On Power And Twitter Files

Looking at the ongoing Twitter saga through a De Jouvenelian lens

It just so happens that Elon Musk has begun releasing what he’s calling the ‘‘Twitter Files’’ at the same time that I happen to be reading Bertrand De Jouvenel’s influential Elite Theory tome On Power. As is often the way, a book or film occupying my mind in real life often acts as a lens through which I view current political trends.

As many people will be aware by now, the Twitter Files (which are still being released as I write) are exposing the massive amount of partisan censorship and general bias within the bowels of the (now mainly fired) Twitter bureaucracy. So far, the revelations have focused on the various narratives and scandals associated with the 2020 Trump Campaign. I’m hoping that in the future we shall learn more about the censorship relating to Covid and vaccine policies.

What I find interesting in the collusion between various intelligence agencies and an ostensibly private, and therefore ‘‘free’’ company, is the manner in which people of various political stripes interpret and process what is actually happening. Trump and the MAGA faithful can certainly feel a sense of vindication and are not shy about expressing it. The Democrat progressive hordes, who’re mainly in the role of villains here, are naturally downplaying the information and obfuscating its significance. The very worst aspects of their hegemony have been dragged into the sunlight — an abuse of power and the casual sadism of the Spiteful Mutants who do the dirty work.

Twitter’s mutants would routinely invent new rules and policies on the spot to hamper their enemies, in Donald Trump’s case exception after exception was allowed to be made to cripple his reach and dampen his influence. Actor James Woods, a staunch Trump loyalist, was particularly loathed, and when the disgusting Yoel Roth failed to get him on one offence he stated that they’d get him on another technicality further down the line.

As its title suggests, De Jouvenel’s On Power offers a hard-headed and rather unromantic analysis of how Power functions and spreads. Indeed, the manner in which Power spreads its tentacles into every facet of life is the main thesis. How then can the drama and intrigue playing out at Twitter HQ be explained using De Jouvenel’s lens?

In one of many memorable lines, De Jouvenel likens Power to a bear and an independent institution to a honeycomb. The bear is bound by the laws of nature to want to crack open the honeycomb in order to feast upon the golden nectar within. From this perspective, Twitter was a very succulent honeycomb and Power did indeed crack it open and enjoy the benefits of mass censorship and narrative control contained within.

The Democrat support base and the legions of ‘‘influencers’’ which form its ranks are of course wilfully blind to this reality. In their view, Donald Trump, the then president, was the Power, and it’d gone rogue and needed to be brought to heel. In actual fact, Trump was never really in power, he was but a pretender.

The tumultuous events of December 2020 and into January 2021 saw the actual Power, which is to say the Washington Deep State, thrust its tentacles more vigorously outwards than usual into the policies and moderation practices of Twitter. The Twitter Files reveal conversations taking place in which even the Democrat-supporting moderators were beginning to wince at how blatant and severe the censorship was becoming.

Strictly speaking, Twitter employees should not have had a stake in what was happening on January 6th, but now, having been entirely captured by Power, they became not much more than another tentacle of it. Inevitably, then, the scene was set for what would result in the outright censorship of a sitting American President, not by ‘‘progressives’’ so much as by the actual Power which rules America. To reuse De Jouvenel’s metaphor somewhat, once the bear cracked the honeycomb open, it was only a matter of time until he scraped it dry.

What I’ve found interesting so far is the way in which censorship policies are reframed and justified among those doing the actual censoring. After all, nobody wants to be the bad guy. Instead of actually taking ownership of the fact they’re silencing their enemies, moderators would ask each other:

‘‘Can it be truthfully claimed that what we’re doing is moral?’’

To which the reply would be:

‘‘Yes, it can be truthfully claimed that what we’re doing is moral’’

In other words, they needed justification from a higher authority. They were, after all, in the act of censoring their own President. Fundamentally, they knew they had it, not in moral terms — these people are purely Machiavellian, no, they knew that genuine Power had their backs. They knew that the FBI would not be coming to visit them because the FBI and various other intelligence agencies were on speed dial, spurring them on.

This form of analysis paints a profoundly unflattering picture of the Democrat machine. Far from being the gallant and plucky rebels standing courageously in the path of a tyrant, such people are reduced to warts and postules attached to the tentacles of real Power.

In his chapter ‘‘Dialectics of Command’’ De Jouvenel writes:

It is not true that Power vanishes when it forswears its rightful begetter and acts in breach of the office which has been assigned to it. It continues as before to command and to be obeyed: without that, there is no Power—with it, no other attribute is needed for it to be.

It is not, therefore, the case that its substance was ever fused with the nation; it had a life of its own. Neither did its essence lie in its rightful reason and end. It can live, as it has shown, as command and nothing more. We must see it as it is if we are to grasp its inner reality, the thing without which it cannot be: that essence is command.

This is to say, Power and the office of President are not one and the same thing. This is what progressives are wilfully blind to because by associating Donald Trump with Power they can exist in their rebellious delusion indefinitely. Similarly, this is also why it does not matter in the slightest that Joe Biden is senile. Power acted like a horse that threw Donald Trump off while assisting Joe Biden to mount it for appearances’ sake.

In order to rid itself of Donald Trump, Power then expanded under its own logic into the Zoom calls and offices of Twitter. Twitter is an interesting case study in and of itself when viewed through a De Jouvenelian lens. Within the political discourse of the modern West, Twitter has shifted from being something akin to a semi-autonomous principality, a Gen X libertarian project, to being entirely under the heel of Power — until very recently. Elon Musk has recaptured the hypothetical principality, or castle, and not only freed it from Power but is seemingly using it against Power, a rather dangerous game to play.

And how that particular saga plays-out, we shall see, but by the looks of it things are about to get very interesting indeed….