Without wanting to sound like a Marxist, human history boils down to class warfare. The fundamental issue is how much surplus value the rulers can extract from their subjects until they end up getting deposed of, which cold mean defenestration or a trip to the guillotine. The big advantage the elites have had, up until very recently, was that they were connected across kingdoms and, later, countries. During the time of monarch rule in Europe, they all basically belonged to one extended family. There is of course the anti-semitic dog-whistle that the bankers were also all connected, albeit modern research undoubtedly proves that the Rothschilds either never existed or if they did, their money just disappeared, and with it all the power which they never had anyway, as Niall Ferguson so masterfully described in his authoritative two-volume work on this topic. As a pleb, in contrast, you were completely cut off from non-approved sources of information. At best, you could form local connections in your community, which was very limited, well into the 20th century.

Newspapers and radio were heavily safeguarded industries. You could not just start your own newspaper and reach a big audience. At best, you could have gotten your hands on some “samizdat” literature, if you had underground connections. This existed in communist countries up until the 1990s. In the West, there is digital samizdat nowadays, considering that there are some books that are heavily suppressed by our rulers, but such texts can be spread much more rapidly, thanks to the Internet.

Arguably, the control of the elites was highest during the TV era, but before the Internet reached the mainstream. There was even government-funded research on the effect of the TV on the brain. Even though it was not expressed this clearly, you get the impression that the elites were giddy that they were able to literally brainwash a captive audience with a device people felt compelled to have in their home. TV consumption is fully passive, and it is also arguably the main reason for the typical boomer brainrot as they spent decades in a hypnotic state, gorging on government-approved garbage.

The biggest mistake the elites made in the last couple of hundred years was arguably that they did not lock down the Internet from the start. It was originally intended only for government-approved communication, e.g. public administration, military, or academia, and it worked like this for a few decades. However, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN went rogue and released both a web browser and a standard for describing web pages to the public. While his contributions have been praised widely, you get the sense that the elites were, in hindsight, not all that happy with him. One sign of this is that this guy was not showered in riches, given endless board seats and multiple sinecures. In fact, his name is not even particularly well known anymore whereas completely obscure figures like Ada Lovelace are promoted relentlessly by the elites.

There is a timeline in which Tim Berners-Lee gets fired and the public world-wide web shut down. Every website needs government approval. In this scenario, you can still order vidya and gooning supply online but there would not be any way for you to reach anybody else. There was even an attempt by Microsoft to move the Internet in this direction, with their short-lived push for “channels” in the mid to late 1990s. Also, a lot of money was put into companies at that time that offered access only to a curated Internet, such as AOL.

History moved in a different direction. The elites still want to screw us over but you are able to have access to information they used to keep from you. For instance, I grew up in Germany and any audio or video recordings of the reign of the national socialists was kept under lock and seal. School teachers do an elaborate show-and-dance around how dangerous this material is, meaning that you cannot even watch it on your own and every little snipped comes with disclaimers roughly as long as the excerpt. I recall a few tiny snippets from history lessons. Today, a lot of the material is still not publicly accessible, but you can get access to plenty of full-length recordings. online so that you can form your own opinion, something the elites really do not like. Similarly, academic research is more accessible than ever. A psy-op like Covid would have been infinitely easier to pull off in the 1960s than in the 2020s. Even with my obscure blog I could share my reasoning on why you should not take the vaxx, and it turned out that I was right.

People also underestimate the value of having access to raw data. Before the Internet, you had to use an encyclopedia, which only contained curated content . Perhaps you did not even have one at home, like it was the case in my parents’ house. Encyclopedias were great for getting up to speed on the mainstream narrative. Yet, if you wanted to do your own research, you could not do it because you did not have access to all data. Today, there is a plethora of data available and you can draw your own conclusion from it, and even easily conclude that you are systematically being lied to, for instance when you look at CPI figures or statistics that purport to show that illegal immigrants add billions in tax revenue.

I think part of the disillusion of today’s dissenters is due to us being much more easily able to realize how much we are being lied to. Thus, you are fully aware of how big the discrepancy between the official narrative and reality really is. The positive aspect is that we are long past the point where statistical trickery can deceive us any longer. This may feel quite discomforting at times, but I much rather live in this reality than one in which I have the choice between what is on TV and what the newspapers print.