Harry Targ
I read about the dangers of federal deficit, the connection between markets and
democracy, capitalist institutions and human well-being, insurance companies
and quality health care, the virtues of AI, and the historic victories for
peace and justice resulting from supporting Israeli genocide, bombing Iran, kidnapping
the leaders of Venezuela, and starving whole populations of Cubans and citizens
of over 30 nations.
I am reminded of Antonio Gramsci’s perceptive analysis about how people are
ruled as much by what they learn to think and believe as by the use of force.
Ideological hegemony refers to the idea systems that ruling classes construct
to create willing and pliant citizens in political regimes that lack moral
legitimacy or economic rationale.
I am also reminded of theorists from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, particularly Herbert Marcuse, who wrote about how the fundamental contradictions in peoples’ lives-- capitalists versus workers and rule by the few versus the possibility of the rule by all-are transformed into unanimity of thinking among people whose interests should make them adversaries not collaborators. Marcuse’s postulate of a “one-dimensionality” in political thinking in the United States was the resultant of the campaigns of the ideological institutions-- media, education, and the political process.
Ken Kesey, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, used an interesting metaphor for society, a ward in an institution for the mentally ill ruled by a nurse who sought to dominate the patients through discipline, sedation, and the projection of the belief system that any independent thought was pathological. Somewhere in the novel Kesey refers to an ideological “fog machine.” The reader could almost feel how the patients of the mental ward experience the thick and blinding fog in the air hampering vision and even breath. Kesey gives the reader hope by describing the arrival of a new patient in the ward, Randle McMurphy, who sees through the fog machine and commits his life to helping his fellow inmates rebel against it. While he personally does not survive the struggle, some of the most docile of inmates escape, destroying the ideological hegemony of the system.
I am also reminded of the great Hoosier writer Kurt Vonnegut who describes an
Indiana woman who roams through airplanes looking for Hoosiers. Vonnegut
describes her quest as pursuit of a “false karass.” It is false because there
is nothing about being a Hoosier that automatically leads to shared interests.
For years we have been sold an ideological package of lies. The recent rendition begins with 9/11. The world consists of large numbers of persons of color, especially Muslims, who want to kill us. We need to kill them first. Preemptive attack on those who we would expect to hate us is OK. International Law says so. U.S. diplomatic history says so.
Why should we be afraid? Why should we be prepared to kill? We must be vigilant because they hate our freedom. They want to destroy the natural evolution of societies from autocracies to market-based democracies. We must be fearful, vengeful, and ready to act for the benefit of the world.
Over the last several months, mass movements have emerged projecting very
different, even counter-hegemonic ideas about democracy, war and peace, immigrant
rights, and the environment, and some have begun to dialogue about building a
better world. Young people, workers, women, secularists, opponents of
government ICE thugs have started going out in the streets and, in addition,
registering their concerns in the electoral arena. Slowly but with determination
they are demanding democracy and economic justice. Workers, students, women,
political progressives, health care advocates, educators began to stand up and
say “no” to the steamrolling right-wing political machine,
For Republicans and many Democrats the problems we
face are not capitalism, or austerity policies, or the military/industrial
complex. No for them the problem is government. So the forces of ideological hegemony
say we need to keep our guard up and be prepared to kill those who threaten us,
abroad and at home. Criminal justice systems and norms against violence are to
be ignored. At home we must challenge the idea that government must serve the
needs of the people.
We on the left must respond to the ideological crusade. While Randle McMurphy
in the Kesey novel was a lone actor, progressives need to work together to
challenge the fog machine. We need to convince our brothers and sisters that
killing and capitalism are antithetical to human needs.
