Troll, the clue is in the “trol” element of “control.” So again, it's going back to this idea of movement, which if we look in Shakespeare's English, “trole the bowl,” meaning “pass the bowl.”
Troll — the clue is in control. So again, it’s going back to this idea of movement, which if we look in Shakespeare’s English, “troll the bowl,” pass the bowl. One of our speakers here has a bowl. And this is the idea of the pipe being passed around, you troll the bowl.
And so control and patrol — we were on patrols. These aren’t mere coincidences, I realised. And eventually, after a lot of work — I basically started in earnest around February 2020 looking into folklore, really, because all I knew about folklore was I recognised a family resemblance between what was going on at the bridge and folklore, but I didn’t know much about it apart from what I remembered from childhood. And it opened up this whole universe, including this idea of the TR sound, which is obviously in “trans” as well, which the far right love to use. And I think it’s probably the best example of its early use in an Indo-European language is in this idea of ṛta, RTA, which means truth in Sanskrit and means “what is.” So this is also the origin of “right,” the “writ” — right, writ, it’s in authority, it’s in sovereignty, it’s the RNT sound — security, integrity, territorial integrity, and fertility. So it’s this sound, and this is what, by accident or by design, Trump and various very brilliant communicators have managed to use. They’re working on a level below language.
And for me, when I was trying to work out how these people are controlling others, I realised that there’s more to the accidental coincidence — for instance, between ṛta, “what is,” and there’s often a reversal of the R and the T. And so in “control,” it literally says what it says on the tin. It’s sort of moving us together.
And so in terms of coercive control, that is for me the essence of what a lot of this stuff is about, particularly Russian communications. And so I use it — if I can see this energy in particular memes, in linguistic or visual or auditory memes, if I can see this, what I call mana, this energy of coercive control, then I know I’m probably dealing with a paleoconservative. I’m dealing with people who are either accidentally — maybe like Trump — or the people behind him, who maybe don’t understand everything I’m talking about here, but they do understand it works. It’s mechanical. They can provoke — the wife-beater can provoke certain reactions. And the mana of Disinfolklore is unethically disciplined. But it’s usually, if it’s Russian Disinfolklore — and this comes back to your question — it’s coercive control. So it’s manifesting this idea of coercive control, of ransom. This idea of ransom. Everything is a ransom. Everything is held to ransom. If you don’t do this, then we will do that. And that structure is in all of it — the threat. Again, the TR thing in there.
And so what I look for is the mana in the meme. So it’ll always be there. And if you detect, if you’re looking for the mana — again, it’s a bit like the Code of Positive Trolls — most people don’t know there’s an absence in this, but there is an energy inside every meme, whether it’s a whole book or a picture or a sound or your cat meowing at you because it wants food. There’s an energy in there which is affecting your intentions, your mana, your energy.
And so I try to see how the output from the firehose — what’s the energy in there and how is it affecting my energy, my intention? Did I start reading this article thinking I’ve got to do everything I can to help Ukraine resist genocide? But then by the end of the article, I’m thinking, oh my God, I should be paying my money to Navalny or to someone else. It’s changed my intention. It changed my mana. And that’s the interaction between this output.
And once you see that, then you can trace it back — say, like in the case of MAGA or Brexit or what I call Trump-Brexitism or Rushism, which are my main focuses. You can generally trace it back to another of their mana. The energy in Russian and all of this paleo-male paleoconservative Disinfolklore is misogyny. So I call the CCP, Iran — the Islamic Republic of Iran, as distinct from the ancient culture of Iran — and MAGA and Brexit: these are the Axis of Misogyny. And if we see that energy in these memes — and again, it goes back to the international conventions on banning discrimination on the grounds of sex and banning discrimination on the grounds of gender identity or sexual preference or politics. This is international law, certainly in terms of sex and political beliefs. And what they’re trying to do is discriminate against, for instance, half our population, which are women, and to create this — I mean, this what they call a Handmaid’s Tale situation.
