Revenge of the Myth: Hoaxes, Hyperstitions & Reality Problems
“There is no difference in principle between a universe, a religion, and a hoax“
hoax: a humorous or malicious deception
Nick Land is a relatively obscure English philosopher who started out at the University of Warwick, at a sort of emerging technology Merry Pranksters called Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) that provided the basis of his contribution to the broad range of theories of accelerationism—the idea that change is happening anyway, so it’s best to make it go faster, usually regardless of, and often because of, the dangerous consequences.
Here’s a clip from the CCRU in 1994 about how technology will affect the future, which will be a “web”, instead of a “central control mechanism”, and also “flat”. Or something like that.
More recently, Nick Land is co-marketer of the accelerationist pseudo-philosophy “Dark Enlightenment” with Curtis Yarvin, which is in many ways just a technocratic version of Project 2025—effectively National Socialism for American tech bros. It includes the concept of “hyper-racism”—which involves splitting off humanity into a pure white race in space.
Back in the CCRU days, Land was on inhuman amounts of speed, for years, as you can plainly see in the video. His intake was so ferocious that he had a complete and total breakdown, which he doggedly documented until disappearing for a while and reappearing as a eugenicist, race pseudo-scientist in Japan in the early 2000s.
But before his self-immolation, one of the foundational concepts he helped invent at the CCRU was “hyperstition” a conflation of “hyper” and superstition which questions the nature of reality itself as basically a result of competitive narrative engineering.
According to the tenets of Hyperstition, there is no difference in principle between a universe, a religion, and a hoax. All involve an engineering of manifestation, or practical fiction, that is ultimately unworthy of belief. Nothing is true, because everything is under production. Because the future is a fiction it has a more intense reality than either the present or the past. Ccru uses and is used by hyperstition to colonize the future, traffic with the virtual, and continually re-invent itself. [emphasis added]
This is what happens when you take too many drugs. It’s also what you say when you want to unmoor other people from reality. It’s what you say when you want them to do things that they wouldn’t do in the real world.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, are those who can make you commit atrocities.” —Voltaire, 1768
If there is “no difference in principle between a universe, a religion and a hoax” then people can be made to believe anything, right? Could the speed-addled Nick Land of the 1990s have a point? Did the internet shatter reality into a multitude of hoax-religions?
Here are a few ancient hoaxes or hyperstitions being operationalized by the Trump administration:
Black and brown people are less intelligent than white people
White people are being systematically “replaced” by Black and brown people
America is being taken over by communists
Vaccines cause autism
Humanity must be “multi-planetary” because the end is nigh
These are all hoaxes, engineered over decades to infiltrate our collective consciousness and influence our decisions. For example, the perpetuation of race science myths over the last half-century was greased by racist Charles Murray who wrote the infamous book “The Bell Curve” about how society should be “restructured” to account for alleged racial differences in intelligence.
Here is Charles Murray in 2011 at the Manhattan Institute, which funded him, arguing that we should stop sending Black and brown kids to college because they’re just not smart enough. On his side of the “intelligence debate” arguing that “too many kids go to college” is Peter Thiel, the puppetmaster of JD Vance, and a proponent of the “Dark Enlightenment.”
Thiel, as I have extensively reported, was born into a racist family who sent him to a school in apartheid colonial Namibia that still greeted each other with “Heil Hitler.” He was born into the hoax that white people are superior. He really believes it and sought out ways to make it real.
Elon Musk’s entire childhood was spent in apartheid South Africa being taught every day that he was superior to Black and brown people. His mother and father are lifelong racists who got it from their parents. When apartheid fell apart in South Africa, Maye Musk fled to Canada with her kids because she was terrified of a Black-led government. She, like Elon, really believes the hoax of white supremacy.
The myth that America is being taken over by “communists” is one of the most persistent canards in modern history. “Anti-communism” is the primary theme, for example, of the long-running cult John Birch Society. JBS grew out of a hoax invented by Robert Welch, who according to Roger Stone, was a friend of and funded by Donald Trump’s father. All of it can be traced to Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of the deadliest hoaxes in human history.
The myth that vaccines cause autism has been around for many decades, a hoax perpetrated by people who don’t want Americans to be safe from diseases. It’s easily disproven, but the myth is powerful to people who want to find a rationale for their own hatred and pain, like Robert Kennedy Jr. who is operationalizing this hoax in America.
As Nick Land declared three decades ago, in the world of hyperstition, there is no difference between a religion and a hoax. That’s how Elon Musk has transformed his teenage fantasy of a colony on Mars into a quasi-religion masking a very simple, ancient hoax:
The apocalypse is coming. Believers have a special way to escape.
This hoax takes the form of the Rapture in evangelical Christianity, but has been reengineered by Elon Musk into a sort of neo-Cosmist space religion which serves to funnel money from the government into his rockets. And if he has his way, to Putin. At the end of the day, however, it is just another hoax, like Satoshi—or Q.
Musk and Thiel never shook the racist myths that dominated their childhoods—and found a way to push them into the American government. Donald Trump was raised by a racist, anti-communist, conspiracy theorist and is implementing the hoaxes his father taught him into his regime. RFK Jr.’s grandfather was an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who believed the cruel hoax that lobotomies would solve learning disabilities—which is just next door to believing that eliminating vaccines will cure autism.
So, our reality problem is two-fold, short and long term.
The short term problem is that we have a bunch of gullible dummies running the government—privileged white men who never left the mythological world they grew up in, despite the evidence of their own eyes and ears. But if we understand the hyperstitions they live in, at least it’s easier to predict what they will do, and how to combat their old, bad ideas.
The long term problem is solving how we let these ancient hoaxes get reanimated and take over the government in the first place. Why are these dangerous hyperstitions so attractive, how are they transmitted, and how do we combat them? In my view, the answer to this question will determine the future of civilization. Can we find a way to share a common world or will each of us be condemned to solitary confinement on our own lonely shard of reality?
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Republican operatives in 70s infiltrated churches on just this idea: religion is a hoax. If people are dumb enough to believe in a religion so they thought, then they are dumb enough to accept the Republican party as their political religion hook, line and sinker. That is how they got their unshakeable MAGA base. It is the bottom feeders being led by the fishermen except they have nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with power and profits. It's what the sociopathic rich live for. That and proving to other lesser human beings that they, the sociopathic rich, are obviously smarter and superior in every way. The ignorant and poor are led like horses with blinders on. As long as they can feel superior to another group, they are satisfied because they can maintain their status. Our society values "rank" far more than we admit.
It's the information czars who have become the newest robbers of the intellect of the people. Do they announce themselves and say: "I've come to steal your attention and your mind." No, they just do it.
Ultimately, what people are being forced to learn is that your beliefs do have consequences - not only for you but for others because we ARE in a web of shared reality that we CAN agree upon.
How do you tell if your beliefs are constructive and of benefit to you and society? Do they help you? Are they of potential positive benefit to others? If so, your beliefs are constructive. Do your beliefs cause pain to you and unnecessary suffering to others? If so, they are destructive, and they will destroy you and your society.
Your perceptions/beliefs about reality are OK as long as they pertain to you and extend to the outer limits of YOUR skin and don't harm someone else. Believing that your beliefs must be forced on others if where society begins to disintegrate.
Having a mental illness or schizophrenic condition and thinking of mass murdering individuals means confinement in a mental institution until condition can radically improve (if possible). Believing that other human beings don’t deserve the same rights you do based on their skin and/or culture is destructive to American society.
Destructive beliefs are what we must understand and stop right now while we build a more humane and functional society that works for more people and, hopefully, all people.
The future of civilization does indeed depend upon keeping humanity safe and sane. Removing these mentally unbalanced toxic men from power is just the start. Then we place Cults, cult behavior, cult leaders and cult followers into formalized categories of diagnoses of mental illness. We then deem most of these people a danger to themselves AND others. Just as we do with psychotics who are homicidal and/or suicidal. We remove them from society. Commit them. Ethically, and humanely. But- these mentally ill will not be released back into the population. They will be committed until treatments and therapies as yet undiscovered can return their minds to their own free will and ability to reason. These mental illness designations will have a stigmatizing effect on those diagnosed. That will, fairly or not, be initially helpful for the general population to keep their distance from, and stay safe from, the cultists.
I believe we are living in the largest known active cult in the history of the human race. Most cults have been toxic, dangerous and a threat to any humans that cross their paths. This one is no different. It’s just bigger and worse. The Trump/maga cult, the adjacent fundamentalist religious cult, and the opportunistic, parasitic tech bro racist cult are all
Intertwined. It’s really important to remember: They are the crazy ones. We are not. I, for one, hope to be a part of the rebuilding of our society when the cult is broken, locked up and removed from free society.