Cognitive Warfare in the West
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 24, 2024
Thierry Meyssan
Rossia Segodnia is Russia’s public broadcasting group. It produces six television channels (RT Group), news agencies (Sputnik, RIA-Novosti) and websites (Voice of Europe). It is now administratively banned throughout the European Union and soon in the USA.
In the West, censorship is nothing more than a method of government from another age. NATO is waging a cognitive war, not against ideas and reasoning, but to alter citizens’ ability to take into account the way other cultures think. This war first led to the banning of the Russian media, RT, Sputnik and so on. Then, today, to exert very strong pressure against journalists, such as Scott Ritter or Jürgen Elsässer, who do not perceive Russians as enemies because they are capable of understanding them.
The Western vulgate on the conflict between the Anglo-Saxons and Russia does not tolerate contradiction. A number of personalities and companies who have reported on a different point of view have been subjected to arbitrary repression.
It all began, in France, during the May 2017 presidential election campaign. Two Russian media outlets, RT and Sputnik, relayed hacked files from candidate Emmanuel Macron’s team and a deputy’s remarks about his alleged off Shore account in the Bahamas. Mr. Macron lodged a complaint against X (i.e. without naming the perpetrator), while the media concerned announced their intention to lodge a complaint for defamation (but the President could not be tried during his term of office). However, the situation remained unchanged until, a month later, Mr. Macron, who had been elected, held a press conference with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Versailles. He then described the Russian media as “an organ of influence [having] repeatedly produced untruths about my person and my campaign (…) Russia Today and Sputnik did not behave like press organs and journalists, but they behaved like organs of influence, propaganda, and misleading propaganda, nothing more, nothing less.”
In 2020, the British authorities give one interpretation of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, while RT gives another. The media regulator, the Office of Communication (Ofcom), issues a series of notices to the Russian channel and, ultimately, fines it £200,000, which are upheld by the High Court of Justice in London.
On March 10, 2021, the US Director of National Intelligence published a report on foreign threats during the 2020 elections [1]. She asserted that President Vladimir Putin had instructed his media to denigrate Joe Biden’s candidacy and thus support Donald Trump’s. However, none of this is reprehensible and no media is cited.
In 2022, German authorities are concerned by RT’s reporting of “Russian aggression against Ukraine”. The channel presented the Kremlin’s arguments on the “special military operation” made necessary by the presence of neo-Nazis in the Kiev government. They therefore banned it, and were soon followed by the EU. On February 27, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU-wide ban on RT and Sputnik. A few days later, YouTube closed European access to the channels of the channel and the agency. A month later, Canada also banned RT and Sputnik.
Censorship accelerated in 2024. On March 27, 2024, the Czech government banned the Voice of Europe website and imposed sanctions on former Ukrainian MP Viktor Medvedchuk for allegedly financing it. The same day, Polish police raided the site’s Warsaw offices and seized cash. On May 17, 2024, the EU banned RIA-Novosti as well as Voice of Europe, Izvestia and Rossiïskaïa Gazeta.
Neither in the USA nor in the EU has there ever been a case against RT, Spunik, RIA-Novosti, Voice of Europe, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Their bans are purely administrative. In the EU, freedom of expression does not apply to Russian media.
The German federal police launched some twenty high-profile raids to suppress an imaginary crime, and seized a large quantity of equipment. The administrative court annulled the entire procedure.
On July 15, 2024, the German Federal Police raided the homes of Jürgen Elsässer, editor-in-chief of Compact, Magazin für Souveränität, and around twenty of his colleagues. They searched for evidence of a coup d’état, seizing a great deal of material but finding nothing. At the same time, the Minister of the Interior, the socialist Nancy Fraeser, administratively banned the magazine.
FBI search of Scott Ritter’s home. The former inspector of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq made a name for himself by denouncing the lies of President George Bush. Today, he perseveres by denouncing Atlanticist rhetoric on the Ukrainian conflict.
On August 7, 2024, Scott Ritter’s home was searched by the FBI for evidence of Russian funding. Here too, the federal police seized a great deal, but found nothing. Mr. Ritter’s only fault is that, since the war against Iraq, he has never stopped analyzing the lies of the US government, a form of protest that is in principle permitted in a democracy.
