Political Psychology?
by Joseph Jordan

Go to any given country in Latin America, and ask a kid of any social class about American cultural exports like “McDonalds”, “Levis”, “Coca-Cola”, “Hollywood”, or “Disney”. Chances are a high school student can give you a better, more detailed biography of the trials and tribulations of Donald Duck than of Simón Bolivar (revolutionary who won independence for many Latin American countries).

The phenomenon is what Julius Evola called “the Cult of America”. With the start of the Cold War, the United States began a campaign to reach out to the most primitive instincts of human nature. Things like hyper-sexuality, violence, abstract art, and selfishness are glorified in U.S. culture, or to coin an Americanism: “cool”. Our heritage, experiences, folklore, even our national religions or cultures regardless of where you are from, take a backseat to American abstractism and blatant immorality. In Kuwait we see Muslims smoking a Lucky Strike after morning prayers, in Russia we hear lesbian techno, in warlord-controlled Somalia, Coca-Cola is a popular beverage, in Buenos Aires the streets are polluted with the familiar ‘golden arches’.

Many of you would say that Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa are enriched by this cultural diffusion, but it’s much more sinister than innocent cultural sharing. In his work, “On Art and Culture”, Stalin noted American use of cosmopolitanism as a weapon of hegemony against poor countries who are fighting to take their own independent path in the world. He called it “escapism”. An example cited was the popular American dance in the 1920’s called “The Swing”. In this dance a man and a woman move around in an uncoordinated fashion causing lethargy and ecstasy in the two dancers, so as to “vent” their frustrations at their oppressors and “escape” from their daily suffering and toil. Such music and dances do not move, or inspire people, they just serve as an instrument to keep people in line, according to Stalin.

This psychological warfare was not something Stalin just “made up”; Upon taking office, Dwight Eisenhower declared, “Our aim in the Cold War is not conquering of territory or subjugation by force. Our aim is more subtle, more pervasive, more complete. We are trying to get the world, by peaceful means, to believe the truth. That truth is that Americans want a world at peace, a world in which all people shall have opportunity for maximum individual development. The means we shall employ to spread this truth are often called “psychological.” Don’t be afraid of that term just because it’s a five-dollar, five-syllable word. ‘Psychological warfare’ is the struggle for the minds and wills of men.” These were not empty words. When the Cold War started heating up and many nations were split between siding with the United States or siding with the USSR, the U.S. started putting their money where their mouth was with the funding of the “Abstract Expressionist Movement” (with taxpayer money of course). Coincidentally, the art that the U.S. was so desperate to spread around the world, was the same art that the USSR opposed (for the same reason that they opposed “The Swing”). The Marshall plan served in fighting the covert war against nationalist and independence movements, not just rebuilding war torn Europe. Financial aid was not the only thing to enter Western Europe – U.S. products also flooded European store shelves. One of these products was the “Abstract art”. The goal was to show the “greatness” of American culture to any supporters of nationalism and thus strengthen American interests in Europe.

In the US, the youth especially were full of dissent toward their government’s foreign policy aims. Student protests on college campuses all over the country promoted the original American value of cultural and religious tolerance and from movies and the music they left behind, we are all familiar that this counter-culture movement of the 1960s was also a time of rampant drug use and _expression of sexual freedom. However, there is a little known connection here between two unlikely parties. LSD, a prominent drug of the period, used for artistic and intellectual ‘creativity’, was actually distributed by the CIA but conveniently made illegal in1966 when the counter-culture movement turned anti-establishment. Just three years later, the movement was beginning to disintegrate. The CIA’s employment of drugs like LSD is only one example of ways that the US government was able to destroy from within the otherwise successful coordination of dissenters.

The violence employed and murders executed by the U.S. government are not why the U.S. won the Cold War nor the reason for its extensive power over the world today; the war was won through sometimes devious cultural influence abroad and at home as well.

Sources:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/kreca1.html
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/10/cultural-warfare/

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