By Richard Moore

             First Preface:
           What is the New World Order?

 

         

 

     Go to the Article:  Doublespeak and the New World Order, on this page.

     TRIPPINGLY ON THE TONGUE Politics and Brain Damage in the New Word Order

      Communism, Zionism & Feminism Share NWO Pedigree By Henry Makow Ph.D.

 

 

Few would disagree that the dominant trend of our day is globalization - the elimination of trade barriers, the downsizing of governments, a greater reliance on the private sector, reduced regulation of business, and an increasingly global economy. A great many people interpret this trend as economic progress, and see it is a basically good thing. This article will argue that globalization is first and foremost political regression - threatening to destroy our Western democratic institutions, and turning the clock of human progress centuries backward to something resembling feudalism.

The role of the USA in the globalization trend is not entirely obvious. In some ways, America seems central to the process. It is the leading proponent of free trade; it provides the primary military muscle to shape and maintain global order; when the American President speaks on international issues, his words are taken as being decisive - he is (by virtue of his office) far-and-away the most powerful and influential world leader.

But at the same time, America seems hardly to be the primary beneficiary of the globalization process. Other countries, notably Germany and Japan, are faring better economically, while America suffers increasing debt and a declining standard of living. America, though the dominant world power, appears not to be exploiting its advantage in the traditional fashion of dominant powers.

The perspective of this article is that globalization is not about competition among nations - but rather about the increasing power of mega-corporations over nations, generally, and their peoples. America - the hotbed of this trend - is in effect acting as a proxy for elite corporate interests, not as a representative of the American people, nor even of American national interests in any traditional sense. Seen from this perspective, America’s seemingly ambivalent role becomes understandable.

In order to get a comprehensive picture of where globalization came from and where it is going, this article makes a whirlwind tour of American history, showing how that feeds into what has now become the mainstream of world history. If sovereign national states, sometimes competing and sometimes cooperating, have been the Familiar World Order, then globalization seems to be leading us all inexorably toward a New World Order where mega-corporations (and the wealthy elite who control them) reign supreme, and nations are reduced to a vestigial, subservient, policing role - controlling the populace on behalf of the elite - as we see already in much of the Third World.

Second Preface:
What and Who are the Elite?

During the era of feudalism, there were three elites. There was the church hierarchy, there was the landed aristocracy/nobility, and there were the royal families, who might also be seen as the topmost layer of the aristocracy. As feudalism ended, there was the rise of an additional elite - the business wealthy - who gained their status and influence through trade and manufacture, with or without benefit of inherited title. These elite groups competed for power, and different accommodations occurred from time to time and from place to place.

From the point of view of the general population, these elites represented security or tyranny, depending perhaps on ones perspective - but it was obvious to everyone that the elites ran society - no one pretended that society was democratic. With the advent of "democratic republics", beginning with the USA, the older elites were removed from power, but the wealthy business elite, which had evolved into the capitalist elite, remained relatively undisturbed.

Did this transformation bring about democracy, in any genuine sense, or was it merely the monopolization of power into the hands of the single remaining elite? This is a question that remains open - and it is a question that can be asked also of most of today’s modern "democracies", which have each to some degree been modeled on the American precedent.

Part One:
The Birth of Democratic Republics - American Independence

The Colonial Context

Although sentiment for independence in the American colonies was minimal prior to the latter half of the 18th century, there were objective conditions which made independence a natural, and comparatively non-disruptive step. The colonies were already largely self-governing, had their own social identity, had considerable natural resources, were mostly self-sufficient economically, and had their own extensive trading fleet. Boston was the third-busiest port in the British Empire.

The colonies were seen by Britain as economic investments, more than as administered territories. Some colonies, such as Pennsylvania, were privately-owned corporations, and in general the colonies were expected to take care of themselves. The colonies paid taxes to the Crown, lived under restrictions such as a prohibition on industrialization, and received in return the protection of the Crown and access to British markets. But in fact the benefits of being subject to Britain were questionable. When frontier war with French-backed natives occurred, for example, help from Britain was slow in coming and the colonies were then taxed for the troop expenditures.

There were many vocal advocates for independence, and there was widespread popular resentment of certain royal measures, such as the stamp tax. Nonetheless, until nearly the eve of revolution, most colonists wanted to remain subjects of the Crown, and sought reform of British policies toward the colonies, not independence. Even with the stamp tax, it is noteworthy that the tax burden of a typical colonist was less than that of someone of similar circumstances living in England.

