Bloodless Coup
/For an Integrated experience, the author suggests listening to: ‘The Planets’ by Ludovico Einaudi (The Royal Albert Hall Concert) whilst reading this part. The author claims no ownership, copyright or control of this song.
- Ch: 07 of Upgrade -
In the years preceding the War of Resources, a coup took place to gain control of the United States government. What follows is an excerpt from a speech given by the coup’s leader to his inner circle, following the successful takeover.
War is inevitable, there is simply not enough to go around. Yet, due to the affluence of our nation, no one here was preparing for it. Whilst other countries were stockpiling munitions and supplies, we were debating trivialities.
It is easy to philosophise over high minded morals and the ethical concerns of animals or ‘subjugated minorities’ when the barbarians are not at the gates. But they are coming, oh yes they are on the way.
We have grown soft. Generation after generation living in abject luxury has left us internally weak. Years of safety ‘guaranteed’ by a technologically strong military combined with aggressive financial regulations and trade deals padded our pillows and filled our plates.
But it can’t last forever. Nothing ever does. Rival nations can only be pushed so far. Our puppet dictators will fall, and when that happens, they will come for us. Our allies will smell the changes coming on the horizon and they too will turn on us.
What the average citizen fails to realise is that we are a part of history. Not just an observer of it. Our attitude of malaise and general indifference to the geopolitical posturing of other nation states will be debated for eons.
Thus, if we didn’t act, if we didn’t seize control of our country, it would have inevitably fallen. We recognised the threat and took action, and we will continue to take the necessary preparations to safeguard our nation against the upcoming storm. There will be some tough choices ahead. Choices that the prior government were clearly incapable of making, but not us.
The beauty is that we will use the very mechanisms we used to gain control, to gear the nation onto a war footing. It will be a slow process of course, but once our second phase is initiated, we will be able to ramp it up significantly.
You remember the process? It was already happening of course, we just saw the mechanisms in place and steered them towards our objectives.
It was only two years ago. Social media had the world divided into arbitrary camps of opinion, and where there was no divisions, we created them.
Despite being billed as an information sharing platform, the internet was really just an elaborately constructed echo chamber. When a user watched one video or read one article they were auto played another, and another, and another. Each one projecting a slightly more extreme opinion than the last.
A few hours later, and the user was indoctrinated into a ridged ideology. This was all fuelled by content creators who were quick to produce anything that would draw them a click. And of course the social platforms happily accommodated this service. More time on site means more advertisement revenue for them. In fact their algorithms were being upgraded daily to better match their content to their user’s interests. Users were far less likely to click off site if it shows them self-referential content. Not many people want to have their preconceived notions of truth challenged. Thus it was in the platforms best interest not to show their users the true nature of the world, rather to reflect back at them what they already knew to be the true nature of the world.
This leads us to one of our prime weapons, ‘Outrage Culture’. Highlight an insignificant issue and show it to one side, then show their responses to the issue back to the first side and repeat. Flame the fires by promoting, sharing, and encouraging where appropriate. Once the issue had some traction, hungry bloggers and faux media personalities were jumping all over it.
Finally, through the use of thousands of fake accounts, we covertly hounded anyone with an online following to weigh in on these ‘issues’. If they refused to participate in the discussion, we would dredge up past comments and label them as a supporter of one side. That or hack into their cloud servers and threaten to reveal images to the world that they didn’t want to go public.
To make it clear that we were serious, we would intermittently ‘leak’ footage of their contemporaries and trump up the charges with accusations of indiscretion. The message was clear, ‘comply, or this will happen to you’.
We knew we would be successful with our efforts to create partisanship when the discussion reached print and television media. The politicians began debating the legal ramifications of policy change to address the ‘concern’ of their democracy. Rinse and repeat.
From there we began to sow the seeds of distrust in the mainstream media itself. ‘Fake news’ is just a new term for propaganda. Anyone could release a blog. Anyone could make a legitimate looking news website. Social proof could be purchased, accounts could be created and comments faked. The overall effect is that the public began to trust nobody but the people that they already agreed with. People we already controlled.
Then we just needed to hijack the system. When animosity was at a fever pitch, we proposed a common enemy. Not the real enemy, that will come with time of course, but not yet. Rather, a common enemy of the group of people that each member belonged to. It was different for each group, but the tactics used and the subsequent results were the same.
We told them as such.
“This is the cause of your problems. It is the reason that your group is over looked, persecuted, and treated unjustly. It is the reason that the world cannot see your plight. They have spread fake news and their own agenda. Really, only the people inside your group can see the truth. You are the only ones that are truly awake to it.”
We used the social media’s own algorithms to show them the footage, the arguments, the barrage of posts. Then we showed them that we would fix it. We became the solution to their problem, and thus, under different guises, the solution to everyone’s problem.
Once we had the populace, taking over the system was a foregone conclusion. We knew who to buy and with what to leverage. No one wants the worst of themselves exposed for the world to see. We once more strategically leaked, pushed, and propped up where necessary. From there it is a simple matter of using overt, covert and subliminal propaganda through social media. Small incremental changes in appropriate directions.
The beauty of this coup is that it is not apparent to our enemies. A typical ‘night of daggers’ was contemplated, but quickly abandoned. Too many moving parts to control and too much bloodshed. We could have started the movement, but we couldn’t predict the outcome. We wanted a more guaranteed outcome. Besides, that approach would signal to the world that a change is coming, and that may have caused the war to start pre-emptively.
We didn’t want that, we wanted to gain control without advertising it. No one, except you, the inner circle are privy to truth about the extent of our control over the nation. Or our plans for phase two.
That takes us to today. Please, turn on the television. Any channel will suffice, phase two will be featured on them all.
Do not doubt yourselves. We must sacrifice a part to protect the whole. The attack will be real, the victims will be real, and the perpetrators will be real. But here is the true beauty of it, we will tell the populace how to avenge their loss. We will show them who is at fault, who our enemy is, and, with popular support, we will develop the necessary will to attack them. And should that will begin to wane, turn to the news once more. We will reignite it.
As a nation we will grow strong and proud. Through conflict, our military might will be sharpened, our industries solidified, our resources secured. We will be prepared for the war that is coming.
‘Bloodless Coup’ is part of Upgrade
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