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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Monday, March 28, 2005
"Protecting corporate power against democracy"
When Deb Chapman of the Progressive Blogger Union (http://www.pbu.blogspot.com) sent out this week’s topic, it was a familiar one for me: “Various ways to combat the use of propaganda by government and corporate media.” To follow is an excerpt from my first book, “Saving Private Power,” soon to be re-released as “There is No Good War: The Myths of World War II”:
“As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief...without moral purpose or human interest.”
-Archibald MacLeish, Assistant Secretary of State during WWII
The “Good War” had been won. Now what? Well, besides actively recruiting Nazis and bringing humanity to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, the winners did have a plan. An internal document, written in 1948 by George Kennan, head of the State Department planning staff in the early post-war period, highlights the philosophy behind the U.S. strategy:
“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction...We should cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
Thus the post-war era and the age of Cold War propaganda commenced...driven by corporate globalism and virulent anti-communism. The few years spent fighting fascism during WWII were essentially nothing more than a subtle diversion from a larger war to control resources and smash any ideology deemed incompatible with that control. When the dust had cleared, fascism had survived the saturation bombings, the genocide, and the atomic weapons to rise again in a new, more insidious form. The development of the highly unaccountable multinational corporation is one of the saddest legacies of WWII.
Accordingly, Australian scholar Alex Carey has noted the three developments of great political importance that characterize the twentieth century: “The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” Simply, democratic institutions can hinder the pursuit of capital, so it becomes necessary to create the false arguments discussed earlier. This helps explain how the Department of War was reborn as the Defense Department after WWII.
To pre-order “There is No Good War,” please click here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0975276336/qid=1111940481/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-0011028-9174455?v=glance&s=books
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Some interesting efforts to expose and challenge corporate power:
http://www.adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotsneaker
http://www.subvertise.org/
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(This post is presented in solidarity with the Progressive Blogger Union. For more information, please visit: http://www.pbu.blogspot.com.)
Tag: PBU13
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