In any case, it was independence that was at issue, not a social or political revolution. The existing colonial assemblies would presumably continue if independence occurred, with more or less the same people stepping forward as leaders, and with land ownership and economic activity continuing more or less as before (but without Royal interference).

The Colonial Elite - Differing Attitudes Toward

 Independence

As mentioned above, independence didn’t promise most colonists that much of a change. But for the elite - who possessed a highly-disproportionate concentration of wealth, land ownership, and influence in local affairs - there were more compelling economic considerations.

With independence, industrial development would be possible and international trade wouldn’t be directly limited by the vagaries of British imperial entanglements. The resources of the new continent could be developed without sharing the spoils with England. For the elite, a divorce from the empire represented profound and immediate economic opportunities.

The turning point in radical consciousness, when a majority of the populace came to favor independence, occurred in the form of a single earth-shaking essay: Tom Paine’s Common Sense. This essay, written in an unprecedented popular style that anyone could understand, broke all existing publication records and was read aloud in villages and towns everywhere, and not only in America.

Common Sense created in the popular Western mind, for the first time, perhaps, since the early Roman republic, the notion that government arises from the consent of the governed - that the people are the state. It marked the beginning of the popular concept of nationalism - the notion that citizens find their identity in their nation and its interests, rather than in their role as subjects of a domain belonging to royalty and nobility.

Paine was popularizing - and expanding the scope of - some of the radical ideas that had been developed by Enlightenment thinkers generally. He was concerned with promoting personal freedom, popular sovereignty, and - most particularly - creating an ironclad case for the legitimacy of a government based on the will of the people rather than on divine right or inherited dominion.

Paine was much less concerned with the other major thread of Enlightenment thinking, regarding market forces, the "invisible hand", and laissez-faire economics. Paine was so little motivated by economic gain, in fact, that he refused to accept royalties for his all-time best seller. He was, by personal disposition, much more interested in ending tyranny than he was in opening up opportunities for capitalist development.

The wealthy, and literate, elite did not need Paine to tell them about Enlightenment thinking. Nor were they as focused as Paine was on only the anti-tyranny ideas. They were at least as much taken with the laissez-faire thread, which justified their natural eagerness to pursue unfettered their economic opportunities. Many of them, in fact, were so afraid of the possibility of "mob rule", that they preferred that an American monarchy be established following independence, rather than a democracy.

Thus the War of Independence had different shades of meaning for two different constituencies. In both cases the rallying cry was "Freedom!" - but to the populace, this meant primarily personal freedom and popular democratic sovereignty, while to the business elite the emphasis was more on commercial freedom and the ability to pursue capital investment unfettered by the old regime’s elites.

In the end, the spectrum of visions for the new nation had to be pinned down into a single Constitution. This was a task that fell, as one would expect, to members of the elite. The resulting document was a compromise that included elements of democracy, but that included sufficient buffering mechanisms to insure that the elite, if diligent, could control the government sufficiently for their purposes.

The rule of Crown, Nobility, and Church was definitely ended, and the principle of popular sovereignty was definitely established - as an ideal. But, to repeat our earlier question, had the old tyrants been in effect traded for new tyrants, namely the capitalist elite?

In partial answer to the question, it seems fair to say that the new constitutional regime provided a forum in which the elite and the people could peacefully vie for control, and in which checks and balances attempted to prevent either side from fully dominating the other. And all would agree, presumably, that the new regime offered better opportunities for genuine democracy than the one it superseded.

Part Two:
Capitalism Unleashed - The American Experience

The Elite vs. the People - An Ongoing Struggle

Whatever one might think about the intentions of the (mostly elite) Founding Fathers - or of the theory of the Constitution - the actual fact is that American history has been characterized by a see-saw battle for control between the people and the capitalist elite.

At times, as in the late nineteenth century robber-baron era, the elite have brazenly ruled - J. D. Rockefeller bragged about how many government officials were "in his pocket". At other times, as during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, government policy seemed more responsive, instead, to the needs and wishes of the general population.

One can debate whether the elite exert influence through secret conspiracies, or whether they simply act straightforwardly in their own perceived interest. The answer, surely, is that both mechanisms are and have always have been at work. Numerous conspiratorial "scandals" can be found throughout American history, but few would argue that without those episodes the elite would have been without major influence.

Propaganda & Credulity

Propaganda played a pivotal role in the birth of America and has been part of the American scene ever since. It was the elite, in pursuit of commercial self-interest, who were the vanguard of the revolutionary movement, while the populace was stirred up by high-sounding democratic principles and sensationalized rabble-rousing around the issues of Royal oppression and taxation.

