The wonderful James Alexander, a regular at The Daily Sceptic, thinks that Keir Starmer’s “greatest achievement” so far – yes, the field is pretty barren – has been to invent the phrase “Heineken word”. That is a word or phrase that “gets inside your head”. (It may have been Starmer’s advisers who came up with this. There is some evidence to suggest that Starmer himself is not up for much, including new words).
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/02/starmers-greatest-achievement-to-date/
Many of us wish we had been the one inventing “virtue signalling”. Lucky James Bartholomew. Well, that’s his story and he is sticking to it.
Perhaps the most famous Heineken phrase, certainly for political junkies stateside, is “October surprise”. Now that we are in an October just prior to a presidential election, expect to see this phrase many times over the next thirty-odd days.
The creator of “October surprise”, the phrase, if not the actual event, was one William Casey, in late 1980. Casey was, at the time, Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager. Later he was the unfortunate (or malevolent) CIA director during the Iran-Contra fiasco, one of the large blots on Reagan’s copybook.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-J-Casey
What is an October Surprise?
In the politics of the United States, an October surprise is a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November election (particularly one for the presidency), whether deliberately planned or spontaneously occurring. Because the date for national elections (as well as many state and local elections) is in early November, events that take place in October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters and allow less time to take remedial action; thus, relatively last-minute news stories could either change the course of an election or reinforce the inevitable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise
It is something unexpected that blows one side out of the water.
Casey feared in 1980 that then President Jimmy Carter – just this week a centenarian – was going to announce the release of some American hostages from Iran. (Nothing much changes, then). That would be Carter’s October surprise. Many other examples have been discussed, both before and since Casey’s word invention.
Some potential 2024 events might include a fresh attempt on Trump’s life, perhaps this time successful. The use of nuclear weapons by Putin might count, or some other Ukraine-linked atrocity. My own favourite has always been a freshly announced pandemic, like bird flu or Mpox, that would necessitate, at least for TPTB (the powers that be) the return of the mail-in ballot. It worked, after all, in 2020.
We know that the pandemic planning industry is forever vigilant and prone to announce false emergencies in order to create panic. Post Covid, they think they are on a winner. Just now, the New York City PTB have conducted a test run. We are watching this in real time, as they say. As The Children’s Health Defense, run by RFK Jr, reports:
Exclusive: New York City Health Officials to Hold Bird Flu Tabletop Exercise
New York City officials are planning a tabletop simulation later this month to prepare for a hypothetical bird flu outbreak, a city health official revealed at the International Bird Flu Summit, taking place this week in Fairfax, Virginia.
John Leake describes this as:
The Defender's extensive report on Bird Flu maneuvering and machinations.
Source: John Leake’s emailed newsletter, 4 October 2024.
(I have always thought that the best cure for Mpox would be locking down homosexual men, since they are mainly the ones who spread it, making them wear masks, and insisting on vaccine mandates for them and them only. I never said it would be popular, nor do I foresee the idea taking off. Imagine the impact on Sydney’s economy come March).
Other candidates for 2024? We already have the rapidly escalating war in the Middle East, something that I predicted, without great prescience or perceptiveness or joy, a year ago next week. That is a surefire candidate. Terrorist attacks in the runup to 7 October? Could well be. There are calls for a global intifada from the usual suspects, as we speak.
Which brings us to the possibly imminent World War Three. Now that would be a candidate for an October surprise, one would think. The Aussie Covid hero, Monica Smit, thinks she has found one for 2024.
I don’t often comment on international affairs but who thinks WW3 will be announced and the Biden/Harris administration will declare a state of emergency to delay the election?
Source: Monica Smit’s Telegram channel, 4 October 2024.
This would be a case of not merely rigging the election, but dispensing with it entirely! Now that would be some October surprise. Not being a US Constitutional expert, I don’t know if what Monica is suggesting is even legal or doable for Beijing Biden. US elections these days are such a damned farce that the case could be made, why even have them? It might be argued – has been – that whoever wins isn’t really in charge, anyway.
Finally, we have the renewed attempt by the US deep state to ping Trump for 6 January, aka J6, the absurd suggestion that Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election by getting his supporters to “invade” the Congress after a Washington DC rally. This neatly plays into the Democrats’ ongoing fake news story that Trump is a threat to US democracy. Yes, I know, a bit rich coming from the Tammany Hall brigade.
The American left-legacy media is all about over Jack Smith’s latest salvo. Smith is the Democrat appointed Department of “Justice” point man on getting The Donald in jail. His latest effort is an attempt to work-around the Supreme Court’s recent decision to exempt American presidents from prosecution over matters to do with their job. Everyone has been waiting for this October surprise. Trump has called the latest filing blatant election interference, a plausible claim.
Becker News simply noted, back in late August:
“It is DOJ policy that the Department of Justice should not take any action that will influence an election within 60 days of that election"...
Source: Becker News Telegram channel, 28 August 2024.
Oh dear. Perhaps Jack Smith and his egregious boss, Merrick Garland, haven’t read their own rules. Jack Posobiec has called it thus:
The new Jack Smith filing is limper than Tim Walz’ wrist.
Source: Jack Posobiec’s Telegram channel, 4 October 2024.
Ouch. We shall see. The Democrats will give it their best shot, as will Jack Smith and his not inconsiderable cheer squad.
Of course, there has been one memorable fictional October surprise, recounted in the minor classic film from the late 1990s, Wag the Dog. It told the story, post Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky affair, of an American president being caught with his pants down just before an election, and his advisers thinking up the ultimate distraction. A pretend war. A war that was created/captured on television but wasn’t really happening. (Covid theatre, of course, was one giant Wag the Dog, complete with Chinese actors collapsing in the streets of Wuhan and adjacent cities. A massive coup de theatre).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog
Sadly, with the neocon class running Washington, they are real wars, not fake ones, that are detaining us today. Not that the US military industrial complex alone is causing global grief and war-mongering. There are enough bad actors across the globe seemingly itching for battle to run a dozen serious wars. The end of history it ain’t. Sorry, Francis Fukuyama. You were wrong.
Yet … Would anything count these days as an October surprise? What with instant memory-holing and the all-but-instant normalisation of just about any political event – think an assassination attempt or a likely nuclear war – we may be approaching the day when there are no more October surprises.
That would be a surprise.
Sullen David Graham at The Atlantic is an October surprise denier:
There’s No Such Thing as an October Surprise
Jack Smith’s new filing shows why January 6 should hurt Trump. But don’t expect a major public reaction.
What was the first October surprise of this election? Was it a strike by East Coast stevedores? Was it the threat of a hot war between Israel and Iran? Or was it the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page motion, unsealed yesterday, in the federal case against Donald Trump for subverting the 2020 presidential election?
The answer is almost certainly option D: none of the above.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/theres-no-such-thing-october-surprise/680145/
David is just being a leftie pessimist, methinks. The Atlantic is paywalled, and I am most certainly not going to subscribe, so we don’t know the ending on this one. Graham’s lament may also show him to be an adherent to my own theory of memory holing and normalisation. That everything in politics is a blur, and nothing ever matters that much, now, to the vast mass of low-information matters. It is normally right-of-centre types that bemoan this, as it happens.
Still and all, the sheer anticipation of an October surprise makes American elections the mad fun that they are. Most things that happen therein, you just could not make up. The four-yearly guessing game, come the last days in September, is half the joy of it. Buckle up for the ride. October is never dull, stateside.
Paul Collits
4 October 2024
Israel sure to commence a wider Middle Eastern war dragging the US into a war with Iran which was, and is, their intention from the outset. Let’s see how we go with zero fuel when Hormuz closes and here’s us with no refining and under legislated fuel reserves. Screw Netanyahu.