Social Credit System. It's probable that you've heard the phrase and that it's been used pejoratively. When the practice is spoken of at all, it's generally as a warning of what the elites (or the globalists, or the deep state – however you want to categorize them) have in store for us. We are to look to China to see how it operates, because it will be with us in the West soon enough if we don't wake up to the threat. They will abolish cash and impose a central bank digital currency. And, certainly, to be fully effective, complete control would be necessary. However, can similar control be exerted without a cashless society, or is control of currency essential to the endeavor? And what exactly is a Social Credit System – how does it work? Finally, if the desired end state is a society that is rigidly controlled from the top down, how will they go about achieving it and how far have they already got?
As is usual in these circumstances, the concept must be garnished with a veneer of respectability. Accordingly, when the Chinese government introduced the system, they claimed that the idea was to introduce a national credit rating system and an accompanying blacklist in order to standardize financial and social credit rating and assist pretty much every entity – including the individual – in accurately assessing the trustworthiness of said entities and individuals. The observant will have already spotted two fatal flaws; why would there be a need for a social aspect to a credit rating and trustworthy according to who?
In China, there are multiple interlocking systems, all of which, taken together, allow a credit score to be assigned. The system is closely linked to the mass surveillance programmes such as Skynet, which incorporates facial recognition and analysis of online habits and social media output. A person can be whitelisted or blacklisted for offences as minor as social media posts criticizing the regime. A blacklisted person may find themselves unable to access private schooling, book transport, rent hotel rooms or even procure employment. Whitelisted citizens get quicker internet speeds, shorter waits in hospital queues, discounts on energy bills; you get the picture. Do what the government wants you to do and you're a first class citizen. Don't want to bend the knee, then you're a second class citizen. And, if you fall foul of the system, there is no quick fix available. It usually takes two to five years of impeccable behavior to void non-person status. This is without China being cashless, even if it is heading there at a rate of knots.
Interestingly, official opinion in the West is divided – which tells you all you need to know about where the left side of the political aisle is heading. Berlin University published a study of Chinese citizens who, uniformly, strongly approved of the system, proving once more (if that were necessary) that academics devote a very small proportion of their brain power towards the development of common sense and perspective. After all, it's unlikely that the respondents would trust the researchers enough to be critical of a system whose function is to penalize people who are critical of it. However, the left wing think tanks and magazines have opted for a co-ordinated message for the rubes; you're misunderstanding things, as usual. It's not what you think. You're thinking about what it could do, not what it is doing and so forth.
In any event, we are to believe that a system that could punish us for our beliefs as well as for what any given government believes is anti-social is not about to hit Western shores, even if (in their opinion) it would be no bad thing if it did. The orthodoxy is that what is happening in China is not going to happen here. Given the fact that they would say that anyway and the additional fact that they have plenty of previous for lying through their teeth, it would be wise to double check.
It seems that two vital components of any scheme involving control over a population would be mass surveillance and financial control. Classically, as previously noted, the solution to the latter is a digital currency, but in the absence of that (for now), what other ways might be effective? Certainly, the removal of banking services might be one method; another might be the redistribution of existing funds in 'approved' directions. Yet one more might be a commitment to only fund entities that met certain criteria; criteria that go well beyond the merely fiscal. It might not always be necessary to implement these strategies, as the threat of them may prove to be enough to ensure compliance. Are any of those things happening? You may already know the answer to that, which is yes to all three.
An example or three. Mike Lindell, an American conservative and business owner, had his banking services withdrawn, because the bank didn't want to be associated with any views that he held. Legally, of course, banks only run into trouble when they do things such as laundering money for criminals, a service some are quite willing to provide unless and until they are caught or challenged outright. HSBC, for example, laundered hundreds of millions of cartel funds, escaped prosecution and then did it again within five years, this time with billions. But 'reputational harm' caused by a conservative expressing legally acceptable views is clearly far more serious and not to be countenanced.
Or how about GoFundMe, a crowdfunding company. They provide a service which allows citizens to donate to a cause. The funds raised are then disbursed to the recipient; unless the recipient happens to be Canadian truckers mounting a peaceful protest against 'vaccine' mandates, in which case those funds will be used for causes which GoFundMe deems to be worthy. This happened last week and the presumption and arrogance on behalf of the company is extraordinary. They were subsequently forced to reimburse the donors automatically, having initially tried to deal with the blow-back by instituting a time-consuming reclaim method that would have left most of the $9 million in their hands. Once again, no laws were broken and no service agreements. The company simply made a unilateral decision, based on its own 'moral compass', and clearly believed that it would be allowed to get away with it.
Then we have ESG (Environmental Social Corporate Governance) and Stakeholder Capitalism. This is social engineering dressed up as ethical investing, whereby the big Wall Street investment funds won't provide financial backing to companies that don't comply with their diktats, which allegedly revolve around issues that will 'save the planet' and 'address inequality':
“Supporters of the stakeholder capitalism model have identified several benefits of its adoption. By leveraging market-oriented principles like those found in this management model, economies have a better chance of solving deep, systemic problems like inequality, the future of work, and climate change.”(1)
The gist of ESG then, is that a company won't be funded unless they are deemed worthy in ways that have never been relevant previously. In fact, none of these methodologies have anything to do with the law, nor are they concerned merely with finances. They are on another level entirely, a subjectively moral level that uses mechanisms that should be devoid of political animus, but which now aren't. And it's not as if these tactics are random; they are all being utilized in the service of the same general goal, the progressive goal. I would imagine that GoFundMe and Lindell's banks were under pressure from financial backers, whether implicitly or explicitly and they pulled the plug to preserve their own businesses. The point is that money and services are being leveraged in pursuit of a political agenda and are being used to control behavior. That which is approved of is funded, that which is not is de-platformed and the law, the supposed yardstick by which such decisions are made, is irrelevant.
So, how about the surveillance aspect? Where are we with that, in the Western world? Well, it may not surprise you to learn that things are a little further along than you may have thought. Law enforcement are already abusing powers which were given to them for use in extremis. For instance, although WhatsApp is supposed to be encrypted, police can legally access the target's real time communications as well as their address book. Whilst they cannot read the message content, they can see who is talking to who. And spurious search warrant applications in order to go after 'domestic terrorists are not, I imagine, the most difficult to get ratified by a court. Indeed, in the US, the FISA court approves over 99% of all applications.
Israel is using the counter-terrorism phone tracking system to locate people which it believes may be Omicron positive, in direct contravention of their own Supreme Court's rulings. But hey, it's an emergency, right? The IRS is floating a system whereby access to your financial records is gained via facial recognition (although they have encountered stormy waters at present). Google is facing legal action over the fact that the location feature on their android operating system doesn't shut off even when instructed. There are CCTV cameras everywhere and ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Readers) at gas stations, hospital car-parks, toll booths, you name it. Government backed entities police social media sites, monitoring whatever it is they deem to be 'disinformation' and then encourage the site owners to banish all those that don't agree with the narrative. The same goes for platforms such as YouTube, which will delete content uploaded by medical professionals if they don't agree with the WHO. Sounds a lot like yet more social meddling, does it not? Approved views are encouraged, 'dissident' content banished. People who earn their income from the content they upload are effectively forced into unemployment.
Then we have the airlines who placed peaceful protesters at the January 6th Trump rally, people who didn't break any laws, on domestic no-fly lists. Or companies who sacked staff for the same crime – attending a political rally in their own time. Not to mention the 'vaccine' mandates that predominantly disfavor conservatives, who are far likelier to resist government overreach. Private companies, again, have instituted policies that have no basis in law, which are blatantly unconstitutional (not least because several judges have so ruled) and have then terminated workers who don't bend the knee. Talking of which, yet one more example of forced social compliance, on pain of ostracism. How many people have felt compelled to kneel in support of Black Lives Matter, a Marxist organisation that promotes anti-racism? Bear in mind, anti-racism is not what is sounds like. It's not a movement that is actually anti racism; it's a movement that seeks to correct 'systemic racism' against black people by promoting racism against white people, which is not something that a vast majority of white people would agree with. Which is why it is very rarely explained in those terms by the legacy media.
And that is the third component of our latent Social Credit System – the power of the mob and its adoption by the powers-that-be. Whether that be the online wokeists who come after the likes of Parler and Rogan, or the legions of BLM and Antifa loyalists who torched perhaps 100 US cities in the summer of 2020, it is clear what will be tolerated and what will be punished. The couple from St Louis who defended their home from the mob are convicted of an offence, while those whom the regime approves of are either not charged or have their charges dismissed by progressive District Attorneys. January 6th prisoners, many of whom were escorted into the Capitol building by police (and most of whom would not have known that they were trespassing, as there were no visible barriers at the time they arrived), are held without charge for 12 months or more; arsonists and violent 'Social Justice' protesters are either bailed on the spot or shortly afterwards, often with no requirement to provide funds. The message is being sent. The law is a sideshow, enforced in an unequal manner, just one more tool that is used to influence societal behavior.
But how do they get away with it? How is it that such blatant engineering and control is tolerated? Because enough people approve of it, regrettably. There is a political concept called the Overton Window. The basic premise is that there are a range of policies which are politically acceptable at any one time and that, if a politician's pet projects fall outside this range, they have little chance of being acceptable to the electorate. If we co-opt this theory and utilize it in the social sphere instead, we will find that preferred social mores can only be enforced upon a population if they want them to be; or, to be more precise, if a significant proportion want them to be.
It may come as something of a surprise, but it's not just the loony left that harbors authoritarian views. It may be that discrete societies have slightly different numbers (although the 'pandemic' has ably demonstrated that a startling number of people of all nationalities can be separated from their critical faculties with ease), but I suspect that the following findings will be easily replicated outside the States. A Rasmussen survey recently asked a series of questions about all things Covid. I include a fair chunk of it, just to demonstrate how a sizeable number of Democrats are inherently undemocratic:
– Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters would oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine. However, 55% of Democratic voters would support such a proposal, compared to just 19% of Republicans and 25% of unaffiliated voters.
– Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a proposal is opposed by 61% of all likely voters, including 79% of Republicans and 71% of unaffiliated voters.
– Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications. Only 27% of all voters – including just 14% of Republicans and 18% of unaffiliated voters – favor criminal punishment of vaccine critics.
– Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a policy would be opposed by a strong majority (71%) of all voters, with 78% of Republicans and 64% of unaffiliated voters saying they would Strongly Oppose putting the unvaccinated in “designated facilities.”
– While about two-thirds (66%) of likely voters would be against governments using digital devices to track unvaccinated people to ensure that they are quarantined or socially distancing from others, 47% of Democrats favor a government tracking program for those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.
How far are Democrats willing to go in punishing the unvaccinated? Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s much more than twice the level of support in the rest of the electorate – seven percent (7%) of Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters – for such a policy.(2)
I find this disconcerting. If we are to assume that Democrats make up half the population, then around 15% of American adults support taking children away from 'unvaccinated' parents, around 22% believe that the 'unvaccinated' should live in government facilities until they see the light and get jabbed and approximately 42% of the adult population believe that the 'hesitant' should be fined. Now, I appreciate that a Covid survey does not prove the existence of a wider tendency towards extra-legal societal doxxing, but it's a pretty good proxy. A significant number of people clearly believe that they have the right to impose their beliefs onto other people and to use governmental resources to do so. With such censoriousness in abundant supply, it isn't difficult to see how other forcing measures could be tolerated.
And so, in most respects, the practical application of the Social Credit System is with us already. It's not officially linked up and you won't find commentators acknowledging its existence, but the effect of the components that I have referenced (and I'm sure there are more that I could have included) is the same – a mix of private entities and state actors have imposed upon us a belief system that is theirs alone. There has been no real debate, no bipartisanship. What this substantial minority believe is what we must all believe, or profess to believe at least.
And, if we don't, we can be punished in significant ways. The ability to work, to communicate, to fly, to participate in society – all these can be taken away. The element that is currently lacking is ubiquity. So far, those who are prominent either by virtue of their existing profile or because their current actions have made them so, are in the cross-hairs. What is required is an algorithm that can assess us all for trustworthiness, which is bound to already be in existence somewhere . That and a central bank digital currency, which they will also try to foist upon us. If we allow that to happen, it's difficult to see a way back.
Citations
(1) https://www.esgenterprise.com/governance/what-is-stakeholder-capitalism-relates-to-esg/
(2) https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated