by Vasko Kohlmayer, Lew Rockwell:

Growing up in a communist regime was like living in a twilight zone where everything had gone topsy-turvy. If you’ve never been to a twilight zone, it is a most curious phenomenon. It comes into existence when in a certain country or a geographic location a blatantly false narrative takes hold of the collective psyche.

The narrative of the twilight zone of my youth went roughly as follows: Socialism was the greatest socio-economic system ever devised while capitalism was very, very bad. The Soviet Union was a paradisiacal land of freedom, opportunity, prosperity and happiness. The United States, on the other hand, was a country of exploitation and oppression where most people were bound, destitute and miserable. This official narrative was constantly and relentlessly promulgated from every quarter of our twilight zone: television, radio, textbooks, arts, newspapers, magazines, etc. Needless to say, the narrative ran in complete contravention of reality. The actual truth was that socialism was no good. On the other hand, most people in the United States were free, quite prosperous and reasonably happy while the Soviet Union was pretty much an all-around hellhole.

Those who attempted to point out the truth or question the authorized storyline were promptly silenced, suppressed and punished. As a result of the swift and efficient censorship the false narrative prevailed and took a deep hold on the societal mind. And because it served as the paradigm for reality, it distorted and turned upside down almost every aspect of life: the good was bad and bad was good; white was black and black was white. The values and ethics in the twilight zone became inverted.

Escaping from behind the Iron Curtain, I thought I was done with twilight zones for good. But as I watched in amazement the events of the last three weeks, I saw something happen that I would have never dreamed possible: The United States has descended into a twilight zone of its own.

As with every twilight zone, America’s also came into existence as the result of a false narrative. This narrative runs thus: The United States of America is a racist country in which black people are oppressed and where systemic racism prevails. In America every non-black person is racist. This applies even to those who have never done or said anything that could be conceivably construed as racist. The racism of such people is unconscious – they simply cannot see it due to their white privilege.

As with the communist narrative of old, the claim that the United States is systemically racist and oppressive toward black people is completely false. This is something that should be readily obvious to every reasonable person. (In case there is doubt, we have discussed this matter at some length here.) Rather than being oppressed, black people in this country are given protections, resources, privileges and preferential treatment that the majority do not have. No society in world history has, in fact, done more for the advancement and upliftment of black people than the United States of America. And this includes all of the black countries and systems that ever existed.

The obvious fact that the US is not a racist nation was actually quite evident to most people until very recently. If a month ago someone seriously claimed that America is an institutionally racist country, he would have been viewed either as a professional race hustler or a far fringe crank. Today, amazingly enough, most of the media, corporate and athletic establishments and officials on all levels of government are proclaiming this very thing.

Out of the countless instances, let us just mention one. On June 5, the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell released a statement which read in part:

“We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter.”

We are not going to comment on the vacuousness of these words. We just note the paradox of this statement being made by the highest official in the NFL, which is a highly exclusive sports association in which 70 percent of players are black. But such paradoxes – along with truth in general – are lost on most people these days.

The speed with which the false narrative gained hold of the American psyche is truly astounding. As the racism claim was gaining its rapid hold on our collective mindset, we witnessed a corresponding frenzy of accusations and kneelings, prostrations, self-flagellation and repentance of white privilege. All this took place against a backdrop of much destruction and burning cities set ablaze by the “mostly peaceful” protesters. (Who still have to explain how looting boutiques and taking home armfuls of boxes of iPhones and Nikes furthers the cause of racial justice.)

All this drama is quite inexplicable, especially since the premise behind it is demonstrably false. It almost feels as along with COVID-19 we have also been affected by some strange malady which could only be called faux racism. This bug gets straight in the mind and makes people say things that are not true. It is extremely communicable as evidenced by its rapid spread into every sector of our society. The contagious strain was apparently spawned under the pressure and heat of the lockdown that transformed the bog of decades of racial demagoguery into a toxic mixture of combativeness and guilt in which all kinds of false claims and accusations flourish and thrive.

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