Kayfabe
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
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Arthur Schopenhauer
One last concept that is necessary for understanding complicated, systemic level deception comes from an unexpected source. Pro-wrestling. The carnival world of professional wrestling provides a fixed or “worked” wrestling match in order to increase the drama for the crowd and to preserve the performers’ careers beyond a few nights. Kayfabe is the term used for the collective effort everyone in the business makes to portray wrestling as a legitimate sporting competition, even though everyone knows it isn’t. Comparing politics to wrestling is not new. Journalist Matt Taibbi has made comparisons between news media and WWE style theatrics. Former wrestler and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura has also proclaimed politics as faker than wrestling and of course there is former President Donald Trump who is in the WWE Hall of Fame. But no one has so fully and deeply connected prowrestling with our political reality than mathematician Eric Weinstein.
But first let’s get back to idea of kayfabe. Kayfabe is about layering fact and fiction so many times that it's hard to sort out what is true anymore or at least it is easier to suspend disbelief momentarily to enjoy the show. Like when Adam Copeland (Edge) was legitimately sneaking around with Matt Hardy’s real life girlfriend Amy Dumas (Lita) so they had the two of them battle it out in the ring in a kayfabe storyline. Fans knew that the match was a “work” but at the same time they were all wondering if Hardy would break and try to “shoot on Edge” or hurt him for real. Or when the storyline had Paul Levesque (Triple H) drugging boss Vince McMahon’s daughter Stephanie and marrying her in a drive-thru chapel as a strategic coup against McMahon’s authority, only for Triple H and Stephanie to eventually get married in real life and take over the company completely in 2022. The audience is in a state of belief and disbelief at the same time and it keeps them watching.
Weinstein observes that we currently both believe and disbelieve our political system in the same way wrestling fans do. He points out that while the West enjoyed unprecedented growth and advancement post World War II, for many reasons that growth stopped in the early 1970s and so the political establishment has had to fake progress and growth ever since. He believes we have an “embedded growth obligation” or EGO that keeps us hungry for growth but in a world where the pie isn’t getting any bigger, the only growth comes from getting more of your neighbour’s pie for yourself, or in other words, wealth distribution in which only those at the top experience gains. It’s growth at the expense of everyone below them, like a pyramid scheme.
So, as Weinstein’s theory goes, the failed reality of eternal growth was transformed into a successful fake and the kayfabrication of our society began. Powerful elites fell into, or constructed, what he calls the Gated Institutional Narrative (GIN), a fancier and more precise way of describing “mainstream media”. It’s like an inner circle of information dealers who control what’s said and how it is said in a way that benefits that inner circle. Like Vince McMahon feuding with Stone Cold Steve Austin on television but behind closed doors both of them are laughing their way to the bank after the show. But unlike the WWE, the GIN is not under central control by a McMahon or anyone. Weinstein believes that the widespread phenomenon of idea suppression through cancel culture, shadow banning, no-platforming, or down ranking is an emergent complex that serves elite institutions over individuals, which he calls the distributed idea suppression complex (DISC). The name of the phenomenon, for our purposes here, is not as important as it is to recognize that there is something like cancel culture going on and powerful people get to decide its rules.
A few more terms to throw at you before we take a look at how this plays out. Weinstein calls out “the rent-seeking elite.” Rent seeking is an economic term for wanting to increase one’s share of wealth without creating new wealth. Think, taking everyone else’s pie instead of making the pie bigger. Keep in mind, this is necessary because growth has stagnated, so wealth is only likely to occur by taking more of someone else’s share. When the powerful at the top are unable to create their own wealth through ingenuity or creativity they are threatened by anyone who can, (independent media types like Baris Weiss, Russell Brand or Joe Rogan. They hate those). The rent-seeking elite push narratives that benefit them from the shadows and are then propagated by public figures who Weinstein calls “ivy covered dupes.” These dupes are the highly educated, public figures who have the platform to disseminate these ideas (like CNN’s Don Lemon or almost any late night talk show host). They also have the cultural influence to decree which ideas are righteous so that they can differentiate who is morally virtuous or not depending on whether they support the right ideas. Anyone who disagrees with the GIN, they would say, must only be doing so because they are idiots and/or evil. But maybe there are plenty of legitimate reasons to reject the GIN. Then there are those who will disagree with whatever the establishment presents just because they’re the ones presenting it. These people are tired of being suppressed and they grow a hatred for the elite which blinds them and leads them to antisocial behaviour. Weinstein calls them troglodytes. The dupes, who are the mouthpieces of the GIN, are able to label anyone that does not agree with their narrative as troglodytes (racists, TERFS, fascists, communists, or whatever slur relegates them to troglodyte status at the time) , thus maintaining their narrative control. Meanwhile, there are some genuine, independent thinkers who might disagree with the GIN for legitimate reasons. They represent the biggest threat to the whole narrative and will get the most censorious attention from the rent-seeking elite and their dupes.