Propaganda is by no means unique to the American experience - all governments and elites employ propaganda - but propaganda has played a uniquely intimate role in the American experience. Because America is endowed with democratic mechanisms - the government is elected, after all - such propaganda has been essential from the beginning in order for the elite to exert the influence to which it feels entitled. Propaganda is one of the elite’s primary antidotes to the dreaded disease of actual democracy.

America is the land of Hollywood, advertising, public relations, sugar-coated fairy tails, cult religions, the "Defense" Department, Disneyland, and "progress". It was of Americans that it was said "A fool is born every minute", "You can fool all the people some of the time", and "You can never underestimate the intelligence of the public". Certainly not all Americans can be so characterized, but in a land where majority rules, the effect is not much different.

The rhetoric of liberation and democracy captured the imagination not only of Americans, but of the whole world. America became an almost mystical symbol, spoken of in fable-like imagery: "the land of freedom", "the land of opportunity", "the American Dream", "streets paved with gold", "bastion of democracy". America was something people everywhere yearned to believe in - it seemed (and claimed) to be the fairy tale kingdom of everyone’s childhood dreams.

The War Culture & Expansionism

America was born out of a war it initiated and it has achieved its growth through periodic warfare ever since. There has been a significant war approximately every thirty years, often initiated (overtly or covertly) by America and more often than not achieving a new stage in the growth of American power and the expansion of American-based elite interests. Such aggressiveness is not particularly unusual among nations; what is unusual is the propaganda mythology that would have America acting always in "self defense", and in defense of "freedom and democracy".

A common scenario typically underlies American involvement in wars: there is usually an incident which is perceived as an outrage against America, and the populace then rallies to the common defense with a characteristic ferocity and self-righteousness. America’s contribution to causing a war is seldom acknowledged.

The incidents may be provoked, as with the Mexican War, arranged, as with the Lusitania, or fabricated, as in the Gulf of Tonkin - but they are always deftly exploited and enable the elite expansionist agenda to be further advanced, under cover of yet another crusade for "freedom and democracy". The elite is always well-prepared for the incident, has a plan ready for execution and its propaganda machinery goes into full gear as the incident unfolds.

The use of outrage-incidents to launch elite-planned military campaigns accomplishes several objectives. It triggers the in-built American war spirit, and channels the resulting righteous wrath toward the nominated enemy. It also concentrates power in the executive branch, where elite control is usually most undiluted by popular influence. Congress - where popular will is most likely to find expression - is then relegated to the role of loyal stores-supplier for the duration of the crusade.

This process is exemplified by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which enabled full-scale U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The incident itself was faked, but Congress promptly issued its usual knee-jerk Resolution, authorizing the President to "act in defense". The "authorized actions" were then incrementally escalated into a full-scale war, with Congress having minimal additional influence and popular will finding expression only in the streets.

The eventual scope of the war was completely beyond anything authorized by the original Congressional Resolution, but once America is on the warpath, its war-culture ethic does not include room for official dissent or reconsideration - it would be "betraying the boys at the front". Even when the fake incident was exposed, it was too late to put the war genie back in the bottle.

Immigration and the Melting Pot

While immigration to America has been heralded as "welcoming the huddled masses" - inspired presumably by humanitarian concern - the effect was to provide a constantly renewed pool of exploitable cheap labor. Instead of Britain’s static class system of tiered exploitation, America evolved a dynamic class ladder system (the Melting Pot), where new (ethnically identifiable) lower classes were continually placed on the bottom rung, willingly trading their home-country cultural identity to struggle for acceptance as bona fide Americans.

Ethnic rivalries helped divide-and-conquer the masses, preventing democratic solidarity. Each segment of the American socioeconomic ladder seemed willing to see lower rungs suppressed, while it viewed higher rungs as its future opportunity. Thus the prisoners of the class ladder system were motivated to embrace their own exploitation and the elite was spared the development of a general popular socioeconomic consciousness.

The Horatio Alger myth was born, of the poor immigrant who achieves immense wealth in one lifetime. Thus was fostered a "lottery" mentality regarding economics - attention is focused on the rare individuals who win big, distracting attention from the overall pattern of systematic subjugation and exploitation. The victim takes the blame for his own predicament: if he isn’t well-off, it’s only because he’s not clever enough. The question of why most things are owned or controlled by the elite goes unasked.

