Totalizing “Control Rooms” in Every Western State …. Skewing ‘Democracy’

Observer in a Black Sea Port

At 6:02 Judge Napolitano asks Crooke “Is a wider war in the Middle East inevitable?”  ….. Crooke answers this question and then explains why.

He articulates the change that has taken place in Western politics, particularly in the democratic area which has become a “control room” that we don’t see, that is behind it. Even the President or the leader of any Western nation is just a figurehead and is not important any longer.  One figurehead can be removed and then another figurehead is elevated by the media and becomes the new figurehead.  But behind it lies “the control room” which is operating this in a new form of politics which Crooke calls “the whole of state politics” which means there has to be ideological alignment, not just across the party, but among NGOs, the financial world, all of the state apparatus,  the media — all of this has to be the same.

LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 29: Alastair Crooke from Conflicts Forum, appears on stage on Day 1 at the International New York Times/Energy Intelligence Oil & Money Conference at The InterContinental Hotel on October 29, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for The New York Times)

This new form of Western democracy was introduced by Obama at the time of the War on Terror and has become ubiquitous and is now centred on slogans like “our democracy”, “our consensus”, “our values”.  It is not about debate. It is not about reformism. It is a totalising process of emotive gestures produced by “the Control Room” with Hollywood import which controls the people. The same process happens in Europe,  Australia, New Zealand – the same process is going on. So you have these meaningless things “the campaign is about joy” “the Republicans are about are we in”. What do they mean? They are just emotive statements. And at the same time we have this totalising politics on the domestic front that bleads across into a totalising foreign policy i.e. “the people we are dealing with – Russia, Iran, China – they are all extremists. They don’t follow our democracy. They don’t follow our values. They are not part of this.” And there is no differentiation. You don’t try to understand Iran, you don’t try to understand Russia or China or have a differentiated policy because they are all “terrorist extremists” groups and hostile.  And that means the war is against all of them, not just against Iran because Russia and China support Iran so it has to be against all of them because they ate all lumped into the category of “extremists” which are “against us” and against our democracy.

Crooke hits it on the nail. This is why it is so important to critically evaluate Western democracies today and condemn this new “totalising politics” and everything that comes from it. It is a corrupt broken system that has nothing to do with democracy or values. 

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