The Great American Screw-Job
Or
Sports Entertainment and Perception Management- From Wrestling to the Grandest Stage of Them All.

Paul Knight

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“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely Players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his Acts being seven ages.”- William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1623

“Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behaviour”-Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1967

“The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient theatres... Even hidden in the most squalid Parisian halls, wrestling partakes of the nature of the great solar spectacles... a light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.”- Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1984

“Everybody in the country wanted this event and we got it.”- Donald Trump on hosting Wrestlemania 4, 1988

“Politics is way more cut-throat than wrestling” Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota, Beyond the Mat, 1999

“Donald Trump is a Wrestlemania institution”- Vince McMahon, inducting Trump into the WWE Hall of Fame, 2013

“I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them and they are there for me- and that’s a broken system.” - Donald Trump, First GOP debate, 2015

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Everybody “knows” that pro wrestling is “fake”- or if not exactly “fake” then they at least appreciate that the match outcomes are pre-determined. Wrestling fans accept that the wrestlers are both legitimate sportspeople and entertainers playing roles. This dichotomy at the heart of understanding wrestling (and how wrestling encourages us to look at the world), does not affect fans enjoyment of the product. Wrestling fans are able to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the product simultaneously as a form of theatre or pageantry and also as a showcase of genuine athletic talent. Of course, pro wrestling is entertainment first, and everything else second. Until quite recently, that is.

Wrestling fans occasionally have a kind epiphany where they begin to question whether other aspects of their society are similarly faked, and after investigating and observing celebrity culture, reality TV and the world of politics, inevitably come to the queasy conclusion that everything in the media is what they would in wrestling parlance refer to as a “work”, and that is to say a managed narrative in which actors play roles, dramatising scripted situations which are passed off as “reality” in the final product, in order to fool or entertain the “marks”- the fans who pay to watch the show, and who, in fact, pay for everything that happens.

The campaign leading to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States is surely one of those instances where the simplification and simulation of reality that is pro-wrestling and what we like to call “reality” more generally have come to overlap, in turn creating a new meta-narrative by portraying a version of reality which exists separately from and at odds with the idea of fact- this concept has been referred to extensively by cultural commentators as our movement into the “post-fact era”. This false reality, which began as storytelling, as entertainment, has suddenly become in late 2016 the dominant paradigm in mainstream American politics.

Trump’s victory would appear to be the crowning achievement in a long series of experimental perception management strategies created by the marketing machine of Vince McMahon, the owner of World Wrestling Entertainment, who if not the king himself, has now taken on the role of king maker. What could this mean for the microcosm of American politics and for the rest of the world in general? What are the implications on reality as we know it? What does it tell us about reality as we think we know it?

Before we begin to tell the tale, it might be worth remembering that the words real and royal share a common linguistic root- the implication being that reality is really only what the king says it is- anything outside this narrative is not “real”. It is also interesting to note the implications this idea has on our understanding of the terms “political royalty”, “real-estate” and “reality TV”.

If the king controls the ideas about reality which are accepted as reality by the rest of society, then the process by which objective reality is moulded and shaped is what people in public relations refer to as “perception management”, and what people in the military refer to as “psychological operations”; covert operations designed to affect the perception of reality shared by a group of people. In the case of Vince McMahon and Donald Trump, that group of people are notably a single demographic- white, blue collar males who do not hold a University degree; that same demographic who just voted Trump into the Presidency.

To tell the story from the beginning, we have to travel back to 1988, to a moment when McMahon was still just establishing what would become his multi-billion dollar media entity. Vince had a vision- he wanted to employ the best talents from the smaller regional territories that constituted the world of pro-wrestling since the birth of the National Wrestling Alliance in 1948, and to create a national and international media platform for his product. This would eventually come to pass in the form of WWE Network, McMahon’s online platform which launched in 2014- and in a different way, in the US presidential election of 2016.

In 1988, McMahon’s central vision of this new way of producing wrestling was a super-show that Vince hoped would become as much a part of the fabric of the spectacle of American cultural consciousness as the Super Bowl- a centrepiece for each year’s calendar of wrestling events. He had come up with the idea for “the grand-daddy of them all”, Wrestlemania.

Back in 1988, McMahon was in the process of producing Wrestlemania IV, which would be held at the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Donald Trump was at ringside for the event. Trump would eventually go on to host UFC mixed martial arts events at his Atlantic City Taj Mahal casino by 2000, and would return to the WWE for Wrestlemania 23 as a performer in 2007 before his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

Clearly Trump has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with WWE and UFC- a relationship which would appear to have led him from the WWE ringside and from the worlds of sports/entertainment and reality TV to the most famous piece of real estate in America- 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.

