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The imposition of the nationwide lockdowns required elite consensus. There’s no way that a project of that magnitude could have been carried out absent the nearly universal support of establishment elites and their lackeys in the political class. There must have also been a fairly-detailed media strategy that excluded the voices of lockdown opponents while– at the same time– promoting an extremely dubious theory of universal quarantine that had no basis in science, no historical precedent, and no chance of preventing the long-term spread of the infection. All of this suggests that the lockdowns were not a spontaneous overreaction to a fairly-mild virus that kills roughly 1 in 500 mainly-older and infirm victims, but a comprehensive and thoroughly-vetted plan to impose “shock therapy” on the US economy in order to achieve the long-term strategic ambitions of ruling class elites. As one sardonic official opined, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

It was clear from the beginning, that the lockdowns were going to have a catastrophic effect on the economy, and so they have. As of today, 30 million people have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses have been shuttered, second quarter GDP has plunged to an eye watering -45.5 percent (Atlanta Fed), and the economy has experienced its greatest shock in history. Even so, pundits in the mainstream media, remain steadfast in their opposition to lifting the lockdowns or modifying the medical martial law edicts that have been arbitrarily imposed by mainly-liberal governors across the country.

Why? Why would the so-called “experts throw their weight behind such a sketchy policy when they knew how much suffering it was going to cause for ordinary working people? And why has the media continued to attack countries like Sweden who merely settled on a more conventional approach instead of imposing a full-blown lockdown? Swedish leaders and epidemiologists were unaware that adopting their own policy would be seen as a sign of defiance by their global overlords, but it was. Elites have decided that there can be no challenge to their idiotic lockdown model which is why Sweden had to be punished, ridiculed, and dragged through the mud. The treatment of Sweden further underscores the fact that the lockdown policy (and the destruction of the US economy) was not a random and impulsive act, but one part of a broader plan to restructure the economy to better serve the interests of elites. That’s what’s really going on. The lockdowns are being used to “reset” the economy and impose a new social order.

But why would corporate mandarins agree to a plan that would shrink their earnings and eviscerate short-term profitability?

Why? Because of the the stock market, that’s why.

The recycling of earnings into financial assets has replaced product sales as the primary driver of profits. As you may have noticed, both the Fed and the US Treasury have taken unprecedented steps to ensure that stock prices will only go higher. To date, the Fed and Treasury have committed $8 trillion dollars to backstopping the weaker areas of the market in an effort to flood the market with liquidity. “Backstopping” is an innocuous-sounding term that analysts use to conceal what is really going on, which is, the Fed is “price fixing”, buying up trillions of dollars of corporate debt, ETF’s, MBS, and US Treasuries to keep prices artificially high in order to reward the investor class it secretly serves. This is why the corporations and Tech giants are not concerned about the vast devastation that has been inflicted on the economy.

They’ll still be raking hefty profits via the stock market while the real economy slips deeper into a long-term coma. Besides, when the lockdowns are finally lifted, these same corporations will see a surge of consolidation brought on by the destruction of so many Mom and Pop industries that couldn’t survive the downturn. No doubt, the expansion of America’s tenacious monopolies factored heavily into the calculation to blow up the economy. Meanwhile, the deepening slump will undoubtedly create a permanent underclass that will eagerly work for a pittance of what they earned before the crash. So, there you have it: Profitability, consolidation and cheap labor. Why wouldn’t corporate bosses love the idea of crashing the economy? It’s a win-win situation for them.

We should have seen this coming. It’s been clear since the Russiagate fiasco that elites had settled on a more aggressive form of social control via nonstop disinformation presented as headline news based on spurious accusations from anonymous sources, none of who were were ever identified, and none of whose claims could ever be verified. The media continued this “breathless” saturation campaign without pause and without the slightest hesitation even after its central claims were exposed as lies. If you are a liberal who watches the liberal cable channels or reads the New York Times, you might still be unaware that the central claim that the emails were stolen from the DNC by Russia (or anyone else for that matter) has not only been disproved, but also, that Mueller, Comey, Clapper etc knew the story was false way back in 2017. Let that sink in for a minute. They all knew it was a lie after the cyber security team (Crowdstrike) that inspected the DNC computers testified that there was no evidence that the emails had been “exfiltrated”. In other words, there was no proof the emails were stolen. There was no justification for the Mueller investigation because there was no evidence that the DNC emails had been hacked, downloaded or pilfered. The whole thing was a hoax from the get go.

There’s no way to overstate the importance these recent findings, in fact, our understanding of Russiagate must be applied to the lockdowns, the Black Lives Matter protests and other psychological operations still in the making. What’s critical to grasp is not simply that the allegations were based on false claims, (which they were) but that a large number of senior-level officials in law enforcement (FBI), intel agencies, media and the White House knew with absolute certainty that the claims were false (from 2017 and on) but continued to propagate fake stories, spy on members of the new administration and use whatever tools they had at their disposal to overthrow an elected president. The guilty parties in this ruse have never admitted their guilt nor have they changed their fictitious storyline which still routinely appears in the media to this day. What we can glean from this incident, is that there is a vast secret state operating within the government, media and the DNC, that does not accept our system of government, does not accept the results of elections and will lie, cheat and steal to achieve their nefarious objectives. . That’s the lesson of Russiagate that has to be applied to both the lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter protests. They are just the next phase of the ongoing war on the American people.

