Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PR industry (which stands for Public Relations--or PRopaganda) discovered in their days of working for the tobacco industry, more than half a century ago, that you don't have to convince the public a lie is true. All you have to do is "manufacture doubt." If people aren't sure whether cigarettes cause cancer or not ("I saw this article that said a top scientists says it isn't true..."), or whether climate change is real or not, or who's lying about Ukraine, they do nothing. And that's all the toxic industries need, to go merrily on their way of making money from death. What's happened in the US this century is that the "culture wars", a real thing that's been roiling around since the Sixties, have been heavily amplified until we have a hot angry division between two camps. It's said that this is result of the media finding a niche where each outlet feeds its audience what it wants to hear, including emotional triggers, because this is what gets clicks and clicks are what brings the money in. No doubt true, but it's also awfully convenient for the ruling class, at a time of inequality so stark that in the past it brought on the pitchforks and guillotines. There is great anger but people are training their guns on each other instead of the ruling class. It's hard for me to believe the ruling class just got lucky; I think they worked to amplify this division. They've got all the psychosocial experts they need, and free access to media outlets of every sort from the New York Times to Qanon.
Yes, and what do you think Caitlin is saying when she writes "We can fight this by working to *exacerbate public distrust* in the institutions that manufacture our consent"?
I think perhaps you misunderstand. All a powerful industry has to do to avoid government taking actions on the people's behalf is render the situation unclear, so that people who aren't sure whether tobacco really causes cancer, or secondhand smoke or pesticides are really harmful, or climate change is real or caused by humans, will do nothing. The PR company doesn't have to persuade the public that the threat is false--just make it unclear. Increasing distrust of corporate media is a necessary step toward liberation but it doesn't help people figure out what to do, or unite them--without unity we can't accomplish much which is why, I think, the PTB have invaded "fringe" media to ensure it's neatly divided into two warring camps.
Unity is a religious construct and a liberal shibboleth. It is a prayer for the total subordination of all mankind to an imagined or more likely projected subjectivity that, like all such things, is puppeteered by a relatively small number of humans. (What would Jesus do? As lawyers say, it depends.) Unity as a norm serves these subjectivities and their particular interests more than it serves humans as a species or as living specimens. Only under Unity in subordination can such hostile, fragile subjectivities as joint stock corporations persist and govern action, i.e. exercise "power". In calling for unity, you're not trying to eliminate the conditions that cause the problem, but merely attempting to capture and discipline the problem under color of reform or redemption to an arbitrary standard, as if they were moral agent-subjects. If that tack had real effects that served the subjective interests of participants, it would exhibit them far more reliably than it does.
This is in contrast to other, intersubjective phenomena such as alignment, consensus, and concurrence, which require no grand drama or self-alienation and yet produce powerful effects. Who's trying to impose grand purity dramas on the Rage Against the War? I'm not currently standing in Washington listening to speeches, but so far it doesn't appear to be the Mises Caucus or the People's Party, rather, it is the legacy owners and inheritors of the monopoly on moral property who collect moral rents from their expropriation of moral capital and stand to lose their moral income streams in case they are deposed. Despite the possibility that they too are seeking to capture the machine to prove they can drive it in better style, I've come to a position of critical support for the event.
Since this myth of unified action is unachievable, since mythical ideals tend to unify people in acceptance of permanently unfavorable conditions, since network effects are exponential, and since general strikes are far more illegal than demonstrations, I agreewith Caitlin that it is more important and effective to undermine the conditions under which people could be unified against their own autonomous (but common) interests, than to try to run exhausted competitive challenges on inherently disadvantageous terrain.
Nice to run into someone who believes as strongly as I do that ‘unity’ is never what we aspire to: unity of purpose perhaps, but an acceptance that there will always be disagreement and differences and dislikes within any healthy movement or community or association. I first noticed that the call for ‘unity’ did not make sense back in my days as a young Muslim more than 20 years ago. Wow! Feeling my years, writing that!
I think there’s dogma we can stomach and dogma we oppose. If we teach children from early on that their professed religion is a dogma, that anti-communism is a dogma, that xenophobia can be a dogma, maybe we pay more attention to what we say we actually believe, and opt for reticence over emotional acceptance. Peer pressure may be the most insidious, effective means of getting people to believe emotionally, without reflection or thought.
Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PR industry (which stands for Public Relations--or PRopaganda) discovered in their days of working for the tobacco industry, more than half a century ago, that you don't have to convince the public a lie is true. All you have to do is "manufacture doubt." If people aren't sure whether cigarettes cause cancer or not ("I saw this article that said a top scientists says it isn't true..."), or whether climate change is real or not, or who's lying about Ukraine, they do nothing. And that's all the toxic industries need, to go merrily on their way of making money from death. What's happened in the US this century is that the "culture wars", a real thing that's been roiling around since the Sixties, have been heavily amplified until we have a hot angry division between two camps. It's said that this is result of the media finding a niche where each outlet feeds its audience what it wants to hear, including emotional triggers, because this is what gets clicks and clicks are what brings the money in. No doubt true, but it's also awfully convenient for the ruling class, at a time of inequality so stark that in the past it brought on the pitchforks and guillotines. There is great anger but people are training their guns on each other instead of the ruling class. It's hard for me to believe the ruling class just got lucky; I think they worked to amplify this division. They've got all the psychosocial experts they need, and free access to media outlets of every sort from the New York Times to Qanon.
"All you have to do is 'manufacture doubt'"
Yes, and what do you think Caitlin is saying when she writes "We can fight this by working to *exacerbate public distrust* in the institutions that manufacture our consent"?
I think perhaps you misunderstand. All a powerful industry has to do to avoid government taking actions on the people's behalf is render the situation unclear, so that people who aren't sure whether tobacco really causes cancer, or secondhand smoke or pesticides are really harmful, or climate change is real or caused by humans, will do nothing. The PR company doesn't have to persuade the public that the threat is false--just make it unclear. Increasing distrust of corporate media is a necessary step toward liberation but it doesn't help people figure out what to do, or unite them--without unity we can't accomplish much which is why, I think, the PTB have invaded "fringe" media to ensure it's neatly divided into two warring camps.
Unity is a religious construct and a liberal shibboleth. It is a prayer for the total subordination of all mankind to an imagined or more likely projected subjectivity that, like all such things, is puppeteered by a relatively small number of humans. (What would Jesus do? As lawyers say, it depends.) Unity as a norm serves these subjectivities and their particular interests more than it serves humans as a species or as living specimens. Only under Unity in subordination can such hostile, fragile subjectivities as joint stock corporations persist and govern action, i.e. exercise "power". In calling for unity, you're not trying to eliminate the conditions that cause the problem, but merely attempting to capture and discipline the problem under color of reform or redemption to an arbitrary standard, as if they were moral agent-subjects. If that tack had real effects that served the subjective interests of participants, it would exhibit them far more reliably than it does.
This is in contrast to other, intersubjective phenomena such as alignment, consensus, and concurrence, which require no grand drama or self-alienation and yet produce powerful effects. Who's trying to impose grand purity dramas on the Rage Against the War? I'm not currently standing in Washington listening to speeches, but so far it doesn't appear to be the Mises Caucus or the People's Party, rather, it is the legacy owners and inheritors of the monopoly on moral property who collect moral rents from their expropriation of moral capital and stand to lose their moral income streams in case they are deposed. Despite the possibility that they too are seeking to capture the machine to prove they can drive it in better style, I've come to a position of critical support for the event.
Since this myth of unified action is unachievable, since mythical ideals tend to unify people in acceptance of permanently unfavorable conditions, since network effects are exponential, and since general strikes are far more illegal than demonstrations, I agreewith Caitlin that it is more important and effective to undermine the conditions under which people could be unified against their own autonomous (but common) interests, than to try to run exhausted competitive challenges on inherently disadvantageous terrain.
Nice to run into someone who believes as strongly as I do that ‘unity’ is never what we aspire to: unity of purpose perhaps, but an acceptance that there will always be disagreement and differences and dislikes within any healthy movement or community or association. I first noticed that the call for ‘unity’ did not make sense back in my days as a young Muslim more than 20 years ago. Wow! Feeling my years, writing that!
I think there’s dogma we can stomach and dogma we oppose. If we teach children from early on that their professed religion is a dogma, that anti-communism is a dogma, that xenophobia can be a dogma, maybe we pay more attention to what we say we actually believe, and opt for reticence over emotional acceptance. Peer pressure may be the most insidious, effective means of getting people to believe emotionally, without reflection or thought.
I couldn’t agree more.