Read other letters about this article

• Thursday, May 8, 2008 05:37 PM

  The subtext about 'monarchic rule' and the Brits

  It struck me, thinking back over this threadful of comments overnight, that if I was involved in psychological warfare, my maxim would be, try to re-arouse the emotions that your audience learned to feel during childhood. This will make it harder for them to think rationally. I think this may explain why there is so much low-level propaganda floating about that boils down to encouraging Americans to imagine that the war of independence against Britain only ever appeared to have been won over two hundred years ago, and that in reality Britain has secretly maintained some sort of occult hegemony over the USA ever since, or that it is trying to re-impose such a rule today. Baldie McEagle started me thinking this way when he said that what I called "hyper-individualism" is very deeply inculcated and is rather omnipresent culturally - he seemed to stress the emotional intensity of it. Now, the demand to re-fight the war of independence against Britain is quite widespread in the conspirological subculture at the moment, coming from people as diverse as Alex Jones and Lyndon Larouche. It can be keyed into other themes, like the Jewish bankers one, for instance, or the 9-11 conspiracy one. There are some conspirologists who point out the role Britain had in Cromer's day in fostering the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for instance. Apologies that all this is so off-topic, but it seems to me to be relevant across the board when thinking about US ideologies of crisis, and having presented it once, I won't have to present it again on other threads.

  —Rowan Berkeley Read Rowan Berkeley's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel