C.J. Hopkins's Blog

OK, I’m not back in the U.S.S.A. quite yet, but I’ll be there Sunday night, assuming (a) the German officials allow me to leave, and (b) the Guardians of American Greatness at JFK Airport let me into the country.

I think they have to let me in. I’m still a U.S. citizen, after all, so they can’t “remigrate” me back to Germany, or rendition me off to some medieval gulag in El Salvador, or Uganda, or wherever. Or maybe they can. As far as I can tell, it seems like anything goes these days.

Just in case, I’ve been prepping for my reentry exam at JFK, you know, rehearsing my recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, brushing up on racial epithets, and practicing my “Roman salute.” I couldn’t get my hands on a MAGA hat—I think it’s a felony to wear one in Berlin—but I got my wife to sign an affidavit attesting to my aggressive heterosexuality and hysterical fear of touching my own anus. So that ought to put to rest any worries that the Homeland Security Commissars might have about my flag-waving, red-blooded American status.

My collaboration with Hugo might be a problem, though. He is kind of … well, you know, a mulatto. But he is also the son of Cuban anti-communists, so that probably cancels the mulatto thing out. Or, I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t read the latest MAGA ukases.

Seriously, though, I’m not terribly worried about it. If I get any guff from the airport apparatchiks, I’ll just hand them a copy of one of my new books, Fear and Loathing in the New Normal Reich, the back jacket of which is festooned with endorsements from prominent members of the MAGA politburo, bigwigs like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jay Bhattacharya, and even J. D. Vance.

Granted, those endorsements were issued before my recent counter-revolutionary activities, race treason, and other thought crimes were exposed, but I doubt the goons at the airport will know that, unless they dig into my Substack, or my Twitter account, or read any of the essays in the book, in which case, sure, I might be in a little trouble.

Anyway, assuming I get in, we’re launching this crazy road trip project in New York City on September 11th, so this will be the final pre-launch update. I’ll update you on our itinerary below, but, first, let me tell you about a few new events.

On the evening of September 13, we’ll be doing a reading/discussion event at The Big Board, a bar and restaurant in Washington, DC, which you might remember from the Covid era, when they were shut down by the health authorities for refusing to enforce the “Covid measures.” If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll come join us.

On the evening of October 3, we’ll be doing a reading/discussion event at The Plant (Dogpatch), an organic cafe in San Francisco. This event is being organized by Sane Francisco, a local artist/musician who you might know from her popular Substack.

On October 14, we’re doing a town hall event at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The location and time hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it will be around 6:00 or 7:00PM on campus somewhere, but probably not in Tiger Stadium. Geaux Tigers!

Due to popular demand, we’ve also scheduled a few informal gatherings at places like Pat’s King of Steaks in Philadelphia, Madtree Oakley Taproom in Cincinnati, Dick’s Primal Kitchen in Portland, Joe’s BBQ in Kansas City, and the Bohemian Biergarten in Boulder. See our itinerary below for dates and times.

I’ll be updating our itinerary on the America Road Trip Project page on my website as it continues to evolve. So, if you’re following our road trip and want to stay up-to-date, that’s where you should look. (These Substack posts will be out-of-date soon.)

Also, I’ll be posting short updates from the road on Substack Notes (rather than doing numerous Substack columns and flooding your email in-box), so, if you want to follow the trip day by day, and stay apprised of any additions or changes, follow me on Notes. I’ll try to publish at least one proper column a week, but I might not always have time to do that. Our itinerary is getting rather demanding, as you can see …

New York City — September 11. Road trip kicks off at George’s and 9/11 Memorial.Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — September 12. Lunch at Pat’s King of Steaks (1PM).Washington, DC — September 13. Reading/discussion at The Big Board (7-9PM).Hillsboro, West Virginia — September 14. Event at The Levels Depot (4:30PM).Cincinnati, Ohio — September 16. Madtree’s Oakley Taproom (7:30PM).Chicago, Illinois — September 17. Visceral Adventure bonfire event (7PM).Chicago, Illinois — September 18. Integrity Media Group event.Peoria, Illinois — September 19. Gathering at a nearby horse farm.Kansas City, Missouri — September 20. Joe’s BBQ (7:30PM).Council Grove, Kansas — September 21. Reading event at Carnegie Library (3PM).Boulder, Colorado — September 23. Gathering at Bohemian Biergarten (2PM).Pinedale, Wyoming — September 24. Gathering with locals.Missoula, Montana — September 26. Gathering with locals.Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — September 27. Breakfast. (TBD)Portland, Oregon — September 28. Gathering at Dick’s Primal Kitchen (1:30PM).Gresham, Oregon — September 28. Reading event at The Scout Wine Bar (6PM).Medford, Oregon — September 29. Reading event at Barnes & Noble (6-8PM).Ashland, Oregon — September 30. Gathering at The Noble Fox (6-10PM).San Francisco, California — October 3. Reading event at The Plant (5:30-8PM).Los Angeles, California — October 6-8. Meetings with locals.Sedona, Arizona — October 9. (TBD)Santa Fe, New Mexico — October 10. Gathering with locals.Austin, Texas — October 13. Gathering with locals.Baton Rouge, Louisiana — October 14. Town Hall at Louisiana State University .New Orleans, Louisiana — October 15-17. Meetings with locals.The South — October 18-23. Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina? (TBD)Washington, DC — October 24. A visit with FIRE .Greenwich, CT — October 27. Town-hall event at St. Mary Church .Kensington, NH — October 28. Gathering at Crows’ Feat Farm (4PM).

Yes, we’re still working on our route through The South. There are a few potential events we need to sort out before we can plot the rest of our course. Hang in there with us, Southerners. I’ll update you as soon as I know anything.

And here’s the state of our crowdfunding campaign …

Thank you, everyone who has contributed to it!

OK, that’s it for the final pre-launch update. Wish me luck getting out of Germany, and dealing with the Guardians of American Greatness at JFK.

And stay tuned for reports from the U.S.S.A.!

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CJ Hopkins
September 3, 2025

The America Road Trip Project is made possible by generous contributions from Peter LaTona and Jan Harrell, Harley Lennon Squires, Ralph A. Korpman, M.D., Debbie Lerman, Sasha Latypova, Integrity Media Group, several anonymous contributors, and donations from C. J. Hopkins’ readers.Photo credits: (top) Fife and Drum Corps, Concord, Massachusetts 2025, Hugo Fernandez, Professor of Fine Art Photography, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, Long Island City, New York, USA; (bottom) Dept. of Labor Trump-Banner Photos: (1) exterior, Getty Images; (2) interior, Jennifer Bendery/X.

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

Here comes Road Trip Update No. 4.

Road Trip Update No. 4 will probably be the second to last update before the road trip begins on September 11th. It includes a few exciting additions and adjustments to our ever-evolving itinerary, and some other details that you might find interesting.

Before we get into Road Trip Update No. 4, though, I want to apologize, sincerely, and repeatedly, for whatever I have or have not been doing that has caused the little graph that tracks the growth of my paid Substack subscriptions to look like this …

I’m sorry. Terribly, terribly sorry.

I’m not quite sure what I’m sorry for, but I have a few theories. I’ll try to get through them quickly.

Theory No. 1 is that I’m not a team player. I’m not on a side. Any side. Of anything. I don’t have a cause. I’m not part of a movement. Or a member of any political party. I do not subscribe to any specific ideology. I have absolutely no loyalty to any team, or side, or party, or movement, or set of ideological tenets. Which I realize is confusing for people who are on a side, or a team, or whatever, if they come across something I have written that seems to align with whatever side they’re on, and naturally assume that I am on their team, and then I publish something else that appears to align with the other side, or team, or ideology, which their side or team is staunchly opposed to, which is understandably confusing, and frustrating, and leaves them feeling betrayed or tricked, and prompts them to furiously unsubscribe from my Substack.

I am terribly, terribly sorry about that.

