Olúfémi O. Táíwò
Corporations like Amazon have lives of their own—and they control ours.
The post Welcoming Our Robot Overlords appeared first on The Nation.
Archive for category: Uncategorized
Forget what you know about medieval Europe — history is often quite complicated
Lenders purchase banker’s acceptances as safer way to support government policy
The Senate minority leader accused Democrats of “genuine radicalism” as they attempt to reform the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.
The “Just Say No” campaign is remembered today for the huge quantity of kitsch media it produced, like McGruff the Crime Dog. But the campaign was based on the psychological warfare techniques of the Cold War.
Nancy Reagan (center), with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in 1990. (Levan Ramishvili / Flickr)
A few months ago, Twitter got a sustained chuckle out of the ill-advised — yet, somehow, also compulsively listenable — 1986 cassette McGruff’s Smart Kids Album. It’s a recording in which anti-drug spokesanimal McGruff the Crime Dog “sings” jazzy, synthy tunes about the dangers of alcohol, marijuana, and inhalants backed by a children’s chorus and some impressive studio musician chops.
McGruff and his musical explorations were but one of the many expressions in 1980s American media of a larger “just say no to drugs” public information campaign, one that enlisted everyone from sitcom stars to cartoon characters to First Ladies in an effort to wipe out the use of illegal drugs and alcohol in the young. The commonly accepted story — that the “just say no” slogan spontaneously originated with a visit First Lady Nancy Reagan made to a school shortly after her husband took office — is a bit disingenuous.
The Just Say No campaign was the culmination of many threads of postwar public opinion shaping that have their roots in both the American military-industrial complex and big business’s uses of mass psychology and media to enforce ideological conformity during the Cold War. Primary among these was, and still is, the Ad Council.
The Ad Council originated during World War II as the War Advertising Council, which redirected America’s massive peacetime domestic consumption propaganda apparatus — the advertising industry — to promoting war bonds and other publicity campaigns for the war effort. In peacetime, its mission changed to “public service” and matched well with the new medium of television. In addition to its work for Cold War propaganda efforts such as the US Information Agency, the Ad Council pioneered the postwar TV “public service announcement” (PSA).
The Ad Council was the Madison Avenue brain trust responsible for famous PSA campaigns like Smokey the Bear, the “crying Indian” anti-pollution ads of the 1970s, and the United Negro College Fund’s series of “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” television spots. The Ad Council also facilitated the creation of McGruff the Crime Dog in 1980, thanks to the contribution of veteran ad man Jack Keil, who also voiced McGruff in commercials and on the aforementioned cassette. McGruff’s remit was public safety and kids, so he became a natural for the Just Say No message.
The Just Say No campaign was designed thanks to a public relations/mass psychology approach known as inoculation theory. Inoculation theory originated in the aftermath of the Korean War, when US defense officials and psychologists believed that American defectors to the Communist side of the conflict had been “brainwashed” by their Chinese captors. These widespread fears during the 1950s Red Scare — based on the premise that no “real” American could ever see the logic and reason of joining the Reds — led opinion makers and national security officials to look for a way to prevent “conversions” like these.
Psychologist William J. McGuire coined “inoculation theory” in the early 1960s in a series of research papers, noting that
we would develop the resistance to persuasion of a person raised in an ideologically aseptic environment by pre-exposing him to weakened forms of the counter-arguments, or to some other belief-threatening material strong enough to stimulate, but not so strong as to overcome, his belief defenses . . .
just like the weakened form of a virus.
In the terms of the typical tropes of 1980s Just Say No propaganda, the weak inoculating factor usually takes the form of a peer on a child-friendly sitcom, after-school special, or PSA offering drugs to a main character — who is already known by the viewer and thus their proxy — using a number of familiar yet easily refuted arguments for taking drugs (“it feels good,” “everyone’s doing it,” “just try it once”).
Over the course of the episode or PSA, the viewer proxy might receive support and advice from authority figures or peers on precisely how to “just say no,” but in the end, the decision and action is taken by the character for themselves, demonstrating individual strength and independence in the face of communal peer temptation. In the process, the viewer has also been “inoculated” with counterarguments to use in their own real-life encounters.
The ubiquity of Just Say No led to parallel campaigns in the 1980s, some of which were organized by local law enforcement. Most famous of these is probably Los Angeles Police chief Daryl Gates’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), which went nationwide but had its roots in Gates’s own militarized war on drugs and gangs.
Of course, we now know a few decades later what happens to a generation raised on these kinds of messages — a fully enshrined carceral state championed by both Republicans and Democrats since the 1980s that continues to incarcerate and oppress people of color in the face of a widening acceptance of drug legalization and an opiate plague that has devastated communities from coast to coast (it’s much tougher to “just say no” to a doctor’s prescription backed by Big Pharma funding, after all).
Just Say No left behind a series of cultural artifacts and memories that evoke the conservative Reaganite desire to turn back the clock, but they also demonstrate that the union of big business, the military, law enforcement, and the makers of capitalist propaganda in the ad industry can still be turned to the manufacturing of consent for any number of ideological projects — and that in order to do so, they’ll always start with the young.
