Empire of Lies

George Carlin's First Rule

JMSmith explains how the dirty commies work. He uses a couple of fancy words. I had to look them up.

anamnesis - the remembering of things from a supposed previous existence (often used with reference to Platonic philosophy).
• epigones - a less distinguished follower or imitator of someone, especially an artist or philosopher. "the epigone's habit of exaggerating his master's voice"

Here's his post: 

Remembrance False and Otherwise

“I cannot forget that widely organized lying about the past which is one of the chief activities of the epigones.”

Leon Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (1930)*

The key word in the foregoing sentence is organized. There will always be adventitious lying about the past, as there will always be historical untruths engendered by lazy ignorance, wishful thinking, and the natural human love of spouting off; but organized lying about the past is altogether different.

Organized lying is altogether different because it aims to permanently alter collective memory, and organized lying works because a false collective memory is engendered and sustained by repetition. More particularly by repetition that appears unorganized. Organized lying (propaganda) works to the degree it infiltrates everyday discourse and is unwittingly passed along by dupes in their casual conversations.

We find shills more persuasive than salesmen because we do not see that the shill has an interest in selling us what the shill is in fact selling us. This is because his sales pitch is disguised as a casual remark, and in this disguise slips past our skeptical sales resistance. But a salesman must share his commission with his shill, so he seeks to recruit shills who will spread the disguised sales pitch unwittingly and for free. These second-order shills are the dupes who, unbeknownst to themselves, pitch sales in their casual conversation.

It is important to remember that organized lying includes organized silences, and that the power of organized silences also comes from repetition. When circumstances repeatedly demand that a memory be publicly recalled, and when that memory is instead repeatedly not recalled, private recall of that memory begins to fail. This is one aspect of what we now call gaslighting. It is very hard for a man to keep a memory if others do not recall and confirm that memory when circumstances demand that that memory be recalled and confirmed.

Christ instituted the eucharist because he knew that a conspiracy of organized lying and silences would try to put the memory of Christ “down the memory hole,” as George Orwell would say. “Do this,” Christ said, “in remembrance of me.” The conspiracy that St. John called the Synagogue of Satan would, Christ correctly foresaw, undertake organized lying and silences about the past. It would engender and sustain a false collective memory by means of repeated lies—mostly in the mouths of paid and unpaid shills—and by gaslighting silences that would cause Christians to believe they were losing their minds.

* * * * *

“The history of the church as written down by the medieval apologists is a model of scientific treatment compared with the historical investigations of the epigones.”

Leon Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (1930)**

Epigones, as you know, are the mediocrities that follow in the train of a cultural or religious genius. Indeed, we call many epigones mediocrities only out of courtesy. Many lack the energy and wit that is required to discover that they are repeating the falsehoods of a conspiracy of organized lying, and many lack the conscience that is required to feel shame if they did, by some accident, make this discovery. These epigones are just obedient functionaries—what Trotsky called “apparatus men”—in the organized empire of lies.

The ”red pill” is what Eric Voegelin called anamenesis, the Platonic principle that knowledge is not so much discovered as unforgotten. The conspiracy of the empire of lies creates collective amnesia; anamnesis is the “red pill” by which memory is restored. Theodore Parker was a Platonist theologian who described anamnesis as

“a reminiscence of what the soul knew in a higher state of life before it took the body.”

A Christian articulation of the same idea might be:

“a reminiscence of what the soul knew in a higher state of life before it took the Fall.”

But my subject here is mundane historical anamnesis, the essence of which is:

“a reminiscence of what you once knew in an earlier state of life before the empire of lies.”