New Normal Germany Blues

The first rule of New Normal Germany is “You Do Not Compare New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany!” I did that on the cover of my bestselling book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich, so the State Prosecutor’s office in Berlin has launched a criminal investigation of me for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which is punishable by up to three years in prison.

Actually, the first rule of New Normal Germany is “Shut Up, Click Heels, and Follow Orders!” I think the second rule is probably the one about not comparing New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany.

Which is totally reasonable. After all, Nazi Germany was not just one type of totalitarian social system among others, like Maoist China, Fascist Italy, the USSR under Stalin, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and other totalitarian social systems that you’re allowed to compare New Normal Germany to. And, even if it was (i.e., one example of totalitarianism, among others, and not the incomparably singular and utterly unprecedented historical event that it was), there is no such thing as totalitarianism anymore, so you can’t compare any present-day system, or movement, or widespread sociopolitical phenomenon, to it (i.e., to Nazi Germany), or to any of those other totalitarian systems, especially not in New Normal Germany.

If you do … well, this is what happens.

You want to see a picture of my “propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” don’t you? Sure you do. All right, here you go.

My book is the one on the right, of course. The other book is the international bestseller, The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, by William Shirer, which has sold, I don’t know, a gadzillion copies since it was published in 1960, and which you can buy in any bookshop in Germany, and which is absolutely not “propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

And here’s a frame from Rammstein’s music video, Deutschland, in which the Rammstein guys dress up like both Nazis and concentration camp prisoners, which is also not “propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

Oh, and, here is a Tweet by Jessica Berlin, a political analyst and expert in security issues and international development, and a former fellow of The German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the founder and Managing Director of something called CoStruct, where she advises governments, foundations, investment funds, NGOs, and companies large and small on strategy and program design to tackle global challenges with sustainable, scalable solutions, and who is also a commentator at Deutsche Welle News, Washington Post, BBC World Service, Tagesspiegel, ZDF, et al., which is also absolutely not (i.e., Jessica’s Tweet is not) “propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

OK, yes, Jessica tweeted the same photograph of a bunch of little Nazi girls waving little Nazi flags with swastikas on them that I tweeted back in 2021 (I think), and wrote “they are back,” referring to the Nazis, but Jessica was referring to people in Frankfurt who were supporting Russia instead of … well, you know, the totally non-Nazi Azov Detachment, or “Division,” or whatever they are calling themselves now, and the other Nazi-regalia-wearing heroes that New Normal Germany is supporting and arming, whereas I was referring to the decent, well-meaning, “unfortunately mistaken,” order-following people all around the world who were persecuting “the Unvaccinated,” and who wanted to lock us up in “quarantine camps,” and forcibly experimentally “vaccinate” us.

But, seriously, this investigation is a joke … and it’s not. The Berlin authorities have the power to imprison me for up to three years, or to fine me thousands of Eurodollars, for tweeting the artwork on the cover of my book.

Apparently, I tweeted an image of the book cover (or at least the cover art of the book) on my birthday, August 24, 2022 at 5:51 P.M. CET, and then again on August 27, 2022 at 8:47 P.M. CET, according to the notice of Ermittlungsverfahren from the Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin. (Yes, I’ve just used the German terms for comic effect, so they can add that to my charges.) If you understand German or would just like to see what an Ermittlungsverfahren notice from the Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin looks like, there’s a photo of it in my recent Substack post.

I can’t go into all the details of my case, and I am certainly not going to argue it in this column — my lawyer’s job is challenging enough; I mean, imagine having me for a client — but I can fill you in on life in New Normal Germany and share some of my personal emotional feelings about the country I have called home for almost twenty years now.

My personal emotional feelings are, it sucks. It didn’t used to suck. It used to be lovely. When I arrived here in Berlin in 2004, the city was still in its “poor but sexy” phase. It reminded me of my years in San Francisco in the early 1980s, before the dotcom boom, except for all the bullet holes in the facades of buildings from the Russian machine guns, and the Stolpersteine, and … well, everyone speaking German. I was still “poor but sexy” back then, and in the throes of an extended midlife crisis (i.e., running around making a fool of myself with Berlin club kids half my age, tripping on mushrooms in Volkspark Friedrichshain, and engaging in other degenerate behaviors), so it seemed the perfect place to set up camp in Europe.

And it was … until the Spring of 2020.

Given its history and the character of its denizens, Berlin felt like the last place on Earth that was ever going to go totalitarian again … and then it did. In the blink of an eye. Like someone had flipped a big “fascism on” switch.

