You are living in a Digital Neofeudalism

The new feudal pyramid is being constructed to protect the cultural and political hegemony of a global empire characterized by technological surveillance, censorship, psy-ops, and mass propaganda.

The European Middle Ages are often invoked to represent a dark and brutal period without freedom, where the masses were at the mercy of a few lords and rulers who vied for lands and resources. Life, they say, must not have been great. Fortunately, today we are much more civilized.

The Gunpowder Revolution (15th century) put an end to the picturesque chivalric orders, and the subsequent French Revolution allowed us to expel the vile monarchs and aristocrats who plagued us, leading to the discovery of representative democracy.

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Although the end of the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment are often seen as positive phenomena, my view is that after an initial period of adjustment (with many fine promises), the world is now crushed within a post-illuministic neofeudal system, but this time much more centralized, global, and without any limits.

The New Monarchs

At the pinnacle of the new neofeudal pyramid, we undoubtedly find a small but powerful elite of people with vast wealth and power, who use known and unknown supranational instruments to exercise and manifest their will without having to show their faces.

Among these are, first and foremost, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the financial tool of the United Nations and lender of last resort for much of the world. Then there are central banks, like the Federal Reserve Bank or the European Central Bank. Other supranational administrative entities like the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), or the relatively unknown Financial Action Task Force (FATF) also have an increasingly significant and direct impact on our lives. And let’s not forget our beloved European Union and the globalist think tank known as the World Economic Forum.

New Vassals and Sub-Vassals

In this globalist context, nation-states take on the role of new vassals. Today, they pledge allegiance to the globalist sovereign in exchange for money (in debt) and protection of the lands assigned to them for management.

The vassals retain limited legislative and administrative power over the peoples they are called to govern on behalf of the Global Sovereign, from whom the primary directives come. The evolution of the role and functions of the European Union over the last 20 years testifies to the change in paradigm.

Today, much of our lives are determined by decisions made in Brussels, and certainly not in Rome. In turn, Brussels is “inspired” by the needs of the financial system that come from the Federal Reserve and are received in Frankfurt (ECB).

Further down the pyramid, we find the smaller sub-vassals, the operational arms of the national vassals. Sub-vassals are local entities, such as regions and municipalities, that exercise proximate power over the people. This is mainly expressed at the level of technological and bureaucratic surveillance: cameras, restricted traffic zones, speed cameras, and issuing the documents necessary for a citizen's life, such as identity cards and passports.

The New Serfdom

At the base of this new feudal pyramid are you and me. The new serfs: the citizens of the global world. Serfdom was an economic and social system where individuals were subject to the authority of the local vassal or sub-vassal and were required to work and produce on their behalf. The serfs were primarily called to work the land assigned to them for a number of days determined by the local sovereign, to whom they then had to give part of the product of their labor.

There was no standard. For example, in medieval England, serfs worked for the sovereign three or four days a week and gave them a third of what they produced. In France, they fared better: sovereigns usually did not demand more than eight days of work a year, and taxation ranged from one-fifth to half of what they produced, depending on the territories.

Unfortunately, today’s new serfs are not so fortunate.

Today, taxation far exceeds 70% of what we produce (between income taxes, contributions, fees, stamps, and excises). Thus, we are forced to work for the sovereign for most of the year. To the national sovereigns’ taxation must be added the hidden one of the global sovereigns, called inflation. This constantly deprives us of purchasing power and thus of time and life: every year, we are forced to work 5-10% more to earn the equivalent of the previous year. Those who cannot keep up become increasingly impoverished and thus increasingly a serf.

And while the old serfs could at least enjoy complete privacy in their family and personal affairs, the same cannot be said for the new serfs. The processing of personal data begins at birth and expands into adulthood with often mandatory digital identity schemes necessary for work, travel and business.

This data processing is followed by the forced extraction of personal data at every moment of a citizen’s life. Large corporations and nation-states are now extremely competent in forcibly extracting vast amounts of digital information, claiming our experiences, communications, and all our electronic transactions for themselves. Sometimes, citizens even become true lab rats for innovative surveillance systems, as happened, for example, in the city of Trento in Italy with three projects (Marvel, Precrisis, and Protector) designed to process large amounts of data acquired through surveillance systems and microphones scattered around the city to develop various predictive systems.

Hegemony of Thought

Despite the similarities, there are also some important differences between medieval feudalism and global digital neofeudalism.

First of all, medieval feudalism was characterized by extensive and widespread competition among local lords and sovereigns. Local lords were often independent and autonomous in their territories compared to the sovereign, to whom they pledged allegiance only out of opportunism.

It is not unusual to find in history examples of feudal lords who, under the right conditions, even challenged the sovereign. This allowed for a natural limitation of power, which had to be exercised carefully by anyone, even the king.

Today, however, local sovereigns—nation-states and local entities—are directly linked to the globalist sovereign. Nation-states are entirely dependent on global financial instruments and are subjugated by an ever-growing, unpayable debt. Local entities, in turn, are direct extensions of the nation-state, acting as its proxies at the territorial level. Today, there is no competition among sovereigns. The globalist machine is unique, and political dualism (right vs. left) is nothing but perverse and false entertainment.

Moreover, while medieval feudalism was born to physically protect territories and possessions from external attacks, globalist neofeudalism aims to protect global ideological hegemony.

The new sovereigns do not need to protect anything material: they already own everything through the financial system. Central to this is the role of mass media, propaganda, and digital technology. This also explains the reason for the global “fight against disinformation”—which I will never stop repeating, is nothing more than a fight for control of information. The control plan has thus shifted from the material to the spiritual.

The New Chivalric Orders

In such a context, the only possibility of redemption for the plebs is—just as in the Middle Ages—to join the ranks of new chivalric orders and swear to protect the sovereign’s ideological hegemony. Whether it’s the Order of Journalists, a political party, or an environmentalist or LGBTQ NGO, it makes little difference. What matters is swearing allegiance and demonstrating one’s commitment in this Holy War made of propaganda, information control, and censorship.

The new chivalric orders enjoy the sovereign’s favor and benefit from certain political privileges, such as immunity from censorship (automated or otherwise) and sometimes even legal immunity in cases of criminal episodes—as happened with many of the vandals who ransacked numerous American cities under the banner of “Black Lives Matter!”

Those who do not comply are destined to be labeled as “extremists,” “intolerant,” “anarchists,” and much more. The local territory and communities, once places to find oneself and be safe from attacks, are now instead the focal point of the internal conflict between first-class citizens (those who comply with the hegemony of thought) and second-class citizens.

A Philosophical and Technological Issue

The new sovereigns do not enslave us with walls, moats, and iron chains but with cameras, spyware, algorithms, and propaganda.

Supranational entities, nation-states, and local entities are all engaged in a fierce struggle for control of our data and minds to understand and predict our behaviors and then to standardize them through actions of propaganda and censorship, nudging, and psyops. It should come as no surprise that many countries, like the United States and the United Kingdom, have within them “psy-op” units whose sole purpose is to manipulate the masses' thinking.

Given the global servitude system that continuously restricts our horizon of freedom through technological oppression, propaganda, censorship, and inflation, we should now begin to reflect on how to break free from the new chains.

Just as medieval feudalism was surpassed and rendered obsolete by the technological and philosophical changes of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, so too will globalist neofeudalism. If we recognize that this neofeudalism is primarily a philosophical and technological issue, it means that it can also be addressed and overcome through technology and a new philosophical approach.

Cryptography, cryptocurrencies, and the Internet have already begun to instigate radical social change, towards a new idea of the Sovereign Individual and distributed sovereign communities, like Network States. More and more people today want to rediscover a new dimension of freedom outside the surveillance of big cities. Similarly, more and more people have decided to take control of their digital sovereignty through new cultural paradigms and conscious use of technology.

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