On August 14, 2024, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig annulled the ban on Compact, Magazin für Souveränität, pending the presentation by the Scholz government of evidence of the conspiracy of which it accused the magazine. He demands that the seizures made from Jürgen Elsässer and his collaborators be returned to him. In reality, Mr. Elsässer’s only crime is to have declared that the Scholz government is betraying the German people and that he would like to see it overthrown – an opinion, admittedly radical, but in principle permissible in a democracy. In addition to his magazine, he has set up an Internet channel seen by 1.2 million Germans every day.
On September 4, Washington announced criminal proceedings and sanctions in response to attempts to interfere in the elections, which it blamed on Russia. The State Department imposed visa restrictions on the Rossia Segodnia media group.
On September 13, 2024, in an interview with the press, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the destabilizing activities of RT, which he described as a “branch” of Russian intelligence around the world. Almost two years earlier, his department had published a special report: Kremlin-funded media: the role of RT and Sputnik in the Russian disinformation and propaganda system [2]. Three days after the Secretary of State, on September 16, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, declared, “Rossia Segodnia, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps worldwide due to their foreign interference activities.”
Of course, one might think that these cases are unrelated, even though they all involve media outlets. This is unlikely, given that the US and EU authorities have violated the principle of freedom of expression enshrined in the US Constitution and in European law. The question arises as to which body is coordinating these actions and for what purpose.
In 2016, I reported on the creation of NATO’s Strategic Communications Center [3] and, in 2022, of the Disinformation Governance Board by the Biden administration [4]. The former unit still exists and is expanding, while the latter has been dissolved, its director moving to the British Foreign Office.
The whole system now aims to intervene as far upstream as possible. Drawing on the latest discoveries in neuroscience, the aim is to steer brains before they even think: this is “cognitive warfare”. This theory is a French invention, the brainchild of three Bordelais, François du Cluzel, Bernard Claverie and Baptiste Prébot [5] within NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, under the command of Generals André Lanata and Philippe Lavigne.
From the point of view of cognitive warfare, we need to intervene as soon as possible, before certain ideas gain ground. That’s why, in February 2022, when Russia implemented UN Security Council Resolution 2022 (misleadingly dubbed “Russian aggression” by Atlanticist propaganda), Russia’s opponents hesitated to ban Russian culture, then fell back on banning Russian media. Ultimately, the ideal for them is to ban not Russian relays in the media, but media that attempt to understand Russian thought.
The enemy is no longer the one who anonizes Kremlin communiqués, but the one who tries to understand the Russian way of thinking. This used to be the function of diplomats: to understand other people’s way of thinking. But on April 16, 2022, President Macron dissolved the diplomatic corps just after he had Russian media banned in France, and a few weeks ago his administration arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, guilty of giving his users a private means of communication and thus chatting with Russians.
These efforts are most likely being coordinated by Nato’s Strategic Communications Center, the only body with both experience of cognitive warfare and the authority to have particular media banned and individuals arrested.
According to our information, the targets are determined by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bayerisches Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz). This office was set up in 1950 by the US High Commissioner to occupied Germany, John McCloy. It was staffed by former SS and Gestapo officers. Nothing has changed since then: a few months ago, for example, this office classified around a hundred opposition groups, including the Attac association and the Die Linke party, as “left-wing extremist”, accusing them of links with terrorism and recommending that they be banned.
To my great surprise, I had the opportunity to verify that this office classifies me as a “Russian agent of influence” because of my defense of international law drawn up by the government of Nicholas II and the French Nobel Peace Prize winner Léon Bourgeois [6]. Apparently, these sleuths only reacted to the reference to the Tsar, ignoring that of the illustrious French politician, President of the Council and President of the Senate.
Notes:
[1] Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections, Avril Haines, March 10, 2021.
[2] Kremlin-Funded Media : RT and Sputnik’s Role in Russia’s Desinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem, Global Engagement Center, January 2022.
[3] “The NATO campaign against freedom of expression”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 5 December 2016.
