For some reason, we like to associate denial with mavericks, outcasts, non-conformist extremists and hatemongers, but right now the biggest deniers are mainstream journalists, news anchors and fact checkers who refuse to countenance the existence of the Deep State or insist on dismissing it as a mere conspiracy theory.

How on earth could Donald Trump’s decision to follow Israel’s lead into a destabilising war with Iran be either in the best interests of most Americans or consistent with his earlier denunciation of never-ending regime-change wars? The current best estimates for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars together run from around $5 to $8 trillion and that’s not including the huge outlay on military operations over Libya and Syria, bases in the Gulf states and funding of the Israeli armed forces. The simple question is: who’s calling the shots? Alas, I suspect the answer is not simple as Bibi Netanyahu.

The last month has resulted in immense destruction of strategic infrastructure in Iran, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and, last but least, in Israel itself. On the first day, the USAF managed to destroy a girls’ elementary school killing around 180 girls and teachers in Minab in the Southern province of Hormozgan. The Iranian civilian death toll may range between 5000 and 8000 with many more military fatalities, with hundreds reported dead in the Gulf states and Israel because of retaliatory drone attacks. However, the economic fallout of much higher crude oil prices and supply chain disruption is likely to cause much greater human suffering over the coming months, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis in Europe and Southern Asia, reliant on Middle Eastern oil. Perversely, higher oil prices have already boosted Russian exports and strengthened China’s economic and soft power on the world stage.

Rather than make America great again, Donald Trump’s exercise of Commander-in-Chief powers to join Israel’s war with Iran have alienated not only his European allies, but much of his base. Who would have guessed that neither higher gas prices nor an unwinnable war with the prospect of thousands of American body bags were popular with Trump’s MAGA base?

Back in Britain, Farage’s pro-Israel stance has seen a sudden drop in Reform’s popularity, with recent polls giving the challenger party around 25% closing the gap with other parties amid growing voter disillusionment with all the main options available. All of sudden, a Green-Labour-LibDem-SNP coalition, rather than a Reform landslide, seems a real possibility in 2029, such are the volatile mathematics of the first-past-the-post system. The point is, would a Green-themed administration change anything other than accelerate our demise? We only have to look to Germany to find the answer, where Green politicians not only supported covid authoritarianism and tech censorship, but also higher military spending to ward off the Russian threat.

Oddly Farage’s new belligerent foreign policy stance is perfectly aligned with Tony Blair’s and Kemi Badenoch’s, but apparently at odds with Keir Starmer’s who has strategically ruled out direct involvement in the conflict, possibly to appease pro-Palestinian Labour MPs and align himself more with Macron and Merz, while covertly letting American warplanes use British bases. The apparent rift in the transatlantic alliance could be a symptom of shifting power dynamics from west to east, but also a sign of engineered systemic collapse with the ruling elites running for the hills before their AI-driven drones can build back better over the wreckage of the outgoing Fordist model. In this context, the settled working classes are not only critical of rapid migratory flows, transgender ideology or restrictions on automotive freedom, but of any destabilising policies likely to undermine their livelihoods. Wanting a better life for your family, higher pay, affordable housing, safe neighbourhoods and better working conditions used to be leftwing talking points, until the corporate left adopted identity politics and started to blame the lumpenproletariat for the lack of progress towards their vision of a harmonious borderless utopia. Then the populist right exploited widespread opposition to globalism to take back control from remote supranational bodies like the EU and prioritise home grown workers, at least in rhetoric if not in practice. Now the pendulum has swung again, but the same puppeteers remain firmly in control.

In its first four weeks, the war triggered an exodus of 1 to 2 million foreigners from the GCC states, almost totally dependent on desalination plants that Iranian drones have already hit. Iranian reprisals on Israeli targets and fear of deadlier strikes to come have likewise accelerated the departure of young, secular, educated and affluent Israelis, significantly reducing the tax base. The Times of Israel reports that 27% of Israelis are considering emigrating. That’s around 2.5 million people in a country of 9.5 million.

We may have a temporary ceasefire over the Strait of Hormuz and the spectacle of peace talks in Islamabad, but the goalposts have moved in a matter of days from angry social media posts demanding the Iranians “Open the fuckin’ Strait” to a proposed US naval blockade of the Strait to force Iran to give up its uranium enrichments rights. How can this make any sense? Why would the US administration spend 100s of billions on destroying critical infrastructure in the Middle East, weaken its international standing and impoverish the Western working classes through inflation? Why would the likes of Donald Trump and his European acolytes like Farage and Orban risk losing votes to appease the Israel lobby and beat the drums of war? We are witnessing the planned demolition of Western civilisation, not by Islam or through cultural decadence, but rather by the emerging planet-wide technocracy who thrive on chaos.

The only logical conclusion is that our leaders are mere careerist actors who would never have been allowed to grace the corridors of illusory power if they had any principles and exposed the machinations of Deep State operatives posing as neutral civil servants, investment bankers, philanthropic billionaires or dispassionate scientific advisers. The covid scam showed us that the real decision makers work behind the scenes in close liaison with the wider Biotech-Military-Industrial complex. If a few technocrats decide the only way to slow the spread of a flu variant is to close down small businesses and print trillions of Euros, dollars, yen and pounds, then governments will just have to comply, if they want to access loans from the World Bank or IMF. The Israel-Iran war is every bit as much a manufactured crisis as the covid scam. The environmental, economic and human fallout is very real, but the causes have been deliberately misattributed. In both cases, the cure was worse than the purported disease. And yet some politicians will shrug their shoulders and claim they had to do something. Otherwise, covid would have wiped out humanity or the mad mullahs would have nuked European cities, unless we had let experts override common sense.

We can only regain hope if we learn the lessons of the recent past and stop placing our trust in talking  heads at the mercy of BlackRock, Palantir or Lockheed Martin.