Intelligentsia and the Empire

a shared devotion to the capitalist world order.

To many people leaning on the Left or the Right, what I am about to express may sound preposterous or cause outright denial. In spite of the deepening divide, what appears common and unspoken between the two opposing sides, made of liberalism and fascism, is their shared devotion to the capitalist world order. To an empire, but not ruled by a singular tyrant, instead by many many intelligent guardians of our ‘sacred democracy’. While one side prefers the velvet glove of hegemonic consensual rule, the other readily goes for the iron fist of repression and violence. But both sides are naturalized by unquestionable foundations and false identity, in hindsight framed by the Intelligentsia, for decades now, also serving the objectives of the global ruling class. Like an eternally self-consuming serpent, it is continuous as a ‘forever show’.

“The intelligentsia is a status” (Wikipedia). Intelligentsia can be decoupled from individual characters, and instead understood as a global cultural apparatus. One that is lead by a class composed of university-educated people of any given society, who engage in the complex mental labors, by which they critique, reshape, rethink, influence and cause change. By all means the knowledge industry is one of quantum value as well as influential soft power. Be it within the specter of politics, social justice, international relations, economics, identity, race or production of mass culture, it is clear that global Intelligentsia exerts major influence, injecting radical new ideas and possibilities, aimed at common people. Especially at the young, the disenfranchised and the marginalized. Mobilize masses to resist and identify, using radical ideas and theories, yet which actually do not combat or dismantle the actual concentration of power. The emancipatory role and image aside, there exists a legacy and institutional framework, between the Intelligentsia and the imperialist ruling class. The following story is an inquiry to uncover and understand, how the Intelligentsia and the Empire collude, to radicalize and divide people using devious forms of essentialism.

Like many people of my generation, I too believed that the growth of powerful and intelligent forces were the autonomous drivers of modern history. Through intellect and knowledge, one could overcome materialism, tyranny and scarcity. That great philosophers and critical scholars like Theodore Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Michael Foucault, Judith Butler, Francois Lyotard, Nancy Fraser, Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, Noam Chomsky, Seyla Benhabib, Ruth Behar, Slavo Zizeck etc etc all sound empancipatory, revolutionary, groundbreaking and above all else, honest and well meaning. But I was naively wrong to believe so. While millions of people identify and concur with the ideologies framed by western Intelligentsia, there are clear limits to the extent of which they actually empower us, to really challenge and deconstruct forms of power and tyranny.

Western Intelligentsia, webbed within various forms of deconstruction and essentialism, is but absent when it comes to legitimate interventions, against the concentration of imperial power. Like the presence of all pervasive modern technology, for example. In most cases, the Intelligentsia tacitly accepts the independence of technology. The intellectual discourse is then crafted to mislead and radicalize us, reorienting the question of technology as a binary choice, between autonomy (technological determinism) or heteronomy (technological slavery). Done so because it lets us fall back on much-simplified and fragmented pictures, of a reality which is hyper-complex. It is absurd to ‘periodize’ the present as an age of technology and at the same time carry on dreaming and talking of future emancipation and liberation. “We cannot look for comprehensive ideas or methods of understanding when it comes to what the intelligentsia has to objectively present…” (Liberalism and Fascism: Partners in Crime by Gabriel Rockhill) Much like the United Nations, Intelligentsia too is impotent, when we see the abhorrent genocides that have occurred during the last 50 years in Latin America, Africa, India, Cambodia, Palestine, Iraq etc.

A flattened understanding of power, projected upon the entire world, based on an entirely false understanding of material and economic inequalities. Imperialism in it’s modern form, does influence all such Intelligentsia as it does common people. It is also true that imperialist propaganda is covertly present within several ideologies of the western Left Intelligentsia. Little known is the liaison between the CIA and eminent academics, philosophers, critical thinkers, writers and cultural spearheads for well over 50 years now. Well known is the CIA’s involvement in destroying counter-revolutionary forces across the world, yet what is missing from the mainstream critical discourse and media, is the “multifaceted cultural cold war aimed at containing—and ultimately rolling back and destroying communism and other forms of resistance back then… The CIA did so, along with other state agencies and a host of foundations created by major capitalist enterprises”. (Gabriel Rockhill and Zhao Dingqi). Take for example the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) revealed in 1968 to be a CIA front, one of the largest patrons back then, of art, new music and film making.

Post WW2, we can view a clear timeline upon which American soft power (however imperialist in nature) filtered into public consciousness via the Intelligentsia based in western Europe. Through the 1970s, 80s and 90s several new foundations, leading figureheads, mainstream media personalities, artists, writers and Hollywood would also come around to collaborate with Imperial power, tremendously benefiting from the liaison and acquisition. Abstract art and Expressionism are two such examples of the new imperial power of America (1960s) which was projected upon the rest of the world. Remarkable but not spoken is the old European influence and form.