[4] “The West renounces freedom of expression”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation TheAltWorld, Voltaire Network, 10 November 2022.
[5] Cognitive Warfare, François du Cluzel, NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, November 2020.
[6] “What international order?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 7 November 2023.
Translation by Roger Lagassé
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/09/ ... -the-west/
British Intel’s ‘Counter-Disinfo’ War Goes Global
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 24, 2024
Kit Klarenberg
CDU’s overseas relationships, with countries across Europe and North America, and even as far afield as Colombia
On September 13th, an extraordinary document was released via litigation against the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is an August 2021 slide deck presentation by Britain’s shadowy, spook-infested Counter Disinformation Unit to the White House National Security Council’s Interagency Policy Committee, which regularly gathers Washington’s spying services together to coordinate on national security matters. The contents amply expose how London’s long-running use and abuse of security and intelligence agencies to warp online perceptions is, by design, spreading the world over.
The presentation, which has never hitherto been publicly revealed, was delivered by CDU operatives on August 10th 2021. At this time, the NSC was meeting daily to discuss policing and suppression of pandemic-related speech within and without the US. The British were seemingly invited to offer the Council best practice guidance on battling “disinformation” and “misinformation”, based on their experiences of managing the CDU, which was founded in 2019. Initially operating in total secrecy, London’s “intelligence community” has been central to its efforts since inception.
The Biden administration’s untrammelled censorship push during the COVID19 pandemic was absolutely rabid, and brazen. Overt state policing of social media so enraged and terrified average US citizens, even Mark Zuckerberg has felt compelled to issue a major mea culpa. In August, he admitted senior US officials successfully “pressured” Facebook to remove untold swaths of dissenting content throughout this period, in almost every case completely egregiously. Meta’s CEO unconvincingly pledged to “push back” against any similar government bullying in future.
As the world’s foremost purveyor and enforcer of mass censorship, Britain’s CDU was inevitably of enormous interest to the Biden administration. Yet, suppression is just one component of the Unit’s – and by extension London’s – neverending quest for narrative control, and dominance, both on- and offline. As we shall see, psychological warfare, stalking, and harassment are all part of the CDU’s clandestine toolkit. The newly-released file reveals British intelligence is exporting this sinister “counter-disinformation” credo to every corner of the globe.
Due to the nigh-total conspiracy of official silence cloaking the CDU to date, the document provides unprecedentedly candid insight into the Unit’s activities and modus operandi. The details are certain to have enormous relevance throughout Europe and North America, for the Unit’s tendrils, and structure, now extend throughout the world. The international proliferation of this very British censorship, surveillance and manipulation mechanism could well account for so many information ecosystems becoming effective wings of the Anglo-American national security state since the COVID19 pandemic.
‘Domestic Dissent’
In the slide deck, CDU is predictably described in anodyne terms. It states the Unit “works across Departmental boundaries and is mandated to provide the most comprehensive picture possible about the extent, scope and impact of disinformation during times of heightened risk.” The Unit is said to have “stood up an operational response to counter disinformation during the 2019 European elections, the 2019 UK General Election,” and had been extremely active since March 2020 “in response to Covid-19.”
An accompanying diagram places the CDU at the very core of the British state, and deep state. Internal “monitoring” and “open source” teams within major government departments feed reports on “disinformation” to the Unit, which then receives “support” from “agencies” – a euphemism for Britain’s security and intelligence services – and vice versa, before coordinating with Whitehall on how to “respond”. Often, this entails ordering social media companies to throttle or purge content, or particular users/accounts.
It could also extend to “non-platform interventions”, such as “proactive and reactive communications.” Their nature is unstated, but it may be instructive that the CDU works in close tandem with the newly-created and similarly opaque Government Information Cell, “to identify and counter Russian disinformation targeted at UK and international audiences.” The Cell “brings together expertise from across government”, including “experts” on “analysis, disinformation, and behaviour and attitudinal change” drawn from the security and intelligence services, and directly coordinates with major social media platforms.
“Behaviour and attitudinal change” is also the beat of 77th Brigade. The British Army’s psychological warfare unit worked in lockstep with the CDU throughout the pandemic. The Brigade’s online operations are as opaque as they are apparently vast. This includes maintaining a sizable militia of real, fake, and automated social media accounts to disseminate and amplify pro-government messaging, while monitoring and discrediting the British state’s enemies, be they domestic or foreign.
After 77th Brigade’s 2015 launch, it was repeatedly claimed by officials the unit not only didn’t conduct information warfare operations targeting British citizens, but was legally prohibited from doing so. When in April 2020 then-British military chief Nick Carter announced the Brigade was “helping to quash rumours from misinformation, but also counter disinformation” related to the COVID19 pandemic, it raised obvious anxieties these safeguards were being breached. Such concerns were quietly confirmed in June that year by an Army spokesperson:
“The [Ministry of Defence] has been working within the Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit to tackle a range of harmful narratives online. As a UK government unit, [77th Brigade] have two primary audiences – government departments and British citizens, as well as anyone else seeking reliable information online.”
In January 2023, an ex-Brigade whistleblower revealed how longstanding domestic laws and civilian protections were routinely circumvented by the CDU and 77th Brigade, throughout the government’s crusade against pandemic dissent:
“To skirt the legal difficulties of a military unit monitoring domestic dissent, the view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality they could be a foreign agent and were fair game. But it is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population…These posts did not contain information that was untrue or co-ordinated.”
In the process, an untold number of people within and without Britain were subjected to psychological manipulation strategies honed for use on battlefields, against enemy militaries. Accordingly, the online profile of a 77th Brigade veteran who oversaw “countering dis- and mis-information during the COVID19 crisis” was deployed straight from a tour of West Asia, where they “successfully implemented behavioural change strategies against ISIS.”
It wasn’t just average citizens on the receiving end. Investigations by Big Brother Watch indicate the CDU and 77th Brigade kept a very close eye on the online statements of government ministers, elected lawmakers, academics, journalists and citizens. Their crime? Opposing vaccine passports, lambasting poor state financial support for businesses, questioning the modelling used to justify a second lockdown in November 2020, and criticising NATO, among other non-pandemic matters. What response the British state cooked up in each case is left to our imaginations.
‘International Engagement’
In April 2024, British parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a report, Misinformation and trusted voices. It contained a scathing section on the CDU, describing the unit as “one of the most opaque…in government outside of the security services.” Despite receiving assurances from Whitehall officials that the CDU did not “drill down into individuals” or censor material, and simply “identified narratives…gaining traction in a particular area,” the Committee remained deeply suspicious. It declared:
“We are concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability of the CDU and the appropriateness of its reach. We recommend that the Government commission and lay before parliament an independent review of the activities and strategy of Counter Disinformation Unit [sic] within the next 12 months.”
There is as yet no indication that such a review has been initiated in Britain. Nonetheless, it is surely of the utmost urgency similar probes are conducted in a great many other countries, to gauge contacts between the CDU and foreign governments, and the extent to which this may have informed the latter’s approaches to stifling inconvenient truths and dissenting viewpoints. Several slides in the declassified presentation refer to the Unit’s “international engagement”.
One refers to the CDU collaborating “with partners to counter disinformation.” This includes, “sharing ideas and open source intelligence; building coalitions; sharing lessons learned; exploring and delivering programmes and joint campaigns; multilateral cooperation to counter disinformation.” Another boasts of the Unit’s “bilateral engagement with 20+ countries”, “international training and capability”, and “joint working” with the Five Eyes global spying network.
These excerpts strongly suggest the CDU is a key nucleus for Western governments to collude in influencing online discourse, and maintain narrative unanimity on national security matters. The Bucha incident may provide a case in point. It’s been confirmed the CDU censored online content related to alleged massacre. Western countries, led by Britain, framing mysterious killings in the occupied Ukrainian town as a targeted genocide by Russian forces was fundamental to sabotaging fruitful peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in May 2022.
