Thursday, August 15, 2013
Creating a Submissive Citizenry
Austerity is not merely a larcenous agenda by federal governments in cahoots with Wall Street and the European Central Bank; it is equally valuable as a tool of oppression of the populations impoverished by the financial services empire.
The audacity of austerity's exponents also serves a purpose: transforming economic desperation into a sense of fear and hopelessness creates a submissive citizenry inoculated against revolutionary politicization. Deprived of the resources necessary to organize a viable opposition to the empire, these downtrodden citizens thus become a reservoir of resentment from which modern states can mobilize sycophants to intimidate and outmaneuver democratic reformers.
In the absence of resources for resistance to austerity, the oppositionally politicized are tempted and encouraged to mobilize disorganized, but this only ensures their ineffectiveness. Marches, protests and demonstrations are means, not ends; unprepared to challenge the power of empire, they demonstrate at best a false hope, at worst a romantic delusion.
The audacity of austerity's exponents also serves a purpose: transforming economic desperation into a sense of fear and hopelessness creates a submissive citizenry inoculated against revolutionary politicization. Deprived of the resources necessary to organize a viable opposition to the empire, these downtrodden citizens thus become a reservoir of resentment from which modern states can mobilize sycophants to intimidate and outmaneuver democratic reformers.
In the absence of resources for resistance to austerity, the oppositionally politicized are tempted and encouraged to mobilize disorganized, but this only ensures their ineffectiveness. Marches, protests and demonstrations are means, not ends; unprepared to challenge the power of empire, they demonstrate at best a false hope, at worst a romantic delusion.
