Oligarchs, Sex, And Total Hasbara: How The Hell Did Johnny Depp Survive His Past 6 Years?

I tuned in into the public Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial because I am done with our hyperreality and cut myself off from reading the news and discourses produced by the mass media for good. Hard to resume the dimension of alienation caused by the many various fatalities of the past two years. I guess time heals all wounds while simultaneously being the one measure amplifying all of those wounds: a morally wasted opportunity of a plague, overall corruption and the decadent and murderous decline of an overreaching empire and the environmental destruction attached to it during my lifetime, all wrapped in a mind-numbingly crude and unjust SS-Officer style public discourse- it is too much to take. The final straw for me were pictures of the president of the US Empire, mummy Joe Biden, flanked by creepy life-sized bunnies during an Easter welcome in the White House. What the fuck- those images were bizarre even for the totally demented standards of our age, and they made me think that David Lynch had some prophetic qualities with those creepy bunnies in his Inland Empire (2006). It only gets worse when you have a look at the moved images from the White House and realize that the cartoon bunnies are ear-plugged and acting like intelligence agents in bad disguise: taking the waxy president mummy by his arms, commanding him to wave, guiding him away from reporters when he attempts to have a conversation about Afghanistan (one of the many countries that he’s starving out). This is still the most powerful man in the world on paper- our reality feels like a fucking simulation, an absolute shit-show baccanal.

Besides resignation and nihilism, the other motivation to watch Depp‘s defamation suit trial against ex-wife Amber Heard is of course that it is an oddity: Depp is not one of the reality-tv species that feels comfortable in such public settings, but a high-profile actor who has maintained his gravity and kept his internal life private throughout his superstardom of now 4 decades, a man more like Jagger and Richards than a Kanye or Kardashian. And then there are the subjects of the lawsuit: allegations of domestic violence, the growing impression that determining the gender of the violator and the victim apparently makes for a vast difference in our judgement and measurement of this violence; me-too and the fake tail-riders and benefiters of the movement, and the witchhunt practices of mass media and ideological NGOs preying on such cases with the help of powerful oligarchs.

Here, it is helpful to keep in mind that the very ‘rules-based‘ society producing the leading global ideological jack-hammer narratives has never sanctioned its last two presidents for the sexual harassment and abuse allegations both were facing. Trump was a somewhat overdue target with his open nastiness and foul mouth, but after lots of talk about his missteps, we are still waiting for “the walls to close in”, but neither claustrophobia nor Justitia would settle in. Joe Biden also evaded justice to this day: when the #metoo movement was at its peak- culminating in the unbelievably ridiculous slogan “believe all women” (yeah, I believe in Alexis Carrington), the rulers of the media narratives decided to exclude some women from this newly innate credibility. And those were women like Tara Reid, accusing the future President of the United States without any real chance to be heard. One woman discussing her allegations in public was Kamala Harris, who shut up about Tara Reid immediately after she was crowned vice president by and for Biden. Sir David Lynch will serve as a conclusion-giver once again: it’s “Crazy Clown Time“- an awesome song that is sounding more sane with every year passing.

But back to Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard: Depp, who testified that he “was not allowed to be right or have a voice” since Amber Heard made her extremely consequential allegations in 2016, opened up a much bigger societal conversation and explosive hornet’s nest which give this trial a much bigger relevance besides the actor’s personal quest for justice and clearing his name. With Depp’s push for a public trial (which Amber Heard’s team of lawyers tried to prevent 4 times) after having lost a dubious, behind-closed-doors UK trial against a UK newspaper, his case is being laid out in great detail for six full weeks and for the entire world to see. And boy! it is not the gossipy, voyeuristic details that are interesting here, details which are made painfully public because it seems like Amber Heard recorded the couple’s entire relationship on tape and video for whatever ‘loving’ reason in a complete breach of trust between two intimate people. It is not that very hard-to-watch bulk of accusations which is the most staggering aspect of this trial for me, but it is the haunting two-day long testimony of Johnny Depp and mind-blowing court revealings which prove that Depp was not just up against a very twisted Amber Heard throughout all these years, but that, insanely, he was up against powerful organizations and oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and his Washington Post, Elon Musk, and the controversial ‘civil rights organization‘ ACLU, all spiced with some prominently unhinged warriors of Zionist hasbara targeting Depp.

