Rapidly following the American trends has been Great Britain, and then to a lesser extent, but similar in many aspects, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. What still sets America apart as being the worst of the countries is the dramatic elimination of due process and justice, so that it has become largely a prosecution state with only the show trials of a few celebrities demonstrating any working defence mechanisms.


While the English-speaking countries appear to have suffered the most from the slide towards the police state and the moral panics assisting this slide, other countries are being affected to some extent, especially those where American influence is great. France appears to have been tethering on the edge, giving way to specific moral panics and then recoiling in dismay. All the signs are however that the whole world could join in the slide. Amongst these signs are the eagerness with which a few developing countries, such as Cambodia and South Africa, with the help of unscrupulous NGOs have embraced the new politics of fear and moral panic, and the corruption that this has boosted. We hope to see discussion on this web site about why the English-speaking countries were so badly affected, and why America, now followed by Great Britain has slipped so rapidly into a virtual police state.

We live in the two worlds described by Bois. One the world we appear to directly experience in a physical and biological sense and the other that of our ‘structured unconscious’, the world described by Alfred Korzybski as our ‘semantic environment’, in which incest can be acceptable and even normal depending on the place or time, while the most heinous of crimes in other places or times. We must constantly bear in mind that more than simply a state of mind, the semantic environment can drive us insane or kill us, so it must be taken as seriously as the most formidable of physical environments, such as one where wild beasts roam.

The totalitarian states into which we are sliding into in the West are better understood when we appreciate the power of our semantic environment. The crimen exceptum used for example in the witch-hunts that take place under inquisitions could not exist without a strong semantic environment supporting them. When a designated pervert or infidel is defined, the mass of the population needs a supporting semantic environment to engender its hatred and revulsion. There may be many in positions of power cleverly manipulating the semantic environment, but the multitude, which can also create the lynch mob, must believe fervently in the dogma that creates the object of revulsion.

While he is often mentioned, George Orwell gets little acknowledgement for his anticipation of the late 20th and early 21st century developments. While by 1984, his predictions appeared not to have happened, all had become fact by 2004. Consider a few. The person to be most feared by a young man is a beautiful, sexually attractive young woman. Children are also to be feared as organizations representing ‘child rights’ and the government urge them to confide in the state and not to trust their parents whom they now should spy and inform on. There is a constant war against a vague enemy going on and a politically correct new vocabulary. The most revolutionary and dangerous act is to tell the truth.