Hypernormalization

In 2016, the BBC published a defining documentary by Adam Curtis titled Hypernormalisation. The term itself was taken from a Soviet scientist named Alexei Yurchak, who introduced it in his 2006 book, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, as a way of explaining the uncanny normalcy bias effect that had gripped Soviet citizens living amidst a decaying political system. More specifically:

He says everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society. Over time, the mass delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with everyone accepting it as the new norm rather than pretend, an effect Yurchak termed hypernormalisation.

The definition of self-fulfilling prophecy can be viewed in the vein of Nick Land’s hyperstition:

hyperstition (plural hyperstitions)

A cultural belief (especially a work of fiction) that makes itself real; a cultural self-fulfilling prophecy where some cultural idea or hype truly brings about the thing it describes.

In echoes of the USSR, the Adam Curtis documentary explains, our modern Western societies have slowly devolved into this state of what he calls hypernormalization—from the description:

HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments.

For those interested, the documentary can be watched here in full. At nearly three hours long, it does at times strike ominously thought provoking tones, but is quite discursively overlong, particularly in its turgid Middle East subplot which drowns out the main arguments.

But getting back to the core theme: that the post-war order ‘ran out of steam’ and resigned to merely the upkeep of a kind of ‘Potemkin society’, the illusion of which is kept ‘stabilized by neoliberal governments.’ The documentary’s opening heavily centers on Kissinger as a central role player and wire puller of the initial thrust to mold society in the globalists’ utopian image. This excerpt should ring familiar for people used to seeing its echoes repeated today by figures like Klaus Schwab, who was in fact Kissinger’s protégé:

Listen to what he’s saying, these dislocations will allow us—the globalists—to, for the first time in history, create a ‘truly global society’. Note how, as per the standard globalist praxis, it takes ‘dislocations’—in other words, major social disruptions—for them to wrest control and remake the world in their vision. Does that remind you of anything else? Recall Schwab’s own ‘Great Reset’ plan, which followed the precise outline: shock society with unprecedented disruptions like the Covid-hoax scare, then “reset” the world into their utopian vision of borderless nations, ablated cultures, and centralized control.

To be clear, I don’t quite agree with the idea that the elites have totally abandoned ‘shaping the world’ in exchange for merely maintaining the status quo—at least not directly and intentionally. Rather the process transitioned toward this emergently due to the elites’ inability to harness the unpredictable fluxes they had unleashed with their monetary and social engineering leviathans, particularly of the ‘Nixon shock’ era and Bretton Woods annulment.

The distinction is this Potemkin existence is essentially a de facto rather than de jure system. It’s a tail that wags the dog because the system’s main imposed characteristics are designed more to reactively stave off collapse, rather than proactively re-engineer society into an altruist’s vision of the future. Again, the distinction comes from the inherent urgency of the demands for this change: the elites have no way of stopping their system’s slow-mo demise, and instead resort to perception control to buy time.

The current unfolding USAID drama figures prominently into this, as USAID was central to the spin doctor operation for maintaining the illusion.

Eric Weinstein once again pithily connects the dots:

This is “Managed Reality”. Yes. It’s real.

The Gated Institutional Narrative or GIN is a real thing.

Likewise the DISC or Distributed Idea Suppression Complex is a real thing as well.

It’s not fake. Yes. This is that thing.

Your whole life within civil society:

Kayfabe.

Curtis’ documentary foresaw this ‘bursting’ of the bubble with these prophetic words:

“Forces are now returning to pierce the fragile surface of our carefully constructed fake world.”

But the most interesting part of Curtis’ thesis is embodied in this portion of the earlier description:

…everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo…

And:

Over time, the mass delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with everyone accepting it as the new norm rather than pretend.

In the West, few can imagine an alternative because of the system of guardrails and Overton windows in place, enforced by the control mechanisms being disrupted in the USAID saga. Our outrage is managed via careful framing devices and astroturf campaigns, most notably during the Occupy movement which birthed modern Wokeism as a fig leaf to channel dissent away from ‘uncomfortable’ focal points—i.e. the banking and financial system.

I often refer to it as a kind of spell woven over society, a haze, a fog akin to mass psychosis. There is both a more indescribably universalized component, and a more tangible one, which can be pointed to directly. For instance, the idea of our taxes and governmental expenditures—the vast budget deficit and parabolic public debt. We know instinctively there is everything wrong with this: it’s unnatural, inhuman, totally contrary to logic. Yet we somnambulate through it in a cognitive daze, pretending to ignore it or acting like it’s normal. It’s the equivalent of one day waking up to a sky that is red instead of blue, but out of powerlessness to confront it, going about your day while simply throwing on a pair of shades to ease the discomfort of the vast, unavoidable distortion of reality.