Capitalism, Development and "Progress"

Capitalism has only one goal: the increasing of a pot of gold into a larger pot of gold. National economic development, back when such was typical government policy, had the touted goal of providing general prosperity, but it also facilitated the growth of elite capitalist wealth. Now that the elite prefers global investment as a way to grow wealth, national economic development seems, significantly, no longer to be an objective of governmental programs.

Progress, says the myth, is about improving the quality of people’s lives. But from a capitalist perspective, progress is about continually scrapping one infrastructure (or product portfolio) for another - thereby allowing capital to go through another cycle of re-investment and profit-taking. Thus rail is superseded by highways, coal by oil and electricity, home-made by store-bought clothes, ovens by microwaves, main streets by shopping centers, small farms by agribusiness, family doctors by medical corporations, home remedies by high-priced pharmaceuticals, etc.

In most cases, people willingly go along with such "progress" because of perceived or actual advantage. In some cases, however, implementation of "progress" requires covert elite intervention. Functioning intra-city light rail systems, for example, were purchased (in Los Angeles and other urban areas) and dismantled, by automobile-related interests, to be replaced by far less efficient, more polluting, oil-hungry bus and auto traffic.

Part Three:

World War Two - America Gains Global Dominance

 

Background of the War

The rise of communist and socialist movements, following World War One, created considerable fear in elite capitalist circles. Marxist ideology emphasized the tyrannical aspects of the capitalist elite, and issued a strident call for solidarity among common workers, who Marx credited with creating all real wealth. This ideology, which was simplistic and one-sided, had nonetheless taken firm root in Russia and seemed poised to spread further.

In German, Italy, and Spain, in particular, anti-elite movements gained popular strength under the banners of socialism, communism, or anarchism. It is not surprising that the elite in those and other countries welcomed and encouraged the rise of fascist movements. Fascism was virulently anti-communist, pro-capitalist, and fully willing to brutally suppress any who opposed its agenda.

Hitler began his political career as an operative of German military intelligence and received funding and support from elite Western industrialists. While in prison, writing Mein Kampf, he kept a portrait of Henry Ford on his desk. During the Spanish Civil War, the Western elite kept the anti-fascist opposition disarmed, while it approvingly observed the efficiency of Hitler’s growing war machine. American volunteers who fought against Franco found their patriotism questioned when they returned home.

Mein Kampf made it unambiguous that the primary strategic objective in Hitler’s mind was the subjugation and economic exploitation of Russia. By ignoring their own prohibition on German re-armament, and providing loans, the Western elite were in fact collaborating with Hitler in the development of an invasion force targeted on Russia - socialism’s bastion.

Meanwhile, the West was watching with discomfort Japan’s growing economic power and imperial scope. Japan was building a formidable Asian economic zone backed up by a large, modern navy.

This was a significant threat to Western, and especially American, elite interests and designs. Not only would markets and investment opportunities in populous Asia be highly curtailed, but Japan would be dislodging the West from its accustomed role as collective master of the seas and arbiter of global imperial arrangements. And who knew what would be the bounds of this Asian empire? The aggressive expansionism of Japan seemed destined to force a war with the West, sooner or later.

America handled this complex situation with all the finesse and subtlety of a skilled martial-arts expert, guided by a strategic vision unsurpassed by the imperial masterminds of any previous age.

America Orchestrates Global Domination

In the prewar years, Japan and Germany enjoyed credit and trade with the West, while their aggressive designs and military machines were allowed to develop. They were being given enough rope to hang themselves with. Then, as was completely predictable, Hitler became embroiled in a war with Russia and Japan became similarly entangled in China and Southeast Asia.

It was only after this anticipated scenario had unfolded that Uncle Sam unholstered his guns and prepared to take charge of the sequel. The traditional war-popularizing incident, in this case, was the inevitable Japanese strike on America’s Pacific fleet. The incident-facilitating provocation, in this case, was the cutoff of Japanese oil supplies, which America convinced Holland to undertake.

When the anticipated incident occurred, President Roosevelt feigned surprise and outrage, and the most formidable, popularly supported military crusade of all time was launched. The well-funded and well-armed G.I. was loose on the world, and because of the eagerness with which Germany and Japan had hung themselves in world opinion, he was welcomed as a hero wherever he went.

