“The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.
This is true. The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, just as they have done the same for an international audience. We have long been subjected to this “information warfare,” whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced long ago by the CIA in Vietnam and by The New York Times, CBS, etc. on the American people then and over the years as the American warfare state waged endless wars, coups, false flag operations, and assassinations at home and abroad.
Another way of putting this is to say for all practical purposes when it comes to matters that bear on important foreign and domestic matters, the CIA and the corporate mainstream media cannot be distinguished.
For those who read and study history, it has long been known that the CIA has placed their operatives throughout every agency of the U.S. government, as explained by Fletcher Prouty in The Secret Team, The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World; that CIA officers Cord Myer and Frank Wisner operated secret programs to get some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom among intellectuals, journalists, and writers to be their voices for unfreedom and censorship, as explained by Frances Stonor Saunders in The Cultural Cold War and Joel Whitney in Finks, among others; that Cord Myer was especially focused on and successful in “courting the Compatible Left” since right wingers were already in the Agency’s pocket. All this is documented and not disputed. It is shocking only to those who don’t do their homework and see what is happening today outside a broad historical context.
With the rise of alternate media and a wide array of dissenting voices on the internet, the establishment felt threatened and went on the defensive. It therefore should come as no surprise that those same elite corporate media are now leading the charge for increased censorship and the denial of free speech to those they deem dangerous, whether that involves wars, rigged elections, foreign coups, COVID-19, vaccinations, or the lies of the corporate media themselves. Having already banned critics from writing in their pages and or talking on their screens, these media giants want to make the quieting of dissenting voices complete.
Just the other day The New York Times had this headline:
Robert Kennedy Jr. Barred From Instagram Over False Virus Claims.
Notice the lack of the word alleged before “false virus claims.” This is guilt by headline. It is a perfect piece of propaganda posing as reporting, since it accuses Kennedy, a brilliant and honorable man, of falsity and stupidity, thus justifying Instagram’s ban, and it is an inducement to further censorship of Mr. Kennedy by Facebook that owns Instagram. That ban should follow soon, as the Times’ reporter Jennifer Jett hopes, since she accusingly writes that RFK, Jr. “makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers” at Facebook. Jett made sure her report also went to msn.com and The Boston Globe.
This is one example of the censorship underway with much, much more to follow. What was once done under the cover of omission is now done openly and brazenly, cheered on by those who, in an act of bad faith, claim to be upholders of the First Amendment and the importance of free debate in a democracy. We are quickly slipping into an unreal totalitarian social order.
Which brings me to the recent work of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, both of whom have strongly and rightly decried this censorship. As I understand their arguments, they go like this.
First, the corporate media have today divided up the territory and speak only to their own audiences in echo chambers: liberal to liberals (read: the “allegedly” liberal Democratic Party), such as The New York Times, NBC, etc., and conservative to conservatives (read” the “allegedly” conservative Donald Trump), such as Fox News, Breitbart, etc. They have abandoned old school journalism that, despite its shortcomings, involved objectivity and the reporting of disparate facts and perspectives, but within limits. Since the digitization of news, their new business models are geared to these separate audiences since they are highly lucrative choices. It’s business driven since electronic media have replaced paper as advertising revenues have shifted and people’s ability to focus on complicated issues has diminished drastically. Old school journalism is suffering as a result and thus writers such as Greenwald and Taibbi and Chris Hedges (who interviewed Taibbi and concurs: part one here) have taken their work to the internet to escape such restrictive categories and the accompanying censorship.
Secondly, the great call for censorship is not something the Silicon Valley companies want because they want more people using their media since it means more money for them, but they are being pressured to do it by the traditional old school media, such as The New York Times, who now employ “tattletales and censors,” people who are power hungry jerks, to sniff out dissenting voices that they can recommend should be banned. Greenwald says:
They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous ‘disinformation.’
Thus, the old school print and television media are not on the same page as Facebook, Twitter, etc. but have opposing agendas.
In short, these shifts and the censorship are about money and power within the media world as the business has been transformed by the digital revolution.
I think this is a half-truth that conceals a larger issue. The censorship is not being driven by power hungry reporters at the Times or CNN or any media outlet. All these media and their employees are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled. These companies and their employees do what they are told, whether explicitly or implicitly, for they know it is in their financial interest to do so. If they do not play their part in this twisted and intricate propaganda game, they will suffer. They will be eliminated, as are pesky individuals who dare peel the onion to its core. For each media company is one part of a large interconnected intelligence apparatus – a system, a complex – whose purpose is power, wealth, and domination for the very few at the expense of the many. The CIA and media as parts of the same criminal conspiracy.
