It has been ten years since I blew up my online and real-world lives. Other than some occasional sniping on social media, I have stayed away from all of it: real, fake and imagined. That, for me, was the right thing to do. It was necessary. 

And yet.

2020, and the collapse of American democracy, which was always partly illusory and fragile at best, has been so sudden and so complete that my 2007 self is kicking himself for ever backing away. Because nothing that is happening now comes as a surprise to 13-year-ago me. The very title of this blog, Dream’s End, was specifically referencing a near-future collapse of the US. I was constantly warning about fascist inroads into our politics and culture (in fact, even specifically Russian/US far right alliances and specifically involving Aleksandr Dugin) but now what seemed alarmist comes across as almost quaint.

I am not under any illusion that adding my voice to the cacophony of internet cross-talk is going to make much of a difference. There is not much difference left to make. 

The US incel-igencia has chucked their conservative disguises and donned their full-on fascist finery. US police openly encourage and cooperate with rightwing militias, while death squads are surely just around the corner. 

And Trump is even hinting more and more often that he will not leave office in January no matter the election results.

But this rather stunning, almost Vichy-like collapse did not start with Trump. Trump came to power in the vacuum created by the absence of a true opposition party that champions working people. And fascists love a power vacuum, because fascism speaks to the people (white people, anyway), the downtrodden, the frustrated. Fascism is an ideology of action. Fascism provides simple stories to make sense of the dizzying complexity of modern society. Fascism offers a solution to the misery and poverty suffered by so many. It provides purpose, meaning. Pride. Even vengeance.

It does not matter that the answers it provides are rooted in racism and misogyny and that the program of action is comprised of violence, repression and even genocide. Or even that fascism is a corporate long con which will continue removing wealth from the pocketbooks of the people who embrace it.  Because fascism is not rational. Fascism is harnessing the power of misdirected rage.

This did not start with Trump. Fascism did not die at the end of World War II. It merely went underground, quietly growing like fungus in the dark, establishing networks and colonies in the rot and decay that underlies our ever-thinning veneer of “civilization.” 

Or perhaps a better analogy these days is a virus, and the internet, that frontier of mystery and wonder (to my younger self, anyway), has become the primary vector of transmission. 

But there is a complicated dynamic at work, and it is here where I so often part with fellow leftists. Because the left, or what passes for left in the US, has created another kind of vacuum as well, a vacuum of intellectual honesty about our country and society. And just as the vacuum of political leadership is being filled by fascist ooze, so to is this other vacuum filled by simplistic, xenophobic conspiracy narratives that unite “us” against the all-powerful “them” who secretly run the world.

Beyond stirring the passions of angry, authoritarian-inclined white people, these conspiracy tales serve another purpose as well: discrediting legitimate inquiry into history’s darker corners.

Here are a few examples that will continue to be topics at Dream’s End. 

9-1-1 “Truth.”  By the mid 2000s, it became almost impossible to discuss the 9-1-1 attacks online without the conversation turning to “controlled demolition,” the idea that both towers had been pre-wired with enough explosives to level the buildings after the planes hit. Even if the evidence for this was stronger than I believe it is, there were other elements of the story that got drowned out, such as the role of Saudi Arabia, a US ally the US left has always been disturbingly silent about. This, I think, is no accident.

MKULTRA. The CIA’s “mind control” program is surprisingly well documented (partly by accident as records thought destroyed turned out not to have been). Yet despite the documentation, it is a difficult topic to discuss without encountering the ridicule factor. Self-described “mind-control victims” and even “mind-controlled assassins,” litter every online avenue of legitimate discussion, their strict programming apparently unable to prevent them from blabbing about their status. But MKULTRA was ultimately about the question so important to those in power: how do we get people and groups to do the things we want them to do?

Child trafficking.  Hey Q Anon: Did you know there is a worldwide network that aids and protects thousands of child sexual abusers?  It’s called the Catholic Church, and while obviously most Catholics are not involved in this activity, it shows that institutionalized abuse does happen and that very powerful people can be involved in covering it up. So, is the world controlled by a secret elite of Satanic pedophiles?  Unlikely. But sexual exploitation of minors is rampant in our society, and as with most social ills, the rich and powerful can get away with a lot more of it. And sexual enticement and blackmail are still tools of spycraft.  Whether in Hollywood, DC or Wall Street, child sexual abuse is a serious issue that groups like Q Anon do far more to obscure than to expose. 

UFOs. I have always been fascinated by this topic, which is on its face not clearly political, though the topic is often tangled up with our national security state. But I also highlight the subject because we know of fairly well documented efforts to promote bizarre conspiracy narratives specifically to hide other information, such as test flights of secret military aircraft. There is also a long history of fascist strains within the UFO community, and some conspiracy theories feature aliens prominently in their secret occult histories of the world. So, while there appears to be a new era of openness and scientific analysis of the topic, there are still games being played.

Assassinations. The US left vigorously denounces the many assassinations and attempted assassinations carried out on foreign leaders by our intelligence agencies, yet is often dismissive that such things happen here at home. Those promoting the “secret government” narrative (it’s not the authentic US government but a shadowy inner group that does all the bad stuff) are more than happy to control that narrative. So, for example, Oliver Stone used crypto-fascist “former” intelligence officer Fletcher Prouty as a consultant on the film JFK.  Yet even a subcommittee of our own House of Representatives determined that there was a second gunman in Dallas when JFK was shot. This does not settle the matter, but it shows that there was a time when the topic could be discussed seriously. 

COINTELPRO. While the FBI’s infiltration, manipulation and disruption of left groups under this program is well documented and not, as with the other topics, particularly distorted by conspiracy narratives, it’s also discussed with alarming infrequency. Activists should know this history like surgeons know anatomy. The internet just makes infiltration and disinformation campaigns that much easier.

These are all examples of the odd niche occupied by the Dream’s End blog. My interest became a sort of “revelation of the method,” much like a Youtube channel dedicated to revealing the secrets of stage magicians. But do the stage magicians even matter anymore?  Dictators don’t need such subtle tricks. They can simply outlaw opposition groups and jail or disappear their opponents. 

Maybe we will somehow escape the overt authoritarianism Trump represents. Maybe Joe Biden, despite his lack of both mass appeal and interest in campaigning, will overcome all the gerrymandering, charges of absentee-ballot fraud, Russian bot farms, armed fascist militias and the corona virus to win the election in November. And maybe, just maybe, Trump will actually pack up and leave the White House, or be escorted out by a military unit whose loyalty to Trump is exceeded by their loyalty to the Constitution. These are weird times. It could happen.

But either way, I hope anyone reading this does not assume that the removal of Trump fixes much of anything at all. Large segments of our population openly embrace fascism and removing Trump will just piss them off further.  Meanwhile, the collective sigh of relief if Biden is sworn in will very likely drain a lot of energy from activists pushing hard for radical but essential changes to our country. 

Because if a country does not govern justly and does not meet the needs of its citizens, then the government simply functions as a tool of the corporate class, and its primary mission becomes social control. That’s where we were before Trump bullied his way into office and that’s where we will be when he slithers off into history. 

So, maybe Dream’s End will be no more than a post-mortem analysis of how the fascists dismantled the last vestiges of democracy in America. Or maybe a barely coherent, corporate stooge will buy us a few more years to save ourselves and the planet and this site can play a small role in exposing the conjuring tricks of the men behind the curtain. 

Either way, these are times that will define decades and even centuries to come.

Welcome back to Dream’s End.

Part One Part Two