I grew up taking people at their word. Even as a child I listened carefully to adults and gave thought to their interests and motives- but especially their actions. In the course of time one can see- at least I do- that those who hold any kind of power know they must be willing to do or say anything if they are to maintain and expand it. There are numerous manifestations of this phenomenon.
I am dismissive – to be charitable – of the climate, hygiene, gender and other legions of hysterics who, with open or indirect (undisclosed) foundation/ NGO support, “flood the zone” preaching moral crusades as “scientific truth”. The dean of Anglo-American power policy stated the strategic doctrine for which almost without exception these campaigns – from anti-communism to anti-climate, to anti-covid, anti-woman and ultimately anti-human- have been launched:
We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. 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 daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such 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.
— George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning, US State Department, 1948
These useful idiots, being charitable again, enjoy the fetishes of idealistic slogans invented in the marketing departments of the corporate state.
Unlike some who are genuinely critical of the two centuries of unrestrained plunder, pillage and pollution brought by industrialisation (or Western colonial/ imperial rule), these storm troopers and crusaders consistently blame the 92% of the robbed population for the spoilage of the 6.3%. (Whereby Kennan is including the owners and their immediate household servants, overstating the actual percentage of beneficiaries.) Nor did Kennan rule out increases in that ratio above 50%. The solutions offered, even demanded, amount to sharing some of that loot on the condition that the raw numbers and the share of consumption comprising the 92% be reduced to a level that will render the present ratio conscionable for the courtiers and household servants (Malcolm X called them “house negroes”.) upon whom that 6% (actually less than 1%) rely for protection.
There is a phenomenon, hardly new, that persists in politics, which I would call for want of a better term “rhetorical burglary”. Years ago there were debates- some were even recorded on film/ video- where for example a group of black students discussed their living conditions while a minority of white students in the group insisted on a balanced debate or an account of their feelings and conditions. Somewhat less frequently there were such debates between women and men in women’s circles.
The fact that these whites or men were in the minority within these groups caused a cognitive conflict between the debate among the majority (a social minority) and the minority (members of a social majority). So some whites became “dissidents” in black groups and men became “dissidents” in women’s groups. This constructive reversal of the role of Establishment and dissident created a moral dilemma- at least for the liberal-minded. How could an oppressed minority maintain its integrity when it also repressed a minority among its number?
One attempt to resolve this far from original problem was to assert the majority right to establish its identity, sometimes called consciousness. A black students group had constituted itself foremost as a group of blacks who happened to be students. The participation of whites who happened to be students too was of right subordinated to the essential interest and criterion of being black. Hence whatever these white students might say as students was peripheral when the issues focused on being black—which they were not. Moreover the status of being white or male in a group formed for blacks or women (the main groups involved in this ancient history) did not constitute dissidence but interference or even infiltration by the Establishment in what was then per se dissident organisation.
One reply to this claim was that a white or male was not an Establishment agent simply by virtue of biology. While this was clearly true, unlike in Georg Lukac’s “standpoint of the proletariat” theory, until the 21st century “black” or “female” were not considered pure states of consciousness. However “black” the white UCLA student might feel in a BPP meeting, when he was faced with an LAPD officer he remained white while his brethren remained black. As Mao was fond of saying, truth flows from facts.
Anglo-American liberalism, even its left-wing version, is founded on the concepts of possessive individualism like that of such village philosophers as Locke and monarchist apologists like Hobbes. People were chattel like cows or bushels of grain. There was the owner class that had rights in property and this was a tiny minority for whom Anglo-American political theory was composed. The collectivism of Mill or Bentham did not abolish this distinction. It only added a morality of scale, an adaptation from slave-driven plantations to worker-driven factories. Class formation was reserved to the owners who maintain a system of indoctrination venues for this purpose (also known as schools and universities etc.)