During the first days of the trial, in a phase when I still didn’t really know why the fuck I am watching a live trial for the first time in my life and what to expect from it, a woman got banned from the courtroom because she was tweeting and texting from the front row reserved for legal counsel, and provided false evidence that discredited witness Gina Deuters and got her dismissed as witness. When I learned that that banned woman was Eve Barlow, who is on the front-rows of putting out the most aggressive pro-Apartheid and dehumanizing anti-Palestinian propaganda out on Twitter from her ‘unwashed person with speech privileges’ position, and when I learned that Barlow was the current BFF/partner of Amber Heard- that was the time when I sensed that much darker forces than thought had invaded Depp’s life, and that there is more to this story than a “he said, she said” public ex-partner dispute.

The trial delivers spectacularly on this aspect. Depp is suing Heard for defamation and 50 million dollars in earning losses for a specific Op-Ed she wrote titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change” was published by Jeff Bezos‘ Washington Post and obviously hinting at Depp. One thing it was not hinting at was Heard’s arrest for domestic violence against then-girlfriend Tasya Van Ree in 2009. And while Heard testified under oath that she is being sued „for an Op-Ed that I wrote“, the trial revealed that she barely wrote that Op-Ed but rather dictated it, and that the hit piece was the product of an ideological conspiracy between various parties which all benefited from their organized destruction of Depp’s character. The leaders of the ACLU testified that they reached out to Heard and co-wrote the Op-Ed (to which they multiple times referred to as „the ad for Amber“) going so far as to write the very first draft of an alleged ‘personal victim account’, and to pitch the piece to the Washington Post after a documented back-and-forth communication with Heard and her lawyers on how to make sure that the Op-Ed did not outwardly incriminate Depp by name while clearly being about him. The ACLU further testified that they timed the publication of the Op-Ed with the release of the film Aquaman (in which Heard played a role) to both take advantage of the film’s fame and adversely affect Depp’s, all while simultaneously crowning Amber Heard as their ambassador for women’s rights. Now, that was a most interesting and damning witness testimony from the ACLU, and it was a testimony that even media outlets like The Atlantic and the Rolling Stone could not ignore or white-wash anymore. Kudos to Johnny for publicly providing a glimpse on the vast corruption behind these organizations and their manoeuvres. But that was not all.

The ACLU’s testimony made it obviously clear that they had a serious quid pro quo going on with Amber Heard, whose most revealing flaw expressed in her scary display of personality in court might be her hubris, some sort of Madonna-complex where she wants to paint herself as a saint, but with tragically little talent or evidence. And so Heard claimed in 2016 that Depp violently abused her, and that she is no gold-digger that wants to extort money from him by character destruction, but only virtuously and altruistically fights for the good cause. And when Johnny Depp agreed to settle for $7,000,000 in their divorce after Heard said that she would donate all the money to charity (half of it to a children’s hospital in LA, the other half to the- well, ACLU), Heard bragged about it in the media virtuously for 6 years, telling everybody that all the divorce settlement money was already completely donated. Only, it was not. And that’s where the next villain comes in, straight out of the spectre (remember the bunnies).

Elon Musk, who is said to be the richest man of the world mainly because of his stock market manipulations, was the partner of no-gold-digger Amber Heard immediately after her marriage with Depp ended, although court coverage established that Heard used to sneak Musk and James Franco in into the apartments (that Depp paid for her and her siblings and friends for years) before that, during nights when Depp was not present. Anyway… the ‘private‘ Musk in my opinion comes across as a ridiculous person who’s hungry to be cool, making kids with strange names with Grimes, clumsily smoking joints on Joe Rogan’s podcast and all… it just doesn’t click as authentic or wholesome, and that’s nicely put. Johnny Depp to him must have appeared to effortlessly be all that he could never be, and so Musk was not only the unloved partner of Heard, but actively participated in her structural crusade against Depp by putting his money into it. The ACLU testified that from the promised $3,5 million dollars that Heard pledged to donate to the ACLU, $100000 were paid directly by Depp, $350000 by Heard, $850000 by Musk, and the rest amount of $2,2 million were never paid. But even the ACLU’s recent testimony that Heard paid the organization $350000 is questionable: “Rolling Stone searched the 990 tax forms for the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation covering the period of April 1, 2016, through March 31, 2017, and found no donation matching that dollar figure.”