While Japan was contained by rear-guard actions, peripheral pressure was applied against the Nazis. The full-scale landing in Europe was carefully withheld, to enable Germany to keep most of its troops on the Russian front, so that Hitler and Stalin could decimate one another to the maximum extent possible. Only when Stalin turned the Nazis around, and began to advance toward Berlin, was the landing carried out. D-Day, it would seem, was timed to minimize the Russian advance more than to hasten the demise of Nazism.

At the end of the war, America had managed to put itself in a position which was very close to total global hegemony. It had the run of the seven seas, an intact military machine and national infrastructure, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, greatly expanded influence in the oil-rich Middle East, and the lion’s share of the world’s disposable wealth and industrial capacity.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world was in shambles, in deep debt and/or under occupation. America had the prestige, power, and resources to guide the construction of post-war arrangements largely according to its own designs.

Hitler had threatened to conquer the world and lost a generation of his men instead; Uncle Sam lost a comparatively minuscule number of troops, with no proclaimed territorial ambitions, and yet world domination seemed to fall into his lap.

Part Four:

The New World Order - The Global Consolidation of Elite Power under Neo-Feudalism

 

The "Free World" - A Global Playground for Capital

Following the war, the Western elite, led by America, drew a line on the globe, separating the part they dominated from the part they didn’t. The "free world" (doublespeak for "elite-controlled zone") was organized into a new kind of global capital investment realm. While capital investment was afforded a new kind of global commercial freedom, much of the "free" population was systematically subjected to military dictatorships responsive to elite interests. The doublespeak usage of "freedom", originating during American independence, had now been globalized.

Meanwhile the "communist block" (doublespeak for "beyond elite control") was contained: ostracized, pestered around its periphery by provocative military deployments, and subjected to chronic economic destabilization by means of the "arms race", expensive brushfire engagements, and trade restrictions.

America could have used its position of strength to establish a traditional American-centered imperial system in the "free" world, relegating Europe to a secondary position, keeping Japan underdeveloped, etc. Instead America implemented a bold new global scheme. The elite had grander plans for capital growth than simply a larger American economy. The old European empires were disbanded and a seemingly democratic United Nations was set up, promising to maintain orderly international relations.

The "free" world seemed to be entering an era of national self-determination and democratic renaissance - a bright new day following the fascist nightmare. But the reality - as elite designs unfolded - turned out to be quite different from that.

Instead of an end to imperialism, as the propaganda myth would have it, what was introduced was a collective imperialism. Under a pax-americana military umbrella, an international economic infrastructure was established (IMF, World Bank, et al). Investment and trade were free to flow, increasingly, around the "free" world at will, without the territorial partitions traditionally imposed by a competitive European imperial system.

The result for the ex-colonies (soon to be dubbed the "Third World"), was that they found themselves dominated by the capital elite generally, rather than by the business interests of a single national power.

Megacorps - The Elite’s Frankenstein Monster

This semi-homogenized, semi-pacified, investment environment enabled large corporations (elite-controlled money-multiplying machines) to develop orderly operations on a global scale. Thus arose the era of megacorps (aka: multinationals, transnationals) - mammoth corporations with wealth and influence on a scale comparable to nations.

While Third-World peoples were acutely aware that megacorps were becoming the overlords of the "free" world, the First World did everything it could to encourage their growth - they were seen as the agents of First-World economic domination and necessary to maintaining "home-country" prosperity.

Megacorps are much more than simply giant units of economic enterprise, capable of executing large-scale business transactions. They are also significant political and economic powers in their own right on the world stage. They increasingly have outgrown any sense of home-nation loyalty, view regulations and trade barriers as provincial interference, and see themselves as autonomous masters of the globe. Their needs and demands are more often than not the hidden agenda behind the policies of the Western powers.

The rise of megacorps must be viewed as an historically momentous development: the emergence of a new species of political entity, a species in direct competition with its ancestor species, the modern nation state. Born out of limited-liability laws, nurtured in a capitalist culture, and lacking any natural bounds to growth or restraints on behavior, megacorps extend themselves as would cancer cells, poisoning and strangling their host planet in the process.

Megacorps, in the end, are capitalist investments, and their motivation, pure and simple, is to increase their own market value on behalf of their absentee owners. This means that the primary "drive" of the megacorp species is growth. Unlike natural species, where individuals grow only to a certain size and mating habits typically limit population to what the environment will support, megacorps are driven to grow without limit and have no natural concern with whatever stands in their way.

What would be the nature of a megacorp-governed world? There is no need to speculate or theorize about such a future - we can simply look at Third-World countries, many of which have been dominated by megacorps for some time now. What we see there are minimal regulation and taxation of megacorp activities, along with repressive regimes which are subsidized, armed, and otherwise bolstered by outside elite interests.

