US President Donald Trump secured his second term in office, and a new narrative has emerged. One in which the United States is at odds with the European Union. Alongside newly established 20% tariffs against EU goods, SignalGate painted Europe in unflattering terms during a group chat on the Signal messaging app, where US officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, participated. Vance and Hesgeth depicted EU/NATO allies as “freeloaders” and “pathetic”.  At one point, Vance stated that he hates “bailing Europe out again”. 

This shift in rhetoric has not gone unnoticed abroad. In early March, French President Emmanuel Macron noted in a TV address that the West is entering “a new era”, in which the US may no longer be a trusted ally. That warning adds weight to speculation that Washington’s relationship with Europe may face a structural breakdown.

Whether this conflict reflects genuine strategic divergence or a manufactured narrative requires further scrutiny. How much of that purported animosity is real? If it is real, will it lead to a permanent restructuring of world powers? If not, why does it seem so real?

To untangle these critical questions, we must first examine the system that produces public belief: governance technology.

Dual-rail messaging and cognitive conversion

Since the advent of mass media, governance has undergone permanent changes in its form, and in doing so, altered its nature as well. Walter Lippmann was one of the first to notice, in his 1922 book Public Opinion, that modern democracy relies on mass media. In turn, the mass media helps inform public opinion.

However, as mass media consists of nodes that disseminate information to form public opinion, it follows that those who control the nodes control the public consciousness. If that is the case, democracy itself is simply a well-crafted illusion of agency. Key tools of power centralize mass media nodes. Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman further detailed this mechanism in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent. 

Shoshana Zuboff is one of the latest contributors to this thesis with her 2018 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, in which she warned that:

Two men at Google who do not enjoy the legitimacy of the vote, democratic oversight, or the demands of shareholder governance exercise control over the organization and presentation of the world’s information. One man at Facebook who does not enjoy the legitimacy of the vote, democratic oversight, or the demands of shareholder governance exercises control over an increasingly universal means of social connection, along with the information concealed in its networks.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new agency launched in 2024, revealed just how deeply this control runs. Internal documents from DOGE show that governments worldwide use taxpayer money to fund propaganda and censorship operations without public consent. Even before DOGE, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg regretted his role in colluding with the government to enact mass censorship.

It also seems that the division between capitalism and government may be a meaningless exercise, to the chagrin of Zuboff and her concept of “shareholder governance.”

Yet, the underlying feature of this phenomenon, this governance technology, is clear. We can divide it into two key components:

• In dual-rail messaging, one thing communicates overtly (visible, official), while another thing communicates covertly (hidden, implied, outside mainstream).
• Cognitive conversion: Between overt and covert communication, public opinion is born as an artifact of a surface-level, emotionally compelling message designed for mass public consumption.

Specifically, the vast majority of people either lack the time or the cognitive capacity to pick up the implied messaging or delve into secondary information rails. Instead, they absorb only the surface-level messaging, which is visible and promoted by established authority nodes. This topic is also not new in literature, as Antonio Gramsci explored it in his 1929 Prison Notebooks.

Gramsci described most people (peasantry, workers) as “subaltern groups”, dominated by the ruling class, whichever type it may be. At the end of the line, in terms of evolutionary biology, it appears that human societies mirror a dominance hierarchy. Perhaps Vilfredo Pareto summed it up best with his theory of the circulation of elites, which Robert Michels later framed as the “iron law of oligarchy” in his seminal 1911 work, Political Parties.

Pareto’s theory implies that it is entirely irrelevant what kind of -ism runs society (communism, liberalism, capitalism) because an elite always rules the majority. Naturally, this would make “democracy” both practically and theoretically unfeasible.

In this light, it is easy to see why dual-rail messaging and cognitive conversion have become pervasive in modern governance technology. One could even see “democracy” itself as an embedded part of dual-rail communication.

The 2020–2022 anomaly: A case study in cognitive governance

One would be remiss not to revisit the most densely packed period in recorded history to point out governance technology in action — the highly anomalous 2020–2022 period. Not to delve too much, here are the basic outlines:

• Rail 1: A surface push through relentless media amplification of the crisis (pandemic), justifying unprecedented measures.
• Rail 2: contradictory data readily available but obscured and suppressed. 