In his new book, Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology and Democracy, Gabriel Rockhill unpacks new declassified history of CIA projects that featured certain leading academics of the 1960s - 90s, from America and more so from Europe. A deeply enriching narrative which traces the rise of western liberal Intelligentsia not only within colleges campuses and liberal think tanks, but across capitalist foundations, global economic forums, international social justice organizations, feminist discourse, mainstream media, TV shows, movies and even popular counter-culture. Michel Foucault, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse being five leading examples of such patronage and collaboration. Michael Parenti has explained this confluence as an “imperial and intellectual alignment” in his book Against Empire (1995). A figure like Francis Fukuyama, as a political theorist is the winner of Parenti’s “imperial and intellectual alignment” whereby fulfilling the objectives of the Deep-State.

The intellectual mechanisms by which individuals “gained a wide audience and began building real power that was eventually captured and utilized by the bourgeois, in many different emancipatory ways… circulation and assertion of ideas and redefined dialectics, in many different languages. To be able to rule people by consent instead of having to beat them up or kill them altogether”. Rockhill puts out the ‘good cop versus bad cop’ narrative with a new twist as “the good cop and the bad cop work together for the same state and with an identical goal: maintaining, even intensifying, capitalist social relations by using the carrot of bourgeois democracy or the stick of fascism.” But yes, the Intelligentsia are not just CIA spooks! Disingenuous even? Not at all.

We can proceed further, to figure that intellectual production and the “Knowledge Economy” together equate to various forms of “mind control” regardless of where they may be situated within the political spectrum. While we are attracted to the most sophisticated and the radical ideas of our age, over time most do not disclose the truth about ‘our time’ at all, instead towards a path of “vanishing objectivity and capacity”. The “Knowledge Economy” also equates to “intellectual capital” worth billions of dollars, by virtue of the millions of intelligent people dedicated to serve capitalism and materialism, regardless of their political believes, identity and individual potentiality. We have been told a million times “knowledge is power”. Seldom do we introspect, as to what the larger purpose of all such power may be?

About purpose, take the example of the RAND Corporation that orchestrated and funded a rebellion within Indonesia, to overthrow the democratically elected “Sosrodihardjo” Sukarno. The objective was to create an anti-communist regime and acquire access to Indonesian gold mines. Founders of RAND Corporation, Franklin R. Collbohm, Henry H, Arnold Donald Douglas and Curtis LeMay worked extensively with founder of CIA, Allen Dulles (1956-62) on various counter-insurgency “projects” across Asia, Latin America and Africa.

To be clear, organizations like the CIA and immensely wealthy patrons situated in the West do not control intellectuals and academics with money or like a puppet or even at the point of a gun, but create the orientation and conditions first, consequently letting the cultural and intellectual apparatus do the real work. While that has been going on for decades, the rise of Intelligentsia also mirrors a democratized and globalized era intimately connected by a single, all pervasive economic and technological network. A super structure, which operates autonomously while it expands dominion infinitely. Question being how does Intelligentsia and the knowledge economy, together serve that dominion?

The idea that we live ‘in the new’ has been a pervasive feature of ‘Western modernity’. And that everlasting construct of modernity, is visible not just amongst the Intelligentsia, savants of new technology and emerging futurists but across powerful foundations and think tanks such as Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Center for Strategic and International Studies, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil) Chatham House UK, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Heritage Foundation, Gates Foundation, Sierra Club, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Ford Foundation, Center for American Progress, RAND Corporation and Center For New American Security (CAP) to name just a few. Emblematic of western soft power and democratic ideals. One common demarcating feature of the above mentioned organizations, is a lack of ‘direct action’ and a disdain for violence (when necessary) to overthrow existing forms of tyranny.

There are thousands and thousands of smaller mirror institutions, dedicated to numerous disciplines and causes, spread across the world which follow a similar trajectory of influence. While it would be false to say that all such institutions are a direct outcome of 20th century capitalism, and not based on their emancipatory commitments, yet we can clearly deduce, that over time Intelligentsia mobilized principle forms of agency by first creating “objective social and cultural coordinates” in order to attract and control people automatically, regardless of their identity, class, prevailing reality and history. Rule or pacify people with theory, ideas and essentialism. The global success of multiculturalism, gender empowerment, trans-rights, inclusion of minorities etc is not just token but real, even if we ignore the presence of billion dollar industries and philanthropist billionaires (now known as the global elites).

Walter A Rodney, a Guyanese historian, activist and academic summed up the nature of western essentialism as “it prompts eccentrics, by saying you can have any road, because, after all, when you are not going any place, you can choose any road…”. It takes a while to realize, that the abstract right to “free speech” is so wild, precisely because common people are devoid of the power to be heard in the first place. Yes, by all means here on social media, maybe you are ‘one in a billion’ reading this story as of now, much like me expressing my individual views in any way that I would like to. However, in reality, these opinions will be rendered largely irrelevant. This is the general condition of most people living within 21st century global Empire. Point being, what does critical theory or the Intelligentsia have to do with “free speech” in the real world, sans the platforms, patronage and limits, all provided for by private capital and invisible power. Hilarious in this aspect is the “diversity industry.” The maxim encourages everyone involved to identify with a specific group and advance their own individual interests, as a “privileged representative” (Franco Bifo Berardi)

A number of well known philosophers and critical thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Theodore Adorno, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas were openly anti-communist, regardless of their appropriation of various Marxist ideologies within their discourses, aimed at anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-class and human liberation during the 20th century.

