Let's not try to figure out
everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of
you falling through the sky
The
National,
from
their song “Fake Empire”
The 65th anniversary of the
first publication of George Orwell’s 1984 – June 8th, 1949 – is a
fitting time to address things totalitarian, fascist, nazi, authoritarian,
oligarchic, plutocratic, dictatorial, and police state. Each has its distinct
significance; yet to simplify, perhaps, they are all engineered, to a large
degree, by Supremacist Control Freaks.
According to Orwell:
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been
written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for socialism, as
I understand it."
Totalitarianism, however,
is not quite accurate for what’s going on nowadays. One variation of the word
comes from ‘total state’. Yet it is not just the state wielding power; but,
more specifically, the corporate-state combo, which is how Mussolini
defined fascism.
“The concept of
totalitarianism was first developed in a positive sense in the 1920s by the
Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt and Italian
fascists. Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat in his influential work on
the legal basis of an all-powerful state.”1
Hmmmm. “In a positive
sense”? Anyhow, the gist is: ‘all-powerful’, hence ‘total’, hence megalomaniac
and sociopathic.
Perhaps there is value in
debating the various labels and their meanings, but for those struggling or
starving there are more important things to be doing; for instance, becoming
free from the oppressor.
Is There A Pill To Cure FSD
and FSS?
A new wine in an old skin
is ‘Full-spectrum dominance’ (FSD), a military entity's achievement of control
over all dimensions of the battle space, effectively possessing an overwhelming
diversity of resources in such areas as terrestrial, aerial, maritime,
subterranean, extraterrestrial, psychological, and bio- or cyber-technological
warfare. This is officially known as ‘full-spectrum superiority’ (FSS) and
defined by the U.S. military as: “The cumulative effect of dominance in the
air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits
the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive
interference.”2
Key phrases for the average
citizen are:
- ‘psychological’ (think, if you dare, of Orwell’s ‘thought
crime’ and the current pharmaceutical industry);
- ‘bio’ (think GMOs and "start with the so-called Big Six:
Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Bayer, and BASF who produce
roughly three-quarters of the pesticides used in the world. The first five also
sell more than half the name-brand seeds that farmers plant, including
varieties modified for resistance to the very pesticides they also sell");3
- ‘information environment/cyber-technological’ (think ‘10 Corporations Control Nearly Everything You Buy, 6
Media Corporations Control Nearly Everything You Read or Watch’.)4
That is, of course, IF you
buy, read, and watch what the Total Corporate State packages.
Consolidation,
monopolization – words generally having to do with corporations, yet with
corporations and the state in bed together the total shebang going round in
circles to fascism, totalitarianism, totally nuts, or whatever you want to call
it.
“I think the world is going
to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they
get big.”
- Pete
Seeger
It may be surprising to
realize the large percentage of small farmers, mostly peasant women, whose
back-bending work provides the bulk of the world's food supply.
“Governments and
international agencies frequently boast that small farmers control the largest
share of the world's agricultural land. Inaugurating 2014 as the International
Year of Family Farming, José Graziano da Silva, Director General of the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), sang the praises of family
farmers but didn't once mention the need for land reform. Instead he stated
that family farms already manage most of the world's farmland – a whopping 70%,
according to his team. Another report published by various UN agencies in 2008
concluded that small farms occupy 60% of all arable land worldwide. Other
studies have come to similar conclusions. But if most of the
world's farmland is in small farmers' hands, then why are so many of their
organisations clamouring for land redistribution and agrarian reform? Because
rural peoples' access to land is under attack everywhere.”5
Full-spectrum dominance isn't lying
when it speaks of ‘bio-warfare’.
Another chink in the Total armor has to
do with media, news, and information. In his article ‘Is The Mainstream Media
Dying?’, Michael Snyder begins:
“Ratings at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News
have all been plummeting in recent years, and newspaper ad revenues are about a
third of what they were back in the year 2000.”6
The Supremacist Control Freaks fear
loss of control, thus their attempts to squelch real democracy and
decentralization whether with agriculture and the entire food chain, from seed
to packaging, or more recently the Internet which has the common folk rallying
for Net Neutrality (or as comedian John Oliver prefers to call it “preventing
cable company fuckery.”7)
Pay To Play
So how does one break free,
or at least minimize being psychologically and perhaps
physically groped by the beast?
Perhaps it’s better to look
first at how some people are not just blind victims of the Total Corporate
State, but actually willing participants in the scheme.
