Is This Peak Western Manufacturing of Consent?
I have been noticing the “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “China Bad” discourses invading many of the progressive online spaces that I frequent. I don’t watch mainstream news as it seems to frequent a parallel universe to the one that I find by doing some basic research, so it does get annoying when the elite and deep state propaganda seeps into some my “safe spaces”. Thankfully, most of my spaces have remained safe from annoying propagandist garbage.
In his book 1984 George Orwell created a dystopian future (the book was written in 1949) where a Ministry of Truth creates continual lies and rewrites history to program popular consent for whatever policies the leaders are currently pushing. The writing out of the role of the Soviet Union in beating 85% of the German armed forces in WW2 has been going on for many decades, but now it has been flipped to equating Stalin with Hitler. Quite an impressive reversing of historical reality! The fact that Taiwan only exists because of US intervention in the Chinese Civil War when Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT retreated to the island, which Chiang himself considered to be part of China! But those are inconvenient facts to the current US focus on trying to contain the China/Russia/Iran threat. Another forgotten history is of course the joint UK and US driven coup in 1953 to remove the secular democratic government of Iran that wanted to use the nation’s fossil fuel reserves for the benefit of Iranians. Or, of course the full support given to Iraq in its war with Iran which included the poisoned gassing of hundreds of thousands of Iranians; with the chemical ingredients for the gas provided by the West. Or the fact that for women Iran is a relative paradise compare to Saudi Arabia, so much for the Western interest in “human rights”. What about the human rights of the journalist murdered and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Turkey? Down the memory hole that went too, together with the state murder of the Iranian commander Soleimani, who had led the roll back of ISIS, while he was on a diplomatic mission.
Reality is whatever the Western population is told it is, and it takes considerable work to escape from the media programming and personal monitoring. Those public figures that do not conform are quickly disciplined and words lose their meaning as they are used to mean the opposite of what they previously meant. I feel as if we are living more and more in a 1984 world, with the safe spaces being slowly but surely marginalized through a media that consorts directly with the security services and utilizes so-called “fact checkers” which are more the commissar discipliners of unacceptable facts and opinions. A long time ago now it seems the internet was seen as a vehicle of democratization, but just like radio and television before, it has been corralled and increasingly tamed by the elites and their representatives. Google search has continued to deteriorate and I find myself more and more tuning to other search engines to escape the official narrative.
The sheer hutzpah of a nation that is based upon the unacknowledged genocide of the indigenous Amerindian population and racial slavery, and is responsible for at least a million Muslim deaths in illegal wars and torture carried out in “black sites”, in attacking China for unsubstantiated human rights abuses against its Uyghur population represents quite an impressive level of projection. I have noticed that the term genocide is now less used and is now replaced with vague and unsubstantiated human rights “concerns”. Hard to argue for genocide when the population referred to keeps increasing, helped by its previous exemption from the one and two child policies. What was not noted in Western media is that no Muslim state signed on to those accusations. Also, nothing about the possibility of famine in Afghanistan that could be dealt with if the US hadn’t stolen the US$8.5 billion of the nation’s foreign exchange reserves. The consternation of Western commentators that a Uyghur athlete held the Olympic torch is notable; every sign that the Uyghurs are not being subjugated has to be immediately attacked and debased. No mention of course about the Muslims and others dying in Syria due to brutal US sanctions, its theft of Syrian oil, and its support for Muslim extremists. Russia is deemed to be “aggressive” by asking for basic security guarantees from the West, and the requirement not to have the Ukraine used as a Western military launching base. If the US can define the whole Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence with the Monroe Doctrine still in full force why cannot Russia have a right to a safe “back yard”?
The intensification of the management of the acceptable truth and the ramping up of propaganda are a good gauge for the level of concern that the elites have with respect to an increasingly strong alliance of China and Russia, that together with Iran is starting to dominate much of the Eurasian land mass; aided by the failure and end of the Western occupation of Afghanistan. The lack of any support from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) for an anti-China coalition shows that those nations know that good relations with China are in their best interests. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) countries are also becoming much closer to China, in addition to Iran’s influence in Iraq and Syria. When added to the increasing orientation of African nations and recently Argentina toward China, the US is seeing its hegemony dissolving in front of its eyes.
The US and Western elites had thought that Russia would become a vassal that would supply raw materials and cheap labor, and that China would open up to Western exploitation. With this understanding, Western elites happily deindustrialized their economies and ramped up rentier capitalism at home with the understanding that they would make super profits from their ongoing takeover and control of over a fifth of the human population together with a huge chunk of the world’s natural resources. Instead, Russia regained its sovereignty and China played a canny game of playing along while maintaining its own sovereignty until it became strong enough to start to assert itself; while the US continued to deindustrialize and wasted vast resources on failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The money that should have been spent on rebuilding US economic and social strength was frittered away on foreign wars; many a medieval sovereign could have explained the problem with that. The sheer incompetence, careerism and corruption of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) elites involved is astounding. Every year for twenty years, twice the GDP of Afghanistan was spent on its occupation, with the population worse off at the end than at the start; the money went into the pockets of profiteering MIC contractors and corrupt officials as it did in Iraq. The Afghanis would have been happy to take a quarter of that money in return for an undying commitment to US interests. This mixture of incompetence, careerism and corruption has also been shown to have become widespread within the civilian branch of the US state during the COVID response; during which the rapacious brutality of the US economic system toward the average citizen has also been laid bare. With the Biden administration working hard to show itself as even worse than the Trump administration, the US people’s commitment to the state and other important social institutions has been significantly undermined.