In court it was revealed, via text messages that she wrote to Depp’s former agent, that Heard admitted to missing and wanting back Depp, and that she had never loved Musk, the “gap filler“ – it makes for a jolly good fantasy thinking of Jeff Bezos’ space-cock-co-racer Elon Musk watching or reading that, and then hyperventilating through a fake Twitter purchase hoax. But in the end, you are left to think: damn Johnny, how did this one brief relationship get you involved with such a heinous and sinister crowd? And would your friend Hunter S. Thompson, if he were still alive, believe you if you told him that now you were in a public trial, and in this trial facing a kafkaesque lawyer who is literally called “Mr. Rottenborn“, and who is somehow allowed to turn a defamation trial into a drug trial against you?

It is true, Amber Heard’s attorney is a barking, aggressive lawyer with the name J. Benjamin Rottenborn, as if he were a character of a parable that is demonstrating good versus evil for the blind and illiterate. Rottenborn objects to every sentence Depp begins, just to make sure that he doesn’t finish it and that Depp again will not be heard. Rottenborn barks and objects to make the jury forget damning audio recordings of Heard, like that one where she threatens to frame Depp as an abuser: “See what the jury and judge thinks. Tell the world, Johnny, tell them, “Johnny Depp, I, a man, I’m a victim, too, of domestic violence’ – and see how many people believe or side with you.” But Rottenborn seems to have so little evidence on behalf of his client, that he is trying to defame Depp by endlessly talking about the actor’s history of drug use and by senselessly dropping the name ‘Marilyn Manson‘ in every witness examination, and without any follow-up question. But the intention is clear: Johnny Depp used drugs in the past, and every drug user is a violent abuser, so Depp must be a monster. It is unbelievable that this is even possible and allowed in the year 2022, and in a country that is in the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic. When Depp took the witness stand and with great dignity and calm opened up about how he started to drink and use opioids as a teenager living in a desolate and violent home in rural Kentucky, there was a much larger story being told. How do all of these millions of opioid addicts in the US feel when they see themselves stigmatized and shit on like this, unempathically and with great prejudice, in such a public trial? I doubt that it will give them any hope, but I know that basically all of them will see pieces of their own stories reflected in Depp’s account, and that for the duration of Depp’s sincere and articulate testimony they were temporarily being humanized again. But since the opioid epidemic mostly affects the working class living in rural America, I predict that it is only a matter a time until support for Depp gets labeled right-wing/MAGA.

The most important part of this trial is still Johnny Depp’s early, two-day long testimony – I have never seen anything like this. It was rare, authentic, sad, beautiful, honest- and triggering as fuck for all victims of domestic violence, male or female. Johnny Depp’s testimony unraveled as a universal catalyst experience for victims of domestic violence. When Johnny spoke about the casual violence and misery of his childhood, we saw ourselves in him- before later we saw our twisted mockers and abusers in Amber Heard. This is not just an anecdotal or impressionistic account, Johnny Depp actually kicked off a global movement of domestic violence victims of every gender coming out on social media and supporting him, and calling out Amber Heard and the powerful (wo)men and organizations participating in Depp’s violent, medial, and financial abuse. Initially, those supporters were labeled as bots and Depp-heads, but data showed that so many real, regular women were among them, that they could not be dismissed just like the many marginalized male victims talking about the abuse they suffered from by their mothers or wives under the #mentoo hashtag. These women were a problem, an anomaly in the discourse. And so Heard’s new PR team, which she hired mid-trial, is trying to frame them as some misogynistic and masochistic female species that is hungry for male abuse. I mean…

It’s crazy clown time.

I am not going to write about Heard’s crazy, ridiculous display of insincerity and overacting in her testimony, which provided a field day for psychologists and behavioural experts. I am not going to detail her many lies exposed, the many aspects of her outrageous accusations which make zero sense but bear chilling parallels to film plots like Gone Girl. Or how Heard reminds me of my former best friend, who is psychotically borderline and framed two innocent men as rapists when they declined to have a committed relationship with her after consensual sexual affairs. I am not going to write about Heard, not just because her testimony and behaviour in court would make for a damning portrait and article for itself, but because she is actually menacing and because I am fucking scared of her. I do not know how Depp survived her and the past six years of character assassination and propaganda orchestrated by his Heard and a group of terrifyingly powerful oligarchs and activists- but he survived it. And I am damned proud of this kid for fighting back, and sacrificing all of his privacy while taking up this epic fight for a simple reason that he expressed in his testimony. A reason that seems to be such a distant foreign concept by now, and so diametrically opposed to our times, that it kind of shook and disturbed me when hearing Depp speak those words in court:

“Truth is the only thing I’m interested in. I’m obsessed with the truth.”

by Saliha Enzenauer