Hence dissidence within that class had its established routines. When the workingmen’s movement began to reach critical organizational mass it also attracted defectors and Establishment attention. Contemporary labour parties, dominated by lawyers and other middle-class leadership did not appear overnight. They are the result of processes that were controversial and strife-ridden in the 19th century just like conflicts within black and women’s groups in the late 20th century. The liberal approach that prevailed in the labour movement – except in revolutionary Russia and China – was to suppress opposition and class conflict by individualizing all disputes. This took two forms: career betterment/ uplifting and litigation. These options were the “dissident” program promoted by liberal whites and men. The dissidence comprised opposing class formations and collective consciousness by shaping every issue as one resolved at the level of the subjective “owner”, the possessive individual who instead of attaining owner status would be liberated by consumption. If blacks and women could aspire to consume like white men then they would be free (and the Establishment even more profitable).
This campaign succeeded with the labour movement until it was destroyed. It has decimated attempts to end the Afro-American gulag magnified by the Bush-Clinton-Obama reign (the bizarre criminal justice scheme introduced under Biden not withstanding). The campaign continued to destroy the women’s movement, turning the demands for equal pay and support for families into the perverse claim that children can be borne by males and 1950s gender stereotypes constitute genetically defined qualities to be chemically imposed by hormones, surgery and paedophilia. It has laid waste to the independent development of formerly “non-self governing peoples” (the UN euphemism for conquered imperial subjects) by first bankrupting them with the phony oil crisis of the 1970s and now robbing every bit of meat and vegetable matter to enforce zero carbon, for the benefit of that Establishment.
These are the facts. Not even the intergovernmental organisations created to perpetrate these crimes deny them — if one reads past the slogans and jargon.
All the foregoing has been promoted as “dissidence”. It has rendered that term suspicious if not meaningless because it is used completely out of context. The ruling oligarchy, along with their court and retainers, can be considered “dissenters” if a fictive majority is erected from whom they require the protection of liberal freedoms. A slave overseer can be viewed as a dissident with respect to the slaves whose labour he compels. They are not his slaves. The field is not his either. In the woke view of the world, he need only imagine that he is a slave and voilà, he is one. He can imagine he is a woman or has a doctorate in climate justice and he knows the virtue of masking and untested gene therapy injections for all those he now “counsels” in the field. Yes, he is also a dissident, too. He cannot share the view of the labourers beneath him that his consciousness is sufficient to make their world just and good. He has to dissent to their demands for firewood at night and more than hominy grits to eat. Like his forefathers his dissent can be enforced with the stocks, branding or even burning.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his critique of the regime that murdered him that it was impossible to defeat stupidity with rational argument and facts. Such an approach can only trigger or enhance the stupid person’s aggression. It is no accident therefore that the most vociferous “poster girls” and boys for these crusades exhibit rabid disregard for arguments based on facts (even about those the interpretation of which might be legitimately disputed). For example, Kary Mullis was deemed unqualified to pronounce on the limits and purposes for which his invention was conceived. The necessity of CO2 for photosynthesis and plant life and hence also animal life – and humans are animals, too – (while corporate deforestation continues e.g. for wind and solar farms) is utterly irrelevant for the members of the Zero Carbon cult.
The authors of these cult tracts are never obliged to defend their absurdities in public because these are the slogans of power whose banners they carry into battle against heretics and infidels. This power, which can and does suppress almost all public challenge to corporate state doctrine and dogma, invades alternative media with the same aggressive assurance: only real dissidents must defend themselves. The appearance of these agents of power in alternative media is intended to spray them with the scent of dissidence while they excrete the Establishment’s propaganda.
Rigorous debate requires disclosure of the power one brings to the encounter. Thirty years ago journalistic agents for corporate state interests were at least subject to critical suspicion. Today the thinnest foundation or NGO condom suffices to prevent scepticism. The illusion of scientific virility is preferred to intellectual decency. (Indeed the Church had good reason to punish even with death anyone found in possession of a bible without ecclesiastical license—look at the digital bible known as the Web if in doubt.) The pernicious sermons spread by these modern mendicants corrupt the serious debate by reducing it to dogmatic disputation, with inquisitorial etiquette masking as serious inquiry. It is either cynical or stupid- or both.
The protection of secrecy jurisdictions1should not be permitted. Propaganda also includes “idea laundering”, presenting ideas through an agent which would be treated very differently, i.e. with scepticism or even suspicion, were they presented by the principal.
That is also why Kennan’s words were not spoken to the general public in 1948 and why the agents of the class he represented do not speak those words today. They are not obsolete. They just remain too honest.
ENDNOTE
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