This was a fantastic case study of dual-rail messaging and cognitive conversion. In the first half of 2020, it was already discernible that:

• Many “COVID deaths” are wrongfully counted as such (false attribution).
• The overall death rate is indiscernible from that of the seasonal flu (facts in plain sight).
• The PCR test is not suitable for determining the existence of a pandemic (fraudulent misapplication).
• The push for lockdowns and masks counters decades of established science (scientific reversal).
• Novel treatment protocols and drugs exacerbate heightened localized deaths in some areas (iatrogenic effect).

Later, various countries acknowledged all of this through official statistics. Not only do mask mandates harm people, but vaccinations also do.

Professor Stefan Homburg summarized these findings for Germany, which apply to other countries. Of course, the unprecedented coercive measures enacted during the pandemic narrative created the incentives for novel mRNA injections.

It turned out in the most extensive vaccine safety study, covering 99 million people, that these injections are exceedingly dangerous, having increased myocarditis risk by 610% among many other conditions. However, as was the case during the entire pandemic narrative, warnings about such a scenario were present long before a single person received the shot.

From a governance technology perspective, the pandemic narrative highlighted the following dynamic:

• Although media bombardment about the “pandemic” was intense on one rail, facts were discernible on the second rail at all times, hidden in plain sight, without tapping into any “conspiracy theorizing”.
• However, most people absorbed the narrative from Rail 1, having failed to scrutinize any aspect of it. 
• This was a cognitive conversion artifact because public opinion is an artifact of ruling class engineering, regardless of the label we assign to governance systems.

To maintain a favorable cognitive conversion rate, global and unprecedented mass censorship had to occur as a matter of structural suppression. Otherwise, all the dissenting doctors, journalists and scientists, as authority nodes in their own right, had the potential to dilute the impact of the first rail messaging. To preserve Rail 1 dominance, it was necessary.

Every Rail 1 claim collapsed post-factum, yet zero accountability followed. One could also see the Iraq War in the same light. The Rail 1 promoted the idea of “weapons of mass destruction,” but of course, no one ever found such things.

Interestingly, the unprecedented mass censorship and coercion tactics were tonally off, potentially serving as a giant red flag. Yet, this too failed to disrupt the first rail messaging for most people. Again, this is another arrow in Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” quiver.

What about Europe and the US?

Now that we understand the key aspect of governance technology, what about the purported deterioration of relations between the EU and the US?

The highlighting of nodes during the pandemic narrative is also helpful here. First, let’s review what the “pandemic” actually produced.

• Unprecedented increase in the M2 money supply (+$6 trillion).
• Record inflation rate (since the 1980s) as a consequence of the M2 money supply increase.
• Unprecedented biosecurity investments and Big Pharma gains.
• Record transfer of wealth to the richest, in addition to massive $200 billion COVID funds fraud.
• Record yearly budget deficits due to government spending.

Perhaps even more importantly, the pandemic narrative highlighted that all major nodes of messaging proliferation are US-centric: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others.In concert with the US dollar being the world’s reserve currency, this affords the United States unmatched hegemonic power — cultural, economic, political and technological. Likewise, the Federal Reserve is effectively the world’s central bank. Case in point, just as the Fed launched the historic monetary intervention via BlackRock, so did the European Central Bank (ECB) when it launched the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP).

However, another intervention occurred that remains in the public spotlight, generating significant attention and influencing events. Overnight, the pandemic narrative shifted to the Russia–Ukraine conflict in February 2022: the same mediatic intensity, the same censorship, the same deplatforming, the same string of absurdities. 

The US State Department paved the road for this conflict back in 2014, led by Victoria Nuland, by toppling the pro-Russian Ukrainian government. Nuland supported the Maidan coup through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA intervention front.

At the revolving door point, William J. Burns is currently listed on NED’s official website under the “experts” section, having served as CIA director under the Biden administration. In this company, Nuland was recorded saying “fuck the EU” when discussing the post-toppling regime in Ukraine.

Later on, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy ramped up hostilities toward the Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which prompted Russia’s direct involvement. Of course, the tie that binds all of these events is NATO’s expansion into Russia’s backyard, as NATO repeatedly broke assurances not to expand. Russia sees this as an existential threat because NATO is a US proxy.

The overarching reasoning for all of this is simple. If there is an EU–Russian alliance, economically or politically, this would spell doom for US hegemony. After all, the combination of Russia’s vast land mass and resources with European technology and population density would make the US a second-rate power at best.

With this in mind, how does this affect the present EU–US relations?

Clumsy clues of deception

In the last month, discussions about the EU rearming itself have dominated headlines. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission and known for the Pfizergate scandal, announced an expenditure of up to €800 billion ($938,086,304,000) for this effort. The new America First realignment presents this as a consequence.

To that end, do you know how the aforementioned leaks happened in which both the US Defence Secretary and Vice President maligned Europe? Well, they invited the Atlantic editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, into their Signal group chat.

Again, dual-rail is afoot:

• Rail 1: America is evil and selfish. How dare it abandon Europe against the rabid Russian bear? This messaging was also explicit in the wall-to-wall attack on JD Vance’s misconstrued remark.
• Rail 2: America orders the EU/UK to fully fund antagonism against Russia, thereby harming their interests in favor of the US.

Is there evidence for the Rail 2 this time? Just a month before Leyen’s rearming commitment, the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth noted that the EU/US must establish a “division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and the Pacific, respectively.”

The Pacific is a reference to the US shift from Ukraine to China and Taiwan. In other words, the US is using the EU as a counter to Russia’s interests, which leaves it with a larger budget to handle China.

There is another deception clue in the mix, quite a big one. In September 2022, targeted bombings rendered the Nord Stream pipeline defunct. This was the key economic instrument that had the potential to bring the EU closer to Russia. Specifically, to bring Germany, the EU’s economic engine, closer to Russia.

Ever since, without Russian cheap gas, Germany has been undergoing a rapid process of deindustrialization due to higher energy prices. Simultaneously, more entrepreneurs and industrialists are moving from EU nations to the US.

Most tellingly, in its presentation of antagonism between the US and the EU among the European ruling class, there is not a single mention of this international act of terrorism that had such devastating economic consequences. It remains a mystery, as inquiries by the Swedish and Danish authorities yielded no results.

Altogether, does this seem clumsy? 

The core problem is that such adjectives are not meaningful. From the perspective of people with a high cognitive ceiling, the entire pandemic narrative was extremely clumsy. Yet, it was successful nonetheless, still accepted and talked about as real by the majority.

Such is the case with the most recent narrative about EU/US relations. The first rail absorbs, while the second delegates to the fringe.

Europe is now in the worst positioning

With the “iron rule of oligarchy” in mind, which excludes democracy as a coherent concept, it is increasingly apparent why both the EU and the US accrued such massive government deficits. To defend US hegemony, both in the intermediate and distant future.

However, the US now holds all the cards. With tariff tools, President Trump can start reshoring American industry. And even without being beholden to the Federal Reserve, Europe faces a massive problem of bureaucratic parasitism, which disincentivizes taxation and undermines net-zero policies.

While the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement and ramped up its “drill, baby, drill” approach, Europe is still on a path to net zero. This puts Europe at a severe and crippling disadvantage. One should also remember that Germany systemically denuclearized its power grid, despite this type of power being considered net zero. 

Without such suicidal policies, even the Nord Stream bombing would have had a muted effect. One wonders if there was external NED-like pressure for Germany’s denuclearization​​ to increase its vulnerabilities.

The bottom line

Post-World War II, Europe entered into a vassal relationship with the US. This relationship has only grown stronger, owing to carefully nurtured American dominance in Big Tech, Big Bank and Big Pharma. The present framework doesn’t make the EU stronger but cements US dominance.

Both Americans and Europeans have little to no input in what their respective governments do. That’s because the private-public ruling class easily deploys and controls narratives. In turn, a construction that enables people to work against themselves is all too readily available.

With the dawn of AI that brings about algorithmic interception, such capacity is likely to increase further.

The pandemic narrative and the complete absence of a meaningful response have vindicated Robert Michels, as we can confidently assert. In the new algorithmically powered governance, thoughts will be much easier to intercept. If someone intercepts them, they can modify their behavior accordingly.

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.