Trump is certainly not the only former WWE performer to have run for political office. In fact, there are now so many examples of Vince attempting to get his people elected that it would appear that some kind of long term plan is in motion- it is my intention to speculate here on what that plan might entail. As it stands in mid November 2016, former WWE performers and Hall of Fame inductees who have run (with varying levels of success) for political office in the US and Japan include:

• Jesse Ventura- former WWE performer, Hall of Fame inductee and former Governor of Minnesota between 1999-2003, (Independent)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger- WWE Hall of Fame inductee and former Governor of California between 2003-2011, (Republican)
• Antonio Inoki- former promoter of the FMW organisation in Japan and WWE Hall of Fame inductee, most famous to western wrestling fans for the mixed martial arts bout he had against Muhammed Ali (himself a WWE Hall of Famer) in 1976. Inoki was successfully elected to the Japanese House of Councils in 1989.
• Bob Backlund- former WWE champion and Hall of Fame inductee ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat from Connecticut in 2000. (Republican)
• Great Sasuke- former WWF Light Heavyweight Champion and creator of the Michinoku Pro Wrestling organisation in Japan. Sasuke was elected to the Iwate Prefectural Assembly in 2003. While in office, Sasuke retained his ring attire, becoming the world’s first masked legislator.
• Linda McMahon- Vince McMahon’s wife and former WWE performer ran for a seat in the Senate from Connecticut in 2009 and 2012. She was unsuccessful on both occasions. (Republican)
• Terry “Rhyno” Gerin- former ECW champion, WWE tag champion, ran unsuccessfully for the position of state representative in Michigan in 2016. (Republican)
• Donald Trump- real estate mogul, reality TV star of “The Apprentice” and WWE Hall of Fame inductee- successfully ran for the US Presidency in 2016. (Republican)

The first two names on the list are particularly interesting with regard to introducing the whole idea of using the fictional characters they portrayed in the media to campaign for political office. Jesse “The Body” Ventura, a former Navy Seal, wrestler and colour commentator campaigned as Jesse “The Mind”, serving as the Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota from 1991-95, and as the 38th Governor of Minnesota from 1999-03. Ventura would appear to be an old hand at perception management, going on to present a series about conspiracy theories for TruTV in 2009.

Arnie famously used his slogan from the Terminator franchise “I’ll be back” as part of his political campaigns, becoming the 38th Governor of California and serving between the years 2003-11.

Significantly, in terms of introducing some of the dominant tropes which would later reappear as central aspects of the Trump campaign, both Ventura and Schwarzenegger would appear in two science fiction films together- both films released in 1987- The Running Man, and Predator.

In Predator, Arnie is pitted against what amounts to an invisible alien suicide bomber with dreadlocks (putting a new spin on the term xenophobia), and Ventura plays one of the team of Special Forces personnel who accompany Schwarzenegger into the jungle- a performance which Ventura’s real life experience as a genuine Navy Seal made seem somewhat more credible.

The whole notion of perception management is central to the plot of The Running Man, in which news stories are faked by a cynical, McMahon-like, TV producer to entrap the protagonist into appearing in a murderous, man hunting game show where convicted criminals are pitted against various wrestler-like hunter characters. Ventura plays one of the hunters- “Captain Freedom”, who has, like Ventura did in WWE, moved from participation into commentary- the character appears to be a parody of Hulk Hogan’s “Real American” persona.

Interestingly, McMahon would later re-work this theme in one of his own WWE produced films, The Condemned, starring former WWE Champion Steve Austin and released in 2007.

The Running Man portrays a dystopian future version of American society in which criminal punishment includes death by reality TV. In the film, the amoral TV producer character ensures that Schwarzenegger’s character is legally entrapped into taking part in the show by faking footage of him massacring a group of starving food rioters and reframing the faked footage as a news story, leading to Schwarzenegger’s character’s arrest and detention.

Therefore, the central point of the plot, Schwarzenegger’s character’s unlawful detention and punishment, is achieved by controlling public perception of him. There’s even a nice scene where Schwarzenegger meets his court appointed theatrical agent. The “Running Man” TV show depicted in the film prefigured and predicted the advent of actual “reality TV” as we have come to know it today by some years. At this stage, it’s worth looking at the phenomenon of reality TV, and how it came about.

The idea of Reality TV as we understand it today, and as it is understood in “The Running Man”, can be traced back to the work of science fiction writer Nigel Kneale- in particular, “The Year of the Sex Olympics”, a science fiction play written for the BBC and produced in 1968.

In the play, Kneale depicts another dystopian future society, this time British, in which a small powerful elite control the media and are engaged producing content which is designed to keep the working classes docile, and in particular to stop them breeding due to an overpopulation problem. The content they produce amounts to a steady stream of well produced pornography. This serves its purpose- the viewers would rather watch than have sex themselves.

Eventually, when even their most slickly produced porn fails to maintain the viewer’s interest, producers come up with a new product, “The Live Life Show”, following the real-life experiences of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a deserted island rigged with hidden TV cameras. An island deserted, that is, apart from a psychopath the producers have also introduced into the environment, with murderous results. The show becomes a live feed of torture porn snuff, and the audience love it.

The play, written as a cautionary tale inspired by Kneale’s experience of TV producers at the BBC, would appear to have served as a blueprint for the creators of what would become known as Reality TV around the time of the millennium- subtly blurring the lines between documentary and scripted drama. Reality TV did not ever claim represent objective reality- it was entertainment, a product, not intended to be taken seriously. Just like wrestling, in fact.

Reality TV show “The Apprentice” would become the mechanism by which Trump cemented popular perception of himself as his “billionaire business mogul” character- a brash persona not dissimilar to the “Mr. McMahon” character Vince created for himself in 1997, as the result of what is today thought of as the greatest “work” in wrestling history- an incident known as the “Montreal Screw-job”.

In this narrative, Mr. McMahon played the king maker for the first time. The storyline, which blurred the line between reality and fiction, centred around McMahon interfering in a match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, ensuring that the WWE Championship was handed to Michaels, apparently without the prior knowledge of Hart, who it appeared had been led to believe that he would retain the belt. Following the match, McMahon became the greatest heel (villain) in wrestling, cementing this persona in an interview where he claimed that “Bret screwed Bret”, to the widespread dismay of the fans, who, significantly, started watching more wrestling.

The Mr. McMahon character would take on his adversaries in a “corporate” manner, using contractual obligations and underhanded business practices to control wrestler’s destinies. The character would be born in Montreal, but would really become fleshed out in the storyline which pitted Mr. McMahon against a new kind of fan favourite character which did not exist before 1997, the foul mouthed, beer swilling, blue collar anti-hero Stone Cold Steve Austin. We will return to this story arc later on, as it is in fact highly significant to the election of a President Trump.

Trump’s reality TV persona, while very similar to McMahon’s, also shares striking similarities with the “Million Dollar Man” character portrayed by wrestler Ted DiBiase in the WWE (at that time still WWF). Trump was, you will remember, seated at ringside in 1988 to watch “The Million Dollar Man” take on “The Macho Man” Randy Savage in the main event at Wrestlemania IV.

It would seem that Trump learned from wrestling how to project a simple character that would be memorable to a demographic of white, uneducated, blue collar males- that is to say, wrestling fans, and more significantly still, the main demographic who would go on to vote him into the White House.

We cannot, of course, say that Trump was alone in his attempt to gain the presidency through perception management techniques. His opponent, Hillary Clinton is on record as admitting to holding both “public and private” positions on Wall Street reform- we could also extend this to our own Prime Minister Theresa May’s position on Brexit.

Interestingly, we only know Hillary feels this way through publication of a leaked script for a speech Clinton gave to US bankers, made available to the public by the actions of another man attempting to build a pop culture persona, Wikileak’s Julian Assange, to whom we will also return later.

Of all Reality TV products, wrestling is probably best suited to use as a vehicle for political propaganda; a way of presenting a simple narrative about good versus evil which takes complex cultural symbols and archetypes, and presents characters who come to embody these cultural tropes. Vince McMahon is well aware of the power these characters have to influence the perception and emotions of wrestling fans, and that is to say more specifically, wrestling fans with votes.

Probably the best example of this is the “Real American” persona which has made Hulk Hogan a recognised worldwide brand- one which at times has eclipsed everything else in the world of wrestling. For a long time, Hulk Hogan was wrestling. The top guy. The Man. He remains probably the most iconic wrestler of all time, and has an image which has transcended wrestling and helped Hogan cross from mere celebrity into the territory of becoming a genuine pop culture icon, instantly recognisable to most people in the world, even those who would never watch the WWE product.

All this was achieved thanks to the marketing and branding efforts of Vince McMahon, who designed a character which appealed to 1980s and ‘90’s American wrestling fans sense of patriotism. Marketed as a “Real American”, Hulk Hogan dominated the industry over three decades, taking his vitamins, saying his prayers and helping to define the public facing image of the WWE in the process.

As such, the Hulk character was created as the perfect tool for the production of a certain kind of propaganda- the ideal vehicle to enable McMahon to push a certain political vision of the world as a central aspect of his TV wrestling products. Hulk would feature in various storylines which pitted him first against an unstoppable Russian giant during the Cold War and then in the early 1990s against a treacherous US defector to the Iraqi military, during the period leading up to and during the first Gulf War.

The popularity of Hogan’s character and the size of Hogan’s ego increased to the point where McMahon was unable to control them- Hulk left WWE for their rivals WCW in 1994. WCW was much more closely aligned to the old NWA territories than McMahon’s organisation, and was more popular in the country’s southern states than the WWE, which held the north. The obvious parallels with the US civil war are highly significant to our story, as we shall come to see.

The two companies flagship TV products, RAW and Nitro would eventually end up (thanks to intervention by another celebrity billionaire, McMahon’s real life antagonist Ted Turner) running head to head against each other in the same time slot on Monday nights. This conflict, pitting the north against the south would become known as The Monday Night Wars.

It was a battle to the death, eventually won by WWE in 2001, when WCW was bought out by WWE and closed- though how close Turner came to bankrupting McMahon is still a matter of conjecture to this day. Again significantly, Turner was able to cause all this trouble for McMahon because he owned a TV network, TNT, and was able to put WCW’s Nitro show into any slot he so desired. This would no doubt cement in McMahon’s mind the necessity of owning his own network, which would take another fourteen years to put together.

The two companies had been in competition since long before the Monday Night Wars, and an interesting early instance of the civil war in American wrestling can be found in the history of wrestling in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has a unique position as the front line of the wrestling civil war- during the 1970s and 80’s, the NWA/WCW live product would often go head to head with the WWF/E live product of the day. The two companies would book separate arenas in the city on the same night. The WWF/E main event would no doubt feature Hulk Hogan, and the WCW/NWA main event would feature their top talent, “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

A North Carolina native, Flair would come to embody a version of the stereotype of the Wild Eyed Southern Boy to southern fans, as much as Hulk embodied the concept of the True Blue American Hero to fans in the north- Philadelphia would see them go head to head in a battle for ratings and attendance as the top guys in their respective companies.