In this context, slides on London’s “wider disinformation policy work” at home take on a particularly disquieting character. These sections discuss how the CDU’s operations interact with a wider domestic legislative framework, which allows authorities “to take action against companies that fail to comply with the government’s online speech regulations,” while prosecuting and penalising alleged disseminators of “disinformation”. The content resembles a sales brochure, outlining the benefits of these restrictive laws and sweeping powers, encouraging partner states to follow Britain’s example.
An accompanying map depicts the CDU’s overseas relationships, with countries across Europe and North America, and even as far afield as Colombia. If any constituent governments have taken draconian measures to tackle the alleged plague of “disinformation” in recent years, there is a high likelihood they acted based on a script drawn up by British intelligence, and continue to do so today.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/09/ ... es-global/
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“Mixing Pop and Politics, A Marxist History of Popular Music” – book review
Originally published: Counterfire on September 19, 2024 by Charles Marriott (more by Counterfire) | (Posted Sep 25, 2024)
‘We are on a road to nowhere, Come on inside’
Popular history of the post-war period is history written by the winners, ‘where all roads lead to neoliberalism’ (p.9). This history, in the words of Francois Hartog, is ‘an invitation for collective amnesia’ (p.11). By stripping out the idea of struggle, and the potential for change, we end up with a sanitised history with music as pure commodity and the masses as the mere temple slaves to the market. In this deep, richly textured book, Manning wants to challenge the history of the winners and the ideas that music is imposed from above and is ‘consumer capitalism writ too large’ (p.5). In its place, we are asked to see music and popular culture as dialectical; a struggle between ‘dominant ideology and popular imaginary, consent and refusal’ (p.5). Music is a form that in Marxist terms is in ‘fluid movement’ (p.5) and offers us a ‘resource of hope for the present, to inspire and incite us to push into the future’ (p.13).
One of the highlights of the book is the periodisation of the chapters; instead of sticking to decades, or longer time periods, each chapter is designed naturally around musical and historical breaks. We have 1953 to 1958, the era of the nuclear family, the nuclear threat and rock’n’roll’s revolt followed by the morbid symptoms of long-1950s cuteness from 1958 to 1964 through to punk, disco and authoritarian pop of 1977 to 1981. These short periods reflect the fluidity of popular culture and history from counterculture to reaction, from revolt to commodification, from utopian to dystopian and from hope to resignation.
This periodisation enables the reader to enjoy the longer perspective of the whole work and dip back into time periods, and musical styles from punk to glam to disco, from rave to rap to grunge. Each period is a rich diet of songs, song lyrics of chart music from the USA and UK that to some may be an overindulgence, but to others will feel like a banquet. Whatever your tastes, your historical, theoretical and musical horizons will be challenged, and your mind will be thinking of lyrics, songs, artists and movements that you would have included. This is a neat trick that will have me returning again and again to this book.
‘A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom’
In popular history, and the eyes of right-wing politicians and commentators from the late 1970s onwards, the 1950s was the period of lost innocence. It is a period sterilised and stylised in Happy Days and American Graffiti. This collective amnesia is reflected in what happens if you look up Elvis on your streaming service. What you get as the most popular song is the from the waist up, balladeering, ‘sophisticated lethargy’ (p.45) of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ rather than the adversarial, exciting, inciting and inspiring ‘Hound Dog’. The 1950s of this history fetishes ‘order, religion and property’ (p.15) with wholesome images of dad as the suited, bread-winning, company man with mom baking apple pie, which even led Harold MacMillan in 1957 to declare ‘we’ve never had it so good’ (p.15).
As the author argues ‘if everything was so peachy perfect, why did rock’n’roll happen?’ (p.16). Here is a story of the working class of non-professional musicians, across colour line, on independent labels, storming into history to challenge the conformity of segregation and social apartheid, patriarchy and the cult of domesticity and the heavy-handed patrolling of sexuality. The author invites us to think of the unfettered freedom of ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’ of Little Richard, and the ‘all disorientation, all excitement, all sex’ (p.2) of ‘Hound Dog’. The author also invites to think of Chuck Berry’s ‘Maybellene’, where the song’s car culture stands as a mirror to a society where African American car ownership was more utopia than reality, as seen in the 1955 Bus Boycott. Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’ sees the singer satirising conservative commentators’ hollow claims that the USA was a level playing field whatever the colour of your skin or your class, whilst ‘School Days’ concludes with the utopian couplet ‘Hail, hail rock and roll/ Deliver me from days of old’ (p.25).