Theory No. 2 is that I tend to be somewhat confrontational, or sarcastic, or insulting, particularly when it comes to people surrending their critical faculties to a side, or a team, or a party, or an ideological movement, and behaving like a bunch of mindless herd animals, or the mob of villagers in a Frankenstein movie, which many readers enjoy (i.e, my sarcasm) when it’s directed at those they perceive to be on the other side, or team, or whatever, but do not enjoy as much when it’s directed at their side, which maybe that makes this part of Theory No. 1, rather than a theory unto itself, and in any event annoys these readers (i.e., the readers who have surrendered their critical faculties), and prompts them to furiously unsubscribe from my Substack.

Again, I’m terribly, terribly sorry.

Theory No. 3 is that I suck. That I started sucking in 2022 when Elon Musk and his consortium of global-capitalist entities purchased Twitter, and increasingly sucked throughout 2023, and then went full suck-hole in 2024, when Trump got elected and set about Making America Great Again again. According to this theory, readers gave me the benefit of the doubt for a while, trusting that my suckage was just temporary, and that I would eventually come to my senses and get on the MAGA train and start gratuitously spewing hatred at illegal immigrants and celebrating the occupation of major US cities by masked MAGA goon squads, and so on, but then—i.e., sometime circa that precipitous drop-off in the graph above—they finally realized that wasn’t going to happen, and that I suck, permanently, and probably always sucked, and just appeared to not suck during the Covid period, when the “other side” was rolling out the goon squads and fomenting hatred of political dissidents, and cracking down on “hate speech,” and doing all the other stuff their side is doing now.

Anyway, whatever I have done or am doing that is causing paid subscribers to dump me en masse, I’m sorry … terribly, terribly sorry.

I promise I’ll stop, and never do it again.

OK, so here’s that Road Trip Update, which is mainly about two exciting new events.

The first one is a gathering at St. Mary Church in Greenwich, CT, on October 27th.

And the other one is a gathering at Crows’ Feat Farm in Kensington, NH, on October 28th.

This will be our only real event in New England (i.e., the one at Crows’ Feat Farm). According to my wife, who is from New England, Greenwich, Connecticut doesn’t count as New England.

Here’s our current full itinerary. We should have details on events in The South fairly soon. Please note that I’ve added links to places like George’s restaurant in New York City, where we’ll be hanging out on September 11th until the memorial opens at 3PM, Joe’s BBQ in Kansas City, and Bohemian Biergarten in Boulder, CO, where we will be hanging out for a couple hours with some readers from the area who really wanted to connect with us. If you are in the vicinity of any of those places on any of those dates, feel free to drop by.

New York City — September 11. Road trip kicks off at George’s and 9/11 Memorial.Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — September 12. Meetings with locals.Washington, DC — September 13. Drinks with a high-powered attorney.Hillsboro, West Virginia — September 14. Reading event at Levels Depot (3PM).Chicago, Illinois — September 17. Visceral Adventure bonfire event (7PM).Chicago, Illinois — September 18. Integrity Media Group event.Peoria, Illinois — September 19. Gathering at a nearby horse farm.Kansas City, Missouri — September 20. Joe’s BBQ with a theater impresario.Council Grove, Kansas — September 21. Reading event at Carnegie Library (3PM).Boulder, Colorado — September 23. Gathering at Bohemian Biergarten (2PM).Pinedale, Wyoming — September 24. Gathering with locals.Missoula, Montana — September 26. Gathering with locals.Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — September 27. (TBD)Portland, Oregon — September 28. Reading event at The Scout in Gresham (6PM).Medford, Oregon — September 29. Reading event at Barnes & Noble. (6-8PM)Ashland, Oregon — September 30. Gathering at The Noble Fox (6-10PM).San Francisco, California — October 2-4. Event at local performance space. (TBC)Los Angeles, California — October 6-8. Meetings with locals.Sedona, Arizona — October 9. (TBD)Santa Fe, New Mexico — October 10. Gathering with locals.Austin, Texas — October 13. Gathering with locals.Baton Rouge, Louisiana — October 16. Event at Louisiana State University. (TBC)New Orleans, Louisiana — October 17. Meetings with locals.The South — October 18-23. Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina? (TBD)Washington, DC — October 24. Storming the Capitol. (Just kidding!)Greenwich, CT — October 27. Town-hall event at St. Mary Church.Kensington, NH — October 28. Gathering at Crows’ Feat Farm (4PM).

And here’s the state of the crowdfunding campaign:

As I mentioned above, there will probably be one more pre-launch update, and I’ll be posting updates from the road, of course. So please stay tuned, regardless of whether you’re a paying or a free subscriber. I promise, I’ll do my best not to suck.

Heartfelt thanks again to everyone who is making this crazy project happen!

All best, as ever, from sunny Berlin,
CJ

* This America Road Trip Project is made possible by generous contributions from Peter LaTona and Jan Harrell, Harley Lennon Squires, Ralph A. Korpman, M.D., Debbie Lerman, Sasha Latypova, Integrity Media Group, several anonymous contributors, and the support of readers like you.

###

CJ Hopkins
August 26, 2025

Photo: International Mall, Miami, 1990, Hugo Fernandez, Professor of Fine Art Photography at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, Long Island City, NY, USA.

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

OK, here comes America Road Trip Update No. 3.

America Road Trip Update No. 3 is going to be predominantly promotional.

It’s also going to be a little sappy, probably, which I know is out of character for me, but I’m extremely grateful to all the kind readers who are organizing gatherings and dinners and BBQs and other such events for us all across the country, and who have invited us to spend the night their homes, and who in some cases are cordoning off designated smoking areas for me in their backyards.

If you look at our current work-in-progress itinerary at the end of this update, you’ll notice that most of our stops along the road involve “gatherings” or “meetings” with locals. These are not public events. These gatherings are being organized by readers. People I have never met before are bringing together friends, neighbors, and other members of their communities, often in their homes, to talk about America with us.

Basically, this was the pipe-dream version of how I imagined this project developing. And it’s actually developing that way, thanks to the generosity and engagement of so many of my readers. Which is … well, it’s quite moving, and I think it says something admirable about Americans.

So I hope you’ll forgive me for breaking character and getting a little mushy. I swear, I’ll get back to being cynical and hopelessly depressing about the state of everything soon. At the moment, I’m feeling overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers.

OK, here comes the promotional stuff.

In addition to the private gatherings, I’m also doing a few public events, readings and such, but these events are really just another opportunity to gather people together to share their stories and perspectives and talk about America, which is the main goal of this road trip. I’ll just be doing a little reading to set the scene, and selling and signing a few books, but the discussion is still the thing.

Here are some of those public events …

On Sunday, September 14, I’m doing a reading/discussion event at Levels Depot in Hillsboro, West Virginia. It’s a café, convenience, grocery store, and gas station all rolled into one, offering a variety of locally sourced products and “the best sausage gravy biscuits ever.” Hunters and non-hunters are welcome!

On September 17, I’m doing a backyard bonfire reading/discussion event in Chicago, hosted by Visceral Adventure, the nom de guerre of a local theater artist. Yes, this will literally take place in her backyard, and there will be an actual bonfire. If you’re in the Chicagoland area, come join us!

On September 21, I’ll be doing a reading/discussion event at the Carnegie Library in Council Grove, Kansas, the smallest town in the country with a daily newspaper, and the last stop on the old Santa Fe Trail.

On September 28, I’ll be doing a reading/discussion event at The Scout Wine Bar in Gresham, Oregon. Check out this video feature on The Scout and its owners, and, if you’re in the Portland area, come join us!

On September 29, I’ll be doing a reading/discussion event at the Barnes & Noble in Medford, Oregon. I don’t think I need to include a photo. It’s a Barnes & Noble. All their stores look pretty much the same.

The next day, Tuesday, September 30, I’m doing a reading/discussion event at The Noble Fox in Ashland, Oregon, which is just down the road from Medford. These events are being organized by the gracious Margaret Anna Alice, who will also be reading some of her work and moderating.

That’s it for public events so far. We’re working on scheduling a few more.