To argue that the Silicon valley companies do not want to censor but are being pressured by the legacy corporate media does not make sense. These companies are deeply connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, as are the NY Times, CNN, NBC, etc. They too are part of what was once called Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to control, use, and infiltrate the media. Only the most naïve would think that such a program does not exist today.
In Surveillance Valley, investigative reporter Yasha Levine documents how Silicon valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are tied to the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex in surveillance and censorship; how the Internet was created by the Pentagon; and even how these shadowy players are deeply involved in the so-called privacy movement that developed after Edward Snowden’s revelations. Like Valentine, and in very detailed ways, Levine shows how the military-industrial-intelligence-digital-media complex is part of the same criminal conspiracy as is the traditional media with their CIA overlords. It is one club.
Many people, however, might find this hard to believe because it bursts so many bubbles, including the one that claims that these tech companies are pressured into censorship by the likes of The New York Times, etc. The truth is the Internet was a military and intelligence tool from the very beginning and it is not the traditional corporate media that gives it its marching orders.
That being so, it is not the owners of the corporate media or their employees who are the ultimate controllers behind the current vast crackdown on dissent, but the intelligence agencies who control the mainstream media and the Silicon valley monopolies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. All these media companies are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled.
But for whom do these intelligence agencies work? Not for themselves.
They work for their overlords, the super wealthy people, the banks, financial institutions, and corporations that own the United States and always have. In a simple twist of fate, such super wealthy naturally own the media corporations that are essential to their control of the majority of the world’s wealth through the stories they tell. It is a symbiotic relationship. As FDR put it bluntly in 1933, this coterie of wealthy forces is the “financial element in the larger centers [that] has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” Their wealth and power has increased exponentially since then, and their connected tentacles have further spread to create what is an international deep state that involves such entities as the IMF, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, those who meet yearly at Davos, etc. They are the international overlords who are pushing hard to move the world toward a global dictatorship.
As is well known, or should be, the CIA was the creation of Wall St. and serves the interests of the wealthy owners. Peter Dale Scott, in “The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld,” says of Allen Dulles, the nefarious longest running Director of the CIA and Wall St. lawyer for Sullivan and Cromwell:
There seems to be little difference in Allen Dulles’s influence whether he was a Wall Street lawyer or a CIA director.
It was Dulles, long connected to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, international corporations, and a friend of Nazi agents and scientists, who was tasked with drawing up proposals for the CIA. He was ably assisted by five Wall St. bankers or investors, including the aforementioned Frank Wisner who later, as a CIA officer, said his “Mighty Wurlitzer” was “capable of playing any propaganda tune he desired.” This he did by recruiting intellectuals, writers, reporters, labor organizations, and the mainstream corporate media, etc. to propagate the CIA’s messages.
Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges are correct up to a point, but they stop short. Their critique of old school journalism à la Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing of Consent model, while true as far as it goes, fails to pin the tail on the real donkey. Like old school journalists who knew implicitly how far they could go, these guys know it too, as if there is an invisible electronic gate that keeps them from wandering into dangerous territory.
The censorship of Robert Kennedy, Jr. is an exemplary case. His banishment from Instagram and the ridicule the mainstream media have heaped upon him for years is not simply because he raises deeply informed questions about vaccines, Bill Gates, the pharmaceutical companies, etc. His critiques suggest something far more dangerous is afoot: the demise of democracy and the rise of a totalitarian order that involves total surveillance, control, eugenics, etc. by the wealthy led by their intelligence propagandists.
To call him a super spreader of hoaxes and a conspiracy theorist is aimed at not only silencing him on specific medical issues, but to silence his powerful and articulate voice on all issues. To give thoughtful consideration to his deeply informed scientific thinking concerning vaccines, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc., is to open a can of worms that the powerful want shut tight.
This is because RFK, Jr. is also a severe critic of the enormous power of the CIA and its propaganda that goes back so many decades and was used to cover up the national security state’s assassinations of his father and uncle, JFK. It is why his wonderful recent book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, that contains not one word about vaccines, was shunned by mainstream book reviewers; for the picture he paints fiercely indicts the CIA in multiple ways while also indicting the mass media that have been its mouthpieces. These worms must be kept in the can, just as the power of the international overlords represented by the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum with its Great Reset must be. They must be dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theories not worthy of debate or exposure.
Robert Kennedy, Jr., by name and dedication to truth seeking, conjures up his father’s ghost, the last politician who, because of his vast support across racial and class divides, could have united the country and tamed the power of the CIA to control the narrative that has allowed for the plundering of the world and the country for the wealthy overlords.
