totalitarianism - rob g on Diigo

Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control" | Naomi Wolf, AlterNet (08.10.08)

the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing "unruly individuals," and the management of a national emergency.

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Germany coalition to amend constitution allowing military to aid police in emergencies | Jurist (07.10.08)

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Fears Grow that Sanctions Could Derail Mediation in Zimbabwe | IPS (08.07.08)

U.S. and European efforts to achieve unanimity among the 15-member U.N. Security Council to adopt a sanctions resolution against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his top aides has run into opposition from African leaders who argue that it will only increase tensions there and in neighbouring countries.

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Zanu-PF 'behind opposition deaths' | Al Jazeera (19.06.08)

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused the ruling Zanu-PF party of killing four of its supporters in the capital Harare, as the country prepares for a presidential run-off election.

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Zimbabwe Government Blocks Aid for Six Million In Need | IPS (18.06.08)

Mugabe blocks foreign humanitarian aid because NGO's might influence how population votes. The gov't distributes the food itself.

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Mugabe Warns Of War If Defeated | Al Jazeera (13.06.08)

Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, has said that the country's war veterans are ready to fight to prevent the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from taking power.

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Zimbabwe Arrests Opposition Leaders | Al Jazeera (12.06.08)

Zimbabwean police have arrested the deputy leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Tsvangirai, the MDC's presidential candidate, was twice arrested as he campaigned for the second round run-off vote for the presidency. On both occasions he was released without charge.

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Zimbabwe MDC Official Arrested | Al Jazeera (12.06.08)

Biti had been wanted by the authorities after proclaiming on March 30 that the MDC had won both the presidential and parliamentary elections before an official announcement was made.

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A glimpse of Mugabe terror | BBC's own correspondent (14.06.08)

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Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled | AlterNet (19.05.08)

The new book "Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism" by Sheldon Wolin offers a controversial but ultimately convincing diagnosis of how the U.S. has succumbed to an unacknowledged totalitarian temptation.

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It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions
The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual. A demotion in the status and stature of the 'sovereign people' to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of 'popularizing' power to democracy as a brand name for a product marketable at home and marketable abroad. The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."
practice and psychology of advertising and the rule of "market forces" in many other contexts than markets, continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the penetration of mass media communication and propaganda into every household in the country, and the total co-optation of the universities. Among the commonplace fables of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge. Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation. Wolin reminds us that the image of Adolf Hitler flying to Nuremberg in 1934 that opens Leni Riefenstahl's classic film "Triumph of the Will" was repeated on May 1, 2003, with President George Bush's apparent landing of a Navy warplane on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to proclaim "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.
On inverted totalitarianism's "self-pacifying" university campuses compared with the usual intellectual turmoil surrounding independent centers of learning, Wolin writes, "Through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially so-called research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly integrated into the system. No books burned, no refugee Einsteins. For the first time in the history of American higher education top professors are made wealthy by the system, commanding salaries and perks that a budding CEO might envy."
The main social sectors promoting and reinforcing this modern Shangri-La are corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy, and the military-industrial complex, which is in charge of Superpower. The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. Its primary tool is privatization. Managed democracy aims at the "selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry" under cover of improving "efficiency" and cost-cutting.
Wolin argues, "The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributing elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled." This campaign has largely succeeded. "Democracy represented a challenge to the status quo, today it has become adjusted to the status quo."
One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust. In Wolin's words, "The point about disputes on such topics as the value of sexual abstinence, the role of religious charities in state-funded activities, the question of gay marriage, and the like, is that they are not framed to be resolved. Their political function is to divide the citizenry while obscuring class differences and diverting the voters' attention from the social and economic concerns of the general populace."
Another elite tactic of managed democracy is to bore the electorate to such an extent that it gradually fails to pay any attention to politics.
Managed democracy is a powerful solvent for any vestiges of democracy left in the American political system, but its powers are weak in comparison with those of Superpower. Superpower is the sponsor, defender and manager of American imperialism and militarism, aspects of American government that have always been dominated by elites, enveloped in executive-branch secrecy, and allegedly beyond the ken of ordinary citizens to understand or oversee. Superpower is preoccupied with weapons of mass destruction, clandestine manipulation of foreign policy (sometimes domestic policy, too), military operations, and the fantastic sums of money demanded from the public by the military-industrial complex.
"In order to cope with the imperial contingencies of foreign war and occupation," according to Wolin, "democracy will alter its character, not only by assuming new behaviors abroad (e.g., ruthlessness, indifference to suffering, disregard of local norms, the inequalities in ruling a subject population) but also by operating on revised, power-expansive assumptions at home. It will, more often than not, try to manipulate the public rather than engage its members in deliberation. It will demand greater powers and broader discretion in their use ('state secrets'), a tighter control over society's resources, more summary methods of justice, and less patience for legalities, opposition, and clamor for socioeconomic reforms."

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Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control" | Naomi Wolf, AlterNet (08.10.08)

Germany coalition to amend constitution allowing military to aid police in emergencies | Jurist (07.10.08)

Fears Grow that Sanctions Could Derail Mediation in Zimbabwe | IPS (08.07.08)

Zanu-PF 'behind opposition deaths' | Al Jazeera (19.06.08)

Zimbabwe Government Blocks Aid for Six Million In Need | IPS (18.06.08)

Mugabe Warns Of War If Defeated | Al Jazeera (13.06.08)

Zimbabwe Arrests Opposition Leaders | Al Jazeera (12.06.08)

Zimbabwe MDC Official Arrested | Al Jazeera (12.06.08)

A glimpse of Mugabe terror | BBC's own correspondent (14.06.08)

Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled | AlterNet (19.05.08)

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