Imperceptibility is where true power lies—not in domination or visibility, but in the quiet, invisible forces that shape the world without being captured. Deleuze and Guattari describe this as escaping the stratifications of identity and control, blending into the flows of life, and becoming part of something larger, something ungraspable. Ideas work the same way. They are imperceptible, abstract, yet profoundly potent. They ripple through societies, changing minds and systems without ever needing to be seen.

This isn’t about disappearing or withdrawal; it’s about movement—deterritorialization, escaping the rigid frameworks that demand recognition and order. In a world obsessed with surveillance, spectacle, and categorization, imperceptibility resists. It flows through the cracks, bypassing systems of power and asserting a quieter, deeper influence. Imperceptibility is not weakness. It’s the power of subtlety, the force of transformation that doesn’t rely on being seen. Like nature, like art, it operates beneath the surface, reshaping the world through connection and creation. True power is this: the ability to act without being pinned down, to affect without being controlled, to dissolve into the plane of life and reshape it from within. It’s not about being loud or visible; it’s about being everywhere, all at once, without leaving a trace.

Bael, the first spirit of the Goetia, embodies this principle. He is a symbol of the Sun—not as illumination, but as an overwhelming force of invisibility. The Sun is so bright it erases everything behind it, hiding the world in plain sight. This is not a contradiction; it is the essence of power: to be so present that you become imperceptible. Occultism understands this paradox. Bael’s power of invisibility is not about absence—it’s about dominance so complete it erases distinction. The Sun blinds, not by hiding, but by being so vast, so all-encompassing, that it outshines all else.

Like the machinery of modern power, it creates a reality where you cannot see beyond its light, yet its very presence remains intangible, ungraspable. This is the logic of invisibility. It doesn’t mean being unseen; it means being so present that you define what can and cannot be perceived. It is the power of the Sun, the power of Bael, the power that makes everything visible—and in doing so, conceals itself. True dominance is not being noticed; it is erasing the possibility of anything else.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Mathers, S. L. MacGregor (Translator). The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Weiser Books, 1995.

The story of modern capitalism is one of contradictions, hidden in plain sight. On the surface, it appears as a grand system of progress, constantly driving humanity forward through innovation, production, and profit. But beneath this façade, it is haunted by a profound reliance on two forces: the movement of people and the birth of new generations. Without these, the relentless march of capitalist growth falters. And yet, the very strategies needed to sustain it—immigration and reproduction—are bitterly contested, exposing the system’s fragility and hypocrisy.

Capitalism, as Silvia Federici argued in Caliban and the Witch, is built not only on the exploitation of workers but also on the subjugation of women. It emerged in the aftermath of feudalism, shaped by a brutal process of primitive accumulation, where peasants were driven from the commons, and women’s autonomy was violently dismantled. The witch hunts of early modern Europe were not simply religious purges; they were part of the machinery that transformed women into producers of labour power—first by destroying their communal roles as healers and midwives, and then by subordinating them to the domestic sphere. This history is not a distant memory. It is embedded in the very DNA of modern capitalism, dictating how women’s bodies and labour are controlled, even today.

The system depends on a steady supply of workers, yet the sources of this labour are not infinite. In many industrialised nations, declining birth rates and ageing populations have become a pressing crisis. Economists, politicians, and business leaders point nervously to demographic charts showing a future where there simply aren’t enough young people to sustain the economy. The solution, on paper, seems simple: either bring in workers from other countries or encourage women to have more children. Yet both options are fraught with resistance, not least from the very political forces that claim to defend capitalism’s interests.

Immigration offers a quick fix. By allowing the movement of people across borders, nations can immediately replenish their labour force, particularly in low-wage sectors like agriculture, construction, and care work. Migrants are often willing to take on jobs that native populations refuse, and their vulnerability—due to precarious legal and social status—makes them an ideal source of cheap, exploitable labour. But this solution collides head-on with the rise of populist right-wing movements. Figures like Donald Trump, with his declaration of a “state of emergency” at the southern border of the United States, and political parties across Europe, preaching against the so-called invasion of immigrants, have turned migration into a flashpoint for cultural anxiety. These movements present themselves as defenders of national identity, promising to shield their followers from the supposed chaos of globalisation. And yet, in their rejection of immigration, they sabotage the very mechanism that could sustain capitalist growth. It is a self-defeating ideology, one that seeks to preserve a way of life while simultaneously undermining the economic foundations that support it.