Constitutional rights were abruptly cancelled. Protests against the New Normal were banned. The German media started pumping out propaganda like a Goebbelisan keyboard instrument. Public displays of conformity were mandated. “The Unvaccinated” were banned from society. Hate drunk mobs of New Normal Germans began hunting down maskless people on trains. By the end of it, the government was making plans to forcibly “vaccinate” the entire population.

I’m not going to tell the whole story again here. I told it in the book. I told it as it happened. I told it these Consent Factory columns …

The Storming of the Reichstag Building on 29 August, 2020 (September 2020)
The Germans Are Back! (November 2020)
The “Unvaccinated” Question (March 2021)
The Criminalization of Dissent (May 2021)
Greetings From New Normal Germany (May 2021)
The Road to Totalitarianism (July 2021)
The Year of the New Normal Fascist (December 2021)
The Rise of the New Normal Reich (May 2022)
The Federal Republic of New Normal Germany (June 2022)
The Normalization of the New Normal Reich (July 2022)
The “Unvaccinated” Question Revisited (August 2022)
New Normal Germany’s Geisterfahrer Geist (August 2022)
The Rise of the New Normal Reich, Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III,
(2020-2021) banned in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands (August 2022)

… and in many other non-New-Normal-Germany-related columns.

As anyone who has read those columns or the book knows, “The New Normal Reich” does not refer to Germany exclusively. I have also written extensively about the New Normal USA, the New Normal United Kingdom, New Normal Canada, New Normal Australia, and various other New Normal countries, none of which, as far as I’m aware, are attempting to imprison me for my writing, currently.

But Germany is sensitive about its Nazi history, and, well, who wouldn’t be? I certainly would be. If I were a member of the German government, or the police, or the media, or the culture industry, I probably wouldn’t take very kindly to an American writer reminding everyone of when my people tried to conquer Europe, and systematically murdered millions of Jews and assorted other types of human beings because they thought they were the “master race.”

Of course, the New Normal has nothing to do with the Jews, or the Holocaust, or even Nazism, specifically. As I’ve written and stated in my columns and my interviews, the New Normal is a new form of totalitarianism … totalitarianism, of which Nazism is one example among others.

It happens to be a really good example … and it is an example that I am allowed to cite when I am writing and speaking about totalitarianism, or else The Universal Declaration of Human Rights means nothing.

The German authorities understand this. They’re not total idiots. They attended universities. Some of them studied political science, and logic, and even 20th-Century history. They know the difference between pro-Nazi propaganda and anti-totalitarian artwork. They know how absurd the charges against me are, but they have to be pursued, because … well, orders are orders!

And it isn’t just the German authorities. As I’ve tried to explain in my essays, and in the book, and at a recent “Real Left” conference in London, the New Normal is a global phenomenon. GloboCap, Inc. (i.e., global capitalism, or global corporatism, or whatever anyone needs to call the supranational network of global corporations, governments, banks, military contractors, media and entertainment conglomerates, pharmaceutical goliaths, imperious oligarchs, non-governmental governing entities, etc., that are currently running the world) is done playing grab-ass. Grab-Ass time is over. They are going totalitarian on us. It isn’t your grandfather’s totalitarianism. It is a new, global-capitalist form of totalitarianism. However, like every other form of totalitarianism, its ultimate goal is ideological uniformity and control of every aspect of society through a process the Nazis referred to as “Gleichschaltung.”

That process is well underway at the moment. The New Normal authorities and their diverse associates are implementing a variety of societal-control systems, censorship and “visibility-filtering” of speech, digital currencies, restrictions on movement, the enforcement of radical ideological dogmas, and so on. And they are aggressively cracking down on dissent.

One of the most repulsive aspects of their efforts to persecute political dissidents, censor our speech, and otherwise implement “New Normal Gleichschaltung” throughout the planet is the cynical way they’re using the Holocaust and false accusations of anti-Semitism as pretexts. If you wanted to make a mockery of the memory of the Holocaust and the dignity of its victims and “further the aims of a former National Socialist organization” … well, I cannot imagine a better way to do it.

I’ll keep you posted on the investigation, and I’ll try my best to not go full “Late Lenny Bruce” and start publishing trial transcripts verbatim. In the meantime, some of us are gathering in London to discuss what to do about what Michael Shellenberger has dubbed the Censorship Industrial Complex. So it’s back to the Big Smoke once again, assuming the Germans let me leave the country.

###

CJ Hopkins
June 12, 2023

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

17 thoughts on “New Normal Germany Blues”

  1. ‘some of us are gathering in London to discuss what to do about what Michael Shellenberger has dubbed the Censorship Industrial Complex’

    Good. It’s high time we worked out what to actually do about this. Up to now all anyone has done is rant.

