I disagree. At one point, it’s not that all people are being brainwashed, though educated and conditioned, but that now, especially in the Global North, it becomes a license for them to feel good about their social position, that is dependent on capitalism.
They may see the system as the source of their wealth or current lifestyle, as a last resort of ‘rationality’
But why would they feel good about their social position? A lot of them aren’t even doing that well - but then you see that phenomenon of like how that one person put it (forget their name offhand), the quote about “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” where people sort of see themselves more as part of the ruling class, but someone who just hasn’t “made it” yet through some fault of their own. I’m not saying it’s 100% brainwashing superimposed over people’s living conditions, without any interplay between the two, but surely they aren’t organically coming to a state of mind such as that. It’s one thing for them to be afraid of worse if they have relative comfort. It’s another for them to believe they can be rich any day now if they just work it out through the right “individual choices”.
In case it’s not clear, I’m not here arguing that propaganda is the defining factor. Just that it’s not one that should be underestimated as an influence over things. I mean, the US has been wielding it for decades, alongside other tools, to help carry out color revolutions the world over. There are limits to it, but countries that want to guard against that take narrative control seriously for a reason.
The prevailing populist narrative grants the People (of the West) moral innocence by attributing to them utter stupidity and naivety; I invert the equation and demand a Marxist narrative instead: Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda — organs of coercion and consent. [6] We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.
None of this is meant to downplay the scale of the propaganda project. I’ve spent enough time chasing down leads on different intelligence fronts and their plots to know that they are real and have real effects. [7] I do not deny that the outcomes we observe are at all times incentivized and enforced both overtly and covertly by our various societal superstructures (police, education, culture) and that principled and effective truth-tellers have been assassinated. I reject only the common misconception that propaganda “manufactures consent” (Chomsky) or “invents reality” (Parenti), because it exaggerates the feat accomplished by propagandists, and, in doing so, it obscures the real material basis that has historically made even the working poor in the imperial core complicit.
This argument comes across to me as kind of reductionist to the point at hand. I can only assume in the best of faith that it makes more sense in context. I have not ascribed to people in the imperial core as a general rule “utter stupidity and naivety” or “moral innocence” either one. Furthermore, I don’t understand how someone is supposed to “instinctively understand that they benefit as a class from exploitation” if they literally don’t understand that others have to be exploited in order for things to be functioning the way they are going. If they understand and don’t care, they’re complicit sure, but I don’t see how it can be simplified to throwing them all into the same bin as being in the same position about it. To use myself as an example for reference, the best I can remember of being lib anyway, I don’t think I saw myself as someone who was part of exploitation and felt it was okay at all. I think what I thought was something along the lines of “the world has problems, but the people in power are doing their best to fix it.” I’d characterize the understanding I had at certain points as almost childlike in its simplicity (like how we talk about people having “marvel brain” of good vs. evil). So in my case, you might say there was a degree of naivete at certain points, but this is not to say it was like that the entire time in every way. At some point, I started developing an anti-capitalist view, which came before I developed an anti-imperialist one; without the right information, I don’t know how I would have done differently. In an observing sense of things, what I was able to witness firsthand was harm that was more personal and relevant to the country I live in. Information outside of the country largely got reframed as something vastly different than what it is. Now that I can see it, it’s wild to look at how thoroughly they DARVO everything about other countries. But I don’t know if I could have reasoned it out without the right information and influences. Until I started reading theory, probably the best framework I had was trying to “think critically”, which in practice, was alright on a small scale of things, but suffered greatly in accuracy due to being too much based on trying to universalize principles in the abstract rather than being able to put things in their historical and present context.
I don’t think any of this is incompatible with the point that people can be reasoned with, but I do think they need strong influences that can break through and they need a framework that can functionally understand what is actually going on. When it comes to the ones who sort of do get it, but are callous anyway, I’m not sure if they are as worth the energy. People can be in many different places and it won’t all happen the same.
Also, perhaps I have an incorrect understanding of the term compared to how it is intended, but I’ve usually taken the term “manufactures consent” not to mean that most expressly, with full understanding, agree with the policy being carried out, but more of consent in the legal sense that if one person is attacking other and you quietly observe and don’t intervene, it may be viewed as you consenting to the act being carried out. Certainly there are the people who go to the full point of rabid support (I see them online on a regular basis) but in RL and even online in random non-political places, I don’t seem to encounter these people in the same way; maybe they are there and I’m unaware, but I more often get the sense of low information than full information with complicity. Which is not to be confused with naivete or stupidity. It’s not naive or stupid if you don’t know the prediction is that it’s going to rain tomorrow, you are just ignorant of the information. By the time much of information about other countries reaches the busier, less news-heavy people, it may be all the more simplified and removed from context.
I disagree. At one point, it’s not that all people are being brainwashed, though educated and conditioned, but that now, especially in the Global North, it becomes a license for them to feel good about their social position, that is dependent on capitalism.
They may see the system as the source of their wealth or current lifestyle, as a last resort of ‘rationality’
But why would they feel good about their social position? A lot of them aren’t even doing that well - but then you see that phenomenon of like how that one person put it (forget their name offhand), the quote about “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” where people sort of see themselves more as part of the ruling class, but someone who just hasn’t “made it” yet through some fault of their own. I’m not saying it’s 100% brainwashing superimposed over people’s living conditions, without any interplay between the two, but surely they aren’t organically coming to a state of mind such as that. It’s one thing for them to be afraid of worse if they have relative comfort. It’s another for them to believe they can be rich any day now if they just work it out through the right “individual choices”.
In case it’s not clear, I’m not here arguing that propaganda is the defining factor. Just that it’s not one that should be underestimated as an influence over things. I mean, the US has been wielding it for decades, alongside other tools, to help carry out color revolutions the world over. There are limits to it, but countries that want to guard against that take narrative control seriously for a reason.
Well, if you wanna understand what I’m talking about, granted this is about those in the Global North, here’s an article
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
I’ll try to read it at some point.
This argument comes across to me as kind of reductionist to the point at hand. I can only assume in the best of faith that it makes more sense in context. I have not ascribed to people in the imperial core as a general rule “utter stupidity and naivety” or “moral innocence” either one. Furthermore, I don’t understand how someone is supposed to “instinctively understand that they benefit as a class from exploitation” if they literally don’t understand that others have to be exploited in order for things to be functioning the way they are going. If they understand and don’t care, they’re complicit sure, but I don’t see how it can be simplified to throwing them all into the same bin as being in the same position about it. To use myself as an example for reference, the best I can remember of being lib anyway, I don’t think I saw myself as someone who was part of exploitation and felt it was okay at all. I think what I thought was something along the lines of “the world has problems, but the people in power are doing their best to fix it.” I’d characterize the understanding I had at certain points as almost childlike in its simplicity (like how we talk about people having “marvel brain” of good vs. evil). So in my case, you might say there was a degree of naivete at certain points, but this is not to say it was like that the entire time in every way. At some point, I started developing an anti-capitalist view, which came before I developed an anti-imperialist one; without the right information, I don’t know how I would have done differently. In an observing sense of things, what I was able to witness firsthand was harm that was more personal and relevant to the country I live in. Information outside of the country largely got reframed as something vastly different than what it is. Now that I can see it, it’s wild to look at how thoroughly they DARVO everything about other countries. But I don’t know if I could have reasoned it out without the right information and influences. Until I started reading theory, probably the best framework I had was trying to “think critically”, which in practice, was alright on a small scale of things, but suffered greatly in accuracy due to being too much based on trying to universalize principles in the abstract rather than being able to put things in their historical and present context.
I don’t think any of this is incompatible with the point that people can be reasoned with, but I do think they need strong influences that can break through and they need a framework that can functionally understand what is actually going on. When it comes to the ones who sort of do get it, but are callous anyway, I’m not sure if they are as worth the energy. People can be in many different places and it won’t all happen the same.
Also, perhaps I have an incorrect understanding of the term compared to how it is intended, but I’ve usually taken the term “manufactures consent” not to mean that most expressly, with full understanding, agree with the policy being carried out, but more of consent in the legal sense that if one person is attacking other and you quietly observe and don’t intervene, it may be viewed as you consenting to the act being carried out. Certainly there are the people who go to the full point of rabid support (I see them online on a regular basis) but in RL and even online in random non-political places, I don’t seem to encounter these people in the same way; maybe they are there and I’m unaware, but I more often get the sense of low information than full information with complicity. Which is not to be confused with naivete or stupidity. It’s not naive or stupid if you don’t know the prediction is that it’s going to rain tomorrow, you are just ignorant of the information. By the time much of information about other countries reaches the busier, less news-heavy people, it may be all the more simplified and removed from context.
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