At the same time, there is a growing call for women to return to “traditional roles.” Figures like Jordan Peterson frame this as a moral imperative, a way to restore order to a chaotic, postmodern world. Women, they argue, must embrace their biological destiny as mothers and caretakers. This narrative taps into a deeper historical pattern, one that Federici identified in the transition to capitalism: the systematic confinement of women to the domestic sphere. In the early days of capitalist development, this was achieved through violence—the witch hunts, the enclosure of the commons, the redefinition of women’s roles as subordinate to men. Today, it is couched in the language of cultural preservation and moral responsibility. Pro-natalist policies encourage women to have more children, not for their own fulfilment, but as a patriotic duty. Birth rates are framed as a measure of a nation’s vitality, a bulwark against the demographic decline that threatens the capitalist machine.

Figures like Andrew Tate take this rhetoric to its extreme, promoting a vision of society where women are little more than commodities, valued for their physical appearance and their willingness to submit. Tate’s worldview is a caricature of patriarchal capitalism, where power and control are celebrated, and exploitation is rebranded as strength. His followers see him as a truth-teller, cutting through the noise of progressive politics to reveal the “natural” order of things. But what they fail to see is that this so-called natural order is a constructed reality, one designed to extract value from women’s bodies and labour while maintaining the dominance of a privileged few.

The contradiction at the heart of all this is clear. Capitalism cannot survive without women’s reproductive labour, yet it refuses to value or support it. In Federici’s analysis, this is a defining feature of the system. Women’s unpaid work in the home—bearing children, raising them, and caring for the household—is the hidden foundation on which waged labour rests. It is a form of exploitation so deeply ingrained that it is often invisible, framed as a natural part of life rather than a source of economic value. By encouraging women to have more children, right-wing populists and capitalist elites are essentially asking them to bear the burden of sustaining the system, without addressing the structural inequalities that make this work so demanding and undervalued.

And so, the system oscillates between these two strategies: importing labour through immigration or creating it through reproduction. Both come at a cost. Immigration sparks cultural and political backlash, while reproduction reinforces gender inequalities and places immense pressure on women. Neither solution addresses the deeper contradictions of capitalism, which depends on infinite growth in a world of finite resources. The pursuit of profit, the driving force of the system, demands an ever-expanding labour force, yet the means of achieving this expansion are unsustainable.

What we see today, with the rise of figures like Trump, Peterson, and Tate, is not a solution but a desperate attempt to paper over these contradictions. Their rhetoric appeals to a nostalgia for a mythical past, a time when society was orderly, men were strong, and women knew their place. But this vision is a fantasy, one that ignores the systemic exploitation and violence that underpin it. It is a narrative that seeks to preserve the status quo by doubling down on the very inequalities that have brought us to this point.

Federici’s work reminds us that capitalism has always relied on division—between men and women, between waged and unwaged labour, between citizens and migrants. These divisions are not accidents; they are essential to the system’s functioning. And yet, they are also its greatest weakness. The same forces that capitalism exploits—women’s unpaid labour, migrant workers’ vulnerability—are sources of resistance and potential transformation. The question is whether we can imagine a different future, one that breaks free from the cycles of exploitation and inequality that have defined the last 500 years.

In the end, the story of capitalism’s reliance on immigration and reproduction is not just an economic one. It is a story about power, about who gets to define the roles we play and the value of our labour. And it is a story about resistance—about the ways in which people, throughout history, have challenged these roles and fought for a different kind of world. The answers are not simple, but they begin with recognising the contradictions at the heart of the system and refusing to accept them as inevitable. For if capitalism cannot survive without these forms of exploitation, perhaps it is time to question whether it deserves to survive at all.

I used to work with somebody who paid te monthly subscription to Andrew Tate’s Hustler University. They paid about £60 a month if I recall correctly.

I asked him what exactly he learned from Andrew.

Society is rigged in favour of rich people

Buy shitcoins that are worthless in the hope they will reach $1 in value even though there are 1 trillion coins and the whole market cap of the crypto market is around 2 trillion (BTC taking over 60% of that value)

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of double articulation: the process through which matter is organized (content) and then given a recognizable structure (expression). This dual-layered process, they argue, forms the basis of stratification—how reality, whether physical, social, or linguistic, is divided into layers that seem natural but are, in fact, systems of control (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 40). It’s not just that things are arranged; they are made meaningful in ways that enforce stability and conformity. This idea is echoed in every corner of life, from language to society, and even in the unconscious.

