Total Information War

Guest Post by The Zman

The wars that brought to a close the feudal period in Europe started as feudal wars, but ended as national wars. Taking the 14th century as the start of the Late Middle Ages, The Hundred Years’ War would be the start of that end phase. It began as a war between kings, leading armies of conscripts and mercenaries of various ethnicities. By the end, it was a war between two nations, fought by the people of those two nations. It is why most historians point to this as the beginning of the nation-state in Europe.

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Similarly, the Thirty Years’ War started as a war of religion, among the smaller states that comprised the Holy Roman Empire. By the end, it was a war fought by nations, carving up central Europe. More important, the defining characteristic of people would not be their king or their religion, but their nation. By the time we get to the Napoleonic Wars, nations were mobilizing their people around love of country, not loyalty to a king. War had evolved to match the new social arrangements brought on by new economic arrangements.

The point here is that wars eventually reflect the age in which they are fought. At the start of the Great War, the French were still using the cavalry charge. They had their line officers wearing brightly colored uniforms so they were easy to spot. The Maxim gun put an end to those old tactics and by the end of the war, both sides were fully employing the weapons and tactics of the industrial age. In many respects, the Second World War was the perfection of the lessons learned in the first industrial age war.

It is not a perfect framing, but a useful one, when thinking about the current crisis and the inevitable wars that will come. Ours is the information age, so the wars will be information wars, especially the civil wars. The corruption of the internet by global corporations on behalf of the emerging global elite is an obvious example. In fact, the corruption of the registrars by companies like Google should be read as a phase change in the information war. The globalists have moved onto a new tactic, as the old tactics have failed.

That is an important aspect here. Up until recently, the Progs had a monopoly on our cultural morality. Labeling someone or something as racist or fascist, was enough to sideline that person or idea. The general public was willing to take their word for it and play along. Now, our Progressive rulers find themselves facing an increasingly skeptical public. Merely calling someone racist or fascist is not enough. That’s why they are moving on to using the blunt force of raw power against threats to their authority.

Now, it is entirely possible that Anglin reported himself to the registrar of Gab, in order to generate attention for himself. He faked the hacking of his site as a publicity stunt. Anglin is a nihilistic provocateur, but he is also just a sideshow. What matters is that we have an extra-judicial set of entities that can regulate political speech on-line. The mere fact that these companies can censor speech on-line, based on their whim or in response to pressure brought by the state, is a serious problem for civilized society.

This is, morally, no different than the decision by the Germans to use poison gas in the Great War. Once it was clear that their conventional weapons were not enough, they made the choice to throw off any moral limits to waging war. That’s what is going on with Big Tech, at the behest of our rulers. In America, speech is considered sacred. Everyone alive has grown up hearing the line about giving your life to defend the right of someone to say offensive things in public. The First Amendment, broadly understood, is sacred.

Our rulers have decided they must abandon that principle.

The response from the dissidents, to the attack on speech by Big Tech, has been an effort to create separate platforms. Gab is an alternative social media platform and others are now in the works. A parallel internet is slowly starting to sprout up with people looking into creating new registrars, new search engines and new funding mechanisms. It is a slow process, and as the attack on Gab shows, one that will be met with escalating attacks from Silicon Valley. We are into a total information war now.

Alt-tech is a defensive response, like the trench was in the Great War. The good guys need weapons to damage the other side’s lines. That will come in time. The old order no longer makes a lot of sense, so it can only be held together by force. The people in charge feel they need to use any means necessary, even if it means squandering what little moral authority they have left. Put another way, they no longer care if we respect them, just as long as we fear them. They’ll choose tyranny if that’s what it takes to remain in control.

That’s why it is important to not follow guys like Andrew Anglin or Chris Cantwell down the rabbit hole. Anglin, to a limited degree, is useful. His site being zapped provides a chance for our side to grab the moral high ground, even if he is mostly a moron. Cantwell is just a sad sack, who should never be encouraged. He makes resistance look bad. This is an information war. Impressions, narratives and imagery are the weapons of this war. Defending reckless lunatics or feckless trouble makers just hands the other side ammo.

When the Germans moved to the use of gas, it was a sign of weakness. When they unleashed unlimited submarine warfare, it was a sign they were scared. Desperate people reach for any weapon that is handy, regardless of the results. That’s our ruling class. They are losing the information war so they seek to reshape the battlefield by shutting off the dissidents from having access to the battlefield. It’s a sign of weakness that they are willing to squander their moral authority. It’s also a sign that they are losing.