Most Left critical theorists of that era positioned themselves as social democrats or at best quasi-anarchists. The Intelligentsia was then able to channel people’s energy and motivation into fighting over the “best methods” for managing capitalist rule, rather than altogether abolishing it. Essentialism obscures, by proposing false solutions to real problems because it “never addresses the material basis of colonization, racism, gender oppression and overall resource scarcity” (Analysis of Free Speech in 21st century society - Proquest Magazine).

Take the case of Slavoj Žiźek, reknowned cultural theorist and public intellectual. His bizarre and often meaningless propositions aside, he mirrors the same euro-centric chauvinism of Samuel Huntington, viz a viz a ‘clash of civilizations’ when he declared that “it is a simple fact that most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible and hostile with Western European notions of human rights.” Torchbearer of the European bourgeois cultural apparatus, all be it Slavoj is “Discursive Sausage for the Uneducated” (Gabriel Rockhill). Of all the “Hegelian Hogwash” mixed with Jacques Lacan mixed with Alfred Hitchcock — a fusion that Žiźek has come to symbolize, but he can never utter a word about the CIA, about Samuel Huntington’s long involvement with the US Govt in framing globalist imperial policies. The disasters of which, are visible from Iran to Yugoslavia to Nicaragua to El Salvador to Indonesia. For this reason, Žiźek is an outstanding example of devotion to imperialism and the current world order.

To a large extent, the publishing industry, mainstream media, multicultural forums, prominent museums, international sports foundations, the entertainment and music industry, Hollywood etc have also adopted multiculturalism, much like identity politics, in order to appear as industries of equal opportunity and equitable merit. This is true about Left and Right leaning media. Is why we see and hear “woke” cherry-picked intellectuals, writers and activists on Democracy Now effectively cutting out subversive elements, be they outspoken academics, writers, political analysts, anarchists, artists, anti-imperialists, anti-technologists, anti-greenwash activists etc. Liberal democratic media is an extension of the propaganda industry, regardless of the featured academics, experts, writers and outliers. “Outrageous is this media, silencing political opposition” says Jill Stein, talking about the “pied piper media-ghetto” orchestrated by Amy Goodman & Company.

The dominant and almost chauvinistic presence of western Intelligentsia and mainstream media together, has excluded deeply objective and intellectual figures like Murray Bookchin, Jacques Ellul, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Achille Mbembe, EO Wilson, Ashish Nandi, Arnea Ness, Pentti Linkola, Ted Kaczynski, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Parenti and Ward Churchill to name a few. Hundreds of lesser known writers and critical theorists from the global south have also been effectively undermined. Especially those who did not concur with intellectual essentialism, unquestionable technological advancement and the “scared sanctity of western democracy and the bounds of metaphysics… operating within that tradition.” (Walter A Rodney).

Trapped within two sides, of the Empire and the Intelligentsia, is there a way out? Not as of now. But we can be sure that, most narratives fabricated by the Intelligentsia do not mirror the experiences of billions of people. The global underclass, that the Intelligentsia utilizes very well in theory, is increasingly facing economic insecurity, lacking social access and real political power in the world today. We cannot openly criticize and attack globalization, technology and democracy and at same time expect rewards and academic endowments. The repercussions can be far worse than we imagine.

Characterized by images of “inexorable growth of connectivity, the networks of trade and communication that cross national borders and social boundaries, and of the universality of western democracy as a final form of political organization” (Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology and Democracy) have become unquestionable maxims of modern civilization, regardless of the cost and impact. Of course, these images “are merely perspectives on a reality” that can be also represented very differently, by marginalized people but not the Intelligentsia or ruling elites. The very real material struggles, for employment, housing, health care, education, affordable energy, a clean environment are used to radicalize people, while not providing any equitable solutions. The Intelligentsia regularly informs us, implicitly though, that there is no choice. No way around capitalism and the Empire.

While the relationship between liberalism and fascism not only presents them as complete opposites, it also defines the very essence of the fight against fascism as a righteous one, as a continuous struggle for liberty. In so doing, essentialism forges an ideologically false antagonism. A false conflict, further dividing two sets of people within society, nation and even across the world.

To wrap, I think that the deal is simple. That bourgeois capitalist democracy and fascist dictatorships are two sides of the same coin, two instruments, of one and the same class, of exploiters and the ruling elite. The Intelligentsia may never concur and not much can be said about their credibility being overshadowed by rising public discontent and scarcity. Hence, it would be near impossible to prevent the replacement of one instrument by the other, within the current world order, held together by techno-capitalism and clearly violent systems of centralized governance. The Intelligentsia is complicit in this absurd “end of history”.

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