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  2. ‘Given its history and the character of its denizens, Berlin felt like the last place on Earth that was ever going to go totalitarian again … and then it did. In the blink of an eye. Like someone had flipped a big “fascism on” switch’.

    Sadly, any place on Earth that has human beings in it is always liable to go totalitarian. Humans evolved to live in small bands where everyone knew everyone else pretty well, and understood which people were untrustworthy or dangerous. (Those people had a strange way of suddenly dying themselves, through unaccountable accidents).

    Today we live on a planet with over 8 billion humans, and 1 million more arriving every 4 days or so. Some cities contain tens of millions packed in together in conditions that have been demonstrated to drive rats insane and make them start killing one another and eating their own young.

    Yet well-meaning folks without much knowledge of the facts keep telling us soothingly that everything is fine. Maybe God will provide – but, as Paul Ehrlich put it, we won’t like what he provides.

    If humans were chemicals they would have to come with safety warnings. Combustible, explosive, very poisonous under certain conditions…

    And by a strange confluence of circumstances, we in “the West” have evolved a system of government and society that seems unerringly to filter out the very worst people and put them in charge of everything.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. ‘And by a strange confluence of circumstances, we in “the West” have evolved a system of government and society that seems unerringly to filter out the very worst people and put them in charge of everything.’

    But what are we going to do about it?

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  4. The text suggests that it’s all a psyco problem. Tom says they are all the worst people, and sure they are. But I think that’s missing the point. This is far behind the psycology of people put in charge. It’s the system, the GloboCap, the uge transfer of wealth from bottom to top. In that context, whoever is chosen or appointed will perform as needed, no matter the character, idiossincrazy, whatever the beliefs or else. Those persons are paid to perform exactly as they do. No point in changing the people without changing the sistem.

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  5. ‘No point in changing the people without changing the sistem.’

    Agreed. But how do we change the system?

    I’m not indulging in sophistry here. I just feel it’s time we moved on from identifying the problem and started discussing how to solve it.

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      1. You really are in the wrong place here because people like me would fight you to the death to prevent communism being our political system. It has been tried in lots of places and it always leads to tyranny. If you want a single word to describe what CJH is fighting against it’s tyranny, represented at the moment by what he calls Globocap.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “It has been tried in lots of places and it always leads to tyranny.”

          No, it really doesn’t. I would give ANYTHING to exchange this hell of a world we live now for 1940s USSR.

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          1. You want to live in 1940s USSR? Let’s assume you mean after the Yalta conference.
            + Brutal repression of Cossacks and other ethnic groups
            + The Gulag Archipelago
            + Increased forced collectivisation of agriculture
            + Secret police, confessions extracted by torture
            + No free press – just propaganda
            + Electoral fraud & rigged elections
            + Shortage of consumer goods
            + Satellite states where the rulers had to be approved by the Kremlin

            I’m well aware that some of these evils are to be found today in my country and other western countries, but 1940s USSR was the pits. If you think you’d be happy there I reckon you are not going to be any help in the search for a way to alter our current trajectory because, I repeat, communism is a particularly nasty manifestation of tyrannical government and I’ll fight to oppose it.

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            1. There are lots of lies about the USSR so forgive me if I don’t buy any of this at face value.

              You guys are funny. “Question everything! Except the Cold War anti-Soviet propaganda you grew up with! That one is totally true!”

              Liked by 1 person

  6. “They know how absurd the charges against me are, but they have to be pursued, because … well, orders are orders!”

    Yes and the purpose behind those orders is twofold and will be a modus operandi of Globocap for problematic dissidents the likes of you:

    1. Debase and profane your character by falsely portraying you as a supporter of Nazi ideology – the opposite of your actual persona as a satirical evocator and reviler of this novel and apocalyptic global totalitarianism now almost fully formed – i.e., nullify you as an influential and informative dissenting voice;

    2. Divert you and your supporters from detailing the forming totalitarian storm and instead waste time, energy and resources defending against the German state’s baseless and slanderous legal bilge. DEBASE and DIVERT, D&D for short.

    The new normal media matrix envisioned by Globocap is one in which there is a formal, accredited “metaverse” owned by the largest media and technology corporations which is the “sole source” of all acceptable information for the masses…AND a shriveled and deprecated alternative media that is constrained, intimidated, controlled and censored by the tangled octopine arms and byzantine edicts of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

    Will they succeed ? I have no idea but I am amazed at how far this has progressed. I know many intelligent, educated mature people who without exaggeration live in a different mental universe than mine. They have been totally informed (indoctrinated) by the omniscient and infallible seers of the corporate/state media (in Can-uh-duh the CBC et. al.). They make no effort to seek any alternative source of information whether “alternative” media, academic, scientific or books.

