Thought Crimes, Cults, and Propaganda: The System’s Evolution Into Nazi Totalitarianism

October 5, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In March 2020, C. J. Hopkins, a left-wing American playwright living in Berlin, compiled a 157-tweet thread of mainstream media headlines about the new coronavirus. He wasn't trying to be a dissident. He was just collecting what the establishment itself was publishing. What he noticed was a gap: the official narrative of an apocalyptic plague with a 3.4 percent death rate did not match the data he was seeing. When he pointed this out publicly, a writing student called him a neo-Nazi. That moment, he says, was the pivot. Within weeks, he had lost nearly all his friends, was under criminal investigation by the German state, and had written the essays that became The Rise of the New Normal Reich—a book that became a bestseller, then was banned across Europe, and is now being republished by Tucker Carlson Books.

The COVID Lockdown as a Message to Populists

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction: The New Totalitarianism** - Tucker Carlson frames the episode around book banning as a hallmark of modern totalitarianism, contrasting it with Nazi-era book burnings.
2 (01:45) **Guest Background: From Left-Wing Playwright to Targeted Dissident** - Hopkins explains his pivot from a leftist playwright in New York and Berlin to a target of the German state during COVID.
3 (04:45) **The Cult of COVID: Seeing the Alternate Reality** - Hopkins recounts the social and psychological experience of being a dissenter surrounded by people who believed the official narrative.
4 (13:14) **Why Some See Through the Hysteria** - Tucker probes why a small percentage of people, including Hopkins, saw the obvious insanity while others did not.
5 (15:57) **Berlin Under COVID: The New Enabling Act** - Hopkins paints a vivid picture of Berlin's transformation into a "pathologized fascistic society" during COVID.
6 (23:40) **COVID as a Lockdown on Populist Rebellion** - Hopkins frames the COVID response as a systemic reaction to the populist uprisings of 2016 (Brexit, Trump).
7 (30:34) **The Inescapable Nazi Analogy in Berlin** - Hopkins confronts the obvious comparison between the COVID measures in Berlin and Nazi totalitarianism.

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Show Notes

When C.J. Hopkins wrote a book about Covid zealots, he compared them to Nazis, because Nazis are bad. In response, Amazon banned his book and the German government arrested him. We’ve decided to republish the book, “The Rise of the New Normal Reich” available now at TuckerCarlsonBooks.com.

(00:00) Why Did Hopkins End Up Getting Arrested?

(06:02) The Backlash Against Hopkins

(30:06) The Comparison Between Berlin During Covid and Nazi Germany

(39:16) The Moment Hopkins Started Getting Into Legal Trouble

(47:22) Hopkins’s Court Trial

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