So they killed him.
There is a reason Noam Chomsky is an exemplar for Hedges, Greenwald, and Taibbi. He controls the can opener for so many. He has set the parameters for what is considered acceptable to be considered a serious journalist or intellectual. The assassinations of the Kennedys, 9/11, or a questioning of the official Covid-19 story are not among them, and so they are eschewed.
To denounce censorship, as they have done, is admirable. But now Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges need go up to the forbidden gate with the sign that says – “This far and no further” – and jump over it. That’s where the true stories lie. That’s when they’ll see the worms squirm.
Forty-five years ago I coined my own interpretation of the acronym, CIA:
“Christian Investment Authority”. Don’t make explanations more difficult or obscure than they really need to be. The CIA is simply a taxpayer funded organization designed and enabled to protect and project the financial interests of the filthy rich; a MI-6 for Yank imperialists. Even if CIA was immediately terminated as a public entity, the same forces would infiltrate or erupt somewhere else, say the State Dept. or the Pentagon or the Federal Reserve. My bottom line is simplicity itself; I don’t want to pay for it….let the filthy wealthy pay for their own imperial penchants. And when identifiable, make certain that these people toe the line with regard to international and USA federal law.
Dave, I am with you in your description of the CIA. But not with your macroeconomics. So many on the left remain unaware of how federal funding operates, assuming, as they’ve been taught, that it operates like a household, which much raise money (via taxes, bond sales, etc.) in order to spend it. Thus the perennial question put to those who want the government to do something significant for the people: how will you pay for it? A question, of course, not asked before a criminal war is started or a huge cut is given to the rich. Let me respectfully suggest that you and other readers of this excellent, incisive blog search for “Angry Birds Stephanie Kelton” and enjoy having your economic thinking literally turned upside down. God, how liberating it is to understand the extraordinary agency we have, yet to be exercised, to build a better, more beautiful world.
Should be “tax cut” is given to the rich. The older I get, the more my proofreading sucks.
Translation from Bulgarian:
The non-cyclic, true democracy is a permanent, constant election process which has its point of commencement but is infinite in terms of time perspective. It enables people to vote at any time they wish with no limitation on the number of votes.
Open vote means the right of people, in case they wish, to step out of their anonymity as voters in the continuous election process of the non-cyclic democracy.
Vote of correction means an open vote of confirmation or rejection at any, desired by people time from the continuous election process with the non-cyclic democracy.
With the non-cyclic democracy, the number of mandates is changeable. It is defined by the sum from the number of anonymous cyclic votes, combined with the number of open and correction votes at any time from the continuous election process.
Threshold of trust of an elected via voting candidate in elective office means half of the number of people who have voted for them minus one vote.
With the non-cyclic democracy, the duration of the mandate of an elected via voting candidate is discontinued with the expiry of the allotted for the mandate time or with the reaching of the threshold of trust.
The list of candidates in elective office is bulk of information of free public access with data about each candidate in elective office. There, at any time from the election process, each voter and each public organization can add candidates or withdraw their trust from the proposed by them candidates in elective office.
The open-type voters have the right of a correction vote at any time from the continuous election process of the non-cyclic democracy.
The vote of correction is as follows:
1. Open vote against one’s own choice, leading the elected one closer to the threshold of trust at any time from the continuous election process.
2. Open vote in favour of another candidate from the list of names, leading the elected one closer to the threshold of trust at any time from the continuous election process of the non-cyclic democracy.
3. Open vote in favour of a chosen by other voters candidate, leading the elected one closer to the threshold of trust, distancing the newly-elected from the threshold of trust at any time from the continuous election process.
With the non-cyclic democracy, the current updated rating of a candidate in elective office for the purpose of their positioning towards the threshold of trust must be freely and publicly accessible in the list of candidates at any time from the continuous election process…
“But now Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges need go up to the forbidden gate with the sign that says – “This far and no further” – and jump over it. That’s where the true stories lie. That’s when they’ll see the worms squirm.”
Yes.
I have long appreciated Chomsky’s, Hedges’ and Taibbi’s writing, but it does seem that they do go right up to the sign that says – “No further” and stop there.
As if they’re doing exactly what Chomsky wrote in “Manufacturing Consent”:
““The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
I have long held reservations about Greenwald.