Another good example are the recent absurd revelations of monetary expenditures from the DOGE team. You’ve seen the lists: LGBTQXIA+ training for frogs, Iraqi Sesame Street, and sundry other profligacy. We know intuitively how lunatic it all is, yet due to years of jadedness, something tells us to ignore it, that it’s just part of “complex reality”, systems and hierarchies we’re not meant to understand, busy lives and all. It’s normalcy bias and cognitive dissonance in one.

The more generalized component has to do with how all the varied pieces of this simulated reality stitch together into a mosaic that fills us with a latent daily dislocation. A sense that we inhabit an unnatural setting, filled with odd artificialities, nonsensical rules and unnecessary complexities, which seem designed for little more than putting distance between us and inherent truths—whether those be things like cultural, biological, and spiritual destinies, or base civil and economic realities.

It’s no coincidence that top thought-leaders likewise describe it in ways like the Truman Show. Everyone seems to be imbibing the same newly raw understanding, as if recent upheavals have turned up the soil of our substrata to reveal long-hidden truths.

The most brilliant explanation of this unveiled status quo control was just scribed by one John Konrad, in a thread that went mega-viral to the tune of almost 12 million views and counting. No more a trenchantly definitive rubric has been written on the topic, which is why I’m reprinting a large portion of it, with some commentary interspersed:

I opened my NYTimes app today. They’re trying, but they can’t keep up. News that broke just hours ago is already off the homepage. The entire liberal deep state command and control system is broken.

The NYTimes’ primary function isn’t journalism. It’s narrative coordination—setting the frame so the entire political-media machine knows how to think about an issue before it takes off.

A pithy summation of the mechanism’s structure, with intel agency-controlled ‘press’ outlets acting as ATC dispatchers to send down coordinated guidance to massage narrative.

Ever notice how, overnight, everyone starts saying “Biden is sharp as a tack” or “JD Vance is weird”?

It’s not random. It’s a system.

Or the creepily synchronized “joy” initiative, which bloomed from the pustulant crevices of the Kamala campaign.

But here’s where we get to the nitty-gritty:

The Narrative Pipeline: How The Blob Operates

The NYTimes, NPR, WaPo, CNN, and the rest don’t just react to news. They function as a distributed, decentralized mission command system for the Democratic Party and the broader Blob.

Step 1: Local Bureau Chiefs – These guys are stationed across the country, watching which stories gain traction and fielding calls from Dem operatives feeding them narratives.

Stories that they need to start controlling

Step 2: New York Editors – Bureau chiefs snip the news and send it to NY, where an editor triages it:
•Will this explode nationwide?
•Will it simmer for days?
•Or should we bury it?

Step 3: Editorial Meeting – The most concerning stories get flagged. Here, editors decide on the narrative framing and who to assign to write it.

This is precisely it. We saw from leaked audios of Jeff Zucker, CNN’s previous owner, that each story and narrative is controlled from the very top with a heavy hand. And given that Zucker—or any other major news station owner—is inextricably tied into the beltway mob, wining and dining with DC bigs on a weekly basis, it’s clear that marching orders are given and agendas aligned from the political centers themselves.

But before they assign a journalist, they make one critical call—to the Deep State.

Why? To give the government a head start on controlling the story.

At this point, the Deep State doesn’t just say, “Here’s what happened.”

They strategically select sources based on the tone they want.

•If they need hawkish China rhetoric, they have a “China hardliner” expert on speed dial.
•If they want to downplay a Chinese spy scandal, they go to a “dovish” China expert who will say it’s being blown out of proportion.
•If it’s a military scandal, they pick a “trustworthy” retired general to subtly steer the discussion toward a desired conclusion.

This isn’t journalism—it’s perception warfare.

Once the tone is set, the editor assigns the story and suggests the approved sources to call.

The journalist’s job is simple:
•Get quotes from the right experts.
•Write it up.
•Stick to the approved angles

If something goes wrong with the angle (e.g. a source exposes it as a lie) they return to the editor for “guidance”

Occasionally, a journalist oversteps. If it’s minor, it passes. If it’s major, the editor kills the piece, buries it on page 16, or reassigns it to a more trusted writer to “correct” the framing.