As you’ll see below, we’re pretty much booked all the way up to October 17-18 in New Orleans, so it’s really just the South that we’re still planning. If you’re one of the kind readers who have offered to put us up in the South—for example, in lovely little towns in North Carolina—hang with us for just a bit. We’ve got a few pending things that we can’t nail down until late August/early September. Once we sort those out, we’ll have a better sense of our route through the South.

And that last bullet point on our itinerary, i.e., New England in late October, is still totally theoretical, although there’s a certain permaculture farm in New Hampshire I would really like to visit, and I’ve been invited to do a thing at a church in Greenwich, Connecticut, which is kind of irresistible.

Oh, and, regarding New York City, some of you have inquired about a gathering there. I don’t have any public events lined up, and, honestly, it’s not my town anymore. I was micro-famous among the Lower East Side experimental theater community in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but that was twenty years ago. New York changes fast and hard. That theater community is gone. The storefront theaters my plays were first produced in are gone, replaced by luxury condos. My old theater colleagues have either left NYC or now regard me as a “Covid-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, far-right-extremist anti-vaxxer,” or whatever, and would rather snort crystallized Covid out of Donald Trump’s anal orifice than be seen with me in public.

Which is a long way of saying, if you live in New York, and would like to get together and take part in this project, sing out in the Comments below. If there are enough of you, I’ll try to find a place to do that, probably on September 9th or 10th.

OK, that’s it.

Here’s our complete work-in-progress itinerary …

New York City — September 11. Road trip kicks off at 9/11 Memorial.Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — September 12. Meetings with locals.Washington, DC — September 13. Drinks with a high-powered attorney.Hillsboro, West Virginia — September 14. Reading event at The Levels Depot.Kentucky or Ohio — September 16. (TBD)Chicago, Illinois — September 17. Visceral Adventure backyard bonfire event.Chicago, Illinois — September 18. Integrity Media Group event.Peoria, Illinois — September 19. Gathering at a local horse farm.Kansas City, Missouri — September 20. Joe’s BBQ with a theater impresario.Council Grove, Kansas — September 21. Reading event at Carnegie Library.Estes Park, Colorado — September 23. Meeting with locals.Pinedale, Wyoming — September 24. Gathering with locals.Missoula, Montana — September 26. Gathering with locals.Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — September 27. (TBD)Portland, Oregon — September 28. Reading event at The Scout in Gresham.Medford, Oregon — September 29. Reading event at Barnes & Noble.Ashland, Oregon — September 30. Gathering at The Noble Fox.San Francisco, California — October 1-3. Possible public event. (TBC)Monterey, California — October 4. (TBD)Los Angeles, California — October 6-8. Meetings with locals.Arizona — October 9. (TBD)Santa Fe, New Mexico — October 10. Gathering with locals.West Texas — October 11. (TBD)Austin, Texas — October 12-13. Gathering with locals.Somewhere else in Texas — October 14. (TBD)New Orleans, Louisiana — October 15-17. Meeting locals. Event at LSU. (TBC)The South — October 18-23. Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina? (TBD)Washington, DC — October 24. Storming the Capitol. (Just kidding!)New England — October 26-30. (TBC/TBD)

And here’s the crowdfunding campaign …

Heartfelt thanks to all the kind strangers who are making this project a reality!

All best, as ever, from sunny Berlin,
CJ

* This America Road Trip Project is made possible by generous contributions from Peter LaTona and Jan Harrell, Harley Lennon Squires, Ralph A. Korpman, M.D., Integrity Media Group, Debbie Lerman, Sascha Latypova, several anonymous contributors, and the support of readers like you.

###

CJ Hopkins
August 14, 2025

Photo: Hugo Fernandez, Krome Detention Camp Protest, circa 1990

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

Here comes Road Trip Update No. 2.

It’s a bit of a weird update, as you are about to discover.

Before we get into it, I want to convey my heartfelt thanks to all the kind readers who have invited us into their homes, and are organizing gatherings of people to come talk with us, and who have offered to introduce us to interesting neighbors, and are setting up readings, and other such events.

I am so very grateful for your engagement and generosity. This project could not be happening without you, or not like this in any event. Without your participation in it, Hugo and I would just be two more old weirdos driving around the country jabbering at random people in truck stops and taking pictures of strip malls.

So, thank you for the opportunity to actually do the project I was hoping to do.

Now let me tell you about Update No. 2.

It’s an epistle to the Wokians. Yes, those Wokians. The pronoun-using, mask-wearing Wokians. I meant it when I wrote that I want to talk with people from all walks of life and of all political persuasions, and that includes the Wokians. The challenge is, most of the Wokians I used to know stopped engaging with me circa the Spring of 2020 due to my extremely unWoke response to the roll-out of the authoritarian Covid measures, and the Covid propaganda, and the rest of the “New Normal” that the Powers That Be started vigorously ramming down everyone’s throat.

So I don’t know how to reach out to those folks. What follows is the best I could come up with. I plan to send it around to various Wokian outlets and ask them to publish it.

I figure, what the hell, it’s worth a shot.

Oh, yeah, and there’s an updated itinerary at the end. We’ve still got a lot of uncharted territory and are welcoming all invitations and offers.

OK, here’s that Epistle to the Wokians. Feel free to copy it and spread it around.

Epistle to the Wokians
Berlin, August 3, 2025

To the Church of the Wokians, and all those sanctified in Wokeness, and, yea, even to the Order of the Covidians, and the High Priests of Pronouns, grace and peace to you all!

I appeal to you, former brothers and sisters, in the name of all that is Woke, that all of you agree with one another in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, and that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

However, notwithstanding your unity of mind and thought, and your undividedness, and agreement with each other, I appeal to you to open your mind and thought to this epistle from a former member of your Church, for I write to you in the spirit of peace and forgiveness and harmony and all that good stuff, albeit in this silly mock-Pauline style.

My former brothers and sisters, what is to be done about the fear and hatred and the political polarization that has divided Americans? Verily, we are as a hodgepodge of fundamentalist churches waging endless cancel crusades against each other. Are we already fighting the next civil war? Is there anything that still binds us together?

Are we even able to talk to each other anymore?

My former comrades in Wokeness and Progressiveness, I intend to find the answer to these questions or make a jackass of myself trying.

Verily, I am going to fly across the ocean, returning to the USA, where I have not lived for over twenty years, rent a somewhat ridiculous automobile, and drive all around the country with my friend Hugo Fernandez, who is a photographer, and who is still fairly Woke (or at least he has not yet been excommunicated from the Church of Wokeness).

Our adventures on the road, the perspectives of the folks we meet along the way, and Hugo’s photos will be published as a book by Arcade Publishing. Strangers in a Strange Homeland: On the Road in 21st-Century America is our working title.

My former brothers and sisters, I need your help to carry out this foolish mission, for the portrait of contemporary America that Professor Hugo and I want to paint would not be complete without the stories and perspectives of the Wokians.

And there’s the rub.

Due to my activities in recent years, my readership is primarily comprised of unWoke apostates like myself, old-school lefties, free-speech absolutists, inveterate individual liberties enthusiasts, and, verily, even conservatives and libertarians. Many of these unWoke blasphemers have generously invited the Professor and myself to come and talk to them about America, and are opening their homes and horse farms to us, and are organizing gatherings large and small in towns and cities throughout the country to help us carry out our quixotic mission.

I am exceedingly grateful to these generous folks, but I also want to talk to the Woke, notwithstanding my apostate status in the Church, and my thought criminal status in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the fact that some of you (i.e., those of you who have even heard of me) regard me as a “Covid denier,” an “anti-vaxxer,” a “conspiracy theorist,” or have some other horrible impression of me.

Therefore, I am reaching out to you, my former brothers and sisters in Wokeness (and to the Wokians I suspect are silently lurking among my 34,000 subscribers). I’m asking you to put aside your low opinion of my unWoke activities and help us paint a portrait of America at this historical, and arguably historic, moment.