After Hogan’s departure, McMahon would attempt to re-create Hogan’s success with various other characters designed to represent the powerful “Real American” stereotype. His first attempt was to rebrand “The Narcissist” Lex Luger, running as the Great American Hope against Japanese sumo wrestler Yokozuna.

Luger would also go on to leave WWE for WCW, creating a great deal of bad blood. Luger had performed a real life screw job of his own, maintaining that he would re-sign his WWE contract when it ended- in fact Luger had decided to move to WCW, and did so without the prior knowledge of McMahon, appearing on both the pre-recorded RAW and the live WCW Nitro TV shows on competing channels on the same night.

By the time McMahon attempted the next permutation of his vision of the American Hero in Kurt Angle, wrestling had changed. Despite his position as a genuine Olympic gold medallist, and therefore a legitimate US sporting hero, Angle was never “over” with the fans in the same way as Hogan. Angle found his place in wrestling as a parody of Hogan- drinking his milk and speaking in the same kind of aphorisms which Hulk had employed with success in the 1980’s taken at their face value, but which Angle found success in the 1990’s using ironically.

It seemed that the fans would no longer accept McMahon’s American Hero stereotype at face value- Hogan style rhetoric was not seen by the fans as in tune with the spirit of the times- and despite what McMahon ever intends, it is the fans themselves who determine what “gets over” and what does not. The fans decide who they want to see, and during the Monday Night Wars this could be accurately modelled using the viewing figures for each segment of the WWE product, watching when fans tuned in, and when they switched over to the competitor.

The main agent of this change in the perception of McMahon’s American Hero trope, the wrestler who re-wrote the play-book on what could constitute a “good guy” to the fans, was none other than “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, whose blue collar anti-hero was so incredibly popular it kept the WWE financially viable through what would become known as the “Attitude Era” in the 1990’s.

The storyline which really pushed Austin over the top into wrestling mega-stardom was the same which would also cement the Mr. McMahon character as a top heel and see Austin take on the boss- Austin vs McMahon. The storyline would come to dominate the WWE product for several years, culminating in a steel cage match, in which McMahon would legitimately break his tail bone plummeting from the top of the cage onto an announcer’s table. It was an ugly landing, but it did tremendous business. Austin’s character resonated with anybody who would love to seriously injure their boss- a huge number of people, as it turned out.

By the time Wrestlemania 23 rolled around in 2007, the Mr. McMahon character was firmly ensconced as a loathsome corporate crook who would do anything to achieve his dastardly ends. It is here where we see the evolution of Trump’s “billionaire mogul” character from a natural heel into the strangest “baby-face” (good guy) in wrestling history.

Trump returned to Wrestlemania 23 not as a venue owner, but as a performer- he would be at ringside for a match between Bobby Lashley and the “Samoan Bulldozer” Umaga. Trump would be in Lashley’s corner, and McMahon in Umaga’s- there was a further stipulation; whoever’s wrestler lost the match would have their head shaved, a bizarre and yet surprisingly common match stipulation born in the deep south known in the trade as a “hair vs hair” match. The match would essentially be a comedic entree in the undercard building up towards the main event (itself featuring another permutation of McMahon’s American Hero, former bodybuilder John Cena, star of the film “The Marine”).

Of course, McMahon’s guy lost, and he was shaved bald in the middle of the ring by Trump. Wrestling fans love to hate Mr. McMahon so much that Trump, a man with a public persona so similar to McMahon’s onscreen character as to be almost indistinguishable on paper, became a de-facto good-guy to millions of wrestling fans through his apparent humiliation of McMahon. The image of Trump shaving McMahon’s head was extremely memorable, creating an association of Trump being the kind of guy who could take on the boss and win in the minds of millions of Americans.

Interestingly, Trump’s wrestler in the match, Bobby Lashley, was the (by that time WWE owned) ECW champion. The story of ECW, as an aside, would seem to be significant to the telling of the story of Trump’s rise to the presidency. The ECW story takes us back once again to Philadelphia in the 1990’s, and the birth of a new promotion which would transform the wrestling business to the point where an American Hero stereotype of the sort favoured in McMahon’s product would come to be seen as outdated- promoter and PR guru Paul Heyman’s Extreme Championship Wrestling.

ECW was like a juggernaut in the mid 1990s. Heyman’s product, which took place in a 1500 capacity bingo hall, was famous for being lewd, misogynistic and most of all violent. Philadelphia had always been known to be home to a particularly bloodthirsty breed of wrestling fan- ECW appealed mainly to a demographic of 18-35 year old, white, blue collar males who were provided with wrestling which had become, in Heymans words, “extreme” and “hardcore”. There was a lot of blood, a lot of Japanese FMW-style stipulation matches involving weapons, a much “stiffer” and more hard-hitting Japanese wrestling style and a lot of wrestlers prepared to go to incredible, death defying lengths in order to entertain their crowd.

ECW was huge. Even McMahon was forced to admit that the promotion showed the people at the WWE that it was possible to have financial success by appealing almost solely to the bloodthirsty 18-35 year old demographic- a fact which seems remarkably significant given the Trump presidential victory.

Heyman would create new stars in wrestling which would form the basis of careers which would long outlive ECW itself. ECW was in fact the first casualty in the Monday Night Wars- which grew, you will remember, from the old Philadelphia based inter-promotional civil wars of the 70’s and 80’s. ECW closed in early 2001, a month before WCW itself closed, and WWE became the dominant wrestling promotion in the world at large.

One of the main problems faced by Heyman during the period of the Monday Night Wars was that the bigger companies kept poaching his talent- WWE and WCW were able to offer much more money to talent than Heyman- and during the WCW/WWE conflict, the monetary value of contracts increased exponentially. A wrestler who might have commanded a five figure salary a few years before could add a zero or two to the figure by 2001. Wrestlers, understandably, went where they could command the highest fee, repeatedly damaging the ECW product.

The real effects of this were firstly, to increase level of “hardcore” in the mainstream products and secondly, to usher in a new era in mainstream wrestling, the Attitude Era of WWE. Thirdly, if ECW made the WWE product look behind the times, it made the WCW product look almost antiquated. Heyman, a former WCW employee, hated the promotion and was hell bent on destroying the company.

Notably, in terms of the ongoing wrestling civil war, it would be an ECW star, Shane Douglas, who would throw down the NWA championship belt, and proclaim himself the first ECW Heavyweight Champion. This, another famous wrestling swerve, would help to cement ECW’s popularity, and damage the profile of the WCW associated NWA.

In the aftermath of the Monday Night Wars, following the closure of ECW and WCW, it emerged that Paul Heyman had been on the WWE payroll, and had performed another real life “work” on his own talent- the implication was that McMahon had financially supported ECW in order to damage WCW, but he had also used it as a developmental territory to help evolve his own product.

Indeed, during the Monday Night Wars, fans were chanting the letters ECW at WWE events whenever a former ECW wrestler appeared. However, as “hardcore” wrestling legend Terry Funk would note, as the Attitude Era in WWE blossomed, the ECW chants began to fade away- the “hardcore” style of ECW eventually became the WWE house style- it’s “Attitude”.

It would appear that WWE supported ECW because it wanted to take the fight to WCW on two fronts, or even, that WWE created the ECW product from the beginning. In the end, the plan worked, and ECW was bought out by WWE, in the same way it would buy up WCW. Highly significantly, by doing this, McMahon came to own the history of televised American Wrestling, in the backlog of product created by WWE, but also ECW and WCW.

WWE would then begin to produce highly successful reality TV style “documentaries” about the Monday Night Wars and about ECW- these documentaries would help to cement the McMahon version of events as the legitimate history of televised wrestling in America.

Critics would note that various versions of events actually existed, depending on whose former employees one spoke to. In fact, McMahon’s “documentaries” were another “work”- an exercise, this time, in perception management- a way of controlling perception of the history of his business. Even today, although various indie documentary films about wrestling and wrestling history exist, McMahons ideas about the subject form the dominant paradigm.

With the birth of the WWE network, McMahon has been able to produce many hours of entertaining talking-head style interviews with former wrestlers which back up his version of events. He has done this ostensibly to fill hours of TV time cheaply, but also to present a narrative about the history of wrestling which is at best not quite the whole story.

This, of course, does not matter- wrestling is entertainment first- though it should be noted that through successfully creating WWE Network in 2014, McMahon has been able to control the spectacle of televised wrestling- using the word spectacle in the sense in which it was understood by French cultural theorist Guy Debord, in his Society of the Spectacle, published in 1967. That is to say a managed version of reality, presented in the mediated form of a TV product- a product which would control the perception of the history of wrestling to fans. Vince McMahon, by doing this, learned how to rewrite history, and how to build a complete simulated reality for his demographic, many of whom would accept Vince’s version of events as authentically factually correct.

Since the ratings wars of the Monday night head to heads, and through employment of marketing gurus like Paul Heyman, McMahon has come to understand the wrestling fan demographic perhaps better than anyone in the world. He knows how they think, what they like, what they hate, and significantly, exactly what they will put up with.

Never one to give up on a good idea, McMahon has attempted to re-work his American Hero archetype on various occasions since 2001. That none of these permutations has been as successful as Hogan was for the company in the 1980’s has taught McMahon an important lesson- he knows exactly how far his demographic can be pushed and still stay loyal to the product. The marketing team at WWE have learned to read the reactions of wrestling fans like a barometer for public opinion- or at least the opinion of that now politically important 18-35 year old male demographic.

In recent years, Vince has attempted to push various wrestlers as the “top guy” in the business against the will of the fans (ostensibly because he is “out of touch”). The characters portrayed by John Cena (a white, Eminem inspired character who is both a rapper and an enthusiastic supporter of the US military), and the character of Roman Reigns, (introduced as a combat-attired SWAT team member in his stable “The Shield”, but who is in fact wrestling royalty- one of the three generations of WWE employees related to both Umaga and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), are cases in point. Neither man has ever truly been accepted as a WWE champion by the fans, but both have been pushed in the position repeatedly by WWE.

Interestingly, in terms of the McMahon plan for the future of America, in recent years we have seen the introduction of political signs held up by members of the crowd at live events and in the simulated crowds in WWE video games. Firstly, it should be noted that a wrestling crowd can be “faked” just as easily as a wrestling match- everything in the arena is ultimately controlled by WWE, including the signs held up by the crowd. Stooge crowd members can be introduced into a live audience, and programmed into a video game.

