Controlled Opposition

[Red Sky at Morning]

I have started to think recently about the way "Controlled Opposition" works, what it's characteristics might be and how we might avoid getting sucked into it's web.

With so much contradictory "truth" out there in the truth movement, you can be certain that it comes with a great many lies and much disinformation. So...

How do we recognise our enemy. How do we avoid being led down the garden path to someone else's agenda?

I watched "Lord of the Rings" a few times and one particular scene reminded me of what I have begun to notice amongst "truthers" - some can be the most deceived (and deceptive) people of all.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

If anyone has ever read "The Thirty-Nine Steps" you will remember the moment Hannay sees through the bald archeologist and his colleagues...

"A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and missed it. But I didn't, and, in a flash, the air seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted from my brain, and I was looking at the three men with full and absolute recognition."​

John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

I remember reading 1984 at college and being struck by how little hope there was in the story. If you've not read it and want to don't read my post...

OK - one of the key elements in the storyline was of a revolutionary book that Winston and Julia track down...

A bit from Wikipedia will remind of the content:

"The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by the character Emmanuel Goldstein, is the fictional book that is used as a thematic and plot element in Part 2, Chapter 9 of the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four(1949), by George Orwell. According to Orwell's plot, in the totalitarian society of Oceania—ruled by the seemingly omnipotent, omniscient Party—Emmanuel Goldstein (in the Party's propaganda) is the principal enemy of the state: a former member of the Inner Party continually conspiring against the leadership of Big Brother. Early in the story, the protagonist thinks to himself: "There were ... whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as The Book".

I have been interested in uncovering the truth behind the surface of world events for a while now and have come across many contradictory sources claiming to be telling the truth and exposing the "elites" etc. I have had a bad feeling about some, and I have severe doubts about others.

The 1984 connection came when I remembered how the story ends, the spirit of the revolutionaries crushed and the final Revelation from the man from the Party:

"O'Brien rejects Winston Smith's perspective as nonsense, because he is a faithful member of the Inner Party, not a revolutionary of the Brotherhood. At the Miniluv, he tortures Winston in order to cure him of his political insanity: that there exists an objective reality external to that of the Party. In their torture chamber conversations, he tells Winston that The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, "the book" by Emmanuel Goldstein, was written by a committee that included him. When Winston asks O'Brien if "the book" is true, he replies: "As description, yes. The program it sets forth ... is nonsense".

I.e. controlled opposition.