A War No One Will Win

Trump, the occult, and the Nord Stream bombing

…it’s hard not to think we’re being moved around on some chess board, re-positioned in preparation for a terrible war that will completely change the world…

Some seven years ago, I had a really odd conversation with an immigrant occultist in France. The man ran a very tiny magic shop, too small for more than two customers to enter at a time. It had no signs directing you to it, nor were there any real markings on the windows. You just had to feel your way to it, which is how I found it in the first place.

The man most definitely knew what he was doing, which doesn’t mean what you maybe think it might mean. Yes, he certainly knew magic. But like all good magic merchants, he also knew how to look like he was doing magic, even when he wasn’t. Once, I watched him “purify” an expensive crystal pendant over a Tibetan singing bowl for a customer. He shot me a glance while he did so, checking both to see if I knew what he was actually doing (that is, nothing at all) and also to make sure I wouldn’t stay anything. I chuckled quietly, said nothing, and we became then something like friends.

It was he who first clued me into an occult way of understanding Trump and the American Empire. Despite having all the sorts of identity markers Americans would have suspected would make him vehemently against Trump, he was quite thrilled about him.

“Finally, someone will break their power,” he told me. “This is good for people like you and me.”

I’ll admit, I worried he was then about to tell me about a global Jewish conspiracy. Still, I had to know who he meant.

Fortunately, he didn’t mean the Jews. “They” for him was something much more occult. Call them spirits or demons if you must, though “archons” might be a much more accurate label. He didn’t actually use a label for them at all, but it was quite clear they were not human.

I don’t have a name for them either. And I should also admit that this is a line of thinking I try to avoid in my life. I know some occultists who are much more capable of delving deeply into such places, but my mind just cannot come back from such depths and still function well. Even human conspiracies disorient me so severely that I avoid looking at them unless I have no other choice.

For me, it’s much better to focus on the material realm, to look at actual material conditions and situations and to let others give thought to the hidden influences. Historical materialism is actually quite a powerful tool, and you can get a very clear picture of the world from it. But it doesn’t explain everything.

So you’ll need to forgive me for not pulling the curtain back too far in the rest of this essay, and instead only citing what is actually verifiable. For my own health, I need to avoid deeper conjecture.

Ever think it’s a bit weird how little you are actually hearing about the assassination attempt on Trump? As another occultist mentioned to me in an email, it certainly seems like the whole matter is being shunted down a memory hole.

It’s fucking weird, actually. And it’s probably not accidental.

I remember clearly trying to find out more about the matter after I learned about it. I probably found out later than most of you did, and here’s how:

That’s a photo I took of a newspaper stand. I snapped that photo just before heading to the gym, and was quite perplexed about the headlines. As you can see, the New York Times headline made no actual mention of an assassination attempt, instead calling it “An Eruption of Political Violence.” The subheading under the story mentions only the “wounding of Trump” and suggests such an incident might potentially make America more divided. It’s only from the Financial Times headline that I learned there was an actual “assassination” attempt.

I remember trying to look up more information, and had the worst time trying to find anything. Every time I’d search for more, the results made no sense. It was like nothing had actually happened. And it turns out I wasn’t the only one experiencing this.

In fact, the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability has just launched an investigation into the way both Google and Meta appear to have suppressed queries and manipulated the information made available to internet users who searched for information regarding the event. From their press release:

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is launching an investigation following recent concerning reports indicating Meta’s AI assistant and Google Search’s Autocomplete function generated inaccurate or nongermane information related to the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump.

The specific problem encountered with Google searches was that the autocomplete search terms would consistently lead to users being given links to information not about the attempt on Trump, but rather on successful and unsuccessful attempts on other presidents and leading public figures.

That’s what happened to me. The first few times I tried to search, I was instead given links to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and further down there was also a bio about Donald Trump which listed no information at all about the attempt. Only by going to specific news websites was I able to find out more.

The issue with Meta is related to its AI feature, one that I’ve never used and don’t plan on doing so. According to the press release (emphasis mine):

When asked if the assassination on President Trump was fictional, Meta’s bot responded that there ‘was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can occur.’

Now, both companies have already tried to explain what happened. Google’s response was that the problem was merely due to a previous policy to discourage searches advocating violence on public figures, and in their official response to a previous complaint from a senator, they said, “we recognize that these out-of-date systems led to an inadequate user experience.”

Meta’s response was about as “apologetic:”

“…our systems were working to protect the importance and gravity of this event. And while neither was the result of bias, it was unfortunate and we understand why it could leave people with that impression.

In Meta’s response, they also address another issue related to the assassination attempt in which a real photo of Trump was labeled as fake on Facebook, because it looked so similar to an altered version of the same photo.

Regardless how you feel about Trump — I won’t vote for the guy, but I also won’t vote for Harris, either — it’s impossible not to think there’s something a bit fucking weird going on here. It was as if there were some kind of collective agreement to redirect the initial attention of the public in these examples, to re-narrate the story as quickly as possible in a way that minimized initial human reactions.

Also, sure. We all know that we shouldn’t be relying on big tech for accurate information about the world. The problem is that almost all information now passes first through these companies, who then filter it in ways that will both maximize their own profits while also ensuring governments tolerate their monopolies. There’s therefore no incentive for them to actually be neutral in the ways they filter that information, and every incentive to make sure they feed into approved government narratives.

That incentive is one of the reasons it’s quite difficult to figure out whether or not they are doing the filtering on their own accord, or are also being directed to do that filtering. Unlike in directly authoritarian states, the US government doesn’t actually need to give a direct order to these tech companies to suppress news stories. They only need to give a few signals as to what they won’t tolerate, and these companies readily adapt.

We saw this most clearly with the Hunter Biden laptop story from 2020. As you maybe already know, news reports about its contents were censored from Facebook and Twitter (pre-Elon Musk). Twitter users could not post the article at all, while Facebook users could post it but no one would actually see that post.