I described the spirit of this slightly crazy project, and the origins of the working title of the book, in my previous column. Here’s a brief excerpt …

… in a broader sense, aren’t we Americans all “strangers in a strange homeland,” no matter how far back our roots in the country go, or how long we may have been away from home? Except for the Native Americans, we’re all from somewhere else.

In these times of extreme political polarization, cultural fragmentation, confusion, anger, and fear, what is it, if anything, that still unites us as Americans? How did we get here? Where are we? Where are we headed? These are some of the questions I’m hoping to explore with the people we meet along the road.

See? That’s not so horrible, right?

Below you will find our current itinerary. If you are Woke, and find yourself along our route, and are willing to talk to me about America, or perhaps organize a gathering of local Wokians, please get in touch via this contact form.

I want to hear and listen to what you have to say.

You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to. As I mentioned above, Hugo is still pretty Woke, or at least quite a bit more Woke than I am. You could talk to Hugo, and then Hugo could lean over and tell me what you said, and then I could tell Hugo what I want to say to you, and then he could lean over and … well, I think you get the idea.

Seriously, all teasing aside, I want to hear your stories and perspectives and be able to include them in this book.

Blessings and Peace to you, my former brothers and sisters, and to all those sanctified in Wokeness!

Yours in Apostasy,
CJ Hopkins

P.S. Here’s our current itinerary …

New York City — September 11 (Road trip kicks off at 9/11 Memorial.)Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — September 12 (Meetings with locals.)Washington, DC — September 13 (TBD)Hillsboro, West Virginia — September 14 (Reading event at The Levels Depot.)Kentucky, Ohio? — September 16 (TBC)Chicago, Illinois — September 18 (Integrity Media Group event.)Peoria, Illinois — September 19 (Gathering at a horse farm.)Kansas City, Missouri — September 20 (Joe’s BBQ with a dear old friend.)Council Grove, Kansas — September 21 (Reading event at Carnegie Library.)Estes Park, Colorado — September 23 (TBC)Pinedale, Wyoming — September 24 (Gathering with locals.)Missoula, Montana — September 26 (Bitterroot Beacon Radio interview and BBQ with locals.)Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — September 26 (TBD)Portland, Oregon — September 28 (Reading event at The Scout in Gresham.)Medford, Oregon — September 29 (Reading event at Barnes & Noble.)Ashland, Oregon — September 30 (Gathering at The Noble Fox.)San Francisco, California — October 2-4 (TBD)Los Angeles, California — October 6-8 (TBD)Arizona — October 9 (TBC)New Mexico — October 10 (TBC)Austin, Texas — October 13 (Gathering with locals.)New Orleans, Louisiana — October 16-17 (Meetings with locals.)The South — October 18-23 (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina? Still no clue what we’re doing in the Deep South yet.)Washington, DC — October 24 (Storming the Capitol … just kidding!)New York/Connecticut — October 26-30 (And, if I’m not in jail or the hospital by then, perhaps a quick trip up to a permaculture farm in New Hampshire.)

And here’s the current state of our crowdfunding campaign …

Thank you for your generous support! Please stay tuned for further updates.

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CJ Hopkins
August 3, 2025

Photo: Hugo Fernandez, Storefront Church, New York City, circa 1991

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

[N.B. This is America Road Trip Project Update No. 1, originally published on Substack. I am publishing it here on the Consent Factory blog late, having just published Update No. 2.]

So the America Road Trip Project is coming together quickly.

This will be the first of a series of updates I plan to post as we prepare to launch on September 11th. I’m planning to update readers on developments as they occur and keep asking for your help as we plot our route and primary stops along the way.

Once we get underway, I’ll publish a series of reports from the road. These reports will be dashed off late at night in unsanitary motel rooms, or in the little fenced off “designated smoking areas” in the parking lots of unsanitary motels, and in other more luxurious accommodations that have been offered to us by kind and generous readers … what I’m getting at is, they probably won’t be as polished (i.e., obsessively over-edited) as my usual columns, these reports.

Before I get going with Update No. 1, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the readers who have contributed to our fundraising campaign, or have offered us a place to spend the night, or are coordinating events and gatherings in their areas.

Thank you, all of you! Your support is incredibly moving and encouraging!

OK, here comes the update.

I had to whip up a press statement for my publisher, and it started me reflecting on the spirit of this project. I’m drowning in dates, cities, and details at the moment, so I’m just going to paste the press statement in here (rather than reworking it to try to make it sound like I wrote it for this update). Here it is …

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE HOMELAND
On the Road in 21st Century America

(working title)

Press Statement
C. J. Hopkins

During September-October 2025, photographer Hugo Fernandez and I will travel throughout the USA by car, talking to people from all walks of life and of all political persuasions and taking photos of the country along the way. Our adventures on the road, the stories and perspectives of the people we meet, and Hugo’s photographs will be published as a book by Arcade Publishing in 2026.

Our goal is to paint a portrait of America, in all its complexity, at this historical (and historic) moment.

Many other authors and photographers have done such “Portrait of America” road-trip projects, Robert Frank, John Steinbeck, and James Agee and Walker Evans, to name just a few. So that’s not new. What is unique, however, is the perspective I bring to it. I’m an American, and I traveled all over the USA in my youth, but I have lived in Europe for twenty years. So, in a sense, I am coming home to a country I have never been to before. I want to discover and explore that country as it is today, or as much of it as I can, as “a stranger in a strange homeland.”

Hugo Fernandez, a professor at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY, will also be seeing the country with somewhat estranged eyes. Having mostly worked with large-format photography for the last forty years, he’ll be returning to the handheld B&W style of his early work for this project.

And, in a broader sense, aren’t we Americans all “strangers in a strange homeland,” no matter how far back our roots in the country go, or how long we may have been away from home? Except for the Native Americans, we’re all from somewhere else.

In these times of extreme political polarization, cultural fragmentation, confusion, anger, and fear, what is it, if anything, that still unites us as Americans? How did we get here? Where are we? Where are we headed? These are some of the questions I’m hoping to explore with the people we meet along the road.

So, there. That’s the spirit of this project, as much as I understand it at this stage.

Here’s what we think our route looks like currently. Everything is still evolving and subject to change, of course, but we’re already accepting invitations from hosts and scheduling events, so the general shape of it is fairly accurate. We’ll be traveling on secondary roads/highways whenever possible, and stopping at interesting places on the way from point to point.