Green lending is showing the classic signs of a financial mania
Société Générale’s Subadra Rajappa says she does not see “any catalysts for the curve to steepen meaningfully” even as the Federal Reserve embarks on a faster taper of asset purchases.
Over the last year, since the events at the US Capitol on the 6th of January, there has been increasing scrutiny and concern around the threat of far-right extremism to and within the military. However, what is driving this threat is less clear, not only in the US but in militaries across the Western world. Therefore, it is important to consider how the hyper-masculine organizational culture promoted in the military might be creating a bridge of familiarity and appeal between service and far-right extremism.
On one side of the threat are the individuals already possessing far-right extremist belief systems that enter the military with the purpose of using their service time to gain useful skillsets or to enforce their belief systems (i.e., the opportunity to engage in sanctioned combat with an outgroup). This aligns with research indicating that others, such as organized criminal gangs, also strategically infiltrate the armed forces, in order to receive the accompanying training. This is ultimately an issue of vetting and learning to be aware of, as well as being willing to address, risk identifiers within recruits and within the culture of the ranks.
The other side of the threat comes from radicalization during or after time in service and the appeal that these groups might offer to current and former members of the forces, as well as specific targeting strategies aimed at veterans and retirees by extremists because of their skillsets. For example, there is evidence of such a strategy being employed by The Base, a US-based neo-Nazi group, seeking to appeal to veterans for their skills – they see the radicalization of ideological viewpoints as a secondary step.
The bridge between service and violent extremism is only traversed by the very few. However, these very few also have the potential to be very dangerous. Additionally, the larger the number of active and former service members that cross to non-violent extremism the higher the general threat level. While they might not pose a direct threat of violence themselves, the further extremism spreads within the ranks the sooner it reaches the level of violence.
The building blocks of this bridge are the hyper-masculine culture within which the military was formed and still operates today, offering organizational familiarities and cultural overlap for those who crave this type of environment. Western militaries were established within the international relations system – a system based on realist interpretation of the state as the sole actor, entirely masculine in nature. The male citizen both holds the power within the state, as he is the rational actor, and is willing to defend the state at all costs.
This patriarchal foundation has developed the idealized conception of the archetypal ‘hero’ as a white, straight, male figure who is brave, valiant, honorable, and patriotic. The same patriarchal organizational structure applies to most groups across the far-right spectrum, with many of the same foundational expectations of heroism twisted to extremist viewpoints.
The military training environment banks on these expectations, building the strength of the unit on absolutes – trust in authority, trust in your comrades, and the value of the mission. Boot camps and other forms of military training are designed to use extreme stress and even sometimes violence to develop the military unit in-group and formulate the strength of the hierarchal culture. Once this has been developed, a sense of loyalty lies with the in-group (i.e., the unit) and its established chain of command. A process of othering then takes place to prepare for combat, dehumanizing the enemy as a threat which needs to be neutralized. This process of becoming a soldier or “martialization” can share many parallels with the radicalization process itself, as well as with the pseudo-martial environments that many far-right organizations seek to create.
In this cultural environment, expectations of hyper-masculinity and the archetypal hero can create familiar pathways into white supremacy, ultra-nationalism, and even anti-government sentiment. The othering of the enemy is often linked to racial and ethnic profiling – in the context of the last two decades of the Global War on Terror, the Middle Eastern Muslim man – and can create a familiar pathway into white supremacy.
Patriotic, nationalist expectations of military members can be a short step from ultra-nationalist sentiment, either based on racial or ethnic hatred. On the other hand, the potential negative experience within the military – perception of failure or misjudgment, or failure to reach required goals – can be an equally short step to anti-government sentiment.
These familiar pathways are potentially encouraged by the hyper-masculinized military training and culture, often with the immediate negative impact being felt first by those within the ranks that don’t fit within this archetypal hero conception. There needs to be increased understanding at the top of how this culture is propagated within the ranks. Additionally, there needs to be further research on how transition points, into the military, potentially between ratings, and especially out of the military can be points of vulnerability and opportunity for altering mindset and action.
Transparency is needed to prevent the spread of extremism within the ranks, both on the extent of concern (e.g., details of cases or investigations into extremism) and on regulatory guidance for what is considered extremism. Ultimately, there needs to be meaningful introspection and a concerted effort to address cultural permission and encouragement of othering, through critical engagement and education at all levels. However, further education and training will only be effective if it is designed and implemented alongside transparent and meaningful analysis of the problem, not if it is only a tick-box exercise to appease the concerns of others.
Veterans should not be tainted by fears of extremism. Rather, it is essential to think about how to protect and increase resilience among active and former service members to these ideological threats. However, in order to prevent and counter the appeal of far-right extremism within the security forces, it is necessary to challenge the hyper-masculine organizational culture that is promoted and to examine how it might be creating a bridge of familiarity and appeal over the gulf between service and far-right extremism.
Dr Jessica White is a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right and a Research Fellow at the Terrorism and Conflict Group, Royal United Services Institute. See full profile here.
© Jessica White. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).
This article was originally published at CARR’s media partner, Rantt Media. See the original article here.