The US ruling elite are in a double bind as they do not want to make the type of compromise with the general citizenry that was forced upon them during the Great Depression; Biden is no Roosevelt. The increase in domestic authoritarian measures and propaganda over the past decades is a measure of the loss of domestic hegemony, one paralleling the decline of international hegemony. If in the 1960s it could be said that the (white) population was fully committed to the “American Dream” with the rest of the world outside the communist enclave also buying into that dream; in the current period US elite-controlled institutions are seen with suspicion by much of the populace and the internal and external actions of the US may represent more of a nightmare than a dream. Just at the point when a strategic retreat and compromise negotiations would be in order, the hubris of an elite that has been winning domestically for 50 years and experienced the euphoria of the “unipolar moment” stands in the way. This was evident in the elite establishment full on attack on Trump’s efforts at a new détente with Russia, a very logical ploy to stall the deepening Russia-China alliance, and the idiotic repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal. With the Biden administration we have the spectacle of a flailing and failing sovereign shouting insults at, and making hollow threats to, the rising stars. “You think you can take me you punks?” would not be out of place in the ridiculous discourse that passes for current US diplomacy, one that the highly experienced and truly diplomatic representatives of Russia, China and Iran listen too as they measuredly increase the firmness of their own words – why pick a fight with a sovereign who seems to be in the middle of destroying itself? Time is on their side, and the US knows it.
Outside the UK and the other white settler colonies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand (although even the Kiwis are refusing to pick a fight with China) together with the South Korean and Japanese vassals, Europe is the last redoubt of the US-dominated West. Any movement away from US influence by European elites would be extremely destabilizing for US hegemony, hence the ramped up baiting of Russia to do something stupid enough to allow it to be condemned by the US and leave the European nations no alternative but falling in line with sanctions that are against their own interests (for example freezing in the winter without Russian gas exports). The same with respect to a China that many in Europe see more as a great growth market to sell their goods to than an enemy that needs to be contained. Unfortunately for the US, the repeated crying of “wolf” with respect to the Russians and the same limited set of slurs and fabrications against China may be creating the very disaffection that it wishes to contain. Such mismanagement of the nobles is a very dangerous path to go down, as many sovereigns have learnt throughout history. Given the sizeable US occupation forces in Germany, Italy and other parts of Europe, together with the deep ownership and social connections between the US and Europe, there will be no sudden rupture. Rather, a slow and gentle increase in the resistance of Europe to US demands. With a stagnant economy, and large structural social, economic and financial issues, Europe simply cannot cut itself off from Russian resources and the Chinese market; the damage would be far too great. In US$ terms, Europe had still not regained the 2008 peak of GDP and in many European nations average wages are still significantly below the level of that year. A future of still slow but hopefully steady growth would vanish if Europe disconnected itself from Russia and China. Europe is caught between the classic “rock and a hard place” with the steering of a difficult middle ground being its best course.
The current US reminds me very much of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s; desperately needing fundamental changes to undo the dead weight of an incompetent, careerist and corrupt elite but held back by the sheer inertia of that elite. Its main allies in Europe and the white settler colonies are experiencing much of the same slow growth, rentier financialization, and general malaise that besets the US – mirroring much of the weakness of the Warsaw Pact countries. It is faced with a much faster growing competitor in China, allied highly synergistically with two nations (Russia and Iran) that can provide much of the energy that it requires, and in the case of Russia raw materials, foodstuffs and military technology, with both nations situated in strategic locations. With Central Asia sown up, an India with a long relationship with Russia, ASEAN decidedly neutral, and China expanding its alternative development model through Africa and South America, the hegemonic reach of the US is shrinking.
The Soviet Union waited too long to change, and then was rent apart by the incompetence and self-dealing of its leaders; once things start to unravel the pace of change can rapidly speed up. The US is in desperate need of retrenchment and a new compromise between both its elite and the general citizenry and between itself and its own nobles and competitors. Instead, it seems to be set on squandering even more funds on its bloated military, intelligence and security sectors while ramping up threats and propaganda to both its nobles and its competitors. The only outcome of that path is for the US and its elites to reduce the level of the final bargain that they will be able to make with their citizenry and the international community. We passed the point of peak US Empire around the turn of the century and we may be nearing the peak of the US Empire manufacturing of consent as reality intrudes further and further into its discourses. The Soviet Union thankfully disappeared from the world stage peacefully, hopefully the US Empire can do the same.
In the meantime, continuing on nearly unnoticed apart from the odd UN conference, greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and the globe continues to warm. On current trends, the end of this decade may be the most dangerous period of great power competition and when climate change forces itself into the consciousness of all. The former will very much get in the way of the international cooperation and compromise required to deal with the latter.
P.S. For some alternatives to the propaganda:
- Herman & Chomsky’s book on manufacturing consent, still extremely relevant. Herman has a number of other books on the usage of propaganda by the US, including during the Kosovo crisis in the 1990s.
- Alexander Mercouris’ excellent coverage of diplomatic events
https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderMercourisReal
- The excellent Martin Jacques on all things China
https://www.youtube.com/c/MartinJacques
- A very good discussion on the US and Chinese economies
- Some news sites / news agglomeration sites
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com
https://www.moonofalabama.org
https://www.youtube.com/c/DanielDumbrill
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEXR8pRTkE2vFeJePNe9UcQ
- This is a good primer on Xinjiang and the reality of the Chinese government’s efforts there:
https://newcoldwar.org/book-review-uyghurs-to-put-an-end-to-fake-news/