The dupes will talk about troglodyte opinions that are beyond the pale all day long but when an independent thinker of any influence has a heterodox opinion on the matter they are the ones who must be censored for the sake of safety. How could you claim that you are trying to create safe spaces when you speak incessantly about how racist everybody is, highlighting the worst versions of bad takes and stoking fears of the public only to then try and deplatform Coleman Hughes for using statistics and logic to argue against reparations? The truth is, like in WWE, there needs to be a heel, or bad guy. The GIN loves the troglodytes because it keeps the focus on their blasphemy and away from the real causes of income inequality maintained by the elite’s rent seeking. The troglodytes are hardly defensible morally but their true role in this kayfabe is playing scapegoat because if an independent thinker comes to a conclusion that challenges the narrative, they immediately get lumped in with the deplorables. The GIN is the story that is accepted by the powerful that everyone is supposed to swallow. That’s not to say the GIN is always wrong, just that it is the approved doctrine for consumption.
Let’s use COVID-19 skepticism as an example. There were clearly some ignorant takes, straight up denying that COVID existed or that the vaccines were actually meant to inject in us some kind of tracking chip. But gradually as some independent thinkers started arriving at conclusions that didn’t jibe with the grand narratives, they were treated as heretics or worse. Evidence that SARS-CoV-2 came from the lab in Wuhan, or that masking children in schools might have done more harm than good, or that getting vaccinated wouldn’t protect us from infection as much as we were told were blasphemies that would get you scorned, kicked off social media, and sometimes even fired. Here in the year 2022, all of these opinions have either been proven or at least are accepted by a majority of people.
Like in Orwell’s 1984, the last thing the GIN wants is for the proles to find out that they are actually the ones who could be in charge if they could find the will to unite. So to keep this from happening they pit Oceania against Eurasia in a steel cage, riling everyone up to hate the villain of the day instead of seeing the manipulation coming from their own elite. It makes me wonder how much we could tackle economic inequality if we could put down our pitchforks over divisive culture war issues. Unlikely. There are a lot of psyops to overcome in order to get there. Let’s now look specifically at some psyop tactics.
Thank you for reading so far. Here is the outline of the manuscript for the book so you can keep track of where you are.
Introduction
Defence against Psyops
What are PsyOps?
What makes us marks?
The power of narratives
Who is behind it?
Kayfabe (you are here)
Psychological Operations
Propaganda
Diversion of hatred
Character assassination
Re-education
Cults
False flags/agent provocateur
Totalitarian regimes
Menticide
Defence
Principled insubordination
The Culture Wars
Ideological possession
Cancel Culture
Postmodernism
Profanity
MAGAstan vs. WOKEistan
Religious Zealotry
Heroes and villains
The Defence
The 21st Century Hero
The Responsibility of Freedom of Speech
Ridicule and Humour
Parallel Polis
Art and doubt
The Information Wars
Political Polarization
Corporate Media
Big Tech and the Post-Truth World
Noise vs Signal
“Woke”Journalism
Hate Hoaxes and victimhood
Collective ADHD
Advertisers
Defence
News/Media Diet
Critical Consuming
Rhetoric
The Slow burn
The Psychological Wars
Bullying
Gaslighting
Shame and isolation
Social contagion/Moral Panic
Safetyism
Social Media and human downgrading
The Meaning Crisis
Defence
Know Thyself
Be Wise
Stoicism
Psychological Immunity
Antifragility
Be Kind
Live Well
Conclusion