McLuhan, writing decades earlier, describes a similar phenomenon but applies it specifically to media. He doesn’t use the term “double articulation,” but his most famous phrase, “the medium is the message,” captures its essence. For McLuhan, media work on two levels. First, they transmit content—what we see, hear, or read. But more importantly, they impose form, shaping how we think, perceive, and act (McLuhan, 1964, p. 16). The medium’s structure—its biases, limitations, and assumptions—alters consciousness in ways that often remain invisible. This is why, for McLuhan, the medium’s hidden effects are far more powerful than its overt content.

Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of double articulation as a process of control can be seen in McLuhan’s analysis of print media. Print organizes content linearly—words arranged in sequence—and imposes a linear, cause-and-effect mindset on society. This form, McLuhan argues, shaped centuries of thought, reinforcing hierarchical systems and fostering a mechanistic worldview (McLuhan, 1964, p. 32). Deleuze and Guattari would call this a stratum: a layered system that controls flows of desire and thought by territorializing them—turning chaotic possibilities into ordered structures (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 44).

But both texts also hint at the potential for resistance. Deleuze and Guattari describe deterritorialization—the process through which the order imposed by double articulation breaks down. A flow of matter escapes its form, creating the possibility of something new (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 56). McLuhan observes similar ruptures in media history. The transition from print to television, for instance, dismantled the linear mindset of the print age. Television’s electric immediacy collapsed spatial and temporal boundaries, creating what McLuhan called the “global village”—a chaotic, interconnected world (McLuhan, 1964, p. 93). In both cases, a break from the old stratum produces new configurations, but this freedom is fleeting.

Deleuze and Guattari warn that deterritorialization is often followed by reterritorialization—the process by which the chaos is captured and re-stabilized into a new system of control. McLuhan’s media theory reflects this pattern: each new medium disrupts the old order but eventually becomes a new stratum, with its own biases and constraints (McLuhan, 1964, p. 120). The question both texts pose is: how can we escape a system that constantly reorganizes itself to capture resistance?

Deleuze and Guattari propose radical strategies, such as the Body Without Organs (BwO), a state of pure potential where matter resists form and flows evade control (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 79). This is a form of resistance that embraces multiplicity and chaos rather than attempting to impose new orders. McLuhan offers a different solution: awareness. He argues that art, as an “anti-environment,” can reveal the hidden biases of media, disrupting the second articulation and exposing the form behind the content (McLuhan, 1964, p. 67).

Ultimately, both texts highlight the relentless nature of double articulation. It is a process as pervasive as geology, shaping the sands of the desert, the structure of language, and the patterns of thought itself. Yet, by understanding its mechanisms, they suggest we may find fleeting moments of freedom to reshape the systems that shape us.

References

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

McLuhan, M., 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

In the early centuries of the Common Era, a profound synthesis of ideas emerged. Gnosticism—a movement both spiritual and philosophical—absorbed influences from the East, the Jewish mystical tradition of the Qabala, and the structured metaphysical system of Platonism. It was a collision of worlds, ideas woven together in an attempt to explain the duality of existence, the cosmos, and humanity’s place within it. Yet centuries later, another philosopher would entirely disrupt this framework, challenging the Gnostic pursuit of transcendence with a radically immanent view of existence.

Zoroastrian dualism introduced Gnosticism to the idea of a cosmic struggle: light versus darkness, good versus evil. The material world, a realm of darkness, was said to be created by a lesser, ignorant deity, the Demiurge. The struggle between these forces mirrored Zoroastrian cosmology. “The soul’s struggle to escape planetary genii resembles the Zoroastrian Devs under Ahriman’s rule,” wrote King (p. 16). This wasn’t just an abstract philosophy; it was a description of human suffering, of the soul’s imprisonment in matter, and the tantalizing promise of liberation.

From Indian metaphysics, Gnosticism borrowed the Buddhist concept of maya, the illusory nature of material existence, which found a parallel in its narrative. Both traditions sought liberation from illusion and suffering. King observed, “The parallels between Buddhist notions of liberation and the Gnostic journey of the soul to the Pleroma are too significant to ignore” (p. 13). The soul’s journey upward became a metaphor for transcendence, a narrative where enlightenment was not just possible—it was essential.