Phrases such as ‘participatory
totalitarianism/fascism’ and ‘inverted totalitarianism’ posit a wider angle on
the situation. The Western totalitarian system relies on the premise that you
will be distracted and sated enough (comfy items, snacks, toys, entertainment),
or busy enough (working to pay the bills) so as to “not try to figure out
everything at once” so you remain “half awake in a Fake Empire.”
‘Participatory
fascism’ is a phrase coined by Dr. Charlotte Twight. As she has shown, the
essence of fascism is nationalistic collectivism, the affirmation that the
national interest should take precedence over the rights of individuals.8
Shows like American Idol feed both ends of the full-spectrum, though in this
case it is not rights of individuals but individual stardom that is celebrated.
The current wave of neo-nazi/fascist
activity in Ukraine combines nationalistic fervor with the desire to survive
and to have a say in local affairs that have been abducted by globalization. In
his article The Durability of Ukrainian
Fascism Peter Lee writes:
“It
is anathema to liberal democrats, but it should be acknowledged that fascism is
catching on, largely as a result of a growing perception that neo-liberalism
and globalization are failing to deliver the economic and social goods to a lot
of people. Democracy is seen as the plaything of oligarchs who manipulate the
current system to secure and expand their wealth and power; liberal
constitutions with their guarantees of minority rights appear to be recipes for
national impotence.”9
Thus, a sense of identity and survival
are driving forces behind both the more willing, overtly violent nationalistic
fervor on display in Ukraine and the more subtly violent (foreign policy)
numbness of cultural assimilation, a buy-product of the United States Empire
(USE).
In a recent article John Feffer
calls the Western version ‘participatory totalitarianism’ and offers the
following as one example:
“Today’s
metaphor is still Big Brother—but
it’s the TV show, not the sinister presence of the George Orwell novel. In this
reality TV show, the public watches what goes on inside a house fully monitored
by surveillance cameras. But here’s the twist: we are both voyeurs and
exhibitionists, for we have also turned the cameras on ourselves so that the
surveillance can be mutual. We don’t just like to watch, like Chance the
gardener in Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There.
We like to be watched as well.”10
Well worth the hour of
watching and REALLY listening is Chris Hedges' critique of Sheldon Wolin's book
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy
and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.11 Citing the personality cult of the likes of Mussolini,
Stalin, and Hitler, Hedges quotes Wolin to explain the current difference:
“In inverted
totalitarianism, the leader is not the architect of the system but its
product.”
Recent USE presidential
elections marketed ‘brand’ Obama, which was promoted via social media. But
outside the political arena is where the cult of personality has found a new
home with an array of entertainment superstars. The citizenry is insipidly
swayed by these ephemeral personas (and a desire to be one of them) which serves
as distraction from real problems including economic sanctions and wars
perpetrated by the semi-invisible corporate-military-state in foreign lands —
not to mention economic sanctions at home, where the poor, which includes
Native Peoples, are most affected.
Hedges notes that inverted
totalitarianism is also fraught with contradictions, for example, CEOs getting
bonuses while social program funding is cut. Another such contradiction is
highlighted by Noam Chomsky in his recent article on the surveillance state:
“In brief, there must be
complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must
defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.”12
Big Brother likes to watch
through a one-way window . . . while the watched watch themselves.
Native artist and activist
John Trudell has the following words-lyrics in “Never Too Loudly” which is
included among several of his spoken-word-to-music pieces
here.
We know the predator
We see them feed on us
We are aware
To starve the best
Is our destiny.
It is each person's and
each community's choice to figure out what to do or not to do, so as to
minimize enforced total control and to maximize the well-being of Mother Earth
and humanity as a whole.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet on
Axis of Logic. In addition to his work as a writer, he is a small press
publisher and Turtle Islander. His new book is “On Behalf of Those Who Speak
Different Languages.” He also hosts an audio show "Between the Lines:
listening to literature online." You can contact him via
his literary website.
READ MORE POETRY
AND ESSAYS BY MANKH ON AXIS OF LOGIC
NOTES:
1. Totalitarianism
2. Full-spectrum dominance
3. “Everything
You Always Wanted to Know About Big Ag”
4. “10
Corporations Control Nearly Everything You Buy, 6 Media Corporations Control
Nearly Everything You Read or Watch”
5. “Hungry for land: small
farmers feed the world with less than a quarter of all farmland”
7. “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
(HBO): Net Neutrality”
8. “Participatory Fascism”
9. “The
Durability of Ukrainian Fascism”
10. “Participatory Totalitarianism”
11. “Chris Hedges on the
work of Sheldon Wolin”
12. “A Surveillance State
Beyond Imagination Is Being Created in One of the World's Freest Countries”
© Copyright 2014 by AxisofLogic.com
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