New York City — I lived in New York for fifteen years, and Hugo teaches there, so that’s where we will start out on our journey, on September 11.Philadelphia — Debbie Lerman is going to hook us up with interesting locals. Debbie is a writer who has a new book out, The Deep State Goes Viral. Check her work out (but then come right back to this update and read the rest).Hillsboro, West Virginia — Harley Lennon Squires, the proprietor of The Levels Depot Café has graciously invited me to do a book reading/discussion event there on Sunday, September 14. If you live in the area, I hope you’ll come talk with us.Kentucky — Possibly. We have to spend the night somewhere on our way to …Chicago — I’ll be attending an event held by Integrity Media, an organization that supports non-partisan independent media, journalists, and publishers (e.g., like me). And Hugo and I will be cruising around the city soaking everything in.St. Louis — We’ll be stopping here to visit the grave of William S. Burroughs, and the birthplace of T. S. Eliot, and maybe even the grave of Tennessee Williams, who wanted to be buried at sea, but wound up buried in St. Louis. So it goes.Kansas City — Pretty much the exact middle of the USA. I’m discussing a couple possible events here but nothing is confirmed yet. My dear old friend and partner in theatrical thought crime, John Clancy, lives in Kansas City now. John will hook us up with the locals. We’ll be in Kansas City September 20-21.Colorado — Boulder, probably, unless you have a better idea for a stop along our route or want to put together a little gathering of locals somewhere and invite us.Big Sky Country — No idea yet where we’re going to stop. Basically, we have six days to get from Kansas City to Portland, so … Wyoming, Montana, Idaho maybe. Again, if you live in this part of the country, and have suggestions or invitations, please let me know.Portland, Oregon — or, actually, Gresham, which is a suburb of Portland, or part of Portland, or something like that. A gracious reader is hosting us here, and has arranged a reading/discussion event at The Scout, a lovely wine bar in Gresham. That will happen on September 28. The next morning we’ll tear ass down to …Ashland/Medford, Oregon — Margaret Anna Alice, who some of you will know from her writings, has been working overtime trying to arrange a couple events. There will be a reading/signing event either at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland or at Barnes & Noble in Medford on September 29, and the next day there will be a mini-quasi-townhall-type thing in a local restaurant/drinking establishment. I’ll post details in a later update.San Francisco — I lived here in the mid-to-late 1980s, before the dotcom boom. Honestly, I’m afraid to go back, because I have such fond memories of my years there, and I’ve read a lot of horror stories about what the city has become. But I can’t leave it out of the book. Hugo also lived in SF for a while, although not as long as I did. We escaped from Miami together in 1985, during a hurricane, but that’s a story for another time, maybe in the book. Anyway, if you are in the Bay Area, and want to get some folks together and talk about America, get in touch. We’ll be there October 2-4, probably.Los Angeles — My cousin, Peter LaTona, a major patron of this project, and all my work, and the one who first introduced me to writers like Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and Herman Hesse and musicians like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, is hosting us in Los Angeles. I have a few friends there, and Peter is going to hook us up with some of his people, but, again, if you live in the Los Angeles area and want to get some people together and talk about America, please get in touch.New Mexico — Santa Fe, probably, but nothing is confirmed. We’ll have to stop somewhere on our way to Austin.Texas — I have no idea, Lubbock, maybe.Austin — I have never been to Austin, and I don’t know anyone in Austin, but I feel like it needs to be in the book. If you live in the Austin area and want to get some people together and talk about America, please get in touch.Houston — Just a quick overnight stop here on our way to …New Orleans — I love New Orleans, or at least I did thirty-something years ago, the last time I was there. A lot has happened to the city since then. Again, if you live there and want to show us around or get a little gathering of locals together, please get in touch. We’ll be there circa October 16-17.The South — Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas? No idea yet. It’s all up in the air at the moment.Washington DC — We need to wake up in DC on October 24, because I need to be back in New York City the next day. We’ve got a couple of things lined up, no events, just people to meet and talk with. And perhaps we’ll swing by the White House and ask President Trump or Vice President J. D. Vance to catch us up on what’s happening with those unsavory Epstein files, and the rest of the “Making Great Again” of America.

That’s the current version of our ever-evolving route.

And here’s what our Free Funder campaign looks like at the moment …

Again, heartfelt thanks to everyone who has contributed to the Free Funder campaign or has sent me a contribution directly. You are making this road trip (and what I think might turn out to be a pretty good book) happen. We’re not quite there yet—I’m afraid I lowballed our projected expenses a bit—but I’m confident we’re going to get there.

Stay tuned for further updates. Until then …

All best from sunny Berlin,
CJ

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CJ Hopkins
July 27, 2025

Photo: Hugo Fernandez, Holland Tunnel, circa 1991

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

Here we go.

The slightly crazy idea I floated back on July 9 has evolved into an actual book project, which will take place on the road all across the USA in September and October 2025.

It doesn’t have a title yet, so I’m just calling it the “America Road Trip Project.”

The plan is, I’m going to rent a car, and drive back and forth across the USA with my old friend Hugo Fernandez, who is a Professor of Photography. We are going to meet and talk about “America” with people from all walks of life and political persuasions.

Our adventures on the road, the stories and perspectives of the people we meet along the way, and Hugo’s photographs of the country and its denizens will be published as a book by Arcade Publishing sometime next year.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has extended offers of support or provided feedback on my initial ideas! Your enthusiasm convinced me that this project is worth doing. If you’re one of the many readers who has offered to help support the project financially, there’s information on how to do that at the end of this post.

We only have about six weeks to raise money and sort out details before I have to get on a plane to New York, so preparation for the road trip is going to consume most of my focus for the rest of the summer. I’ll post updates as the project takes shape, and reports from the road once we get underway, of course, but I’m not going to have the time to also churn out humorous commentary on whatever distractionary nonsense the Powers That Be are bombarding everyone with on any given day. Basically, this project is going to dominate my output for the next three to four months.

If that gets too boring for you, well, there are tons of writers on the Internet slinging partisan slop at each other and telling everyone what to think about everything. I’m rather tired of all that kind of stuff, myself, but I’ll understand if you aren’t and need to ditch me for a while.

I hope you’ll stay tuned, though, because I think this is going to be a pretty interesting project, and I’d like to continue to benefit from your feedback and support as we put it together and ultimately carry it out.

Here are some of my thoughts about the project so far, and ways you can help …

A lot of other writers have done the American road trip thing. So that’s not new. What is unique, however, is the weird perspective I bring to it. I’m an American, but I have lived in Europe for twenty years. So, in a sense, I’m coming home to a country I have never been to before. I want to discover and explore that country, as it is today, or as many parts of it as I can, as a stranger in a strange homeland.The parts of it we’re planning to visit are … the Northeast, the Midwest, the West, “Big Sky Country,” the West Coast, the Southwest, and the Deep South. It’s going to be a whirlwind tour, as we only have about six weeks to do it all.You can help us out by (a) steering us towards places you think we need to visit and/or people we need to talk to in the region you live in, (b) helping organize a social event where we can hang out and talk to people—including, but not only, book signings/readings at local bookstores or cafes, which I’m happy to do, but that is not my main goal, and (c) supporting the project financially via our Free Funder crowdfunding gizmo, or one of the other options below.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’m mainly relying on a few sponsors, or patrons, i.e., people who can make largish contributions to the project, and who will of course get prominently acknowledged in the book, rather than hitting up working people on budgets who have already given me more money than they probably should have (e.g., for my legal defense fund in 2023 and 2024). If you would like to become one of those sponsors, or patrons, please get in touch via the contact form at the Consent Factory.

Many readers have expressed a desire to support the project with smaller donations, so we have also set up this crowdfunding thing, which is up and running now …

And here are two other options …

Direct bank transfer:

Christopher Hopkins
IBAN: DE39 1007 0024 0111 9254 00
BIC/SWIFT: DEUTDEDBBER

Deutsche Bank
Alexanderstraße 5
10178 Berlin

My PayPal. (I know, it’s PayPal. But there’s no Venmo in Europe.)

I will be grateful for your support in whatever form. I have a hunch this could turn out to be a pretty good book. As I mentioned above, a lot of other writers and photographers have done the USA road trip thing, but timing is everything, and this seems like the perfect historical moment for Hugo and I to do it.

That’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted … and maybe I’ll even see you back home!

###

CJ Hopkins
July 26, 2025

Photo: Hugo Fernandez, New Mexico, circa February 1986

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

There are 33,334 of you.

Probably even more by the time you read this.

I do not ask much of you. I do not ask often. But I need to ask something of you now.

I need to ask you to buy my novel.

But, first, I want to say a few things about capitalism.

It has come to my attention that many of my readers believe that I am some kind of communist, or Marxist, or that I am opposed to capitalism, and free markets, and so on. Whenever I write about global capitalism, they write to me, these readers, and advise me not to do that. They suggest that I use other words to refer to the globally hegemonic ideological system that we live in, all of us, regardless of where we live.

I cannot do that. Things are what they are. Global capitalism is global capitalism. It may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it is the kind of capitalism we have.

That said, I am not opposed to capitalism. Opposing capitalism is kind of silly. It is one big global capitalist world. Capitalism is the ideological structure of that world. “Opposing” capitalism is like opposing “reality.” To do that, you need an alternative “reality” from which to mount your opposition. But there is only ever one “reality.”

Capitalism is our “reality.” That is why I write about it.

I have written about it in my stage plays and essays, and I am writing about it now in my novels, not because I hate it, or “oppose” it, or want to replace it with some other “reality,” but because that is my job as an author.