    For them, the scamdemic of the past few years has just been tough medicine.

    A few mistakes were made but by and large the never justified mandates and ineffective but adverse-event-riddled “vaccines” saved lives. Apparently, we didn’t need no stinkin’ early treatments many of which are now proving to be effective and life saving.

    Evil and insane Hitler-Putin decided to go all Pinky and the Brain starting (unprovoked, of course) with helpless and innocent Ukraine. NATO never surrounded Russia with hostile member nations conducting military exercises, never installed a pro-Western leader in an anti-democratic coup in 2014, never advocated Ukraine as a NATO member with a leader who openly favored acquiring nukes that would be on hair-trigger target to Russia. Ukraine never bombed, tortured, oppressed oblasts (territories) of Russian ethnicity in East and South Ukraine. Crazy conspiracy stuff. Then like a deranged asylum inmate Ras-Putin blew up his own multi-billion dollar pipeline and attacked himself in the Kremlin with drones. And bit his own toes.

    But our leaders are on it spending billions on weapons to fight for “freedom and democracy” by supporting a neo-nazi infested military, most of which weapons go into a black hole of corruption ending up in the hands of “diverse” (diversity great!) terrorist groups – while our public infrastructure (potholes the size of craters), health, education and economy circle round the great Western toilet bowl.

    Our biggest problem is white supremacy/terrorism as told to them by old senile Joe in round the campfire format. Most of my social circle are white and wouldn’t know which end to aim. That, and a slew of (oddly) rarely personally witnessed hate/thought crimes – transphobia, misogyny, racism, misgendering, criminal use of pronouns.

    They think it’s cool for preschoolers to be groomed in sexualized drag queen performances.

    They fret and sweat with the obsessive, manipulated formerly special needs child activist about climate change which will surely harken the apocalypse before the next decade is nigh (apocalypse prediction #3598473874; eventually it will come “true”). Sure, “going green”, the Green New Deal, would cost a few hundred trillion, have little impact on the actual climate or carbon footprint, cause ecological damage, chew up valuable agricultural land, mar the landscape and cause untold economic hardship and inequality – but it’s worth it because…because…HOW DARE YOU ????!!!! Whatever that means.

    To come back to the original point, these new normals had never heard of you. If they had and bothered to follow up they would have done a quick google or wiki and quickly “learned” that you are a wacky conspiracy theorist purveyor of mis/dis/mal info. Back to Netflix.

    Maybe it’s something of a compliment that they find you enough of a threat that they felt compelled to take this “final solution” of depredation of your character. (Ooops! Did I just verbally trivialize the holocaust ? Sorry.)

    The single biggest enemy (there are others) remains IGNORANCE and it is formidable.

    Thank you for allowing me my rant time (and your service not military).

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  8. A German friend told me an American can pretty much speak his mind in Germany. I guess that is no longer the case.

    When is part four of “Mr. Global” coming out?

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  9. Craig Murray (a former UK ambassador) was jailed for identifying individuals in a court case (which he didn’t but he de facto accused Nicola Sturgeon and her pals of stitching up Alex Salmond). They made up a ludicrous accusation of jigsaw identification.

    Alex Belfield (a former BBC local radio presenter) was jailed (for five and a half years) for ‘stalking’ BBC employees despite not ever having had any non internet contact with them) but more likely for ridiculing the plandemic, the government and the police. Also for being right wing and tabloid. A working class man, he naively believed judges were impeccably unbiased and honest.

    The point being that defending yourself against the very specific accusation may be missing the point. I obviously don’t know.

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  10. Over at Off Guardian folks seem to want you to be a hero and stand up to ‘the man’. I don’t. I can see the ‘new normal’ in my rear view mirror. We all can. It isn’t going to be democratic or respect the rule of law.

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  11. Hello Christopher Hopkins,

    I just read about that NONSENSE from that crazy Berlin/Senate/UN-Justice-Department via an E-mail from Matt Taibbi.
    .
    Berlin happens to be our “Banana-Republic” within Germany – where EVERYTHING seems to be turned upside down – via INCOMPETENCE and/or CRIMINALITY.
    .
    I am a native German from 1947 in France right now, and I am from the North. If you need pro bono counseling on ANYTHING relating to CRIMINALS in German Politics or German Justice or REAL stealth NAZI’s Faking to be Green or Red or whatever color – just send me a word at SwifterMan [at] aol.com

    Good Luck!
    PS:
    Berlin is HYPER-PSYCHOTIC these days, as foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has pressured the Embassy in Kabul to commit a high crime against German law – so that is when they go after unsuspecting ARTISTS like you . . .
    NOTHING has changed!

    Like

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