Years ago, the terms “false flag” and “conspiracy theory” went hand in hand. Suggesting that a government would stage an attack on its own people or attack an ally and blame it on a “third party” was unthinkable.

This is despite the glaring fact that “false flags” have been going on since before biblical times and have been a part of every nation’s policy. Intelligence agencies exist to do little else, they plan and execute false flag attacks to influence policy and set the course of events, based on analysis. This is, in fact, their greatest single tool, and one used most often.

Today, this is no secret. Except for areas where press is tightly controlled, the US, Canada, Britain and France, that control itself a “conspiracy theory” based on inexorable truths, volumes of facts, analysis any child could do, false flag terrorism is now the fodder of government pronouncements and investigative journalists.

I suggest it was the endless stream of “barrel bombing” and gas attack stories out of Syria while Israel openly slaughtered Palestinians, stealing their land, walling them into ghettos, modern day “Auschwitzs,” and continually playing the “holocaust card” to avoid international justice.

The real issue isn’t necessarily that events aren’t what they seem. The public is increasingly able to discern this as the internet has allowed, as mainstream media has become less than credible, facts to seep into the public domain.

The only way that can be quashed is through psychological warfare, a form of intellectual “false flag,” taking one accurate story, labeling it a “hoax” and using paid assets to flood the public with increasingly unlikely and childish alternative theories until the truth drowns in a sea of “chatter.”

In fact, recent investigations of Facebook and Google have exposed their role in exactly this, quashing embarrassing truths, banning entire news organizations, “delisting” facts and analysis, and promoting “approved” conspiracy theories.

These programs are massive, and billions are spent on them. When combined with controlled mainstream media and the ability to stage events, perhaps even mass killings and even epic terror events like 9/11, reality loses all form and function. There is little or no risk as the entire culture in the West is predisposed, after decades of intense propagandization, to blame Russia or “radical Muslims” or African Americans, and do so “on cue,” like robots.

When one adds to that the books published and promoted and an educational system that, from kindergarten to graduate school, follows a narrative of mediocrity and submission to control, a machine is created that generates the slavish and compliant, that rewards ignorance and glorifies mindless beliefs devoid of fact.

This makes everything possible, wars on demand, any assassination can be an “accident,” imprisoning those who speak up a matter of “normality.”

With the fall of the Soviet Union and communism, there has been no alternative political or economic methodology to what has been coined the capitalist and free market system. If such had existed, which no sane economist can support, the lack of “checks and balances” of the last three decades has brought about an unleashing of the darker instincts of what science fiction writers might call the “insect” or “hive-mind” within a sector of humanity.

Consider this; to rule the entire Western world, how many political leaders must be “placed” in office through rigged elections or bought, perhaps blackmailed or otherwise compromised?

In the US, five Supreme Court justices can overturn any government decision; and the Supreme Court of the United States has at least five utterly unqualified justices, appointed and confirmed through a process, when examined with only moderate discernment, is criminal and conspiratorial in nature.

Look at American elections. Where do candidates come from? Is there really an open nomination process, or are candidates chosen in “smoke-filled rooms” and subjected to mock election, followed by a lifetime of fattening and serving special interests?

Checks and balances were never really implemented in the US constitution. The Senate, until the 20th century, was appointed. States with little or no population, like Wyoming, get two senators, while California with more population that Britain gets the same number. Even by constitutional standards based on “equal representation,” the Senate was always illegal, when it was appointed by the wealthy only, and later when it was “elected.”

As it stands, 15% of Americans, because of this bizarre “oversight” can control the Senate. The other legislative branch, the House of Representatives, is controlled by 30% of voters, through calculated “redistricting.” The point being, America was never intended to be democratic; and the bicameral legislature, the bizarre presidential system call the “electoral college,” and the “star chamber” Supreme Court have one purpose only, to enforce oligarchical rule.

Thus, one continues to return to a single theory, that world economies are built and sustained, not to advance humanity, but to contribute to a regime of self-perpetuating enslavement. This was the basis of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who have been erased from the curricula of every university.

Thus, we return to the single tool of today’s analysis, how false flag terrorism has now reentered the realm of discussion. A decade ago, were one to submit charges before the United Nations Security Council or at The Hague that a nation state is systematically funding terrorism, arming murderers, and butchering the innocent just to control a news cycle or distract from a domestic scandal, the improbability of the act alone would reach the level of high comedy.

Take the White Helmets, a group clearly tied to intelligence agencies, clearly aligned with terrorist groups, paid by governments, caught again and again faking evidence of phony atrocities, and only years later, finally to be called out to the world for what they are, it is easy to recognize the power of thought control, chaos theory and decayed institutions that certify fakery as reality.

The issue for those behind the White Helmets, as it now seems, is “damage control.” There is so much to hide, not just that this one group has proven itself to be an abomination. It goes much further. All groups that impact events are subject to control and infiltration, and the tools to accomplish this are powerful and effective.

If a thing isn’t useful, it can be controlled and made useful. If it can’t be controlled, it can and will be destroyed; and the wealth and power that controls elections, that sends aircraft carriers and missile laden bombers around the world also controls every press organization, every school, even how we feel and think. Can it be this far?

May we not examine this also, if a human isn’t distracted, fed a diet of class envy, racial prejudice or fear, how would this impact events? Would names like Netanyahu, Boris Johnson or Trump hold anything but public scorn?

Real questions might be asked. Is Syria a threat to Israel? How does real history coexist with “fake history,” which in the Middle East is the conventional narrative of the 1967 and 1973 wars? What if everything about them that is generally taught and accepted is false, which of course it is. Why are Germans jailed for asking questions about “the holocaust?” Is it because such questions are “hurtful” or destructive,” or is something else afoot?

It is politically safer to analyze the American Civil War of the 19th Century rather than more recent conflicts. Free analysis of this nearly two century old war isn’t a criminal act in a dozen nations. Then again, we go further, not only is it a crime to ask the question, it is also a crime to ask why asking the question is a crime, in Germany and Austria at least. If only I were making this up.

During the early 19th Century, America was divided into an agricultural South, increasingly dependent on slavery to support an economy based on agricultural exports to Britain, and a North, largely controlled by banking and shipping interests. All the while, political balance was moving westward as the population began migrating across the continent, and as the millions of indigenous residents were systematically slaughtered by the military in the largest ethnic cleansing operation in world history.

The Civil War was never about slavery, however. Lincoln “freed the slaves” only years into the war as a last-ditch attempt to destabilize a motivated non-industrial South with little population, that was dedicated to resisting centralized control by international banking interests.

This is the history one would have been taught 40 years ago, one that no longer exists, that has been “criminalized” as “racist.” America has criminalized honoring Confederate heroes and their memory in a war over states’ rights and rule of law, where the issue of slavery was only an afterthought.

One must again note that the nation that “freed the slaves” was simultaneously slaughtering the indigenous population and putting survivors into concentration camps to starve and die.

Thus, we see events in Syria or Yemen of today, the slaughter of the Palestinians, and America’s support of same, with roots in America’s historical struggles at home.

Behind it all is the war for control of reality. Facebook and Google have now become “self-empowered” to define all facts.

To many today, those beginning to reawaken, one question sits, achingly above all others. Will enough awaken to restore sanity and rule of law?

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”