If you’re an artist, you’re either questioning and challenging the “reality” of the times you live in or you are reproducing and reinforcing that “reality.” I have never had any interest in doing the latter.

So, please, if you’re one of those readers who get upset when I write about capitalism, relax, I’m just as capitalist as you are.

You don’t believe me? OK, I’ll prove it to you.

As I mentioned at the top of this column, there are 33,334 of you, currently. Substack subscribers. Mostly non-paying subscribers. Which is fine. That’s my business model. I do not paywall my Substack columns because (a) I want to reach as many readers as possible, and (b) I trust that enough of you who can afford to pay me for my work will do that, because you recognize the value of what you’re getting. Capitalists call that a “marketing strategy.”

It’s working fairly well, so far. Less than three percent of you are paying subscribers, but that’s enough to keep me in business. I’m grateful for all my paying subscribers.

And now I need the rest of you to do something for me.

I need the rest of you to buy my novel.

I need you to do that because … well, because of capitalism.

See, most people have been educated to believe that those of us in the culture industry—i.e., authors, visual artists, filmmakers, and so on—are engaged in creating works of art and literature that have some degree of “cultural” value. We are not. Because there is no culture. Not anymore. There is only the marketplace.

And the only measure of value in the marketplace is money.

Yes, there is a simulacrum of culture, but it is a soulless little narcissistic world where mediocrity and conformity is rewarded. There are whole academies where mediocrity is taught, where aspiring authors and artists have the last faint flickers of life hectored out of them. It is a world policed by sensitivity editors, literary agents, gallery owners, artistic directors, corporate publishers, foundations, culture ministries, et cetera. It is a delicatessen of sycophantic palaver patronized by the simulated aristocracy. A niche market peddling “sophistication” to the global-capitalist ruling classes, most of whom are glorified widget salesmen.

The only way unauthorized authors like me can subvert that simulacrum of culture, (and maybe even someday change how it operates) is if we sell enough books to force the so-called literary establishment to have to contend with us. The artistic quality of our novels is irrelevant. The market doesn’t care about artistic quality (except when it works as a marketing strategy). It cares about book sales. It cares about money.

If you don’t know what I’m getting at, well, here’s an excerpt from a recent piece by Mesha Maren in The Metroplitan Review. She’s referring to a book called Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, by Dan Sinykin.

Sinykin’s Big Fiction tracks the conglomeration of publishing and how editors went from talking jazz and pouring drinks with their writers in the 1950s to poring over profit-and-loss statements and how these shifts were caused by the buying up of independent, often family-owned, publishing houses by companies like RCA and other large corporations, and how the consolidation of these multinational corporations led to a risk-averse model with no room for low-demand commodities. What this means practically is both a refusal to publish books that do not mimic other recent, financially-successful books and the death of the long-range model wherein an editor like Albert Erskine could continue to publish an author like Cormac McCarthy whose pre-Border Trilogy novels never sold more than 2,500 copies each.

Maren’s essay is worth reading in its entirety, but don’t click away and do that now, because I need to convince you to buy my book.

It’s a new edition of my novel Zone 23, in hardcover, published by Arcade Publishing, the literary imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. It will be released in the USA on July 15, and in the UK and Europe on August 28. It’s available to pre-order now.

As I have mentioned twice, or … OK, three times now, there are 33,334 of you, which means you have the power to make it a bestseller. The power of the free market. The power of capitalism. All you have to do is buy a copy.

If you are as tired of being suffocated by “woke” culture as I am, if you are as sick of the sensitivity editing, the identity politics, the speech policing, the mediocrity, and conformity, of the culture industry … well, I’m asking you to do something about it.

I did. I wrote this big fat novel.

You can buy it wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, any of the major online booksellers, or you can pick up a copy at your local bookstore once it’s published in a couple of weeks.

Seriously, if you are one of my tens of thousands of free subscribers, please, step up, and help me rattle a few cages. Or think of it as a one-time payment for all the free Substack columns you’re getting.

That’s it. That’s my marketing pitch. How am I doing with the capitalism thing?

P.S. I realize a few thousand of you bought the original self-published edition, and I am grateful that so many of you did. But here’s the thing about self-published books. They do not appear on the shelves of bookstores. They do not get reviewed. They get ignored. So please buy this new edition if you can afford it. That old edition is out of print. Shrink-wrap it in cellophane and store it away somewhere. Who knows? If the gods of the market smile on us, it might become a collector’s item that we can sell on Amazon and make a profit!

###

CJ Hopkins
July 1, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

And so the global-capitalist empire’s destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East continues.

Yes, I’m referring to Israel’s “preemptive attack” on the Islamic Republic of Iran, or “World War III,” or whatever the establishment media and social media influencers are trying to get you to call it at the moment.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t engage with either the official “Israel is defending itself from the nuclear weapon that Iran has been days away from developing for the last twenty-five years” narrative, or the unofficial “the evil Zionists who control the US government are trying to draw Trump into a war for Israel” narrative.

The global-capitalist empire, not “America” or “Israel,” has been destabilizing and restructuring the Greater Middle East since the end of the Cold War. It is going to continue to do that until every nation in the region is playing ball with the empire.

“America” is not the empire. “The Zionists” do not control the world. The USA and Israel are components of the global-capitalist empire. Israel is the empire’s Middle East HQ. The US military-industrial complex and its international partners are the empire’s muscle. The empire is conducting a global clear-and-hold op, neutralizing internal resistance, “restructuring” the territory it conquered and now occupies.

That is what is happening in the Middle East. In Gaza. In Iran. In Israel. Look at a map. Note which countries are playing ball with the global-capitalist empire. Note which ones are not playing ball. Note which ones have already been “restructured.”

Or don’t do that. Switch off your mind and consume whatever cartoonish narratives the corporate media and influencers are peddling to you. The evil Iranians and their nuclear weapons! The evil Zionists that control the world! Netanyahu duped Trump! Trump tricked MAGA! The Rothschilds! The Deep State! The Jewish Supremacists! The Return of the Neocons! World War III!

The global-capitalist empire would prefer that you do that. And it doesn’t matter to the empire which narrative you consume. The empire doesn’t care whether you’re a liberal or conservative. It could not possibly care less who you voted for. It does not care whether you’re a multi-gendered pronoun-using anti-Trump progressive or an Elon-loving MAGA conservative. It does not care whether you’re a Waymo-burning Mexican flag-flying illegal immigrant or a race-baiting crypto-fascist creep. It doesn’t care whether you’re a Zionist or an anti-Zionist. It does not give a shit what you think about vaccines.

Whoever you are, whatever “side” you are on, the empire has a readymade narrative for you. A narrative that has nothing to do with the global-capitalist empire and its global clear-and-hold op.

And that’s one big advantage the global-capitalist empire has over earlier totalitarian systems. Unlike the Communists and the National Socialists, global capitalism has no ideology, so it can morph into anything it needs to morph into, including any potential opposition to it.

Which is what it has been doing for the last few years, more or less since the end of the Covid era. Just as the Obama “Hope-and-Change” show captured and neutered the growing opposition to the War on Terror (i.e., the original version of the global-capitalist empire’s destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East), the “Make America Great Again” show (with assistance from the Musk Cult) has captured and neutralized the “populist” opposition to the New Normal Reich (i.e., the new global-capitalist form of totalitarianism that was rolled out during the “Covid pandemic”).

I explored this in the introductory essay of Fear and Loathing in the New Normal Reich, my latest book. Here’s an excerpt …

“This is also a key feature of the New Normal Reich, the capture, conditioning, and commodification of opposition forces that cannot be eliminated. (Remember, this is global-capitalist totalitarianism, not the ham-fisted 20th-Century version.) Any internal resistance to the empire that cannot be annihilated, or otherwise silenced, can be commodified, branded, and marketed back to its members as a simulacrum of itself. Ultimately, it can be instrumentalized, like ‘the Brotherhood’ in Orwell’s 1984. It can be molded into a ‘resistance movement,’ which simultaneously exists and does not exist, because it only exists as a simulacrum (i.e., a copy of a thing that no longer exists, which conceals the fact that it no longer exists), and deployed to lure political opposition into an endless war against other simulacra, a war that is itself a simulacrum (i.e., a copy of a war which is not being fought, and was never fought, and will never be fought, because it was already over before it began).

‘Free-speech X’ is a prime example. The ease with which Elon Musk and a consortium of serious global-capitalist behemoths, Saudi royalty, and assorted other oligarchs purchased the platform formerly known as Twitter, rebranded it as ‘The Bastion of Free Speech’ (despite the fact that X continues to collaborate with the empire to censor dissent), corralled the majority of the ‘populist’ opposition to the emergence of the New Normal Reich, and transformed it into a global personality cult, is a testament to the versatility of capitalism, and to the advantage of having no official ideology. When you don’t have to conform to any specific ideology, you can wear whatever mask you need to wear. You can play whichever role is called for. It’s all just marketing, advertising, branding. It’s about selling images. The images don’t mean anything. They’re just Pavlovian stimuli designed to trigger a reaction in the target consumer.

The transformation of Twitter/X into the Musk Cult and its merger with (or takeover of) the MAGA movement has been fascinating, if extremely depressing, to watch. At the moment, it appears to be on the verge of morphing into exactly the official enemy that the empire has been desperately simulating for years.”

I wrote that in December 2024, just after the election that ushered in a “new golden age of America,” or whatever. And now … well, here we are. The destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Israel and Iran are officially at war. The Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble. The Assad regime is gone, replaced with a gang of global-capitalism-ball-playing Al-Qaeda thugs. The Trump regime is renditioning people with suspicious tattoos to Salvadoran gulags, arresting students for writing editorials, unleashing masked goons to round up “illegals,” and generally “making America great again.” X is now a cesspool of algorithmically-boosted racial hatred, mindless rage, Musk and MAGA propaganda, widget ads, and miscellaneous idiocy. Palantir is assembling a master database of Americans’ personal data. People are shrieking for “mass deportation.” Stephen Miller is channeling Joseph Goebbels. Elon Musk is accusing Trump of degenerate acts on Epstein Island. No one is being prosecuted for lying to everyone about “Covid,” but Bobby Kennedy fired a bunch of bureaucrats, and Trump’s military birthday parade … and so on.

Basically, the global-capitalist empire has morphed into the opposition to itself, or a simulacrum of the opposition to itself, and is now simultaneously instrumentalizing and disassembling the opposition to itself (as it markets itself and the opposition to itself to itself and the opposition to itself).

The global capitalist empire is able to do this because it has no ideology or values to uphold. It doesn’t need to make sense or be consistent. It can wear whatever mask it needs to wear because there is no face behind the mask. There is nothing, no values, no ideology, no beliefs, no principles, nothing to defend or betray, nothing to stop it from becoming anything … and then becoming the exact opposite a moment later.

Sorry, I went all philosophical there, and probably bored a lot of my readers to death. Forget about the global-capitalist empire, and the nothing behind the masks, and all that. I’m pretty sure I’m overthinking this stuff, and it’s really just that the Jews own everything, or that the Muslims hate us for our freedom, or that we’re being replaced by illegal Mexicans, or Trump is Hitler, or Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, or, I don’t know … I’m sure there’s a corporate-media pundit or a dissident podcaster who can explain what’s really happening and tell us who we’re supposed to root for.

###

CJ Hopkins
June 18, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

I miss the old-school neo-Nazis.

You know, the skinheads with the swastika tattoos and the big Nazi flags on the walls of their living rooms. The Aryan Brotherhood-type neo-Nazis.

You don’t get neo-Nazis like that anymore.

These days, it’s all about the crypto-fascism.

Are you not familiar with crypto-fascism? All right, let me bring you up to speed.

Crypto-fascists are a particularly pernicious and pussified species of neo-Nazi. Unlike the old-school neo-Nazis, who at least had the courtesy to go around hollering Nazi slogans and heiling Hitler in public so that everyone knew that they were neo-Nazis, crypto-fascists are sneaky little cowards who pretend they aren’t neo-Nazis and hide behind pseudonyms and coded rhetoric.

Their natural habitat is the Internet, but they can adapt to almost any environment, creepy little chameleon-like cravens that they are.

They are generally more intelligent than your Aryan Brotherhood-type of neo-Nazis. They do not tend to festoon themselves with swastika- and SS bolt-tattoos or display any other kind of Nazi insignia, as doing that would negatively affect their ability to furtively slink around fomenting racial hatred like a cunning little weasels.

Of course, your more prominent crypto-fascists don’t hide behind pseudonyms and anonymous X accounts like a bunch of snickering little adolescent trolls. You might recognize the names of some of them, “alt right” creeps like Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, Andrew Anglin (although Anglin’s neo-Nazism isn’t exactly “crypto”), and European “Identitarians” like Martin Sellner and his wife Brittany, and Björn Höcke of the Alternativ für Deutschland party.

You can read up on all those creeps on your own. This isn’t an in-depth investigative piece about crypto-fascism and its creepy adherents. There are more than enough of those articles on the Internet.

No, the main reason I was moved to write about these creeps is that I have to believe that there is still a large number of my conservative readers who are not neo-fascists, and who do not want to be lumped in with neo-fascists, whether of the old-school or crypto-fascist variety. Despite the fact that I’m an old hippie-looking lefty, I am fond of my conservative readers. I respect them. And thus I hate to see them being preyed upon by crypto-fascists.

Which is exactly what is happening currently.

Now, before I go any further with this, I need to clarify a few points. Because I have written scores of satirical columns mercilessly skewering the mainstream media and paranoid liberals for fomenting mass hysteria over “the crypto-fascist menace.” This mass hysteria was particularly pervasive during 2016-2020, when the Powers That Be were desperately trying to convince everybody that Trump was “Literally Hitler,” and that he was organizing an underground army of Russian-backed American neo-Nazis who were going to frontally assault the United States military and annihilate Western democracy, and so on.

This “Trump is the Return of Hitler” nonsense is just as silly now as it was back then. What we are witnessing, not just in the USA, but throughout much of the West, is not the return of fascism. It is the death throes of neo-nationalism.

The “populist” rebellion that began with Brexit and the rise of neo-nationalist parties in Europe, and that led to Trump’s election in 2016, and that continues to date, is like the violent thrashing of a swordfish on the deck of fishing trawler. The battle is over, but the swordfish doesn’t know it. So it’s going to keep thrashing around on the deck until it suffocates or someone puts a spike through its head.

I confess, I was a fan of that “populist” rebellion, or at least a sympathetic spectator. The neo-nationalist rebels were never going to stop or reverse the advance of global capitalism, but they were causing a ruckus, which was (a) not boring, and (b) waking some people up.

That “populist” rebellion is over. It isn’t dead, but it might as well be. Its energy and focus has been deftly captured and redirected away from the global-capitalist system that it could never accept that it was actually fighting … the system that is dissolving national borders and sovereignty, dissolving cultures, globalizing the labor force, and otherwise transforming the entire planet into one big valueless global marketplace in which everything and everyone is an interchangeable commodity.

What’s left of it, i.e., that “populist” rebellion, has been captured by Crypto-Fascism, Inc., an agglomeration of organized and unorganized forces—MAGA, the Musk Cult, the AfD, other far-right parties, online influencers, faux-libertarians, fake free-speech defenders, remigrationists, Holocaust revisionists, garden-variety bigots, and so on—which is redirecting people’s legitimate rage at the global-capitalist system into racial hatred.

Which, of course, is one of the oldest tricks in the book, i.e., capturing and refocusing the rage of an angry mob onto a convenient scapegoat. Mounting a rebellion against a totally decentralized globally-hegemonic power system, or any other power system for that matter, is hard. It requires a lot of work. It isn’t instantly gratifying. It is so much easier to take your anger out on whichever official scapegoat the system has provided for you, the Jews, the Muslims, the communists, the terrorists, the Covid-deniers, the illegal immigrants, or whoever.

