Inverted totalitarianism & suppression of dissent
I realize this may seem trivial compared to my last post, but thought it an interesting topic to bring up. (and this has actually been on my screen unposted since yesterday morning, so, adding stuff)

Corrente has a new chat feature that you can see on the side of the page (at least if you're a logged in member, dunno if otherwise?); I'll put the whole thing that came up this morning under the cut, cause, again, interesting, but here is what I thought key part:

Johnson, quoting Wolin, says this: "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…' "

This was done quite effectively post-9/11 by using "patriotism" and "unity" as cudgels, with dissenters from the Bush admnistration being not only divisive and potentially treasonous, but not "grown-ups". And it's still being done now, using a variety of different tactics, but one thing practically all sides do (and I am guilty of myself on occasion) is marginalize people/opinions by suggesting that anyone who holds it is looney tunes. And clearly, some people do hold opinions that are woefully in conflict with reality and it annoying and time consuming (arguably pointlessly time consuming) to explain things that should be elementary to people who are almost certain to dismiss it anyway (try explaining the concept of "patriarchy" to one of those guys who say "women hold all the power" sometime, or why taxes and spending are necessary to a Republican or doctrinaire libertarian/Randian, and I wish you the best of luck with this). But opposing conventional wisdom? Not always looney tunes. (remember when something like 70%+ of the country was sure Saddam had nukes and was all ready to come after us and we had to invade in a hurry, and the tiny minority of us who thought he didn't and were sure he wasn't and that invading was a really, really bad idea were supposedly wacked?)

And there are plenty of political positions that are dismissed out of hand even though they are the sort of thing reasonable people can disagree on. I was going into more details on this, but if I do, this post will never wind up being written, so I leave you w/the thought above.

Otherwise, on the positive, yay Washington! I think, havent' seen final #'s. Fuck all in main. Yay districts in CA and NY. VA, not a surprise. NJ? HUGE surprise. All of these things have implications worth thinking about. The country seems split 50/50 'tween homophobes and non-homophobes, which not great but really no excuse for dems to keep running scared here, either. A relatively left leaning dem runs as himself and wins in a supposedly conservative dem CA district, and the wingnuts chase out the pro-gay, pro choice, pro labor Republican woman, Fox says she is dropping out to ensure the conservative win, she promptly endorses the democrat, and even w/her taking several % points after dropping out, the dem still wins. So, the media wisdom about both parties should move to the right to appeal to more people is clearly, um, way wrong. Corporatist, prudent incramentalist NJ Dem gov. bearing strong political/econ resemblance to Obama running in liberal state gets smashed because people are angry about the economy. Anger about the economy is real, and not limited to wingnuts. Democratic leadership, take heed. White house shows how deeply involved it is in all these things by saying Obama isn't watching the results. Wonder how long that will take to get walked back? Though more and more Obama is reminding me of Bush I.


(I dunno how to bring up what has gone before)
* 17:25:02 Jeff W But co-oping public opinion through a "tribalism" (normative) approach would fall within "inverted totalitarianism," I guess. (Sorry for the confusion.)
* 17:22:48 Jeff W Oops, sorry, I read the bolded part of the quote as meaning the opposite of what it says.
* 16:24:56 Jeff W Well, I haven't read Wolin's book (yet), only Chalmers Johnson's review. It doesn't appear as if there is a specific connection but Johnson, quoting Wolin, says this: "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…' " It defnitely could be a dynamic within the IT framework, I guess.
* 15:23:46 lambert Does "inverted totalitarianism" connect to Silber's "tribalism" and if so, how?
* 14:56:01 lambert It's not about personalities, but "access blogging." You can't on the one hand organize your blogging around access in 2009, and on the other hand claim the presumption of good faith that bloggers could, say, in 2003, when they were really "hippies." That is the nub of the issue.
* 14:17:38 Jeff W Well, I defended you, lambert, in my own tepid way: [url] I characterized "your position" all over the place, badly, of course, but made it clear it was "my view" of your position. Apologies in advance if I blew it completely.
* 12:19:01 Jeff W I like the Keynes post. (And I have to remember to use the word chary every so often.)
* 08:55:12 lambert Even if its fiction, it's still a good example. Reminds me of Keynes on the influence of long dead economists. And I'm sure there are utopian communities with direct influences (as opposed to dystopian states, I grant).
* 07:42:32 Michael Kwiatkowski How many examples of Hitchens lying are there? Plenty.
* 01:04:55 Jeff W Christopher Hitchens says "George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il Sung set up his system [in North Korea], and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint."[url] I wonder how many examples there are of this sort of thing.
* 23:07:35 BDBlue They certainly do, Jeff W. I can just see someone saying "disaster capitalism, what a fabulous idea" and mean it.
* 19:58:43 lambert Interesting discussion. Thanks!
* 18:55:40 Jeff W That was an interesting post. The problem, I think, with all these descriptions—"disaster capitalism," "inverted totalitarianism," etc.—is that they become prescriptive in the wrong hands. :(
* 18:52:26 Jeff W Thanks, BDB, I agree with your assessment completely.
* 15:13:38 BDBlue Cool, it worked!
* 15:13:12 BDBlue Here's the link I was talking about, I don't agree with the blogger re the markets failing, they did fail, but the article is interesting anyway. [url]
* 15:05:03 Jeff W BTW: to post a link, just paste in the link (and the chat will automatically put in the [URL] thing.
* 15:02:24 Jeff W BDBlue: And re inverted totalitarianism, here's Glenn Greenwald saying the same thing to Bill Moyers (yesterday) that I said to you. [url] (Moyers asked why Americans aren't taking to the streets.) It's only a minute.
* 14:49:20 Jeff W Sure thing. Thanks, BDBlue!
* 14:03:19 BDBlue Jeff W, re inverted totalitarianism, take a look at this post about social mgt. of the housing crisis, esp. walking away. Now I just realized I don't know how to post a link in the chat. D'oh.