NSA whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, has written many in depth articles about him, Snowden and “checkbook journalism” over the years. She raises many compelling questions.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/08/checkbook-journalism-leaking-to-the-highest-bidders/
https://www.newsbud.com/?s=glenn+greenwald
Thank you Shocker…the dirty deeds just keep multiplying…, I cannot keep track of them. There are too many diversions from what is happening right where our feet stand. Presently there is an issue in Maine with the notorious Nestle’ / Poland Spring bottled water company being sold to a New York Private Equity Firm. Now we all know water is necessary. Not the municipal sludge that many people are forced to drink. Water/Food – Some billionaire socio-path is buying up thousands of acres of farm lands in America; Yes the same self-appointed medical guru. While most citizens are fear stricken and pre-occupied with injections…, dirtier deeds will happen and right where our feet stand.
Truly, Joseph, the dirty deeds are impossible to keep track of.
I did read that Gates is now the largest owner of farmland in the U.S. is extremely disturbing. How can this be allowed?
Again where are our intrepid reporters on this? More checkbook journalism, I guess.
Gates also funds many non profits/NGO’s so we won’t be seeing much dissent from the left at all.
Water is such an important issue, and I’m ashamed to say I know so little about what these conglomerates are getting away with. I just researched Nestle a bit; they are monsters. Deforestation, child labor, slavery . . ..
I did see where they are selling their north American water businesses to a private equity firm. It looks like Nestle itself, a Swiss company, is mostly owned by the same institutional investors, Vanguard, Capital et al that own virtually everything else.
The Glass Steagal act used to regulate commercial and investment banking which kept consolidation and monopolization in check. For years Congress had been watering down the regulations until Clinton signed it’s repeal in 1999.
The loss of Glass Steagal has been disastrous to our economy. The loss of those regulations clearly led to the 2007 financial crisis (depression) and housing bubble. And it has greatly contributed to the autocratic oligarchy nightmare we are now living in.
I would love to see Chomsky, Hedges and Taibbi dig into that whole issue with some investigative gusto.
Get the money out of politics and bring back Glass Steagal.
Peace.
Thanks Shocker for the response…where our feet stand…, yes too many problems, too many citizens alienated from each other and common problems become worse. Citizens distrust each other…, authorities loving this anti-social condition, makes work easy for the socio-paths! We can be concerned about, informed of problems 8,000 miles away, but it would be easier if citizens ‘cleaned up their backyards’ since this is more accessible. Developing a real community, camaraderie is the problem most of the time. The microcosm to the macrocosm.
Yes, divide and conquer is a huge part of it. The crime syndicate is extremely good at keeping us focused on our differences so we are unable to focus on what we have in common; on the issues that will benefit everyone. So we are unable to focus on their crimes.
Learning to trust people and forming real live communities is definitely part of the solutions.
Whatever one thinks of the “pandemic,” it’s hard not to see that it benefits those in control and the robber barons and further divides and isolates people.
I always try to apply Occam’s Razor and ask qui bono? Who benefits?
The “disease”, as Ed implies, goes much deeper than the obvious. I maintain that the origins are not represented by a few “evil” people, but by the ideology that has given birth to them. A significant indicator may be glimpsed in Dr Michael Hudson’s description of “Economics as the study of Exploitation”. You may be surprised that the study of “Economics” as a faculty is less than 100 years old.
The problem is so much deeper & more complex than an essay can reasonably outline.
4-5 books combined can sum up the problem and provide better understanding:
• National Security and Double Government by Michael J Glennon – Regarding the non-elected Bureaucracy that controls much governmental functions & public policy.
• A Republic No More by Jay Cost – Regarding how special interest legislation, financed/influenced by Big Money, is controlling public policy (via influence over those non-elected Bureaucrats from above, and Politicians).
• The New Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian – Regarding how the media, of both the “left” and “right”, with shared financial cross-ownership, Corporate Governance (Boards, etc.) and other close working relationships work like a cartel, creating & spewing entertainment guised as “news”. Often utilizing that entertainment to distract from the fact that special interest controls our supposed democracy.
• Giants – The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips – Regarding how the largest investment banks have become the largest shareholder of the largest “competing” corporations, in most every single industry. And how they similarly exist as the largest shareholders/investors of each other, like a true Cartel.
These are the firms that hold the money to acquire & hold the massive shares which allow them the votes & massive control over Corporate Governance, driving those special interests (via lobby spending, campaign contributions, etc.) that influence Bureaucrats & Politicians, thus effectively controlling the U.S. economy, giving them leverage over most every single aspect of the lives of most everyone, in numerous countries.
Big Everything, created by these numerous factors above, is like a gigantic, monstrous Hydra.
