The essence of cultural imperialism

is the creation of fantasies to escape from misery

It involves the fusion of commercialism,

sexuality and conservatism - each presented

as idealized expressions of private needs,

of individual self-realization

The increasing penetration of the mass media

among the poor, the growing investments and profits

by U.S. corporations in the sale of cultural commodities

and the saturation of mass audiences with messages

that provide the poor with vicarious experiences

of individual consumption and adventure

defines the current challenge of cultural colonialism

Disneyfication

The mass media is one of the principal sources of wealth and power for U.S. capital as it extends its communication networks throughout the world. An increasing percentage of the richest North Americans derive their wealth from the mass media.

Today almost one out of five of the richest North Americans derive their wealth from the mass media. Cultural capitalism has displaced manufacturing as a source of wealth and influence in the U.S.

The mass media have become an integral part of the U.S. system of global political and social control, as well as a major source of super profits.

American cultural imperialism has two major goals, one economic and the other political: to capture markets for its cultural commodities and to establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness.

The export of entertainment is one of the most important sources of capital accumulation and global profits displacing manufacturing exports.

In the political sphere, cultural imperialism plays a major role in dissociating people from their cultural roots and traditions of solidarity, replacing them with media created needs which change with every publicity campaign.

The political effect in to alienate people from traditional class and community bonds, atomizing and separating individuals from each other.

Entertainment As Indoctrination

Cultural imperialism emphasizes the segmentation of the working class: stable workers are encouraged to dissociate themselves from temporary workers, who in turn separate themselves from the unemployed, who are further segmented among themselves within the 'underground economy'.

Cultural imperialism encourage working people to think of themselves as part of a hierarchy emphasizing minute differences in life style, in race and gender, with those below them rather than the vast inequalities that separate them from those above.

The principle target of cultural imperialism is the political and economic exploitation of youth.

Imperial entertainment and advertisement target young people who are most vulnerable to U.S. commercial propaganda.

The message is simple and direct: 'modernity' in associated with consuming U.S. media products.

Youth represent a major market for U.S. cultural export and they are most susceptible to the consumerist-individualist propaganda.

The mass media manipulates adolescent rebelliousness by appropriating the language of the left and channeling discontent into consumer extravagances.

Cultural imperialism focuses on youth not only as a market but also for political reasons: to undercut a political threat in which personal rebellion could become political revolt against economic as well as cultural forms of control.

The Mass Media Spread America's Ideology

The mass media is one of the principal sources of wealth and power for U.S. capital as it extends its communication networks throughout the world. An increasing percentage of the richest North Americans derive their wealth from the mass media.

Today almost one out of five of the richest North Americans derive their wealth from the mass media. Cultural capitalism has displaced manufacturing as a source of wealth and influence in the U.S.

The mass media have become an integral part of the U.S. system of global political and social control, as well as a major source of super profits.

As the levels of exploitation, inequality and poverty increase in the Third World, Western controlled mass communications operate to convert a critical public into a passive mass.

Western media celebrities and mass entertainment have become important ingredients in deflecting potential political unrest.

The Bush presidency has highlighted the centrality of media manipulation through highly visible but politically reactionary entertainers, a phenomena which has spread to Latin American and Asia.

The increasing penetration of the mass media among the poor, the growing investments and profits by U.S. corporations in the sale of cultural commodities and the saturation of mass audiences with messages that provide the poor with vicarious experiences of individual consumption and adventure defines the current challenge of cultural colonialism.

U.S. media messages are alienating to Third World people in a double sense. They create illusions of 'international' and 'cross class' bonds.

Through television images a false intimacy and an imaginary link is established between the successful subjects of the media and the impoverished spectators in the 'barrios'.

These linkages provide a channel through which the discourse of individual solutions for private problems is propagated.

The message is clear. The victims are blamed for their own poverty, success depends on individual efforts.

Major TV satellites, U.S. and European mass media outlets in Latin America avoid any critique of the politico-economic origins and consequences of the new cultural imperialism that has temporarily disoriented and immobilized millions of impoverished Latin Americans.

Imperialism and the Politics of Language Cultural imperialism has developed a dual strategy to counter the Left and establishing hegemony.

On the one hand, it seeks to corrupt the political language of the left; n the other it acts to desensitize the general public to the atrocities committed by Western powers.

During the 1980's the western mass media systematically appropriated basic ideas of the left, emptied them of their original content and refilled them with a reactionary message.

For example, the mass media described politicians intent in restoring capitalism and stimulating inequalities as “reformers” or “revolutionaries”, while their opponents were labeled “conservatives”.

Cultural Imperialism: It's the Ideology, Stupid!

Cultural imperialism sought to promote ideological confusion and political disorientation by reversing the meaning of political language. Many progressive individuals became disoriented by this ideological manipulation.

As a result, they were vulnerable to the claims of imperial ideologues who argue that the terms “Right” and “Left” lacked any meaning, that the distinctions have lost significance, that ideologies no longer have meaning.

By corrupting the language of the Left and distorting the content of the Left and Right, cultural imperialists hope to undermine the political appeals and political practices of the anti-imperialist movements.

The second strategy of cultural imperialism was to de-sensitize the public; to make mass murder by the Western states routine, acceptable activities.

Mass bombings in Iraq were presented in the form of video games. By trivializing crimes against humanity, the public is desensitized from its traditional belief that human suffering is wrong.

By emphasizing the modernity of new techniques of warfare, the mass media glorify existing elite power – the techno-warfare of the West.

Cultural imperialism today includes “news” reports in which the weapons of mass destruction are presented with human attributes while the victims in the Third World are faceless “aggressors- terrorists”.

Global cultural manipulation is sustained by the corruption of the language of politics. In Eastern Europe, speculators and mafioso seizing land, enterprises and wealth are described as “reformers”.

Contrabandists are described as “innovating entrepreneurs”. In the West the concentration of absolute power to hire and fire in the hands of management and the increased vulnerability and insecurity of labor is called “labor flexibility”.

In the Third World the selling of national public enterprise to giant multi-national monopolies is described as “breaking-up monopolies”.

“Reconversion” is the euphemism for reversion to 19th century condition of labor stripped of all social benefits.

“Restructuring” is the return to specialization in raw materials or the transfer of income from production to speculation.

“Deregulation” is the shift in power to regulate the economy from the national welfare state to the international banking, multi-national power elite. “Structural adjustments” in Latin America mean transferring resources to investors and lowering payments to labor.

The concepts of the left (reform, agrarian reform, structural changes) were originally oriented toward redistributing income.

These concepts have been co-opted and turned into symbols for reconcentrating wealth, income and power into the hands of Western elites.

And of course all the private cultural institutions of imperialism amplify and propagate this Orwellian disinformation.

Contemporary cultural imperialism has debased the language of liberation, converting it into symbols of reaction.

The new cultural tyranny is rooted in the omnipresent repetitive singular discourse of the market, of a homogenized culture of consumption, of a debased electoral system.

The new media tyranny stands alongside the hierarchical state and economic institutions that reach from the board roams of the international banks to the villages in the Andes.

The secret of the success of North American cultural penetration of the Third World is its capacity to fashion fantasies to escape from misery, that the very system of economic and military domination generates.

The essential ingredients of the new cultural imperialism is the fusion of commercialism-sexuality-conservatism each presented as idealized expressions of private needs, of individual self-realization.

To some Third World people immersed in everyday dead end jobs, struggles for everyday survival, in the midst of squalor and degradation, the fantasies of North American media, like the evangelist, portray “something better”, a hope in a future better life — or at least the vicarious pleasure of watching others enjoying it.

James Petras