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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:
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: 3. “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Big Ag” 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” 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”
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