And so that for me, again, is: if you pick up that energy in any meme then you probably know you’re being trolled. So even if you might feel, for whatever reason, sympathetic or empathetic to the story, if you’re picking up this mana of misogyny from it, it’s part of it.
And what I noticed with the Pat Buchanan thing is — because the question I was wondering was: what ties all of these oligarchs together? Because it’s more than kompromat, meaning they’ve got pictures in the shower or something. But the compromise — and this is the brilliant idea I got from Peter Jukes from Byline Times — where actually the compromise, what your vulnerability is: you want power, you want your workers with no restrictions on your workers. You want to build a Handmaid’s Tale place. You’re a sociopath. Yeah, well, it could be that, but ideologically they — and because of that, they’re susceptible to manipulation and intra-manipulation by themselves. And that’s what’s powering it. And so if we see it as they are ideologically at one with each other, then it’s not just an accidental coalition.
And if we can understand that — and that’s what I saw with Pat Buchanan in Putin’s paleoconservative moment — I sensed I could see the puppet strings. And now since then, I’ve looked into it a lot. There’s a whole body of academic scholarship which has, lo and behold, concluded there is no such culture war. There is nothing like this. He’s pronouncing it into existence. There are lots of different switches, but the immigrant, the border one, I think is the fundamental, along with trans — transgressors.
So the word “trans,” meaning transsexuals, is actually abbreviated into “trans.” And so what certain personality types who are highly neurotic and low conscientious — 30% of our population, the high right-wing authoritarian followers — what they hear when they hear the word “trans” is just “transgressor.” So unfortunately, one relatively small category of people become the whole focus for this, and they’re a mere vehicle or tool to bang home this idea that these people are transgressors.
And of course, all of this is about inner/outer realm. You’re transgressing the rules of the inner realm, so you go to the outer realm. And so every now and again, the immigrant and the borders have to come up. But in between that, we can go for Taylor Swift and whoever.
And when I saw DeSantis going for Disney, I was like — and the Brexiteers also go for Disney — I’m like, oh my God, you really don’t understand what you’re doing here, because Disney controls our understanding of the inner/outer realm through its story form. And you think this is just a normal enemy that you’re picking up, like a corporation or something.
The fundamental story across Indo-European culture is what they call the Trito Myth. And because it’s in every — and that’s Bruce Lincoln, a theologian from Chicago, a genius, who works this out — and because it’s in every Indo-European culture, basically Trito is a farmer and the dragon comes, or the snake comes, and takes his cattle. And he is a male, takes his cattle. And in some tellings, Trito gets the sky father — Dyaus Pitar, Jupiter, Dyaus Pitar — to intercede on his behalf. Or in other cases, he just gets the cattle back. And then after that, he sacrifices in order, as a contract with God. And the point being: Trito always wins, in every culture, whether it’s Iranian, Irish, Greek, Indian. Trito always wins.
And what Trump and co. are trying to do is put themselves in Trito’s position. So they’re trying to switch themselves. They are the dragon. They are the snake come to take Trito’s cattle. And in fact, by turning it into a spectacle, we’ve all noticed this flicker between victim and perpetrator. It’s like when Putin — it’s even in every sentence — they’re trying between David and Goliath. So we know the mouse always wins. We always get this happy ending.
And so, in terms of inspiring people, the mouse always wins and Trito always wins. But we just have to be careful who we see as Trito. Obviously, MAGA see Trump as Trito, as ridiculous as it is, and us as the dragons. But we just have to kind of switch them back. And we need Disney for that, I’m sad to say. I’ve read Horkheimer and Adorno’s *The Culture Industry* and all of that stuff. So I’m a great critic of all of that. But at the end of the day, for instance, Disney now — and this is why DeSantis drives them nuts — is promoting the post-World War Two architecture of no discrimination. And maybe it needs a market for everyone, and it’s got people of different colours and different ethnicities and different cultures, different accents. And so we can work with these happy endings and make sure that we understand who Trito is and who the snake is.
