Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Exposing and Stopping the Danger of US “Soft Power”

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Exposing and Stopping the Danger of US “Soft Power”

Click here to access article by Joseph Thomas from New Eastern Outlook. (Edited for much needed clarity around 4:18 PM and 5:08 PM Seattle time.)

While the US does this often under the guise of promoting “democracy,” it is clearly engaged in precisely the opposite. While democracy is generally understood as a process of self-determination, through US soft power, the process is co-opted and abused to allow Wall Street and Washington to determine the policies and direction a targeted nation takes rather than its own people.

Often times victims of US soft power are youths who are indoctrinated in university programmes or targeted by US-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).

Thomas provides a very good analysis of "soft power", with emphasis on Asia, as one of the weapons (in addition to military force and subversive efforts by the CIA) that has been used by the US-led Empire since the end of WWII. With the USA having escaped severe damage in WWII in the Anglo-American war against capitalist rivals of the Axis powers for global dominance, the new Empire's ruling class, which was largely a merger of US and British capitalists, decided that what was needed was the addition of soft power to obtain global dominance in addition to the terrorist methods of Operation Gladio (see part 1 and part 2 of what appears to be an excellent 10 part series).

This new program of management of consent/dissent, which the US ruling class had so successfully applied to their own population to sell products, used an upgraded version to convert the beliefs of subjugated populations (as well as their own population) to align with their own more global interests of profit and power. Thus, they placed heavy emphasis on propaganda, infiltration of foreign media corporations, the establishment of NGOs to monitor and promote these programs, and "educational" programs which attracted youth from all over the world.

With the rest of the world lying mostly in ruins, this project did not meet much opposition with the exception of the Soviet Union and Maoists in China that were soon successful (1949) in overthrowing the capitalist ruling class in China led by Chiang Kai-shek. Hence, a vendetta, which became known as the Cold War, was waged against "communism" using every institution of this new Empire.