Each head of that monstrous Hydra can be represented by different segments of society, from Big Tech to Big Media to Big Med to Big Pharma to Big Oil to Big Energy to Big Auto to Big Finance to Big Banks to Big AgriChem to Big Food to Big Politics to Big Government, etc.
Merely attacking one segment is like merely attacking one head of that monstrous Hydra.
There are numerous other heads to continue supporting that monstrous Hydra, as that severed head is allowed to regenerate.
Worse, due to its monstrous size, omnipotence, and omnipresence, the masses are not only unable to attack all the heads of that Hydra, but forced to support the other heads (for employment, for investments, for food, for energy, for healthcare, and so on, and so on, and so on……….
The masses are therefore actively supporting & strengthening the same monstrous Hydra that is enslaving & devouring them.
Someone just posted this link on Caitlin Johnstone’s blog. Thought that Ed and his readers would like to listen to it, if they haven’t already. Being a reclusive codger, I don’t know who the musician is, so if someone does know, please clue me in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwlhh-Y5Vto&feature=emb_logo
Worse than I knew…, and I’m reminded of what I recently heard a elderly woman say; “We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom”.
A very valued old friend of mine once cautioned me, “A true artist never explains”!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-gFXbIl2QIzm0lWE5Ekv-w
This is Ariel AZ Alexander, apparently
Thank you, Lloyd. Now I can check him out.
…If one is intellectually honest, then one will not have difficulty in connecting the following dots: Operation Paperclip and Operation Mockingbird…
A friend just shared the link to an article Kennedy published just a week ago that somehow I had missed reading, as I usually visit his site regularly. Its called: “Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill.” The article provides a wealth of examples of the type of information and analysis you speak of Ed – of all the publicly available information studiously ignored by MSM that must be shut down, ridiculed, denied, banned, ‘cancelled,’ called a “conspiracy theory,” and if necessary assassinated into silence.
The difference between speaking the “full truth” as we see it, and instead speaking only “partial truths” by eliminating all the rough edges that might offend the powerful and make us a target of their repression is hardly nuanced – its the difference between night and day, between light and darkness. Your willingness to speak the full truth Ed sets you apart from the many who cannot bring such courage to bear, instead employing any number of rationalizations and denial in order to remain safely protected from MSM allegations of heresy.
I attended an RFK webinar several nights ago and got caught up on his takedown of Gates & Wifey just this morning. The piece is full of links and complements James Corbett’s 4-part “Who is Bill Gates” that was up on Youtube for quite some time, but I believe he’s been ‘disappeared’ as of late too. He’s on Rokfin and Bitchute, and several others, having had the foresight to get moving.
He addressed what was coming last summer. I too recognized the signs, I was permanently banned from Facebook 4 months ago for anti-Nazi posts; the excuse being using actual photographs of WW II Nazis to accompany my antithetical to Nazism writings. yes indeedy, the circle (noose) is closing fast.
Thanks for this piece, I have been enjoying your work and shared it on FB back in the “day.”
Further CIA foundational material from Gabriel Rockhill:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-u-s-did-not-defeat-fascism-in-wwii-it-discretely-internationalized-it/
What are we to do ? What am I to do ? There was always that knowing something is not ‘right’ …, from almost day one. It’s a good thing I had a textbook, dysfunctional family ! Anyone else have a textbook, dysfunctional family ? I assumed it is the norm, not the exception!
Our pre-pandemic way of life was a highway to hell, was it not? There we were in our gerbil wheel jobs, spinning them frantically to stay in our cages and be fed, knowing all the while that these gerbil wheels, seemingly going nowhere, were actually driving the global economy with ever increasing speed toward the death of the human spirit and planetary ecocide. Surely we knew then what we know now: that there HAD to be a great reset if there was to be a future for ourselves and for other living things. Period. Pandemic or no pandemic. Now as for the terms of that reset, who is to determine and apply them, THOSE crucial questions remain open as long as there is fight in us. Thus we must strive against the MSM and their overlords to make these questions the focus of intense, ongoing public debate. Meaningful discussion begins, however, not with the intrinsic evil of a great reset but rather with its existential necessity. That said, I whole-heartedly agree with virtually everything Ed says in this BS-less piece.
How are we to understand and formulate a democratic response to a great reset if investigation and revelation of elites and institutional connections is hidden, which would seem to be the next step beyond censoring journalism? Is it possible that some form of technology will erode the human capacity for resistance, dissent or even deep inquiry?
All good questions, Jim, and vexing ones. Let us hope that the human spirit, as it always has, will find a way to survive, perhaps even to thrive, under whatever great reset awaits us. Here’s a perceptive piece that says much better what I was trying to say about the necessity of some sort of reset being obvious, long before the pandemic reared its head.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/15/can-we-exit-this-road-to-ruin/
Poverty of ? ? ? ? ?
Operation-9-1-1 bequeathed to federal government extra-constitutional powers and tyranny; Operation-COVID-9-1-1 expanded this to 50 shades of governors and public health agencies across the land.
Chomsky may be able to approach the gates of justice; he can’t bring himself to enter — and never could –and that door is open for him, should he may. . . someday.
Ditto another of my erstwhile favorites, Herbert Marcuse, and, alas, Barrington Moore, Jr.
Moore, the best of the three-as-scholars, beyond question.
My thesis is that these giants, deemed the great USA Intellectuals from mid-20-th century or so and a generation or two beyond – whether actual spooks or useful idiots for the predators that roam the earth.
The predators’ number one objective as always: rule the world, their moral turpitude notwithstanding, and the agents they employ, of which the posted essay here is about, them [among other things].
They, along with great and influential, at least somewhat great and somewhat intellectual: all took a wrong turn, post Karl Marx: they either misunderstood Poverty of Philosophy [or as I translate it: Poverty of Economic-Philosophy].
They ignored it or didn’t understand and/or reified it, whether on purpose and malice, or ignorance and false consciousness.
Put another way: as a western civilization, we have not gotten beyond Marx simply because we have yet to understand his theoretical framework.
In other words: what happened is a reification of the grand theories, and consequences are: mass confusion, ignorance, and ongoing [not new] suppression of actual, concrete Marxian ideas.
The ignorance and mass confusion, we have denied those consequence; we can no longer sit back and deny the consequences of those consequences – including as a beginning of a coming to terms with this.
A critical examination of the above great western 20-th century intellectuals, who helped build the prison, this insane asylum, of mass, social Stockholm Syndrome poisoning: a Nurse Ratched World of which we in the West try to survive in.
Recently an actual communist, an expert on neo-realism in film, albeit not trained in social and economic theory, wrote about Foucault, just a few paragraphs on a public board.
The film expert’s thesis was how Foucault helped destroy the European Communist project, and, she noted how the CIA had deemed him a useful idiot, apparently around the time Bush the elder was in charge during the nominal Reagan presidency.
It was a fascinating short read.
Taking the liberty to fill in the blanks and add some meat to that bone. . . . Perversion of Marx begin with Marxism, –post-Marx–of which French “intellectuals” of last century — are kings doing this.
They were not alone.
Marxism, not Marx, imputes base and superstructure as Base = economy; superstructure = culture/ideology, etc.
The correct dualism as I believe Marx understood is Base = Nature; Superstructure = Economy/Culture/Civilization etc.
In other words: modern civilization composed of two foundations: The life of animals and plants and so on and so forth, in nature, the natural world — Mother Nature, if you will.
And: civilization, and all that this implies, including, obviously, the entirety of economic relations, itself part of social relations, itself a manifold element of civilization – Fatherland, if you will.
This includes what sociologists define as the major institutions: Family, Religion, Polity, Economy, and some would add Leisure.
The perversion of Marx is ubiquitous among the above and their “intellectual” progeny.
The below could have been written by any of them, as they all claim this, viz. base and superstructure.
This one, written in 2004 by Mark Olssen, University of Surrey, United Kingdom, as representative as any.
It’s titled: “Foucault and Marxism: rewriting the theory of historical materialism.”
“In the Marxist conception of historical materialism, discourse is represented as part of the superstructure which is split from material practice (the economic base) and subordinated to it. In the same way, the mental operations of consciousness are represented as derivative from the material base of society. The most famous expression of Marx’s conception is from the Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.”
The problem is obvious: they take one of the foundations of life–nature– on earth: and assume this–economy– represent both of them.
And from there, impute the civilizational foundation as all there ever was, in the history of man.
Olssen, quoting Marx: “The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society – the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression for the same thing – with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes a period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. . . .”
Imputing one foundation – civilization – this the original sin of these post-Marx intellectuals, and where has this brought us? Nowhere, in plain English — save a quagmire of intellectual, psychological and social mass confusion.
The late Egyptian economist Samir Amin understood this error, pointing out in the 1970s what had changed, with the European project and the rise of capitalism.
The difference being that earlier, the Political Institution was dominant; this changed to: Economic Institution being dominant, Amin wrote.
What changed?