And that’s where the crypto-fascists come in. Their mission is to harness and redirect the remaining life-force of that “populist” rebellion into reactionary pipe dreams and racial hatred, where it can’t do the system any actual damage. The “crypto” aspect is crucial to this effort, because the old-school neo-Nazis are out of fashion these days. It’s tough to get a decent-paying job with “the 14 words” tattooed on your neck, and your romantic prospects are extremely limited. Here in Germany, and in most of the rest of Western Europe, that old-school Nazi shit will get you arrested.

I want to leave you with a concrete example of what I mean by “crypto-fascism.” I’m going to use my old Internet “friend” Eugyppius. If you are not already familiar with Eugyppius, he is an anonymous German crypto-fascist and a frequent contributor to The Daily Sceptic. I am going to use Eugyppius as an example because (a) he is one of the more intelligent crypto-fascists, and (b) I was taken in by his shtick, and actually recommended him to my readers, which is kind of embarrassing, but there it is.

The way his crypto-fascist shtick works is that he publishes right-wing but normal-sounding commentary on German politics on his popular Substack and in The Daily Sceptic, much of which is highly intelligent and funny. He claims that he is a former professor who taught for some time at a US university. Whoever he really is, he’s an excellent writer, and his Substack and Daily Sceptic columns contain no sign of neo-fascism.

Here is what he sounds like on X.

Apparently, X is where Eugyppius feels comfortable expressing his personal deeply felt feelings about the “migroids” who are “desecrating” Germany’s “intimate rural areas.”

I was rather confused when I saw that tweet, as it didn’t sound like the Eugyppius I thought I had come to know from his Substack columns. It sounded like a textbook neo-Nazi. Which is a standard crypto-fascist tactic, i.e., the classic bait-and-switch.

Here’s another tweet, posted a few days later, likening non-Aryan immigrants to an “invasive species” of “insects” that need to be “eradicated.”

Or maybe I just misinterpreted Eugyppius’ enthusiasm for, you know, “gardening.”

That’s definitely a possibility. As Eugyppius and some of his fans have noted, I’m a paranoid old pearl-clutching boomer who is irrationally obsessed with Eugyppius.

Plus, there’s no such thing as “crypto-fascism.” Not really. It’s just a made-up word (like “neo-Nazism,” “racism,” and “anti-Semitism”) that leftoids use to try to cancel innocent non-neo-Nazi Aryan gardeners.

If you doubt that, well, just take it from Eugyppius, who has published this lengthy academic-sounding obfuscatory treatise on free-speech X.

As I said, I miss the old-school neo-Nazis.

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CJ Hopkins
May 29, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.

Has America been made great again enough for you yet?

Personally, I don’t know how much more greatness I can handle. I mean, you got the Salvadoran gulag thing, the crackdown on free speech thing, the threats to suspend constitutional rights because of the latest “state of emergency” (i.e., the “invasion” of America by squads of “Tren de Aragua assassins” that Biden conspired with Maduro to unleash on God-fearing heterosexual white families), the luxury resort and theme park Trump wants to build on the ruins of Gaza once Israel gets done liquidating it, the Qatari “Trump Force One” jet, the Saudi weapons-deal money, the Silicon-Valley transhumanist guys, the neo-fascist “remigration” faction, the Musk Cult, and … well, I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but who can keep track of all this greatness?

But, seriously, I don’t know how much more great again America can be made at this point, unless they decide to go the whole hog and declare Trump “emperor.” Which, I wouldn’t put that past them … you know, just to “own the libs.”

OK, seriously seriously now, regarding the “emperor” thing, Matt Taibbi, in his latest column, Ode to Scum, compared Trump to Napoleon, and I thought that was a pretty good analogy.

Through insults to Popes and Kings he united every aristocratic faction in Europe to the point where after Waterloo, he was removed to an island in the middle of the ocean so he could no longer “disturb the peace of the world.” That was the world goal for Trump, whose similar crime was called “undermining the rules-based international order.”

I’ve written tons of essays about the global-capitalist empire’s reaction to the rise of Trump and the “populist” rebellion that started in 2016, many of which are published in two of my books, Trumpocalypse and The War on Populism, so you’ll understand if I don’t opine at length on the rules-based international order and all that again here.

The thing is, it isn’t 2016, or 2018, or even 2020 or 2022 anymore.

A lot has happened since the days when Trump was under attack as both a “Russian agent” and “literally Hitler.” Twitter has been bought and successfully whitewashed and rebranded as “free-speech X” by Elon Musk—the Military-Industrial-Complex-embedded transhumanist multi-billionaire who is literally a key member of the US government—and is now the meticulously visibility-filtered mouthpiece for MAGA and the international “populist” movement. It is an official propaganda organ more sophisticated and insidious than anything Orwell could have imagined. The MAGA movement has joined forces with far-right ethno-nationalist movements and parties like the AfD here in Germany, and together they are fomenting racial hatred around the clock, and selling their hapless supporters pipe dreams of “the end of globalism,” the “rebirth of the sovereign nation-state,” or something … as if the global-capitalist empire were going to just surrender and wither up and die because Trump issued an executive order at it.

In short, the MAGA demographic and the ethno-nationalist right believe they have “won,” or are about to “win,” and they are power-drunk, and reckless, and appear to have forgotten how episodes like this end.

Some of us haven’t forgotten. To me, this was the key passage in Matt Taibbi’s piece.

Trump’s in the White House, but his power base is still mostly all voters, and I’m not sure his people are wrong to think they’ve got maybe a year to smash big law, academia, the media, the DC nomenklatura, the EU, and everything else on their shit list before those entities send the hammer right back.They’re probably also right that if Trump fails, we’ll be back to where we were at the moment of the record scratch seven months ago, staring at a more organized and cynical effort at authoritarianism, with more sophisticated plans for higher “guardrails.”

While I disagree with Matt about the “mostly all voters” nature of the MAGA power base, he’s right about there being a “Godzilla window” (i.e., a short period of time in which they can stomp around breathing fire and smashing “libtard” stuff, or at least pretending to do so). When that window closes, the “entities” (i.e., The Powers That Be) are going to bring their shit-hammer down on this MAGA/Musk/AfD “populist” rebellion in spectacular fashion … more or less as Israel is bringing it down on Gaza currently.

The Powers That Be are going to do that to send a message. The same message they are sending by liquidating Gaza. The same message they sent during the Covid era.

The message is: “This is what you get when you fuck with us.”

Unfortunately (or insidiously), the MAGA/Musk/AfD camp is playing exactly the role the Powers That Be need them to play. Like Hamas on October 7, they have become the “monster” The Powers That Be need in order to justify the “anti-extremist” shit-hammering to come.

Yes, the shit-hammering is coming. Not today, or tomorrow, but it is coming.

If you thought the “more organized and cynical effort at authoritarianism” that Matt referred to in his piece was bad during 2016-2020, or during the roll-out of the “New Normal” during 2020-2023 … well, I’m afraid you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just imagine the draconian “emergency measures” that The Powers That Be will be able to justify after two or three years of balls-out ethno-nationalist “greatness.”

And, no, sorry, but this is not “the end of globalism.” Neither America nor Germany nor any other sales region of the global-capitalist empire is going to be made “great” again. What’s going to happen is the empire is going to let the “populists” run amok, and make a big fucking mess, and scare the living shit out of the normals for as long as seems necessary, and then it is going to come down hard, on them, and on anyone else who looks funny … and by “funny,” I mean anyone who looks like an “extremist.”

So, if you are among that power-drunk MAGA demographic, congratulations! I hope you enjoy your Godzilla Window while it lasts, at least as much as those Hamas guys enjoyed their victory on October 7.

Oh, and don’t forget to pre-book a suite and a VIP table at the Grand Opening Gala of the Trump Gaza Seaside Hotel & Health Spa.

“Trump Gaza Seaside … it’s the Other Riviera!”

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CJ Hopkins
May 22, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, III, and IV of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive or threatening email, feel free to contact him directly.