Elections in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Netherlands

by Jon Rappoport

September 1, 2015

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“National election campaigns are media events. Media run them. Media pump ratings. They produce the soap opera. They construct the illusion. Many people hate hearing this, because they prefer to believe the few candidates who can actually win are real. No one with that much face time on national television is real.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

I’ve just completed a flurry of articles on how elections work as media events in the US (archived here, under “elections”). But why leave out other countries, where the process is essentially the same?

You have to look at these major election seasons as television series produced by the major networks.

Then it begins to make sense.

The casting of characters tends to follow the same pattern, over and over. You have two major candidates (for president, premier, prime minister). Writing their parts is a bit of a challenge, because any intelligent person can see there is really not much to choose between them.

That’s a ratings killer. The networks need opposition and sharp differences. So while both of these “leaders,” behind the scenes, are Globalists and favor huge corporations and huge government bureaucracies, “free trade,” sending jobs overseas where workers will toil for virtually no pay in execrable conditions, etc., the networks will find issues on which they disagree.

Then you have a cast of minor characters running for the top office in the land. A couple of them are fiery and feisty, more “radical” or “radically conservative” in their views. They’ll never make it, but hope springs eternal, and a significant proportion of the population is drawn to them—for a while.

The television networks, as usual, adopt the horse race mode of reporting. Because, when all is said and done, that’s the main theme: who is going to win? Who really cares about exploring the issues in depth? There’s no juice or excitement there.

But watching two creatures gallop along a track toward the finish line moves the adrenaline.

And the networks, day after day, can point to what the candidates are doing or wearing or saying that is affecting their position in the race.

Did candidate A just utter a possibly politically incorrect phrase? Let’s interview three experts and find out.

Did candidate B once have dinner with a financier who cheated investors out of their life savings? No? It was lunch? A brief breakfast? Hmm. A professor of statistics explains how long a brief breakfast averages out to be.

Why has candidate A shifted from wearing blue to red?

To bolster all this, we have the polls, which seem to be taking place three times a day. Numbers to report. Breakdowns of the numbers in key voter areas of the country.

Meanwhile, the networks keep searching out differences between candidates A and B. A’s wet dream is wholescale bombing missions. B prefers thousands of drone strikes. Of course, this difference isn’t presented that way. B is a “peace candidate.” A is a “hawk.”

A wants the “free market.” B wants government to create millions of new jobs. On closer inspection, they’re both pushing the dominance of mega-corporations. But there is no closer inspection in the television series called Election.

At the root of all this insanity is the fact that television networks produce the series. As long as the viewing audience tunes in, as long as the ratings are respectable, the illusion continues.

The viewer, the voter, projects his hopes and dreams on to the television image of a candidate. It never occurs to him that a) he is now a fan of a soap opera and b) his adored candidate is part of an immense political system in which only minor deviations from the norm are permitted.

Entering that system and participating in it is like walking into a tailor’s shop where, by magic, the customer (participant, candidate) automatically shrinks to half his former size in an instant. And from there it only gets worse.

Television is there to obscure the actual size of the political system and its culture. The soap opera highlights the two major characters (candidates), as if they alone can work great changes in the direction the oil tanker called Politics takes.

Television relies on the fact that a majority of the population favors watching competition— rather than learning about the collaboration, behind the scenes, between characters who seem to be on opposing sides.

The election IS television.

Why is that not understood?

Perhaps for the same reason people can sit in a dark movie theater and look up at a large screen and forget, for a few moments, that they are sitting in a movie theater.

They are captured by the story and the images and the characters. And they want to be captured and taken away.

They want to believe, in the case of elections, that they are participating in something important simply by watching television.

You might say election campaigns are the original reality-shows. They’re soap opera, but the main characters are not actors. (Of course, they are actors.)

Perhaps you remember the 1972 American film, The Candidate, starring Robert Redford. The key moment occurs as Redford, who is running for a seat in the US Senate, watches a commercial he claims to favor, one that expresses his real convictions. Within moments he realizes it’s a dud. He comes across as a stammering lightweight. No, from now on, he’ll have to accept ads in which he appears authoritative (but vague), on top of his game, and handsome. The die is cast. He is now an artifact of television.

And then there is the best film ever made about television: Network (1976), written by Paddy Chayefsky. The embittered, half-mad, disintegrating news anchor, Howard Beale, assaults his viewing audience:

“We deal in illusions, man…We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. In God’s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion.”

Unfortunately, the television audience is insulted if someone tells them the characters they’re watching are synthetic and artificial.

Something strange is happening here. It’s more than the flicker of the images or the frequency or the brain wave-states television induces. It’s a counterpart to what people dream when they’re asleep.

The story lines of dreams, the vividness, the intimate proximity to characters.

At the extreme edge, it’s what makes people who watch candidates on television write them adoring fan letters (just as they write letters to convicted killers in prison). It’s what makes people dress up at night to sit in front of their sets and watch late-night talk-show hosts—as if the hosts could see them in their living rooms.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is more compelling.

The whole television exhibition called Election is, in every moment, a living rolling artifice of melodrama. Staged from end to end.

Consider this exchange, in the 1997 film, Wag the Dog, between movie producer, Stanley Motss, and the shadowy White House agent, Conrad Brean:

Motss: What do you think about lining the President up for the Peace Prize?

Brean: Our job’s over come election day.

Motss: Yeah, but c’mon…

Brean: What, just for the symmetry of the thing? [Motss nods] Well, if Kissinger can win the Peace Prize, I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up and found I’d won the Preakness.

Motss: Yeah, but our guy did bring peace.

Brean: There was never a war.

Motss: All the greater accomplishment.

The believable political face of the candidate is turned toward the camera, and television records it and sends it out to the millions. The other face, the secret face, is never shown on television; or if it is, the audience misses it, because they are trained to think only good political intentions are displayed on the screen. And they believe these intentions are the substance of election campaigns; the things worth voting for; the things the winners will try to bring into being in the world.

The audience believes television is democratic. Therefore, how could it deceive? Democracy is the only fair system ever devised.

Such illusions pile up and up.

When one fades, another takes its place.


power outside the matrix


Most citizens prefer to fight out elections inside the system ruled by television. They prefer to attack and defend the images on the screen.

And they prefer to imagine that the entire political landscape will make room for their hero, this one time, after which he will transform it.

Midway through my 1994 campaign for a seat in the US Congress, I woke up from my hallucination and realized that, if I won, my job ought to be exposing the corrupt system in the best way I could.

My job wouldn’t be battling for better legislation or more money for my constituents. It would solely consist of:

Renting large trucks we would drive slowly through the traffic-crowded streets of Washington DC, every day. Those trucks would sport huge posters on their sides:

“Corrupt Congressman of the Week” would be the headline, underneath which a photo of the man in question would float; and then: a list of bills he had voted on, and the money he’d received from the special interests to vote that way.

Every week, more trucks, new posters, new revelations, in the streets of the capital.

Biting the hand that feeds, biting the hand that takes.

Making it personal. Not abstract.

The television series called Election is dedicated to making candidates appear forward-looking. “Yes, mistakes have been made, but now things will be better.”

That delusion needs to be shattered. The system is so corrupt that attacking it and exposing it to extreme embarrassment is the only reasonable strategy.

It’s possible to get on television with that message, but only after forcing television to take notice and after staging a different kind of show.

Hence, the trucks. For starters.

Crack the delusion. Crack the egg.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

14 comments on “Elections in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Netherlands

  1. Lesha Martin says:

    I think the hardest part (for me was) is turning off the television…once that’s done – and with a little time to disconnect – a whole new way of perceiving unfolds. I mean, it is by no means free of MK – but it becomes easier and easier to poke holes in the illlusion. Then – in those instances of re-examining the ‘picture’ put forth by the telly, one sees quite clearly what is referred to here as the program series “Election” – and it makes perfect sense. Yup – has all the elements of programming…

  2. From Québec says:

    I don’t know about the other countries, but here in Canada, elections are very short. An average of about 30 days and, sometimes it can go up to 60 days. Candidates do not spend huge amounts of money for their campaigns.

    So we don’t get too much of the dog and pony show on television. Also, we do not use electronic voting, we vote with paper ballots.

    It’s very easy to predict who will win. If the Prime Minister lowered the taxes, and didn’t generate any scandal, he usually gets re-elected . If he raised the taxes, or generated a scandal, he is usually kicked out.

    There is only one and sometimes two debates between the leaders of each Party on television. So there are never any new faces, since the leader of a Party is the leader for almost forever…lol

    The main Parties are: Conservative Party, Liberal Party. Neo Democratic Party. The other ones are almost irrelevant.

    And there are no term limits for the Prime Minister. As long as the people vote for him, he stays.

    Honestly, our election process is not complicated at all.

    • @ The soap opera writer

      This election will end up being the longest in Canadian history (eleven weeks), and cost the Canadian taxpayer a whopping $400,000,000.

      And that is for a $327,400 job…he (Stephen Harper) receives $163,700 as a member of parliament and $163,700 for being Prime minister.

      There has been cause for concern with voter surveillance by all the parties; tweaking with the election process…bastards.

      We have got a dog and pony show, with the antics of his royal highest Stephen Harper. Justin Trudeau is a complete idiot and is there in name only. His father was the infamous Pierre Elliott Trudeau the Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 till my birthday 1979.

      There is almost no opposition to the conservatives in Canada…they hold 159 seats, compared to 95 for Mulcair and the NDP and that changed because Alberta had a landslide in the last provincial election for the NDP, an almost total NDP vote…Alberta was Conservative country here in the west.

      Trudeau and the liberals hold 36 federal seats.
      The Bloc hold 2 seats and the Green party 2 seats.
      So as you see, Heir Harper is un-opposed. He does what he wishes. What opposition does exist cannot get it together on any one issue and remain separated and powerless in parliament.

      The NDP have not been able to get together since the Great Jack Layton died of Cancer. Mulcair and Trudeau are not as heavily financed by corporate money like King Stephen.
      To give you an idea of his power, Heir Stephen took $59,000,000,000…yes thats 59 Billion with a B from the Unemployment Insurance coffers (the people’s money); and put it into general coffers with no earmark. That’s a big black hole; it will never ever be accounted for, and what is really galling is not one of the opposition parties opposed his move.

      Harper is owned by the corpration and totally controlled by Washington.
      He holds office as Prime Minister of Canada at Her Royal Majesty’s pleasure…so…we not getting rid of the son-of-a-bitch anytime soon.

      • From Québec says:

        “so…we not getting rid of the son-of-a-bitch anytime soon.” (Michael)

        GOOD! I wouldn’t want Muclair or Trudeau, that’s for sure. Two complete socialist idiots who believe in the Global Warming scam. At least Harper doesn’t believe in that shit. Trudeau and Mulcair would have gladly signed the International gun treaty, they are such pussies. but Harper had the guts to not sign it. Plus, Harper lowered our taxes.

        – PM announces tax cut for small businesses | Prime Minister of Canada”.

        – Stephen Harper’s dramatic tax cuts – Maclean’s

        – Stephen Harper’s historic tax-cutting legacy

        – Etc.

        I’m voting for him.

        • Strange the conservatives have forced a 62% increase on my property taxes since 2013 (from $1600 to $2600).

          Harper supports and finances neo-nazis in the Ukraine trying to overthrow a legitimately elected government there…

          Harper has made it illegal to speak out against Israel, and especially what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

          Harper supports giving government pensions to criminal politicians….why is he protecting Duffy?

          Stephen Harper is covering up crimes committed by the rogue RCMP and changing the history of their past crimes.

          I thought that you had more sense than that Q, what a waste of one’s time and spirit…voting is be complicit in the mind game, the matrix, the whole cluster-fuck.
          Voting is to give them the right to oppress…to give permission to their dystopian NWO.

          To except the paradigm and know the truth as a truth is to be a self-blinded hypocrite…you think your vote really counts?

          Do you believe you are helping? You are voting out of spite…ar’nt you?

          To vote is to legitimize a farce Q…a cruel game and hoax foisted on the ignorant public.

          I am not in favor of Mulcair or Trudeau or for that matter anyone else…its all corrupt and absurd to me, all of it, the whole system.

          But you must know the truth… Harper is a globalist tearing apart Canadian soveignty…the laws on our Canadian waterways have been changed by his government, and are now considered by law, a resource that can be controlled and sold by the government on the global market.
          Will you like him when 50,000 refugees enter the country, running from the illegal wars he co-op’s with Amerika.

          You are such a supporter of Alex Jones and Infowars…what do you think of this…

          http://www.infowars.com/stephen-harper-bulking-up-pentagon-north/

          …Canada/Canadians were always peacekeepers were we not!
          Our famous pale-blue berets have been seen in such places as Rwanda, Somalia, Croatia, Angola; now with a secret half a trillion $ spending on the canadian military, I guess we are hawks now. And will follow Amerika into any war they wish us too. We are either with them or…well…we just another state.

          • From Québec says:

            Yes, I know about most of what you said, still he is better than the two other choices we have. I vote because we still have that liberty. If everybody stop voting… who will we have? A King or a dictator for life? Of course if I was an American, I wouldn’t vote, their elections are all rigged with the electronic voting. But I think that in Canada, our vote still counts.

          • No I sorry to say to you that we are not better of…if I had a week and about 5000 pages I could explain.
            The CIA have been running deep within this government and country for such a long time. The prime movers and shakers are Harvard trained.
            There hasn’t been a prime minister that Washington have not approved of since before Lester B Pearson.
            We pride ourselves on being Canadian.
            Have you ever found out what that is…seriously take a look at it.
            Everything and I mean everything we have or do or sell or look at or eat is the same as in the United States of Amerika. They supply most of our foodstuffs.
            The USA is a continent, not a country.
            We disarmed all through history till the present build-up because we were under US protection…the dew line was created and America flew our skies all during the cold war. Cold lake, Alberta is an American base.
            We have never really been a sovereign country, and any vestiges of that, that is left is being torn apart by Harper government.
            Answer this question who owns the oil and natural resources in Canada? Who mines or drills for it, were do the resources go when mined, we’re does the wheat go, when it is harvested, who owns it….American Corporations. We are a nation of 35 million…they are 350 million. Who owns what? What you believe about Canada is an illusion.
            The price of oil is down and the whole province of Alberta is going into receivership…we are not Canadian Q.
            Harper man is Amerikan.

            https://youtu.be/Ei50lM6ab1c

  3. From Québec says:

    Alex Jones talks with former Clinton insider Larry Nichols

    Start listening at: 8:20

    Insider: Obama Plans to Cancel Election
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IJypH2DyD0#t=1302

  4. Rhondar says:

    Is anyone else skeptical about the drama of Carly Fiorina being let into the CNN debates? Changing rules for that mediocre performance is beyond belief. She’s a rotten globalist.

    No doubt this was done to keep Rand Paul off the stage. Let’s see who they ax….him or Christie.
    and as far as polls are concerned I’ve never been polled once and I am turning 63 this year….so who buys that those polls are even valid?

  5. Rhondar says:

    Walker, Rubio and Christie are just bench warmers for Jeb….backups in case something dire surfaces about Jeb’s past before the election.

  6. Together we can peacefully end crimes against humanity and nature. Simply withdraw consent by no longer voting for any candidate in any election. Otherwise we are complicit, forfeit the right to complain, and reap what we sow.

    • @Doreen
      Your the smartest person in the room…I totally agree.
      I have never voted, I will never vote…ever.

      I will run the handle on the guillotine though…when we get to that…in one of my lives, I lived in France. Somewhere around 1776; so I have have experience…pull the handle! …empty the basket…pull the handle!

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