Gnosticism also drew heavily from Jewish mysticism, particularly the Qabala. The Qabalistic system of the Sefirot, a series of divine emanations, offered a symbolic map of the universe. It described the descent of divine energy into materiality and the possibility of its return. For Gnostics, these emanations became the aeons—spiritual beings inhabiting the divine pleroma. Numbers, central to Qabalistic mysticism, resonated deeply with Gnostic numerology. Nick Land described this as an effort to create a “numerical anti-language” that transcended conventional representations of reality, aligning perfectly with the Gnostic pursuit of hidden knowledge (Land, p. 591).

Layered realities, a hallmark of Qabalistic thought, also shaped Gnosticism. Divided into Asiah (action), Yetzirah (formation), Briah (creation), and Atzilut (emanation), the Qabalistic worlds mirrored the Gnostic hierarchical cosmos. “The Pistis Sophia adapts Platonic and Qabalistic frameworks, revealing a remarkable synthesis of Jewish and Eastern influences,” noted King (p. 13). This synthesis offered not just cosmology but a roadmap for the soul’s escape from material entrapment.

Yet the framework was incomplete without Platonism. Plato’s metaphysics, as outlined in the Republic, introduces a dualistic framework that divides existence into levels of reality, symbolized by the Divided Line. This metaphor separates the visible realm of shadows and beliefs from the intelligible realm of thought and understanding, culminating in the ultimate reality of the Form of the Good. Plato describes the Form of the Good as “that which gives truth to the things known and the power of knowing to the knower” (Republic, Book VI, 508e). The material world, for Plato, is an imperfect reflection of these higher realities, a view that resonates with Gnostic cosmology.

This hierarchical vision is further elaborated in the allegory of the cave, where prisoners mistake shadows for reality until they are freed to ascend to the sunlight of truth. Similarly, Gnosticism envisions the material world as a shadowy prison created by the Demiurge. However, the Gnostics intensify Plato’s critique of the material world, framing it as inherently corrupt and deceptive. The soul’s ascent in Gnosticism, while influenced by Plato’s model, carries a more urgent need to escape the material realm entirely.

This synthesis of ideas reached its height with Basilides, whose cosmology encompassed 365 heavens—each a stage in the soul’s journey. “Basilides synthesized Platonic metaphysics with Buddhist and Magian cosmologies, creating a uniquely Gnostic vision of the universe,” King wrote (p. 17). The goal was clear: self-knowledge, the recognition of the soul’s divine origin, and its ultimate escape from the material.

But it was an unstable synthesis, riddled with contradictions. The tension between Zoroastrian dualism and Neo-Platonist monism required constant negotiation. The Pistis Sophia navigated these waters by portraying the divine pleroma as unified while condemning the material world as a creation of the Demiurge. This duality remained unresolved, leaving Gnosticism suspended between its influences.

Then came Spinoza, who shattered this paradigm with a philosophy that embraced immanence over transcendence. Where Gnosticism sought escape, Spinoza saw integration. For Spinoza, the divine was not separate from the material; it was the material, the infinite substance of existence itself. “Deus sive Natura” (God or Nature), Spinoza declared, rejecting the notion of a God who existed beyond or above the world. As Deleuze wrote, “All creatures are only modes of these attributes or modifications of this substance” (Deleuze, p. 17).

For Gnosticism, salvation required an ascent beyond the material. For Spinoza, there was no beyond. The divine was immanent, present in every aspect of existence. Freedom, in Spinoza’s view, was not liberation from the world but the realization of one’s essence within it. “Life is poisoned by the categories of Good and Evil, of blame and merit, of sin and redemption,” Deleuze explained. “Spinoza denounces all the falsifications of life, all the values in the name of which we disparage life” (Deleuze, p. 26).

Spinoza’s Ethics rejected the dichotomy of spirit and matter. Instead, he sought to understand the laws of nature and the interconnectedness of all things. “Consciousness is by nature the locus of an illusion,” Deleuze wrote. “It registers effects, but it knows nothing of causes” (Deleuze, p. 19). For Spinoza, understanding arose not from escaping the world but from embracing its immanent order.

This philosophical shift also transformed the concept of God. In Gnosticism, God was an entity to be reached. In Spinoza’s framework, God was not a being but being itself. “The entire Ethics is a voyage in immanence,” Deleuze noted. “Immanence, universal necessity, parallelism—these are the great speculative themes of Spinoza” (Deleuze, p. 29).

Where Gnosticism condemned the material world, Spinoza celebrated life and its possibilities. He replaced dualistic conflict with an ethics of joy and affirmation. “Only joy is worthwhile, joy remains, bringing us near to action, and to the bliss of action,” Deleuze wrote (p. 28). For Spinoza, divinity was not external; it was intrinsic to life itself.

This transition from transcendence to immanence reshaped metaphysics and ethics. Gnosticism’s dualism, rooted in cosmic struggle, gave way to Spinoza’s vision of unity. His philosophy did not reject the divine but reimagined it as the essence of existence. In doing so, Spinoza offered a radical alternative to Gnostic thought, one grounded not in escape but in understanding and embracing the world as it as it is.

References

King, C. W., The Gnostics and Their Remains. London: David Nutt, 1887.

p. 9: On the integration of ritual elements and planetary spheres.

p. 13: On the adaptation of Qabalistic and Platonic frameworks.

p. 16: On Zoroastrian influences in Gnosticism.

p. 17: On Basilides’ synthesis of metaphysical systems.

p. 20: On Gnosticism’s unified spiritual vision.

Land, N., Fanged Noumena. Oxford: Urbanomic, 2006.

p. 591: On Qabalistic numerical anti-language and its Gnostic parallels.

p. 593: On Qabalistic stratification and interconnectedness.

p. 595: On Qabala’s role in reshaping metaphysics and rituals.

Deleuze, G., Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988.

p. 17: On Spinoza’s concept of God or Nature (Deus sive Natura).

p. 19: On consciousness and understanding immanent order.

p. 26: On Spinoza’s rejection of transcendence and the categories of good and evil.

p. 28: On Spinoza’s ethics of joy and affirmation.

p. 29: On immanence as the speculative theme of Spinoza’s Ethics.

Plato, The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871.

Book VI: On the Divided Line (508d–509a).

Book VII: On the Allegory of the Cave (514a–520a).

The remainder, in Baudrillard’s sense, becomes the hidden and inescapable flaw in the vision of control espoused by the Silicon Valley elite and embodied in the rise of Trump. It is the excess, the chaos, the fragments of humanity that refuse to be assimilated into the perfect systems of optimisation and simulation. For Curtis Yarvin and his disciples, the dream is a world of clean hierarchies, where inefficiencies are eliminated and power is wielded with algorithmic precision. But the remainder is what resists this dream. It is the unpredictable, the wasteful, and the irrational forces that disrupt any attempt at total control.

Trump himself is a manifestation of the remainder. He is not the orderly CEO-leader of Yarvin’s technocratic vision, nor is he a coherent political actor. Instead, he is the leftover chaos of a system that has tried and failed to reconcile globalisation, mass media, and populist rage. He is a product of the very media systems the tech elite have built, but his existence exposes the limits of their mastery. Trump’s rise reveals the fundamental instability of the simulation—a reminder that no matter how perfect the system appears, there will always be something left over, something that cannot be absorbed.

For the tech giants, the remainder is the human element that their systems cannot predict or control. It is the anger of a populist movement that rejects the very institutions they support, the irrational conspiracy theories that flourish in their algorithms, and the chaos that undermines their faith in logic and data. The remainder is not a flaw in their systems—it is the inevitable by-product of their attempt to make everything measurable and manageable.

Baudrillard’s “remainder” also challenges the ideology of neo-reactionaries like Yarvin. They dream of a world purged of inefficiency, but the remainder is inefficiency itself—the excess and waste that power always seeks to eliminate but ends up generating in new forms. This is the paradox of control: the more it strives for perfection, the more it produces disorder. The remainder is what exposes the cracks in their simulation, reminding us that the world cannot be reduced to data, signs, or hierarchies.

In this way, the remainder becomes the ultimate challenge to the hyperreal world being constructed by Silicon Valley and exemplified in Trump’s presidency. It is the reminder that, no matter how much we try to simulate reality, something real will always escape—and that this escaped reality will disrupt even the most carefully constructed illusions. It is the waste, the chaos, and the irrational forces that refuse to disappear, undermining the vision of a world where everything fits neatly into a system.

In the early hours of a cold November morning, somewhere in the archives of an old library, a scholar flips through a brittle, yellowed manuscript. The pages whisper secrets of long-dead gods, their names half-forgotten but their essence still lingering in the air. The scholar pauses, eyes tracing the lines of an ancient invocation to Zeus, and for a moment, he is no longer in the 21st century. He is somewhere else, somewhere older, somewhere before the great rupture—before the gods were killed, before man was told he must kneel before a singular and jealous deity. Before, in Alain de Benoist’s words, the world was stripped of its soul.

It is a strange thing, the way monotheism conquered Europe. It did not happen in a single moment, nor even in a single epoch. It seeped through cracks in the Roman Empire, spreading first among the poor and the outcast, then coiling itself around the corridors of power. By the time Julian the Apostate tried to turn back the tide, it was too late. The new religion had already rewritten history, erasing its own traces, calling its predecessors “barbaric,” “demonic,” or simply irrelevant. The stories of Achilles and Hector, of Romulus and Remus, of Odin and Thor—these were no longer the guiding myths of civilisation. Instead, there was one story, one book, one truth. And there was no escape from it.

Alain de Benoist, writing centuries after this slow and methodical coup, seeks to undo it—not by attempting to resurrect the old gods as historical artifacts, but by questioning the very foundation of the monotheistic worldview itself. He sees in Christianity and its Abrahamic kin not just a religion but an entire way of thinking, a structure that has shaped everything from philosophy to politics, from morality to economics. The world we live in today—the world of democracy, capitalism, human rights, globalism—is, he suggests, merely the secularised shadow of this monotheistic revolution. And like any shadow, it distorts and conceals as much as it reveals.

The key difference, he argues, lies in the concept of dualism. Before monotheism, reality was complex, layered, plural. The gods of ancient Europe were not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent—they were flawed, driven by passions, entangled in the very fabric of existence. Zeus was a ruler, but he was not the only one; he was bound by fate, subject to the whims of an order greater than himself. This was a world where contradictions did not demand resolution, where good and evil were not absolute categories but shifting, dynamic forces, where morality was not dictated from above but emerged organically from within.

Then, something changed. The Hebrew god, the god of the burning bush, made a claim no deity had ever made before: I am that I am. This god did not merely exist within the world; he stood apart from it, above it, outside of it. He was the sole creator, the absolute lawgiver, the ultimate judge. Where the old gods had lived among men, shaping their destinies but also bound by them, this new god ruled alone, demanding obedience not just in action but in thought. To worship another was not just incorrect—it was heresy, a crime not only against man but against reality itself.

And from this single, shattering idea came everything else. If there is only one god, there is only one truth. If there is only one truth, there can be no alternatives, no variations, no ambiguities. The sacred became centralised, monopolised, and then—inevitably—weaponised. What began as a theological claim soon became a political imperative. The Church, inheriting the imperial machinery of Rome, set about ensuring that its vision of the world was the only vision that remained. Pagan temples were torn down or repurposed; local traditions were either absorbed or obliterated; entire cultures were reshaped to fit a narrative in which they had always been incomplete, waiting for the arrival of the one true faith.

For a time, it seemed as though this project had succeeded. The old gods were gone. The myths were forgotten. Even the Renaissance, that great revival of classical thought, could not fully undo what had been done. Plato and Aristotle returned, but only through the filter of Christian theology. The scientific revolution broke the authority of the Church, but not the deeper structure of its worldview. The Enlightenment proclaimed the death of superstition, but in doing so, merely replaced divine providence with rational progress, the celestial hierarchy with the march of history. And so modernity, that proud rebellion against the past, turned out to be nothing more than monotheism in disguise.

Benoist sees the consequences of this everywhere. In the obsession with universalism, the belief that one set of values must apply to all people in all places at all times. In the drive towards abstraction, the constant attempt to strip the world of its particulars and reduce it to mathematical formulas, economic models, bureaucratic procedures. In the demand for moral purity, the impulse to divide the world into righteous believers and heretical unbelievers, now translated into the language of politics, ideology, and human rights. The names have changed, but the structure remains the same. The world is still divided between the chosen and the damned, between the saved and the lost. It is still, at its core, a theological battle.

Yet there are cracks in the facade. The West is restless. It is losing faith—not just in God, but in itself. The great secular religions of the 20th century, whether liberal democracy or Marxism, promised salvation but delivered only fragmentation. People speak of crisis—of meaning, of identity, of belonging. They turn to the past, searching for something they do not fully understand. The myths are returning, but they are distorted, misremembered, or worse, commodified. Viking runes appear on t-shirts, Athena’s wisdom is reduced to self-help slogans, the old festivals are revived as theme-park attractions. It is not yet a rebirth, merely a haunted echo.