A transformation to this: “. . .of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society – the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures”
Prior, according to Amin, it was “the political institution of society – the real foundation, on which rise legal and. . . .”
Monarchical Absolutism in Europe, most obvious example.
And prior to the polity, which was overtaken by economy, but prior to polity, Religion was “the real foundation” and prior to that, Family, “the real foundation”, or tribes and the like.
Marx understood these historical processes in the history of man: the others may have been actually aware of them, but like flying saucers, the post-Marx intellectuals took the liberty to not see how we got to where we are.
They all suffered fragmented consciousness, and we, the consequences of their combined intellectual Failure, we are sitting here and now, with no oars in the water.
Marx provided a roadmap.
The “disciples” pretended for more than a century they were following it: they did not even know how to read a map, as it were, much less theorize.
By late 19th century and beginning of proliferation of electricity, man in the West become more and more sundered from Nature.
Did this sundering collapse man’s conception and heretofore inherent understanding of Base, as Nature?
Man’s indissoluble link to foundation: Nature — from which human beings have been able to eat, drink, procreate and live – and also, destroy, pillage, terrorize and create, for example, the scourge of modern psychology and economics.
Thus Marxism and Marxists took the liberty to be incoherent and imputed Base as Economy — which is part of Superstructure.
Thus a false epistemology took root, and destroyed the Marx in Marxism, as it were.
Freud is the best and worst result of this failure and neo-epistemology, viz. Base and Superstructure.
Freud no longer conceived of man and his future as part of nature!
His progeny brought all the psy-ops, and worse, all the mass manipulation and hysteria and so on and so forth.
The intellectual foundation of Freud and his ilk: at root a perversion of reality. . . because it was deemed “progress” to sunder man from Nature!
Some French intellectuals carried it a step farther, pretending they were writing about Marx, when they were engaged in PostModern word games.
PostModernism is part and parcel a consequence of perversion of Marx. . . and has been around since the late 19-th century.
That is, fraudulently imputing something to Base which was not actually the Base, that is, Nature.
The Base = Economy and Civilization and Superstructure = Civilization! — is how the Marxists wrote the new equation. This majestic tautology and we have been running in circles ever since. . . .
This is the great error of Marxism, and demonstrate its intellectual bankruptcy.
I remember sitting in a graduate sociology class in early 1990s; the professor loved Althusser.
I got up and said Althusser is a fraud and did not understand his own fragmented consciousness on Base and Superstructure.
The professor and the other grad. student of course thought I was crazy.
C’est la vie.
The expert on neo-realism in film postulated that Gates is a disciple of Foucault.
I personally don’t think Bill Gates understood Althusser or Foucault or any of these intellectual charlatans.
Had he, Gates would have had to question the origins of Foucault’s dead end.
No thinking man can pretend that a dead end is a path to anything.
Post Modernism would more aptly be labeled Neo Modernism, or Faux Modernism?
Delanty: We live in the age of Modernism because . . . .
Autonomy at the individual level and its shadow, as it were, fragmentation — more precisely, social fragmentation that must be a consequence of individual autonomy/agency, an autonomy by definition unconstrained and all that that implies — and ongoing disintegration of values, universal or otherwise. . . .
Gerard Delanty, Social Theory in a Changing World, was published in 1999.
Delanty writes: [[“What is modernity? My central argument is that modernity, in the broadest sense of the term, can be seen as a tension between autonomy and fragmentation — and since this conflict is not over, we are still living in the age of modernity. On the one side, modernity as a cultural project refers to autonomy of the Subject, the self-assertion of the self . . . and the progressive expansion of the discourses of creativity. . . On the other side, modernity entail the experience of fragmentation, the sense that modernity as a social project destroys its own cultural foundations. . . There is the suggestion that the social may be at an end, destroyed by the endless fragmentations. If anything characterizes recent social theory it is the question of the possibilities for the autonomy of the subject under the conditions of the fragmentation of the social under the increasing loss of unity in modern society….”]]
The lack of any reference to man as part of nature . . . .Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization claims neo Freudians removed Freud’s propensity in his theory related to human instincts and therefore its “revolutionary” core. This is a false premise, and leads to Marcuse’s own reification of how man connects with nature. It’s not by magic. Marcuse says over and over again this link has been taken away. And thus he condemns man to forever trying to regain his connection to nature. It’s beautiful sophistry. Marcuse says only by removing capitalist exploitation can man regain this connection, to nature. As if we are permanently sundered from nature. The tautology is wonderfully clever reification, sophistry at its best. And Freud’s belief in “science saves,” completes the forever treadmill.
