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Goldstein in HD: The Manufacture of Hate in Modern Britain Something strange happens when you sit in a room with people who still trust the BBC. You begin to feel like you are watching two different realities. The television hums in the background, the newsreader’s cadence slow and assured, and suddenly the temperature in the room changes. Donald Trump appears on screen, and my parents, who are gentle, intelligent, and by no means political extremists, visibly bristle. It is not a reasoned dislike. It is visceral. Like clockwork, the Two Minutes Hate has begun. I do not say that flippantly. Orwell understood this dynamic better than anyone, because he had lived through it. In Homage to Catalonia he wrote of his disillusionment when propaganda twisted reality so completely that even the people he had fought alongside no longer recognised the truth. I had a similar moment of awakening years ago, in a very similar way, when I realised how state narratives are built not to inform, but to control the emotional weather of a population. Once you have seen that mechanism, you can never unsee it. What the BBC has done over the past few weeks, editing political footage and calling it an “error of judgment”, is not just a media scandal. It is a symptom of a society where narrative control has become the last functioning institution. The state can no longer manage the economy, the currency, or the border, but it can still manage perception. When you lose real power, all that is left is the story. The BBC’s framing of Trump over the years is a masterclass in subtle conditioning. Every headline, every facial expression, every sigh of exasperation from the studio panel works as a signal. The message is not simply “we dislike him.” It is “you should too, if you are a decent person.” It is the politics of belonging disguised as public service broadcasting. The result is emotional automation, see Trump, feel disgust, reaffirm social identity. It is not journalism, it is behavioural programming with subtitles. You can feel the echo of Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” in living rooms across Britain. The faces are calm, the voices polite, but the underlying emotion is identical, orchestrated loathing toward a convenient Goldstein. It is cathartic, it is communal, and it is completely safe. No one gets arrested for shouting at the television. Meanwhile, the real architects of decline, the ones hollowing out the country’s finances, liberties, and dignity, remain untouched, hidden behind the reassuring glow of the BBC logo. That is the great irony. The British public think they are watching the news, but they are participating in a ritual. The BBC has perfected the art of moral ventriloquism, speaking through the viewer’s conscience and giving them the illusion of independent thought. “Our BBC,” people say proudly, as though it were still a civic institution and not a state-funded perception management agency co-financed by foreign governments, UN agencies, and philanthropic billionaires. The only thing “ours” about it is the bill. And when the deception is exposed, as with the recent Trump speech edit, the defence is always the same, it was an honest mistake, a one-off error. But the errors always point in the same direction, do they not? If propaganda were random, it would occasionally embarrass the establishment. Instead, it protects it. That is how you know it is systemic. This is the broader macro pattern we have been tracking for years, institutional legitimacy decay across the Western world. The BBC’s crisis is not isolated, it is part of the same feedback loop that is consuming the central banks, the civil service, and the political class. Economic failure breeds disillusionment, disillusionment breeds tighter narrative control, and tighter narrative control accelerates collapse. The system eats itself in order to preserve the illusion that it still functions. What fascinates me is the psychological resilience of those still under its spell. My parents trust the BBC because, for much of their lives, it really did represent reliability and national integrity. But that was another Britain, before the Blair era, before “spin” became a profession and politics became theatre. The BBC has always served as a propaganda arm of the state, it was created to sell national objectives and bury national embarrassments, but there was a time when the propaganda felt civic, even unifying. It wrapped itself in duty, not deceit. That changed under Blair. From that moment, truth became a commodity and narrative an instrument of governance. The institution did not collapse in scandal, it was quietly repurposed. Trust was not broken, it was harvested, the credibility built over decades now spent on political messaging and cultural engineering. By the time most people realised, the transformation was complete. The BBC still sounded the same, but it was no longer describing reality, it was curating it. This is why the hatred feels irrational. It is not rational. It is tribal conditioning maintained through repetition and fear of social isolation. To question the narrative is not just to doubt a broadcaster, it is to risk excommunication from the polite world. Far easier to sneer at Trump than to confront the possibility that the system you have trusted all your life might be lying to you. And so, Britain continues its descent into managed decline, financially, institutionally, and psychologically, while its national broadcaster performs the role of high priest. The rituals remain the same, daily incantations about “far-right populism,” sermons on “threats to democracy,” and emotional communions of righteous outrage. It is no longer journalism, it is liturgy for the Church of the Collapsing State. Orwell would recognise it instantly. He warned that propaganda was most dangerous not when it was obvious, but when it felt virtuous. When people believed that hatred was a moral duty and obedience a form of enlightenment. We have reached that stage now, the Ministry of Truth phase of British democracy. The screen does not just tell you what happened, it tells you how to feel about it. And that, perhaps, is the final act of a dying empire, not censorship by force, but persuasion by habit. The steady drip of moral certainty that keeps the population docile, convinced of its own virtue while everything around it burns. The BBC did not invent the Two Minutes Hate, but it has perfected it.

The Humanisation Phase Has Begun There’s a pattern you learn to spot once you’ve studied propaganda long enough. It always begins with outrage, and it always ends with empathy. When trust collapses, they humanise the leader. We’ve seen a sudden wave of posts by MPs trying to “soften” Keir Starmer’s image, talking about his grief, his music taste, his family values. It looks innocent. It isn’t. This is one of the oldest tools in psychological operations. In the 1930s, Stalin was rebranded as “Uncle Joe” after the purges. Smiling with children, reading letters from farmers, a man of the people. Goebbels did the same with Hitler: the dog-loving artist, the simple vegetarian. Mao posed as the kindly teacher sharing tea with peasants. Why? Because human warmth neutralises resistance. Once emotion replaces reason, critique feels cruel. This is leader empathy engineering, propaganda through sentiment. And now, in the age of managed decline, it’s back, digital, data-driven, and algorithmically boosted. You can already feel it working. The same outlets that stirred outrage yesterday now push intimacy today. Rage and pity, oscillating like a pendulum, keeping the public emotionally entrained. We are watching the emotional phase of propaganda, where control hides behind compassion. Stay grounded, keep your empathy human but your discernment sharp. Remember Orwell: once Big Brother had a face, people stopped fearing him, they began to love him.

Rage-Bait Britain: Manufacturing Outrage in the Age of Managed Decline There is a new kind of theatre unfolding across Britain’s digital stage, and it thrives on outrage. Every day, government accounts and party spokespeople push messages that feel less like public communication and more like psychological triggers. They are too consistent, too emotional, too well-timed to be accidents. The pattern is clear: provoke, divide, distract, repeat. At first, it looks like incompetence, but the repetition suggests strategy. Rage has become a form of governance. The public is no longer being persuaded, it is being managed. Each outburst, each viral argument, drains energy that might otherwise be used to question deeper issues such as economic decay, digital control systems, or the quiet erosion of freedom. The fury keeps the population reactive, not reflective, which is exactly where power prefers it. ⸻ The Historical Blueprint: From the Coliseum to the Screen This is not a modern invention. Every empire that begins to fracture turns to spectacle. Rome gave its citizens bread and circuses. The Soviet Union turned political trials into public theatre. Orwell understood the pattern perfectly in 1984 with his “Two Minutes Hate”, the daily ritual where citizens screamed at a screen, believing they were venting against enemies of the state when in truth they were reinforcing obedience to it. The method is simple. Rage is energy, and energy can be directed. When people are angry, they are engaged, and when they are engaged, they can be steered. The modern feed is the new coliseum, a rolling arena of outrage where the crowd never leaves. Every time the public is pushed into emotional extremes, the government regains control of the centre. A population divided into tribes cannot unite against its rulers. A society addicted to moral performance loses its capacity for rational dissent. ⸻ The Algorithmic Ministry of Truth We no longer need a Ministry of Truth; we built one ourselves. It exists within the algorithms of social media, where emotion determines visibility. Outrage travels faster than reason, so truth becomes secondary to virality. Political communication teams have adapted accordingly. Their goal is no longer to inform, but to dominate attention. Engagement metrics have replaced public service. Every post, every “mistake,” every apparent gaffe is a form of emotional data collection. The result is a feedback loop. Citizens rage, the algorithm amplifies, and the state studies the reaction. Over time, these patterns form behavioural maps that reveal what triggers which groups. Emotional telemetry has become a form of soft surveillance. The more reactive the population, the easier it becomes to govern through noise. ⸻ The Hadush Kebatu Case: A Manufactured Narrative The recent case of Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, an asylum seeker and convicted sex offender who was mistakenly released from prison, is a perfect example of how outrage can be harnessed for political utility. The facts are disturbing. The optics are catastrophic. The emotional reaction was immediate. For two days, the story dominated feeds and headlines, igniting every fault line in British society: immigration, crime, race, safety, and government failure. Then came the pivot. Almost instantly, the discussion moved from outrage to “solution.” The same politicians who fuelled the panic began to speak of the need for better data-sharing, better tracking, and digital identity verification. What began as bureaucratic incompetence became an argument for deeper surveillance. Whether intentional or not, the narrative was useful. Fear opened the door for control. Outrage created the conditions for compliance. ⸻ The Five Whys of Manufactured Outrage To understand how this pattern operates, we can use the analytical tool known as the Five Whys, asking sequential questions until the root cause appears. Why was this story amplified so widely? Because outrage drives engagement, and engagement strengthens narrative control. Why does the government benefit from public anger? Because emotional populations are easier to manage than rational ones. Why do crises always end with calls for digital oversight? Because centralised systems of identity and surveillance promise order in times of chaos. Why is chaos being normalised? Because exhausted citizens stop resisting when they can no longer tell what matters. Why is this effective? Because outrage feels empowering even as it tightens the cage. ⸻ The Attention Trap: Connection, Control, and the Machinery of Influence Social media was once celebrated as the great equaliser, a network that allowed people to speak freely and connect globally without institutional permission. It still carries that potential, but the architecture has been weaponised. The documentary The Social Dilemma exposed how these platforms record every action and inaction, turning behaviour into data. Algorithms track what makes us pause, what makes us click, what keeps us angry. They do not measure truth; they measure arousal. The longer you linger, the more the system learns what keeps you emotionally charged. Even silence feeds it. Stopping to read, hovering over a post, or finishing a video in disbelief all signal interest. The machine learns your triggers and builds your digital world around them. Politicians and government “nudge units” understand this dynamic perfectly. They no longer need to censor or persuade when they can provoke. Outrage sustains engagement, and engagement becomes power. Social media is still a powerful force for good, capable of uniting people, spreading truth, and bypassing gatekeepers. But in its centralised form, it has become a behavioural laboratory. The same algorithms that can connect the world can also divide it, shaping attention toward conflict and distraction. There is, however, a way out. Decentralised networks such as Nostr return power to the individual. They have no algorithms, no corporate moderation teams, no hidden filters. The feed is chronological, not manipulative. You choose who to follow, you own your identity, and your data remains yours. On Nostr, there is no incentive to provoke outrage because there is no engagement economy to exploit. It is communication by choice, not by manipulation. In that simplicity lies freedom. It is social media as it was originally imagined, permissionless, borderless, and ungoverned by behavioural design. To stay informed without being consumed, use these systems consciously. Don’t scroll aimlessly; search deliberately. Don’t react; observe. Read slowly, off-platform when possible. Each act of attention becomes an act of sovereignty. When engagement is the currency of control, restraint becomes the highest form of rebellion. ⸻ Closing Reflection: Reclaiming the Inner Republic Every empire learns that its most effective weapon is not force, but story. Ours has perfected it. The battle for truth no longer happens in the streets, but inside the human mind, where algorithms, politicians, and media compete for emotional real estate. The first step toward freedom is awareness. The second is composure. When you understand that your attention is the commodity, you can begin to reclaim it. Pause before reacting. Reflect before sharing. Refuse to be farmed for outrage. Decentralisation is not a trend; it is a moral imperative. Systems like Bitcoin and Nostr represent the re-emergence of autonomy in a world that trades in dependency. They restore the principle that truth and value should belong to the individual, not the institution. The quiet revolution begins with consciousness. Every moment of clarity weakens the machinery of control. The Inner Republic, the part of you that still thinks freely, quietly, and without permission, is where the future will be rebuilt.