But the possibility remains. If monotheism was not inevitable, then neither is its dominance. If the sacred was once plural, it can be so again. The gods never truly die—they sleep, they wait, they return in new forms, through new voices. Perhaps, as Benoist suggests, we are at the beginning of something, the first stirrings of a deeper transformation. Not a return to the past, but the discovery of a future that was always there, hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be remembered.

The past is not dead. The future is not written. The world, despite everything, is still alive.

Imagine a world where reality is no longer real—where the horrors of the past are not just exposed but repackaged, twisted, and fed back to us as evidence of something even bigger, something darker.

Jimmy Savile was not just a paedophile. He was a grotesque symbol of institutional failure—a man who operated in plain sight, protected by deference, bureaucracy, and a system that preferred not to ask questions. When the truth finally emerged, it confirmed what many had always suspected: that the establishment is corrupt, that the media cannot be trusted, and that those in power will always protect their own.
But then something else happened.

The scandal stopped being about Savile. Instead, it became raw material for a new kind of politics. Populists, conspiracy theorists, and demagogues seized on it—not to bring accountability, but to fuel a deeper suspicion: that everything is a lie. That the media doesn’t just fail—it deliberately deceives. That politicians don’t just cover up scandals—they orchestrate them. Savile became a totem, proof that “they” were all in on it.

This is what the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called hyperreality—where the boundaries between truth and fiction collapse, and all that remains are self-referential symbols. In this world, scandals like Savile’s are no longer events to be understood, but signs in a vast, looping conspiracy. The past is rewritten, not to illuminate, but to justify permanent distrust. And into this void step those who claim to tell the “real” truth—who insist that, because the establishment was once caught lying, nothing it says can ever be true again.

This is how modern power works. It doesn’t control people by suppressing information. It does something much more insidious: it overwhelms them with it. The result is a world where reality is so drenched in cynicism that people stop believing in anything at all. And in that world, the powerful can do whatever they like. Because if nothing is real, then nothing matters.

