Hegel explained Napoleon. Marx interpreted the Eighteenth Brumaire. And Karl Rove gives us Ferguson.

During those carefree days when American arms seemed utterly triumphant in the supposed Cradle of Civilization and the Beltway Right talked giddily of a Permanent Republican Majority, Karl Rove, probably not knowing fully what he was saying, uttered the most profound statement that has ever come from a political consultant:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Ironically for the products of a university system marinated in relativism and post-structuralism, the American Left reacted with rage. Alongside the faded “Kerry/Edwards” bumper stickers on high MPG vehicles were the defiant adhesives proclaiming the owner a “Proud Member of the Reality Based Community.” Rove, if he indeed said it, supposedly had given the game away by showing that the Bush Administration was ruled by ideology and indifferent to the facts that supposedly justified the Iraq invasion. Unlike the Bushite theocrats, the American Left would be guided by facts and evidence, rejecting sensationalism and empty media slogans, and adopting an ironic and cynical posture exemplified by the likes of Jon Stewart.

Well, that didn’t last long.

All it took for dissent to transform from “patriotism” into “treason” was the election of a black President. In the age of Obama, the American media seems to have made the collective decision to simply stop reporting. Instead, the poisonous combination of a 24-hour-news cycle and the revenue-driven clickbait culture of the Internet has led to a new way of doing business.

Reporters function less as fact finders than as story-tellers. They exhibit social cues, peddle hate porn, and spell out the expected responses from their audience. If someone does not display the correct reaction, the media attacks. Rather than confronting power, journalists reinforce power and hunt down and punish dissenters from the established Narrative.

The best recent example of this is Ferguson. With the exception of the ill-considered decision by conservatives to repeat Gateway Pundit’s claim that Officer Darren Wilson suffered an “orbital fracture,” the American Right was spectacularly vindicated by the grand jury. Almost everything leftists said about the Michael Brown case, including the claim that he had his “hands up,” was a lie. Yet far from being embarrassed, the media is actually raising the stakes and talking up legal changes that would make it easier to indict people like Darren Wilson.

As this is written, another “Dindu Nuffin” case is being promoted around one Eric Garner in New York City. While the death of Eric Garner seems far less justified than the shooting of “Gentle Giant” and attempted cop-killer Michael Brown, even in Garner’s case it’s not the “execution” that the media seems determined to promote.

Garner did not die of asphyxiation or a supposed “chokehold.” The NYPD officers involved were not charged because the evidence did not exist to charge them. And engaging in constant criminality and resisting arrest, as blacks are wont to do, leads to continual confrontations with police. These kinds of situations are going to occur fairly consistently as long as many young African-American males consciously choose to behave as criminals and turn their “communities” into low level war zones.

Nonetheless, there are now threats of “race war” by black guests on CNN and Louis Farrakhan at massive rallies at American universities. Apparently, even though we’re overlooking Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty so we can talk about Michael Brown and Eric Garner all day, we’re still apparently “ignoring” black deaths at the hands of White policemen. It goes without saying that to mention the far more numerous and far less justified White deaths at the hands of black criminals… er, “youths,” is to confess oneself a bigot. The correct way to interpret black and White crime is to chalk it up to chance, being in the “wrong place at the wrong time,” namely, America in 2014. Being beaten to death with a hammer by a pack of Negroes screaming “Kill the White People” is an accident, like being hit by lightning.

We should not overlook the other media campaign taking place right now–the supposed “UVA rape” story featured in Establishment mainstay Rolling Stone. It has already resulted in attacks on the fraternity where the rape supposedly took place, the supposedly temporary suspension of Greek life at the University of Virginia, and of course, demands for more “anti-rape” and pro-feminist programming at American universities.

As universities have already all but abolished the presumption of innocence when it comes to rape and enthusiastically fund and pamper every feminist group that could possibly exist, it’s unclear how else to interpret this campaign except as a ploy for simply more money. It already seems redundant and unnecessary to note that this “rape” almost certainly didn’t happen, and the inevitable pushback is already appearing even in the likes of Reason magazine and the Washington Post.

But what difference does it make? Steve Sailer notes that the UVA “rape” story owes more to fictional hate porn (is there any other kind?) like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo than anything occurring in the real world. Yet he errs when he writes:

Numerous identity politics uproars, such as Ferguson, Trayvon, and Duke Lacrosse, have turned out to be humiliating fiascos for the national press when all the facts are finally toted up. Note that these were the mainstream media’s wars of choice, battlegrounds chosen to teach the public lessons.

Says who? Sure, on lonely corners of the Internet you can find out the truth about Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and the Duke Lacrosse story, but those facts are discredited because they are being reported by conservative or “racist” sites.

• Ferguson is already being used succe
  ssfully to implement policy changes and empower protests nationwide. Officer Darren Wilson has resigned from his job. The New York Times published his address right after he married. Sites like “Getting Racists Fired” are hunting down those who criticize the riots. Hollywood will soon memorialize the story of the “Gentle Giant.” On balance, Ferguson has strengthened the Left, not weakened it. The end result is a net transfer of resources to the Left.
• George Zimmerman will live in fear and disgrace for the rest of his life, despite doing everything someone is “supposed” to do. Trayvon Martin will be remembered as a civil rights hero: Colleges around the country are already feeding their students the party line, and Martin’s death is used as a rationale to take away Americans’ right to self-defense. As intended, the case taught White Americans not to interfere with black criminality in their neighborhood and the media didn’t back down in the slightest.
• As for the Duke Lacrosse case, the prosecutor did actually meet with professional disgrace. However, the case did nothing to discourage the climate of hysterical feminism and rape accusations on campus, as we see with the current situation at UVA. The accuser in the case, Crystal Mangum, actually went on to be a campus speaker at the University of North Carolina and was given a respectful reception. It should be noted that the University of North Carolina is the same university that greeted Congressman Tom Tancredo with brick-throwing protests by a far Left organization, leading to the arrest of a leftist caricature. Students for a Democratic Society member, child of privilege, and “Morehead-Cain scholar” Haley Koch is now trying to rustle our jimmies as an “anti-assimilationist,” BDSM porn star named “Chloe Camilla.” (Edgy.) Mangum’s future career was similarly predictable – she went on to be convicted of second degree murder for stabbing and killing her boyfriend, though you can help her by buying her awesomely titled book “Last Dance for Grace.” Incidentally, Cosmopolitan is still telling your next one night stand what to think about all this by running cheerleading interviews with her from her jail cell. (She didn’t do nothing.)

In every one of these cases, events have played out in a way that would appear ridiculous and exaggerated if it were portrayed in a Harold Covington novel. Yet this is the world we live in, and these facts have done nothing to change the overall media Narrative of White oppression, the wild charges and groundless speculations by media figures and leftist activists, and the continual transfer of resources from European-Americans to activists, academics, and media figures who seem to derive their livelihood from feeding on their White host. In fact, each new artificial crisis strengthens the status quo, even as we inevitably find out it was based on half-truths or outright lies. They aren’t “humiliating” failures, they are successes.

Rove, if he indeed said the quote about the history making empire, was correct when he said that the hegemonic power creates its own reality. However, he misidentified the source of that power as the state. Power in the modern West is more concealed, if not more diffuse, and it lies not with the head of the state or even the army, but with those who shape consciousness and the Narrative by which people interpret events. Where the “Western” media does not hold sway, as in Russia, we find an entirely different political climate where different things are possible.

What drives those who wield this power? While the real source of dominion lies with the financiers and corporate bosses of the media conglomerates, the ideology informing the foot soldiers still has a power of its own. Mark Stern of Slate recently wrote a piece entitled, “I’m Grateful to Be Gay–Otherwise I Might Have Been a Horrible Person.” Like Patrick Bateman’s favorite musical “Oh Africa, Brave Africa,” it’s a laugh riot. Stern writes:

What if, given the privilege of heterosexuality, I turned against all the vulnerable and disadvantaged people, who, as a gay man, I inherently empathize with? As part of my job, I regularly read the writings of people in whom something has broken or withered—people who have lost the ability to see the humanity in others. I put myself in the mindset of people who dehumanize and vilify and hate. I become intimately acquainted with the twisted beliefs of those who, encountering a person they don’t quite understand, lash out with cruel loathing and immoral rage. Because I am gay, it is basically impossible for me to become one of these people. The identity—a professional minority-basher—just doesn’t fit, and besides, they wouldn’t exactly welcome me into their club.