The Neo-liberal Revolution - The Elite Changes Horses

For thirty-five years megacorps continued to spread their tentacles in the "free" world. Pressure was kept up on the "communist" hold-outs and the elite-controlled regions were increasingly consolidated into a tightening noose of international financial arrangements and dependence on megacorp operations.

Then in 1980 a new phase of elite power-consolidation was launched simultaneously in America and Britain, under the stage-management of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, respectively. This new phase was the "neoliberal revolution" and its platform was lower corporate taxes, reduced corporate regulation, privatization of public services, elimination of international trade barriers, and the self-demonization of democratic political institutions - "The only good government is less government" became the official kamikaze agenda in both countries.

What the neoliberal (no relation to "liberal") agenda amounts to is a wholesale transference of power, assets and sovereignty into megacorp hands. The thrust of government activity under neoliberalism is embezzlement on the grandest scale ever before attempted. Public lands, rights, responsibilities and assets are being given into private elite hands at undervalued prices and without effective public oversight. Government itself is being dismantled, defunded and prepared for the scrap heap. By rights, neoliberal government leaders should be indicted for conspiracy and high treason against the state.

The neoliberal revolution represents a declaration by the elite that nation states are no longer their chosen tools of power, and that megacorps are to become their primary vehicle not only of wealth accumulation, but also of organizing global society. The elite are now making it clear, under the rhetoric of neoliberalism, that First-World nations and their populations are no longer to be privileged partners in the elite game - they are scheduled to come under the same kind of corporate domination that the Third-World has long been accustomed to.

To this end, international arrangements such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank, NAFTA and GATT have been set up so that economic, and increasingly social and political, policies can be dictated on a global scale by corporate-dominated commissions. Mega-corps and their commissions are controlled directly by the elite - they include no democratic mechanisms and no pretense that they represent the "will of the people".

Neoliberal globalism, in all fairness, deserves the label neo-feudalism - with the corporate elite ruling in place of the three elites which dominated classical feudalism. Having served their purpose in dethroning the previous elites, and no longer needed by the corporate elite, these nation states and their populations are being betrayed and abandoned. "Democracy", the scam which unleashed capitalism, has now become a hindrance to elite hegemony.

Global Propaganda - Exporting the American Model

There are striking parallels between the propaganda techniques ushering in globalism and those which heralded American independence. On the one hand there is a propaganda cover story - modernization, competitiveness, greater efficiency, universal prosperity, reduced corruption - just as the earlier cover story proclaimed personal freedom and an end to tyranny. On the other hand there is the unspoken elite agenda - dismantlement of democratic institutions, firmer elite control, expanded exploitation opportunities - just as the earlier elite agenda unleashed capitalism from the shackles of earlier elites.

As happened in America, the myth-fantasy unfolds in the elite-controlled media, while the hidden agenda is being systematically implemented behind the scenes. The promise is to make the whole world a "land of opportunity", but that opportunity is to be for elite investments, not popular freedom or prosperity.

The globalization of American-style propaganda was critical to the orchestration of this scenario, and thus Milton Friedman and his Chicago conjurers were dispatched to Downing Street to help sell the package in the UK. Neoliberal mythology became a global media phenomenon, with CNN, Hollywood, Murdoch, et al, deftly spreading the phony gospel of free-trade, government inadequacy, deregulation and, as always, the American Dream. The film Independence Day, in which the world’s people are shown to embrace American mythology, perfectly exemplifies this propaganda genre.

A significant difference between the neoliberal and American revolutions, is the lack of propaganda emphasis on democracy and freedom. Today’s promises are related to "land of opportunity" much more than "land of freedom". The propaganda intent, here, is to portray neoliberalism as an economic movement, and to keep its political agenda hidden. Citizens are encouraged to assume that democracy is a fact of life, an unshakable institution, secure from any fatal dangers.

People are also, with mind-boggling irony, encouraged to perceive capital exploitation itself as a sign of democracy, particularly in formerly socialist states. As we watch those populations suffering under intentionally destabilized economies, while megacorps organize their own exploitive infrastructures, we are told that the locals are "slow to adopt to democracy".

The Police State - Public Order Under Neo-liberalism

Traditionally in "democracies", police forces have been small and order has arisen from the spirit of citizenship - "This is our country", "We are benefiting from its existence", and order comes out of "following our own rules". Under neoliberalism, maintenance of public welfare is being abandoned - undermining public satisfaction - and nationalist ideology is being de-emphasized - undermining civic identity and voluntary compliance.