The lockdowns are an Americanized version of the “Shock Doctrine”, that is, the country has been thrust into a severe crisis that will result in the implementing of neoliberal economic policies such as privatization, deregulation and cuts to social services. Already many of the liberal governors have driven their states into bankruptcy ensuring that budgets will have to be slashed, more jobs will be lost, funding for education and vital infrastructure will shrink, and assistance to the poor and needy will be sharply reduced. Shutting down the US economy, will create a catastrophe unlike anything we have ever seen in the United States. US Treasuries will likely loose their risk-free status while the dollar’s as days as the “world’s reserve currency” are probably numbered. That “exorbitant privilege” is based on confidence, and confidence in US leadership is at its lowest point in history.

It’s not surprising that the Black Lives Matter protests took place at the same time as the lockdowns. The looting, rioting and desecration of statues provided the perfect one-two punch for those who see some tactical advantage in intensifying public anxiety by exacerbating racial tensions and splitting the country into two warring camps. Divide and conquer remains the modus operandi of imperialists everywhere. That same rule applies here. Here’s more background from an article at the Off-Guardian:

“It is no coincidence that another Soros funded activism group Black Lives Matter has diverted the spotlight away from the lockdown’s broader impact on the fundamental human rights of billions of people, using the reliable methods of divide and rule, to highlight the plight of specific strata’s of society, and not all.

It’s worth pointing out that BLM’s activity spikes every four years. Always prior to the elections in the US, as African Americans make up an important social segment of Democrat votes. The same Democrats who play both sides like any smart gambler would. The Clintons, for example, are investors into BLM”s partner, the anti-fascist ANTIFA. While Hilary Clinton’s mentor (and best friend) was former KKK leader Robert Byrd.

BLM is a massively hyped, TV-made, politicized event, that panders to the populist and escapist appetite of the people. Blinding them from their true call to arms in defense of the universal rights of everyone. Cashing in on the youths pent-up aggression …. And weaponising the tiger locked in a rattled cage for 3-months, and unleashed by puppet masters as the mob…

As a general rule of thumb, it is safe to assume that if a social movement has the backing of big industry, big philanthropy or big politics, then its ideals run contrary to citizen empowerment.” (“The Co-opting of Activism by the State“, Off-Guardian)

Black Lives Matter protests provide another significant diversion from the massive destruction of the US economy. This basic plan has been used effectively many times in the past, most notably in the year following the invasion of Iraq. Some readers will remember how Iraqis militants fought US occupation forces following the invasion in 2003. The escalating violence and rising death-toll created a public relations nightmare for the Bush team that finally settled on a plan for crushing the resistance by arming and training Shia death squads. But the Bushies wanted to confuse the public about what they were really up to, so they concocted a narrative about a “sectarian war” that was intended to divert attention from the attacks on American soldiers.

In order to make the narrative more believable, US intel agents devised a plan to blow up the Shia’s most sacred religious site, the Golden Dome Mosque of Samarra, and blame it on Sunni extremists. The incident was then used to convince the American people that what was taking place in Iraq was not a war over foreign occupation, but a bitter sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shia in which the US was just an impartial referee. The killing of George Floyd has been used in much the same way as the implosion of the mosque. It creates a credible narrative for a massive and coordinated protests that have less to do with racial injustice than they do with diverting attention from the destruction of the economy and sowing division among the American people. This is a classic example of how elites use myth and media to conceal their trouble-making and escape any accountability for their actions.

Check out this excerpt from a paper by Carlo Caduff, an academic at King’s College London, in a journal called Medical Anthropology Quarterly. It’s entitled “What Went Wrong: Corona and the World After the Full Stop”:

“Across the world, the pandemic unleashed authoritarian longings in democratic societies allowing governments to seize the opportunity, create states of exception and push political agendas. Commentators have presented the pandemic as a chance for the West to learn authoritarianism from the East. This pandemic risks teaching people to love power and call for its meticulous application. As a result of the unforeseeable social, political and economic consequences of today’s sweeping measures, governments across the world have launched record “stimulus” bills costing trillions of dollars, pounds, pesos, rand and rupees…. The trillions that governments are spending now as “stimulus” packages surpass even those of the 2008 financial crisis and will need to be paid for somehow. ... If austerity policies of the past are at the root of the current crisis with overwhelmed healthcare systems in some countries, the rapidly rising public debt is creating the perfect conditions for more austerity in the future. The pandemic response will have major implications for the public funding of education, welfare, social security, environment and health in the future.” (Lockdownskeptics.org)

This is precisely right.

The country has been deliberately plunged into another Great Depression with the clear intention of imposing harsh austerity measures that will eviscerate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and any other social safteynet programs that benefit ordinary working people, retirees, or anyone else for that matter. None of it is random, spontaneous or spur-of-the-moment policymaking.

It’s all drawn from a centuries-old Imperial Playbook that’s being used by scheming elites to implement their final plan for America: Tear down the statues, destroy the icons and symbols, rewrite the history, crush the populist resistance, create a permanent underclass that will work for pennies on the dollar, pit one group against the other by inciting racial hatred, political polarization and fratricidal warfare, promote the vandals who burn and loot our cities, attack anyone who speaks the truth, and offer unlimited support to the party that has aligned itself with the corrupt Intel agencies, the traitorous media, the sinister deep state, and the tyrannical elites who are determined to control the all the levers of state power and crush anyone who gets in their way.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR