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 20^th and early 21^st 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.

More on the semantic environment

The semantic environment within which we live and which breeds the laws that shape our lives, is experienced by individuals at a number of different levels, the most basic of which is as a world of immediate experience. An easy way to appreciate this is to picture two savages walking separately through the woods, one simple and one a ‘noble savage’. The simple savage lives almost completely in the world of immediate sense perception, hot, cold, hunger, thirst, danger, safety, bad man/good man. After the day’s hunting, he may move to a higher level, which we might call Stage Two when the witch doctor begins to chant the doctrines and dogmas around the campfire. These make the laws and can be as formidable as the physical world in which the beasts roam. The ‘noble savage’ may join the group but, because he reflects much more deeply, he may entertain doubts about some of the dogmas and may, if the others listen to him, especially the ruling witchdoctors, gently suggest modifications. If, however, the ruling elite have an agenda, or if they are a cabal using the dogmas for their own ends, a virtual police state may exist.

Because of the powerful semantic environment within which we live, ideology is inherent to our society and it both captivates populations and is used by a ruling cartel to control them. Because most of the population makes it meanings, or evaluations, at what we have called Stage Two, the limited level of doctrines and dogmas, the rulers and opportunists use ideology to both control the population, in a way they appear to want to be controlled, and strengthen their own positions of power and privilege. There appears to be a constant move towards an ideology of repression, although there are also cycles of a striving for freedom followed by the reaction of repression. We appear to be in the grips of a repressive downturn following the 1960s, and moving into a dangerous phase.

As we noted above, an inquisition requires a crimen exceptum, the crime so bad that normal due process must be suspended and special or draconian measures used against the accused. To be guilty of a crimen exceptum you do not necessarily require to be tried and convicted, although either plea-bargaining or a trial is normal. Simply to be accused is enough to be considered guilty, so that a trial is largely a formality.

During an inquisition, virtually all of the expert witnesses and lawyers work for the state, that is, for the prosecution. The few lawyers, who may want to work for the defence, risk not getting any more lucrative state work. As the inquisition and its crimen exceptum are based on an established and accepted ideology, which the public accepts often with a hatred for those accused, the media support the accusers, and, as in the earlier inquisitions, so called ‘wise men’, such as university professors, psychologists and social workers, work only for the state, usually as expert witnesses. Under these circumstances, it is virtually impossible not to be damaged or destroyed by a single accusation of being guilty of a crimen exceptum.

The medieval crimen exceptum was either heresy or the practice of witchcraft. Crimen exceptums since have included being a Jew or a gypsy in Nazi Germany and a communist in the America of McCarthy, To-day’s main crimen exceptum is sex abuse, and in particular child sex abuse, and, perhaps in its most deadly form, child pornography. This is already broadening into adult pornography, from where it will move on towards what might be described as ‘inappropriate behaviour’, which is another name for heresy or non-conformism within an accepted ideology. Free speech becomes a casualty in this process. Joining also the sexual crimen exceptum, although not yet as potent, is the crime of being an irresponsible or inappropriate father to one’s children, the use of drugs and other ‘inappropriate behaviour’. It may be that as and when the crimen exceptum, of child sex abuse wanes, these other crimes may take its place as there will always be a ‘designated pervert’ under an inquisition and a police state cannot operate without it. For the time being, however, child sex abuse and child pornography appear to be perfect as the crimen exceptum, especially in the latter’s potential for using the Internet as an instrument of control.

If the above is understood, it may make it easier for those accused and those who long for commonsense or justice to understand why the media or the state fail to come to the defence of innocent people who are falsely accused or to the defence of those unfairly or unjustly accused, for example those whose natural or human acts caused them to be accused. It is in the interest of the media, the police and the state to support any current popular moral ideology. In times of inquisition also, the media and the state are infected to the highest levels by current popular moral ideologies, such as today’s political correctness and the moral panic of sex abuse.

Above all, however, inquisitions arise in times when there is a prosecutorial state in which the state’s legal resources go mainly or only towards prosecution. In such a state, moral laws proliferate and disingenuous activist groups and lawyers form alliances with the police to bring about prosecutions. The most dangerous stage is that when dissent or criticism of either the laws or the moral ideology itself become a criminal activity, as with the laws that forbid the analysis of so-called child pornography in any attempt to discuss and present it rationally. In the US, a defence lawyer and expert witness for defence in child pornography cases has been arrested, because of his zeal and success in defending those accused of this crimen exceptum. This is the stage where the questioning of the current ideology has become a crime. The next step may be that all intellectual questioning becomes criminal.

Now, however, we move somewhat from the idea that the fight against totalitarianism should express itself through assaults on the idea of the crimen exceptum - that is by trying to point to the fallacies supporting the ideas of such crimes, such as there being no sexual activity natural to childhood, or how the so-called crimes are mainly used for disingenuous reasons, not to protect children.

Let us now change that to an idea based on the notion that the crimen exceptum is less important than the nature of the cabal using it. The cabal uses the mechanisms of totalitarianism to seize and maintain power and when they near the point of attaining it they must crush dissent and free speech. When the stage of there being no defence is reached, it becomes pointless to attack the crimen exceptum. The Nazis did not need child porn when they had Jews and Gypsies to exterminate. In such a situation bad lawyers and public complacency no longer cause the real problems, as there is no longer any real justice or due process, except that manufactured in the show trials of wealthy celebrities, which give an illusion of justice.

So this leads us from a platform of trying to debunk the crimen exceptum, or the ‘designated perversion’ to accepting that these are just an excuse for totalitarianism. Look at the US and UK where the ‘designated perversion’ is moving on to the threat against the state, and Sweden where it is already ‘inappropriate behaviour’.

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