The elite is well aware that massive economic suffering and political discontent are an inevitable part of the megacorp future, with its obeisance to the religion of market forces and its abandonment of citizen motivation via democratic processes, as once-prosperous nations decline toward Third-World status.

Not surprisingly then, what we see growing up, in tandem with the neoliberal revolution, are police-state systems and an intense propaganda-myth campaign regarding crime, its causes and its cures. More police, longer sentences, and more prisons are the elite’s answer to the question of public order.

Third-World countries show where this leads: military dictatorships, systematic torture and killings, and suppression of unions, political parties, and non-compliant publications. In America, the First-World’s most fully developed neoliberal state, we can see clearly how such regimes are to incrementally impose on the First World.

The media plays its part by ignoring the obvious fact that planned high unemployment and the abandonment of national hope are primary causes of crime and the erosion of civic compliance. In place of this obvious truth, is offered a mythology which blames the victims: they lack "family values", they are lazy, they have a genetic predisposition to crime, they are habitual offenders - the only solution is to lock them up. How one can follow "family values", when one has insufficient family income, is strangely absent from "public debate".

The nature of the penal system is rapidly changing in America, reflecting the anticipated further increase in social unrest. A formidable prison capacity is being built - prison construction is the largest growth industry at present in the U.S. - and the concept of who the prisons are for is undergoing radical change.

It was formerly the case that punishment was a response to a crime, and when the debt to society was repaid, the offender was expected to join the ranks of the responsible citizenry. Increasingly, prisons are being seen as a place to permanently house certain segments of the population: those who can’t or won’t fit into the corporate system. That’s what "three strike" laws, mandatory sentencing, and soon, preventive detention, are all about.

In a very literal sense, prisons are to be the concentration camps of the neoliberal regime - a place to isolate and control those redundant to corporate needs. Never wanting to waste an exploitable resource, the elite in America are now developing an extensive prison-labor system, renting out inmates to fill lower-rung corporate labor needs. Thus, in the "land of the free", we see the development of a network of slave-labor concentration camps, without the fact seeming to reach public awareness.

In terms of America’s traditional "class ladder" system, what’s happened is that the lower rungs of the ladder have been shoved down into the mud. As feudalistic social arrangements are being re-introduced by neoliberalism, there comes also a re-introduction of slavery, with, as it turns out, a not unfamiliar ethnic bias. It is disproportionately blacks and latinos who are confined to crime-likely life scenarios by corporatization and it is largely blacks and latinos who seem destined to populate America’s slave-labor prisons.

The Gulf "War" - America Becomes the Official Elite Enforcer

With megacorps evolving into the world’s dominant political-economic-social institutions, and with their open grab for political power being reflected in the neoliberal revolution, the question remains as to how order in the world is to be maintained.

If nations are to be weakened - and especially if identification with nationalism is to be de-emphasized - then where are the armies to come from to maintain the elite-architected system? Nationalist spirit - with a feeling of everyone pulling together - has been central to modern war efforts. How can a disenfranchised, betrayed populace be expected to rally "to the defense" when the elite need their support?

And if strong nation-states are to be dismantled, whence will come the infrastructure to maintain systems of weapons and delivery? What will be the command structure and on behalf of what political entity will military operations be carried out? And what about public opinion? Even though the police state will have the capability to suppress troublesome dissent, the myth of continued democracy requires that some degree of popular sentiment be roused for dramatic military interventions.

The Gulf "War" and its aftermath demonstrate clearly how the elite has chosen to deal with these problems. This episode was a major historic precedent on several levels. It established new paradigms for global propaganda, weapons technology, blitzkrieg tactics, and international law. It established in the global public mind the principle that America has a justifiable global policing role, and it exported to the global stage America’s traditional war-incident scenario.

Technologically, the war was in fact a field test of significant new blitzkrieg weapons systems. Precise night operations, stealth defenses, guided weapons, satellite navigation, cruise missiles, bulldozers as mass-murder devices, air-fuel explosives, uranium-weighted shells, anti-nerve gas vaccinations - an entire new generation of weaponry - were tested on a modern, supposedly well-armed, industrial nation. With almost no loss of life in the elite forces, it was demonstrated that Iraq’s infrastructures could be systematically destroyed and that her population could be subjected to relentless terrorism from the skies.

This suite of technology and operating procedures solves the problem posed by the demise of strong nationalism, which formerly provided massive, motivated armies willing to risk their lives for "freedom". By emphasizing hi-tech weapons, operated from safe havens - and by using blitzkrieg tactics - the duration of an intervention is minimized, the number of casualties (on the elite side) is kept low, and the need for a large, non-professional army is eliminated.

The elite no longer needs public support for its military ventures, it only needs acquiescence. A gulf-style approach minimizes negative public responses, making acquiescence easier to achieve. But acquiescence is too important to leave to chance, and so the Gulf War also served as field test for a new generation of propaganda techniques.

Starting with the source of information itself, the propaganda was characterized by a complete lack of information regarding the objectives of the intervention, the targets of attack, the morale of the troops, the type of operations being carried out, and the behavior of the enemy. From this base vacuum of actual war information, an intensive PR campaign constituted the fare from which war entertainment could be constructed.

The propaganda campaign was launched by an arranged war-provoking incident - a direct exportation of the proven American scenario. The incident (Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait) was brought about by an economically provocative oil-dumping policy by Kuwait, followed by a "go signal" from the U.S. Secretary of State regarding the invasion. Once the incident occurred, outrage and surprise were feigned, and a world-wide media/lobbying campaign was launched to achieve UN approval of U.S. military action.

Once the approval was obtained, the U.S. then launched on a military campaign of its own design (the destruction of Iraq), and - as with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution - the UN approval turned out to amount to a blank check, to be interpreted however the elite war-leaders wished.

This Gulf-War precedent has established itself very firmly on the media-managed "world stage". When the Bosnia situation advanced to the point where the U.S. wanted to jump in and manage events directly, it was able to get its way with very little fuss. The U.S. has all but been handed the official title of "Judge Dredd" - judge, jury and executioner of international law - and U.S. intervention, certainly not a new phenomenon, seems no longer to be viewed as imperialism.

The New World Order (NWO) - Global Feudalism & Corporate Overlords

These then are the essential elements of what amounts to an historic New World Order. Overall policies are to be set by non-elected, corporate-dominated commissions; the world’s economy, information and working conditions are to be managed directly by megacorps; governmental function is to shrink down to administrative matters and police-management of the populace. All this to be enforced globally by an elite-dominated strike force built around the U.S. military and NATO.

America clearly has a unique role in this scenario. Partly this is because America has the dominant military power. But it also reflects the fact that America, compared to other First-World countries, is the most thoroughly captured by megacorp interests (recall Eisenhower’s speech re: military-industrial complex), and that the American people, in their habitual credulity, are the most effectively mesmerized by the media mythology they are fed via television. America is a kind of "safe house" for NWO operations.

Humanity on the Precipice - Is a Second Dark Ages Inevitable?

There is now a brief window of opportunity in which First-World populations could rise up and reclaim their paper democracies through intensive political organizing and the creation of broad coalition movements. Soon their governments will be disempowered and that opportunity will be lost.

Such an unprecedented peaceful revolution will only become possible if people generally wake up to the true nature of the threat facing them. Helping them wake up becomes a duty of citizenship for anyone who’s managed to grasp the situation.

Given the dire consequences of globalization, one wonders why there seems to be such global acclaim for its steady progress. The answer, of course, is the sophistication and pervasiveness of the accompanying propaganda campaign, and the absence of any effective forum for the expression of alternate perspectives. If a Big Lie is repeated often enough, as the Nazis proved, people believe it.

Perhaps the single most telling observation, in countering the globalization rhetoric, regards the corruption of governments and politicians. Although we are reminded daily of such corruption, and invited to abandon our democratic processes in order to "solve the problem", it is never mentioned that what political corruption amounts to is the illegal intrusion of the corporate elite into the political process.

If people were to realize that government corruption is just another name for corporate influence, it would be difficult for global corporatization to pose as a "solution" to the problem

Bibliography

Greider, William, Who will tell the People - The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York: Touchstone, 1993).

Lederer, William J, A Nation of Sheep (New York: Crest Books, Fawcett World Library, 1962).

Parenti, Michael, Make-Believe Media - The Politics of Entertainment (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

Parenti, Michael, The Sword and the Dollar - Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).

Zinn, Howard, A Peoples History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).

Keane, John, Tom Paine - A Political Life (Little, Brown, and Company, Canada, Limited, 1995).

Richard Moore, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, currently lives and writes in Wexford, Ireland. Email: rkmoore@iol.ie Address: PO Box 26, Wexford, Ireland.

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