The phenomenon of crowd signs in American sport can be traced back to the weird activities of one Rollen Stewart, a man famous for attending various US sporting events throughout the 1970’s and 80’s and holding a cardboard sign which read “John 3:16”. He became a minor cultural icon in his own right, and would inadvertently go on to provide the inspiration for the sound-bite which would make Stone Cold Steve Austin the biggest name in 1990’s wrestling, and usher in the Attitude Era in WWE which would eventually win the wrestling civil war against WCW and the NWA.

In 1996, McMahon was holding a televised wrestling tournament- the King of the Ring. That year, the tournament would feature a final between Jake “The Snake” Roberts (in a re-invention of his character, as a sleazy born again Christian) and Steve Austin. Following the win, Austin would deliver an interview, known in wrestling as a promo, in which he told Roberts that he could keep his John 3:16, because “Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass”. A wrestling icon was born- the blue collar anti-hero who would go on to take on the boss.

Highly significantly, in terms of the McMahon plan for America, the “worked” signs in the crowds, both real-life and computer simulated, would read “Vince for President”.

Before we reach a discussion of the Trump presidential campaign, it is worth looking at a final permutation of McMahon’s American Hero stereotype, with decidedly more sinister undertones- the case of the “All American American” Jack Swagger.

The narrative arc for the character of Swagger, who made his 2008 WWE debut as part of the WWE-owned and re-launched ECW (a failed project which would last about three years following the hugely successful WWE/ECW pay per view “One Night Stand” in 2005), would follow the same basic pattern as the other post-Hogan permutations. He failed to really “get over” with the fans until the company decided to turn him into a different kind of heel.

Following his introduction into the main WWE roster in 2009, Swagger held various titles, but the most interestingly, came to be “managed” in 2013-14 by another WWE performer known as Zeb Colter- another permutation of the American Hero archetype Vince had come to rely on as a centre piece of his product.

Colter was envisaged as a heel manager, clearly inspired by the far right Tea Party in US politics. The character’s main distinguishing feature, differentiating him from other heel managers, was his strong anti-immigration stance. This was, we assumed at the time, designed to make him a natural heel antagonist, who the fans could really hate. However, something went “wrong”.

The combination of Colter and Swagger, the “Real Americans”, a phrase only differing from the phrase most associated with Hulk Hogan in the 1980’s by a single letter, began to be cheered by fans. In fact, the more intense Colter’s racist rhetoric became, the more the fans cheered. It was this moment which marked the change in the American cultural consciousness which would usher in the time for a President Trump.

It is worth noting the vital role editing plays in the McMahon product. Wrestlers, though mostly sportspeople by background, have to perform as characters, and deliver promos- that is to say, they have to be able to act, to a greater or lesser extent. The role of a manager, is often to act as the mouthpiece for a wrestler whose verbal delivery fails to inspire. We see this in recent times, in the onscreen role of Paul Heyman with relation to WWE and UFC main eventer, “The Beast Incarnate” Brock Lesnar.

Brock, for those who aren’t familiar, is the current dominant force in wrestling and MMA. He cannot be accused of being a gentle giant. Brock is enormous and violent- a huge, young, white, monster known for rendering his opponents into bloody pulp. He is known to hate people in general, and to shun other fighters and wrestlers backstage. Brock lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so that he can be alone. He is, by all accounts, the Real Deal- a steaming alpha male predator. Unfortunately, Brock isn’t great on the mic, so in WWE, he is accompanied by the best stick-man the business has ever seen, the P.T. Barnum-like Paul Heyman.

The effect Brock has had on the wrestling and MMA businesses, is to create overlap between them in a way that has never been seen before. Although McMahon has re-purposed retired MMA guys like former UFC champ Ken Shamrock in the past, never before has a single athlete worked for both WWE and UFC at the same time. McMahon has always tried to absorb UFC into his product since its inception in the early 1990’s- and even Trump has previously attempted to reposition himself as the MMA world’s Vince McMahon when he threw his weight behind the short lived Affliction Entertainment product designed to cash in on some of the popularity of MMA and in particular the Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC.

It is tempting to see a parallel between the role of ECW in the Monday Night Wars, and Affliction’s proposed role in the world of MMA, as a competitor to UFC- a company Trump had helped put on the map in the same way he helped put WWE on the map in 1988.

When UFC debuted in the 1990’s it was not licensed in most American states- events had to take place in those areas where bare-knuckle fighting was not illegal. This was a problem for UFC. Trump, true to form, was one of the first venue owners to wholeheartedly welcome MMA to his hotels and gambling establishments.

In MMA we see another reality TV permutation of the kind of entertainment product first dreamed up by Nigel Kneale in “The Year of the Sex Olympics”, and more pointedly, reworked by Hollywood in the film “The Running Man”.

UFC owner Dana White is quick to lay a portion of the promotion’s success squarely at the feet of Trump, admitting that “when we first bought this company, no venues would even take us... Donald Trump was the first guy to say “We’ll do the fights here”. Trump gave us our first shot over at [Taj Mahal], and when we left and went to a bigger arena... Trump was one of the first guys there in his seat”.

This aside let’s briefly return to the role of the video editor in the WWE product, and see how it relates to what would become the Trump presidential campaign. As previously mentioned, wrestlers, because they are expected to be entertainers first, and sports people second- unlike the UFC product in which these weightings are reversed- have to be able to act, to deliver an entertaining and enthralling promo.

We have seen how a “manager” character will be introduced for talent who lack verbal dexterity- most of the time, however, a wrestler has to cut their own promo, on live TV. Some of them are very good at this, others not so much. Fans who watch live events are very used to enduring long segments of promos, which push the narratives along. Very often, these segments, which provide the exposition leading up to the actual wrestling, are badly performed, badly scripted, over-long and downright boring. Fans learn to switch off, or go to the toilet, or argue amongst themselves during these segments.

Here we find the main role of the editor in WWE products. They take the rambling live interviews and cherry pick phrases from them which they edit together into the slick promo videos used to introduce matches on pay per view events. They are able to see the gold glimmering amongst the dross, and create emotive videos from the raw material. This strategy of editing together sound-bites from rambling material is key to the understanding of how Trump’s campaign and the right wing news edited his speeches for TV.

Finally, it is worth, with regard to fully understanding the McMahon vision for America, to note that of all the former WWE performers Vince has run for political office (mostly as Republicans), those who have performed best, are those whose personas have previously crossed from sports entertainment into another form of entertainment media. Schwarzenegger and Ventura both successfully made the jump from bodybuilding (another sports entertainment product which Vince has had an interest in over the years, particularly with his short lived WBF body building product), or wrestling, into film.

We should not be surprised therefore that McMahon has always understood wrestling as more than sports entertainment- specifically he has understood it as “making movies”, putting his most “over” guys into various films over the years, and eventually, in 2002, launching WWE films, his own film production company. We should understand the existence of WWE films/studios as nothing less than another attempt to help his performers make the jump into the wider media, preparing them for a potential run for political office.

Now we are in a position to fully understand the role the WWE machine has played in the creation of the “baby-face” Trump persona, and in the elevation of that fictional persona to the real-life position of the US president-elect- undoubtedly the greatest wrestling “work” of all time- the moment when the narratives of sports entertainment became the dominant paradigm in US political reality.

On the morning of November 9th 2016 (9/11 to most of the world), nobody in the political establishment could understand quite how Trump became President, and nobody in the media would be able to do so either. In fact, nobody was in a position to understand what had gone down apart from wrestling fans, who knew a piece of work when they saw it, and anthropologists, who didn’t matter as a demographic.

Anthropologists would be tempted no doubt to compare the Trump character to the mythological archetype of the Trickster, as understood by anthropologist Victor Turner. Turner’s trickster is a liminal character, one who exists in a state of ambiguity on the borders of things.

Liminality, in the sense Turner wrote about it, is a quality of ambiguity that exists in participants in the middle stages of a religious or cultural ritual- the attributes of a those participants, at that stage of the ritual is that they exist in a state between states. In the ancient Mystery religions, adepts were initiated to a new role in society- one which necessitated the death of their old role.

The liminal moment in the middle of a ritual (for instance a coming of age ritual) is that moment when a person or selected group of people have laid down their old identities but not yet taken on new ones. Existing in a state of liminality implies a state formlessness and potential, like Zen’s uncarved block. A state where an individual can grow into something new- but in fact a state where the participant can imprint new cultural ideas- these might be anything, depending on the group, the ritual, and the desired outcomes of the priest, shaman, magician, PR guru, reality engineer or wrestling promoter in question.

In the case of the Trump campaign and the involvement of WWE and McMahon, this new set of cultural tropes taken on by the ritual participants would closely resemble the set of values which made the fans “unexpectedly” cheer Jack Swagger, and the values which made the fans accept “billionare real estate mogul” Donald Trump as an anti establishment figure.

The breaking down of the established cultural order which is central to the liminal experience creates a malleable new reality, in which new institutions and new rituals can be established. Without doubt, the criteria for a cultural ritual in which the dominant paradigm of what is understood to constitute reality is changed, is best embodied in a political election.

Victor Turner’s “Trickster” figure is described as the “mythic projection of the magician”- an actor, playing a role. In mythology, a trickster figure is a character who exhibits secret knowledge, and uses this knowledge to disobey normal rules and accepted cultural conventions. Further defined by Lewis Hyde, the trickster is a “boundary crosser”- a character who violates “principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis”. The trickster in folklore will openly question and mock authority; they are fond of breaking rules, and playing tricks on the unsuspecting.

The trickster character is distinct in the world of the folktale, acting as a catalyst for the breakdown of the accepted cultural structures- his actions often lead to the discomfort of others, and yet he himself escapes untouched. The trickster often portrays himself in folktales as a clown or similar entertainer.

Notably, these attributes can be said to be embodied by Donald Trump in wrestling, and now politics in the USA, but also by Nigel Farage in the UK. Significantly, both were initially viewed with a kind of sneering contempt by the political and media establishments of the USA and the UK, and both went on to win votes which have significantly altered the dominant narrative paradigms in the politics of both countries. Both men have fulfilled the role known in wrestling parlance as the “comedy heel”.

Notably, with reference to the McMahon plan for America, which can only be for the creation of a President McMahon, it would seem that Vince is preparing the ground for himself, his wife Linda, or his son Shane to run for the Presidency. The onscreen persona of Shane McMahon seems particularly relevant.

“Shane-O’Mac”, the “Boy Wonder” is known for his willingness to perform death defying stunts, and walks in to a music track called “Here Comes the Money”. He is, in fact, the final permutation of the “Real American” persona dreamed up by McMahon in the early 1980’s combined with the “baby-face billionaire” trope invented for Trump- a lineage of permutations of these character archetypes which have led from Hulk Hogan to Shane McMahon, via one President Trump- a narrative in which we have seen the American Hero trope evolve into an all American anti-hero, and the “comedy heel” “billionaire playboy” trope evolve into the President of the United States.

Trump could never have succeeded without WWE, and WWE would never have succeeded without Trump. Therefore, we should not be surprised that various WWE performers came out in support of Trump, publicly endorsing him. Not only that, Trump was openly endorsed by Dana White, of the UFC. Can we really be surprised that the white male demographic came out to vote Trump in never before seen numbers?

Notably, with reference to the new paradigm of reality Trump and McMahon have thrust into the mainstream of American politics, those former WWE talents would include none other than Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair- the top guys of the wrestling civil wars of the 70’s and 80’s.

Hogan and Flair, representing the Northern and Southern factions in the US civil war of 1861-65, have taken on a new level of symbolism. Both Flair and Hogan represent the white man as “top guy” in a new war which will pit the Great White Hope, President Donald Trump, against teeming hordes of non-whites, illegal immigrants, socialists and homosexuals. Trump, we can be assured, will fight the good fight- or if not that, we can rest easy in the knowledge that the fix is already in.

Hogan even went so far as to proclaim that he should be Trump’s running mate, which is true to his previous form as an egomaniac. Hulk will never understand that he represents an outdated cultural stereotype which can only ever be utilised in the modern pop culture as a nostalgia trope. Dwayne Johnson has already speculated that he might run in 2020 though, so it looks like wrestling and politics are now conjoined permanently.

Once we understand Trump’s character to be inspired by wrestling, his interview style to born out of the heel wrestling promo, we can see exactly the extent to which President Trump and WWE have pulled a “work” on the electorate, a classic wrestling swerve, turning the result of Trump vs Clinton into The Great American Screw Job.

So where does that leave us? In one of those periods of history which future historians will put under the heading of “factors leading up to” a new conflict which will define the new politics. A new American Civil War, which will pit the whites against the non-whites. Whether this descends into open warfare has yet to be seen, although a significant event would come to pass on the frontline of the old wrestling civil wars, Philadelphia. One final psy-op to get things rolling.

On the morning of November 9th, 2016, Philadelphia residents would wake to find neo-nazi graffiti had been painted across their city. The vandalism would feature swastikas and the name Trump in the same flourish of paint. All that is left to ask ourselves is to what extent we find this entertaining.

The narrative now will be one between Trump and various “villains” of the new reality- I suspect these villains will be framed as terrorist “hackers” and “whistleblowers”. Julian Assange will play his part, as will Vladimir Putin, who has already, in classic wrestling style, cut a heel promo in which he admitted to be behind the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s websites and emails. Whether this is objectively true or not is immaterial in the post-fact world. Tellingly, as of November 14th, the Trump administration has revealed that it may place none other than Linda McMahon into a key role.

This entire narrative is an act of subversion of American politics of the exact same type described by Soviet propagandist Yuri Bezmenov when he defected to the US in the early 1980s and started giving presentations on cultural subversion, KGB style, to American audiences. These talks are easy to find on Youtube, and I would thoroughly recommend them as a classic of their type.

The thing which Bezmenov understands, and which the marketing people at WWE understand, is that no matter how convincing an explanation of the Soviet subversion techniques Bezmenov gives (and it is nothing if not elegant), we are aware on some level that by giving the talk, the propagandist Bezmenov is himself indulging in an act of subversion- that everything he says might be a “work”.

Now all that is left to do is for the reader to think seriously about the extent to which this article could be described in the same terms- as a “work”- a story told for the sake of entertainment. At the very least, the reader must decide for themselves their response to the words of the evil TV executive character Damon Killian in The Running Man:

“This is television, that’s all it is. It has nothing to do with people, it’s to do with ratings! For fifty years we’ve told them what to eat, what to drink, what to wear... don’t you understand? Americans love television. They wean their kids on it. Listen, they love game shows, they love wrestling, they love sports and violence. So what do we do? We give them what they want. We’re number one... that’s all that counts, believe me, I’ve been in the business for thirty years...”

Will their response be to sit back and be entertained, or will it be something else? How far will the notion of what people find entertaining be stretched until it finally stretches too far and snaps? How long before they turn off their televisions and actually do something?

Issue 22 - "Like Private Eye for extremists"

BUMPER ISSUE! Features - Anarchist Zombies;  Words of Wisdom from Chairman Vic;  Universal Credit; Interviews with Ian Bone & Timo Vuorensola; Resistance in Palestine; Charlie Hebdo Attack and much more

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Issue 19 - " Produced by four teenage Viz readers in a shed with a dog called Spliff"

Healthy cooking, veganism, cancer cures and unhealthy comics, babies and paranoia. Plus Iron Sky film director interview, reviews and a free T'Pau magazine for idiots.

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"If you wanted to put Paul Knight's novel 'A Trail of Burnt Paper' into a shareholder pleasing box you might compare it to Japanese horror film 'The Ring'... The writing can be brutal at times, at other times it is controlled and delicate. It hasn't been edited into a neater style or more conventional structure but that is part of its beauty"- ARENA Magazine.

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