The Ascendancy of Psychotic Knowledge (cont.)
By Shunyamurti

Whether in the political realm or in that of grassroots media or alternative healing approaches or theoretical science or religion, the power of surveillance and infiltration by the secret agencies of government and corporate machinations became so overwhelming, thanks to new technologies, that every effort to sustain a viable new paradigm was doomed to failure. We can look back in the U.S. at the wreckage of the black power movement, NICAP, the socialist parties, the Green Party, Pacifica Radio, Greenpeace, in fact the whole environmental movement, the political insurgency of Ralph Nader, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam, and recognize the futility of confronting the ruling masters with Truth.

This, however, does not mean that the game has been lost. The deceivers have not gained the victory they supposed would ensue from total control of the political realm. Instead, their misguided and malevolent efforts have now led to the rise of psychotic knowledge. The internet has functioned as the main instrument of this new and hyper-revolutionary development. Much of this was presciently foretold in the work of Jean Baudrillard. His writings were the stimulation and simulacrum behind the film hit known as The Matrix. And his concept of hyperreality has opened a new level of critical understanding of the internet’s capacity to remake the collective consciousness.

The internet is necessary as an instrument of surveillance, but it comes at the price of unregulated communication. And because the internet functions in the realm of the hyperreal, of virtual reality rather than ordinary reality, it does not need to give birth to an actual political movement in order to be effective. In fact, its effectiveness comes in the form of birthing anti-movements, massive fragmentations of parallel, paranormal, paranoid subcultures, flowing lightning-like along fleeting lines of flight, operating in a transverse Deleuzian rhizomatic underworld of conspiratorial fantasy, requiring no verification and therefore also free of the possibility of refutation.