Overstep too many times and your reassigned to local news or gently (it’s not your fault, we LOVE your spark, just downsizing) let go

Do a really good job sticking to the approved script you’ll get awards or book deals and travel assignments

Nobody flatly says “this award isn’t for toeing the party line” because that would expose the scam

No, these journalist are smart. They either pick up on the reward incentives or they are gently pushed aside.

Suddenly, every news outlet, late-night host, and blue check is reinforcing the same message.

And because they aren’t technically taking orders, they think it’s their own independent analysis.

This is why the narrative feels so unified. No one’s forcing compliance—it’s a system that rewards alignment.

There is even more, and it’s easier to read it in the streamlined threadreader version here.

This is where the hypernormalization kicks in. The world around us is layered with so much confection, it begins to resemble a kind of parallel Potemkin fairyland, like a ‘beautiful’ Christmas diorama of gingerbread houses and striped candy canes. But at some point, even the controllers begin to forget where reality ends and the lies start. Like the so-called Five Monkeys Experiment, the initiators of much of our current paradigm have long been replaced, and the self-sustaining illusion has taken on a life of its own. We stumble through it, lost and increasingly detached by our inability to explain the strangeness around us.

That is when ‘emergent’ properties begin to coalesce into the system. Since the ‘controllers’ themselves no longer know the rules or who made them, they’re forced to double down on the synthetic reality with a new layer of perverse mental justifications. The old justifications having faded from memory, a kind of cultural hysteresis takes effect, wherein the ‘controllers’ are forced to defend and define artificialities for themselves in ways disconnected from first principles or original stimuli. It begets a kind of societal moment whose peak we witnessed over the last few years: surreal scenes of perversity which shock our senses like nothing before, entirely unrooted from any traceable cultural leitmotifs.

Once the ‘genie’ is unlidded, the riotous impulsions spill outward of their own volition, taking on a life of their own, thereafter transforming into unexpected chimeras. This only piles-on the layer cake of hypernormalized faux-realities which require further management and stabilization by the QA wardens. In their attempt to sedate us, their explanations become increasingly unhitched from our formative experience and original instincts. But the machine comprised of their various stabilization organs is so vast, it forces us to tune those inner voices out, marshalling us through the arches of a new world, even while the ‘guides’ themselves no longer understand where they’re stepping.

Once in a long blue while, a disruption comes along which ‘pierces the veil’, and violently stirs reality around. The irreverent Musk and Trump tag-team, with their purposely ridiculous ‘DOGE’ construct, have introduced a piston-knock into the machine. Musk’s frenzy of ‘kooky’ moves and rapid-fire decision-making have scrambled the delicately balanced status quo, sending the controllers reeling. Musk and Trump have both made it a staple to blurt out realities deemed ‘out of bounds’ of the Overton window, forcing the ‘referees’ to stumble over each other to keep the ‘hypernormalized’ play desperately going. But once a certain cold truth is sounded out, it becomes as like a spell, with a magical weight, impervious to former goalposts and guardrails.

The blob has been rendered off-balance by the quirk and tempo of the Musk-led charge. Rather than a bull-in-a-china-shop, he’s more an exaggerative drunk stumbling on stage, throwing himself carelessly through stacks of flimsy set pieces painstakingly held up by an army of gaunt technicians. The pace keeps them from setting their feet. Instead it forces them to plug gaps hither and thither, permanently on the defensive, and robbed of smoothly coordinating their enforcement like before.

Little by little the ‘hypernormalized’ mass-psychosis starts to wear off, and we begin to see the sun edging through the cloud-break. The previously unutterable becomes safe to say: the IRS and Federal Reserve should be abolished, illegals deported, and the border closed; the unfathomable deficit should be controlled and the budget balanced. Of course, these are but the first rudimentary artifacts of the imposed reality. Important ones, yes—with them we can begin to chisel away at the massive edifice benighting our world. But the goalposts have been cleverly Matryoshka-dolled in such a way as to obscure us with veil after veil of hyperparametized restrictions, such that clearing one lulls us into a false sense of satisfaction and promise, while we remain blind to the larger webs of deception covering our eyes. We can find examples of this today: Trump seemingly uncorks Pandora’s box with threats of closing down the IRS, FBI, CIA, et cetera—all the while not touching vaster existential ‘framings’ like the Israeli lobby, occult control, or the fiat and usury altar upon which our entire society has been laid for sacrifice.

But that’s not to say those layers, too, won’t be peeled away in time; all things must start somewhere, and so far we’re off to a promising beginning.

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