Forget for the moment the reference to heterosexual “privilege” from someone who brags within the same column about professionally “milking” his homosexuality. (Phrasing?)

Forget the leftist confusion about whether the party line is that the “far right” is fanatically homophobic or that “fascism itself is a gay thing.” (#Slatepitch–it’s both)

And forget the glaringly obvious point that the entire humblebragging essay is simply another example of a progressive proudly proclaiming “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup” (like those who are “broken,” “withered,” “cruel,” and “immoral.”)

Stern is signaling his participation in a caste. White identity allows you the “privilege” to mobilize against other European-Americans. Eventually, this culminates in claimed membership as either an avowed self-hating White, or, more commonly, membership in an official victim group such as women, homosexuals, noncisgenders, or whatever else. Just as prior caste systems were defined by vocation as much
as race, so does the new caste system ensure that there is never a self-consciously White voice that could disturb the Narrative which justifies the status quo.

The role of Jewish privilege in all this and the Tribal motivations underlying much of this goes without saying. But ideology takes on a power of its own. And if politics has taught me anything, it’s that most functionaries and foot soldiers on all sides really do believe their own propaganda.

The result is a kind of perfect merger of identity and ideology, where ideological needs can actually transform the basic facts of someone’s biological identity. As Mark Steyn noted:

“George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic White racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as a Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard.” (The Undocumented Mark Steyn, 30)

The result? Further burdens will be dumped upon those European-Americans who can’t or won’t break out of their identity as Whites. Further devastation will be wreaked on communities and individuals as the media deploys one egalitarian “teaching moment” after another. And life will be that little bit harder each and every year for Whites who want to start families, live in safe communities, and enjoy a standard of living that their parents or even grandparents could have taken for granted.

The purpose is, as Haley/Chloe might put it, “anti-assimilationist”–preventing European-Americans from identifying or organizing as European-Americans. Rather than competing for greatness, we compete for victimhood and the corporate and political sponsorship that officially designated victims are entitled to. But the media, academic, and broader political system still need White bogeymen to justify their own power. And so White consciousness will be stoked, purely as a negative, in order to perpetuate a Narrative impervious to facts and justify more self-serving policies.

Long term, this may lead to unintended consequences that could threaten the status quo. But in the short term, it will always be better for each individual to soldier on try to avoid attention–or even join the other side and individually profit from his people’s collective destruction.

The only good news is that the repression is becoming increasingly overt, as reporting is now simply name-calling more than anything else. When every Huffington Post story reads like a press release from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the President has to hold a press conference every time a black guy gets arrested, it underlies the terrible fragility of the System and the hysteria required to keep it functioning.

Furthermore, as we see in Ferguson, constantly telling non Whites they are being oppressed and murdered by Europeans can lead to outbreaks of violence and disorder that can easily slip out of control. It’s an admission of weakness to say that Identitarians must put our faith in instability rather than an existing political movement, but the good news is that the very tactics the System is using to protect itself are undermining its long-term legitimacy. Even as repression increases, they are preparing the way for us.

Unfortunately, we should have no expectations that most people are spontaneously “waking up” or see what’s happening. The depressing reality is that the last few years have shown that most people really will believe whatever they are told to believe. Only give it a few years (if that) before your typical housewife is as opposed to separate men and women’s rooms as she is to opposition to gay marriage. As John Derbyshire noted, most people really do not like dissidents and want to go along with the flow. The actual “reality based community” is always a minority.

European-Americans may adopt racial realism with startling swiftness as soon as the boot is removed and egalitarianism loses its official mandate. Yet one can’t help but mourn the utter irrelevance of truth, facts, and evidence in what passes for the public discussion and the confirmation that Freedom Failed with every new headline on Gawker. “Quid est vertias?” asks the Roman. “Check your privilege,” comes the reply.