The Midnight Kingdom Lecture Series Episode 5 - The Crisis

The final chapter of TMK Series is live

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Happy Saturday, everyone.

Over on YouTube I’ve been creating a series of lectures and video essays based on my book THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS. The book and the series are attempts to explain our present moment through understanding how white supremacy, religious mythologies, and conspiracy theories have been used by the rich and powerful to control society and further their own power. This, I believe, is the necessary lens through which to view what we are going through and, what’s more, the means by which we will forget a better, more human future.

It’s time to release the final installment: Chapter Five - The Crisis.

This episode concerns the modern moment, beginning with the 2000 Presidential Election, moving through 9/11 and the War on Terror, telling the story of how capitalism has overtaken the American Empire and twisted our politics from national concern to the pursuit of absurd wealth and control on behalf of corporations and an oligarchical class.

While America’s politics and culture are taken over, we also turn to authoritarian regimes in Russia and China, which have been aided by the United States, and turn predictably toward growing authoritarianism. In Russia, we see the rise of a US-assisted dictator who uses his ill-gotten wealth and power to set loose illiberal democracy, or a brand-new authoritarian ideology that will begin to spread to the rest of the world, including the U.S. In China, capitalism begins to mutate and switch on progressively more and more authoritarian measures and controls, creating the next evolution of Neoliberalism as its growth necessitates autocratic measures in countries like America, England, France, and other Western democracies.

All the while, worsening conditions in the United States create a perfect environment for authoritarianism to grow. Neoliberalism’s intentional inequality and precarity inspire fear and anger that are capitalized on by a wealth class that direct faux-populist movements like the Tea Party and MAGA to further their ends. All along, white supremacist paranoia, misogynistic insecurity, xenophobia, Christian terror of persecution, and transphobia are used as easily manipulatable prejudices to deflect blame and persecute vulnerable communities and political enemies.

By the time we reach the 2024 Election, we find ourselves living in a bizarre pseudo-environment where things make less and less sense and autocratic puppets and ideologies seem poised to take over control, a scene that, surprise surprise, resembles very much what has happened in Russia and other illiberal nations. The Democratic Party is twisting inside out, welcoming neoconservatives and moving to the Right, largely providing gestures of frustration and powerlessness. It is a moment of crisis that previews a larger gathering crisis that could very well portend another world war or the return of widespread authoritarian control.

If you haven’t already, you can check out the full series on this playlist.

Chapter 1 - The Great Chain of Being delves into how the failing Roman Empire merged with Christianity, setting loose an age of religious and racist domination that modern authoritarians are trying to return to.

Chapter 2 - Capitalist Apocalypse examines how liberal democracy was an intentional break from feudalism and religious control and how capitalism, a component of that break, was a runaway force that eventually led to a new regime of elites who continued the tradition of oppression through different means. It concludes with World War I, a true capitalist armaggedon, and how psychological manipulation and a burgeoning Red Scare further consolidated power and control with those elites.

Chapter 3 - Changing of the Guard tells the story of how, in the post-World War I environment, capitalism once again reaches a point of crisis, leading to authoritarian regimes like the Fascists and Nazis, who are both inspired and supported by that era’s oligarchical class. After the war, capitalism leaps from Great Britain, the empire which served as its host, to the United States, which begins to reshape global affairs to its and capitalism’s interest. Along the way, America uses the pretext of the Cold War with the Soviet Union to carry out a global war on Leftists, enabling neo-fascist dictators as puppets and tools to engage in violence while controlling their countries and shaping them into nodes of the larger capitalist machine.

Chapter 4 - A New Empire details how the United States became the new empire of choice for capitalism and how representative and liberal democracy were hollowed out by manipulation and operations by bodies like the Central Intelligence Agency, which worked in secret and beyond democratic control, on behalf of the wealth class to change the world to the interest of capital. As this takes place, Neoliberalism as an oppressive ideology takes shape, eventually overtaking the United States and spreading through a growing global system that promises to bring peace, prosperity, and an unending era of control, but unleashes the darker authoritarian energies that have been brewing for centuries.

In my career I have been fortunate to have opportunities to learn to research, synthesize, and ultimately communicate this kind of information to audiences that would otherwise not have access to it. I hope it has helped and please forward it to anyone you might know who might benefit from it. I really do appreciate the people who have reached out as viewers, educators, and students who’ve said this has been helpful. I’ll be looking to do more things like this.