In the 21st century, war no longer announces itself with explosions. There are no parades of tanks, no iconic mushroom clouds. Instead, it slips silently into your feed, disguised as a meme, a video, a funny headline. A war of perception. A war of meaning. And most of all—a war of belief.
You wake up, reach for your phone, and scroll. Somewhere, in the pixels, a thousand tiny battles are unfolding. Not of bullets and blood, but of symbols, nudges, suggestions. It feels benign. Maybe even trivial. But that’s the point.
More than fifty years ago, media theorist Marshall McLuhan imagined this moment. He said that World War Three would be an information war, one fought by everyone—military, civilian, young, old, willingly or not. At the time, it sounded absurd. But today, with your face bathed in the glow of a screen, endlessly clicking, endlessly liking, that prediction doesn’t feel like a prophecy. It feels like a summary of your daily routine.
Because what’s happening isn’t just a shift in tactics—it’s the emergence of a new kind of battlefield. And most people are already on it, without ever knowing it exists.
Governments used to build armies. Now they build narratives.
In the past, if a state wanted to conquer another, it would send soldiers. Now, it sends stories. Carefully tailored, surgically targeted, delivered at speed and scale. The story becomes the weapon. And belief becomes the battlefield.
It starts simply. A video shared by someone who looks like you. A headline that confirms your suspicions. An argument that makes your blood boil. You react, you share, you amplify. And in doing so, you become a node in someone else’s war.
This is the age of digital influence. A world where propaganda is no longer declared, but embedded. In jokes. In hashtags. In comments under videos. The aesthetic is casual, ironic, conspiratorial. But the effect is real. Division. Confusion. Suspicion. That is the goal.
Behind the curtain are not lone geniuses pulling strings, but networks—state-sponsored, corporate, ideological—pushing information into the ecosystem. And unlike in the past, these operators don’t need you to believe them. They just need you to doubt everything else.
There was a time when propaganda was easy to spot. Government posters, dramatic speeches, newspapers with bold typefaces. It was theatrical. You knew you were being manipulated, and you either resisted or submitted. Now, it’s subtle. Hidden behind algorithms. Whispered through influencers. Masked in aesthetic filters and viral dances.
But it’s not new. Empires have always understood the power of belief.
Centuries ago, the Mongols conquered vast territories not just by fighting, but by terrifying. They’d burn a city to the ground, then spread tales of what they’d done. The next city, hearing the stories, often surrendered without resistance. It was cheaper, more efficient. That was propaganda before Twitter.
In the 20th century, governments industrialized the manipulation of minds. America created entire agencies devoted to shaping public opinion. The Nazis did the same, with a darkly brilliant efficiency. The Soviets built labyrinthine networks of disinformation, turning lies into policy and paranoia into doctrine.
But even back then, the game was limited by the tools. Radios, leaflets, loudspeakers. One message, many listeners. Today, that model is dead.
Because now, propaganda doesn’t speak to the masses. It speaks to you. Personally.
Every click you make feeds a profile. Every like, every share, another datapoint. You are mapped, dissected, modeled. And then, you are targeted—with precision. Not with one-size-fits-all slogans, but with messages crafted to resonate with your fears, your beliefs, your biases.
If you’re angry about immigration, you’ll see stories designed to enrage you further. If you’re worried about climate change, you’ll see manipulated videos that stoke your despair. If you’re already suspicious of institutions, you’ll be shown proof—fabricated, but convincing—that your suspicions are justified.
These are not accidents. They are strategies.
There is no need to hack an election system when you can hack the electorate’s faith in the process. There is no need to overthrow a government when you can convince its citizens that it’s illegitimate. Control the narrative, and you control the behavior. And in this new war, victory is not measured in captured territory, but in minds changed, trust eroded, alliances broken.
But this war is not just being waged by states. The tools of influence are now in the hands of everyone—mercenaries, corporations, political movements, even bored teenagers with an agenda and a laptop.
And the battlefield is everywhere.
It’s in your social media feed. In the comment section of a news article. In the YouTube recommendation algorithm. In the TikTok video that seems harmless but subtly shifts your opinion.
And the weapons are evolving.
We now live in a world where a person can be invented from nothing—an AI-generated face, a fabricated identity, a synthetic voice—and used to deliver a message. A deepfake can show a politician saying something they never said. A synthetic audio clip can ruin reputations, crash economies, start wars. And once the message is out, the damage is done. Apologies, corrections, fact-checks—these come later. Too late.
Because in the attention economy, truth doesn’t matter. Attention does.
And attention, it turns out, is easy to hijack. All it takes is emotion. Fear. Rage. Humiliation. Joy. These are the currencies of digital influence. Make someone feel something strong, and they’ll share your content. They’ll become your amplifier. Your foot soldier.
And they won’t even know it.
This is how the new influence campaigns work. They don’t tell you what to think. They tell you what to feel. And once your emotions are engaged, your critical thinking shuts down. You become a willing participant in your own manipulation.
You spread the propaganda yourself.
This is the genius of modern information warfare: it outsources its labor. The users do the work. And they do it eagerly. Because the message feels right. It fits. It confirms. It belongs.
But behind that feeling is a strategy. An architecture of control. A design.
This architecture is invisible. It lives in code. In data sets. In machine learning models. It cannot be bombed. It cannot be reasoned with. It simply acts. A feedback loop of suggestion and reaction, feeding and feeding and feeding.
And it is changing us.
Not just what we think, but how we think. What we trust. Who we believe. What we believe is possible. What we believe is real.
Because in this new era, reality is soft. Malleable. Customizable. The truth bends to the algorithm. The narrative shifts with the trend. The map is redrawn every second by whoever holds your attention.
And as the tools of fabrication improve—as synthetic media becomes indistinguishable from the real—the line between fact and fiction begins to dissolve completely.
Soon, we won’t just question the news. We’ll question our memories. Our senses. Our instincts.
And when that happens, the manipulators won’t need to lie anymore. They’ll just suggest. And we will fill in the rest.
This is the final stage of influence warfare: not to make you believe something false, but to make you doubt everything true. To paralyze your ability to act. To fracture the collective into isolated tribes, each with its own truths, its own enemies, its own reality.
In this state, society becomes ungovernable. Democracy becomes unworkable. And those who thrive on chaos—who gain power from confusion—step forward to offer clarity, certainty, strength.
But it is a lie.
What they offer is not stability, but control. Not unity, but submission.
And in that moment, the information war achieves its goal—not through conquest, but collapse.
The tragedy is not that we didn’t see it coming. The tragedy is that we did—and still walked into it.
Because the seduction of certainty is powerful. And the architects of influence understand us better than we understand ourselves.
They know we crave meaning. That we’re afraid of ambiguity. That we want to feel righteous, even if we’re wrong.
So they feed us narratives that comfort us, outrage us, isolate us—and in doing so, they rewire the world.
And the question now is not whether we can win this war. It’s whether we even know we’re in it.