Their weapon is always fear. The 3 main tools they have always used from the begging to this day is money, power, and religion (not all beliefs are centered around a deity/s). Always operating in secret with knowledge/information as their most coveted asset, and through the suppression of ideas and freethinking (think Galileo) they control the advancements of the world population. As we progress we are stunted and led astray as they write our history to best suit themselves. Remember the saying, "history is written by the victors". With these strangleholds on the minds of men they're able to rapidly increase their power over us, much like a global Stockholm Syndrome. There have always been those of us who have resisted and fought back, though in the past they quickly stamp it out and almost always attribute the incidences to terrorism or whatever threat they're peddling at that time. In the past it was heretics and witches, then it was other countries' that's of war, followed by the Nazis, then the Russians, which continued into terrorists, to today of racist-evil-conservatives/the Russians... Again. Now the resisting group has been growing at such an alarming rate (like in the Matrix films with unplugging people), they're fro on us is slipping. Out of a panic, they accelerate their plans which are harder to conceal so there's a ton of distractions going on (impeachments, Russia hoaxes, protests, riots, celebrity mouth pieces, etc.) yo further hypnotize those that are still enthralled by their pied-piping. Their scrambling to complete their global conquest while retaining their existing victories is why we're seeing all this lunacy, out as started before, "... Why nothing makes logical [sense] and everything seems upside down." Through demonizing those that see behind the curtain, " the good guys," and lifting up their own members , "the bad guys," as heros to be admired am emulated. Thus the good=bad and bad= good, situation we're seeing.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/07/16/wear-face-masks-empathy/