19th century theorists [Durkheim, Weber, Toennies, even Marx] were what I would classically refer to as social conservatives — they understood the phenomenon of the modernity. Durkheim was always trying to find where that unity would be — and of course he never found it — “God is Dead”. . . . Maybe these men were also motivated to research this as they saw where it lead — and were literally scared shitless! They knew Capitalism was anti-thesis of a social system, to boot. Thus they were doubly scared shitless.
Fast Forward to Foucault — it is clearer to see him as charlatan, and ditto his “mentor” Sartre, etc.
These newbies just gave up, threw in the towel, and wandered aimlessly, while pretending . . . .That: they were contributing to knowledge. They were throwing new shit on the old shit they had already created, and calling it knowledge.
They created an intellectual framework to enslave us, while they got to sit at café’ tables and occupy seats at University, spouting their moral turpitude. And failing to advance knowledge, precisely because they had all perverted Marx.
They never came to terms with Marx, and for them it was financially and socially expedient not to. . . and they led wonderfully active social lives, were feted as great intellectuals, blah blah blah.
The CIA seem to have recognized this, including in Foucault — which, in a way, is wonderful black humor.
But it’s not funny.
What did Marcuse accomplish with his advocacy of violent demonstrations? Or at least, his being at odds with the MLK philosophy.
The MLK project rooted in the Gandhian project, rooted in non violence and . . . a revolutionary consciousness – that understood reality for what it is, good bad and ugly. Something, at bottom: for the people – and not for the “intellectuals” of their time.
Always with one foot on the foundation, of nature, as man as part of nature.
This was not Marcuse’s shtick – not at all.
Compare Marcuse’s shtick with the MLK and Gandhian traditions.
And of course, Thomas Merton: steeped in the traditions of the MLK and Gandhi and a man in touch with the earth and with his fellow man. . . .
His death, . . . another great loss.
Why was it that all the great, genuine leaders that could see clearly and knew who the enemy is, all murdered in the span of a few short years?
Where would we be as a society had they all continued to flourish and teach us and lead us? And birthed new leaders to carry the torch?
Instead, we got the dregs of Chomsky, Marcuse, and the anticommunist ideologue, Moore.
We got the French partisans noted above and of course Freud etc.
Camus, read his The First Man. He did not fall into this anti-intellectual “intellectualism”.
Which in a way is amazing.
Dostoevsky, born before the above intellectual clowns, is worth reading now, more than ever.
His trilogy: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Possessed, one antidote to the chains of fragmentation and misery and enslavement in the Modern World.
PS
Below epigraph to The Possessed [also translated as Demons; and Devils]:
++++++++
“Can’t be helped, the track is covered.
Hopeless! We have lost our way.
Demons must have taken over.
Whirling, twisting us astray.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Look at them! They’re everywhere!
Hear the mournful tune they make!
What, a witch’s wedding fare?
Or a goblin’s gloomy wake?”
-(from “Demons” –Alexander Pushkin)
“And there was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them.
And he suffered them.
Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and then the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake and were chocked.
When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country.
Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind: and they were afraid”. (Luke 8:32-37)
-Luke (8: 32-37)
PPS
Bobby Jr. knows who the enemy is and he is a principled man.
Though it got little publicity at the time, statement his family and King family published — the names of signatories is interesting —. . . calling for Congress to investigate the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm.
Bullets 6 and 7 and 8, this from Jan. 2019
6. The official investigation into the JFK assassination immediately fell under the control of U.S. security agencies, ensuring a cover-up. The Warren Commission was dominated by former CIA director Allen Dulles and other officials with strong ties to the CIA and FBI.
7. The corporate media, with its own myriad connections to the national security establishment, aided the cover-up with its rush to embrace the Warren Report and to scorn any journalists or researchers who raised questions about the official story.
8. Despite the massive cover-up of the JFK assassination, polls have consistently shown that a majority of the American people believes Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy — leading to the deep erosion of confidence in the U.S. government and media. . . .
Here’s that document:
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKstatement.htm
It is important, as bad as things are, to recognize that although the predators that roam and rule the earth are bonded and bounded by their class structure; they are not a monolith. Keep an eye on all the signs that indicate when they act in unison and importantly: when they don’t. The divisions and hysteria mass-produced, by them, creating it: are also an indicator, these divisions, within the actual ruling class, the western ruling class, that is. And keep in mind the ratcheted up suppression of the common man in the western world is an indication of their weakness; not their strength. And thus operationalization of their division within that ruling class.
-30-
Brave, brilliant and timely!! Thanks for your ongoing moxie…