It was not just the music; it was the fashion. No longer buttoned down, smoothed down and suited, the youth were greased up, rolled up and dressed in blue-collar and rustic fabrics like denim and plaid (p.35). The youth presented themselves as objects of envy and desire, challenging the dominant ideology and rejecting class hierarchy (p.39). However, capitalism quickly ‘exploited and then contained rock’n’roll’s anarchic energy’ (p.40) with major labels reasserting entertainment over excitement. Mad Men reflects this era of the late 1950 and early 1960s dramatizing how ‘advertising co-opted 50s discontent into consumerism and, as Thomas Frank argues, “made of alienation a motor for fashion”’ (p.47).
The right’s desire to turn its gaze back to the 1950s as an age of responsibility and order is built on sand. This was also a period of challenge to the right’s certainties on race, gender, class and sexuality. It is there in its music which reminds of the possibilities for the future whilst being an echo of the past. Eddie Cochrane’s ‘Summertime Blues’ still raises a fist to the alienation of work (p.458) by raising a fuss ‘about workin’ all summer just to try to an’ earn a dollar’ and raises a holler about the fact that ‘Everytime I call my baby, to try to get a date, my boss says, no dice, son, you gotta work late’.
‘It’s a competitive world’
The 1980s of Thatcher and Reagan is in popular history the natural endpoint of the failure of social democracy and reveals a collective amnesia about the fact that, according to New Economics Foundation research, 1976 was the peak year of British national happiness, whilst the riches’ share of UK wealth was at its lowest between 1974 and 1976 (pp.202-3). This popularised history sees the 80s as a rejection of socialism, social democracy and the social. In its place, was the individual, privatisation, the corporate and the Yuppie. Think Pretty in Pink, Dynasty and Miami Vice and the privatisation of listening with the Walkman (p.241, p.262).
The same was seen in music; an over the top, enthusiastic sense of positivity and individualism that coerced you to be free. Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ insists we are ‘rising up, straight to the top’ whilst Spandau Ballet monetised everything by commanding us to remember ‘Always believe that you are gold’ (p.241). The protestant work ethic was back and was sexy, with Madonna’s ‘Holiday’ just ‘one day out of life’ as life is work and work is life. Principles were out; as Culture Club sang ‘I am man without conviction’, conformity was in, whilst Belinda Carlisle reminded us that ‘Heaven is a place on Earth’.
Yet within this golden edifice, music and culture were growing in the cracks of the structure. Film saw Blade Runner, Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome and 1984, offering a very different view. Music saw the Jam presenting us with the choice ‘to either cut down on beer or the kid’s new gear’ in ‘A Town Called Malice’ (p.248); The Pogues in their rambling ‘Rum, Sodomy and Lash’ gave us songs of the disposed; Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel gave us ‘The Message’: ‘You’ll grow in the ghetto, living second rate/ And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate’ (p.249). Alienation is clearly expressed in the cold, hard musical landscape of ‘Underpass’ on the dystopian ‘Metamatic’ by John Foxx, which offers a ‘satire of a clinical business environment’ (p.231).
In the USA, Bruce Springsteen gave us the pared back anger of ‘Nebraska’ and the terrible sense of loss of a better world and anger against the treatment of veterans on ‘Born in the USA’. This yearning for a collective, socialised past gives the lie to the shiny, individualised world of the 1980s. Whilst Depeche Mode’s industrial sounds on ‘Everything Counts’ capture alienation and lament the ‘collective loss in individualism’ (p.256) with the chorus of ‘The grabbing hands/ Grab all they can/ All for themselves, after all’.
Whilst the right-wing politicians of the 1980s looked to their golden past of the 1950s, the right wing of today looks to the 1980s. They want to write that history as a history of economic success and individual freedom. Yet beneath this gilded veneer, lies a music and politics of protest from the miners’ strike to Billy Bragg’s ‘Between the Wars’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up that Hill’ (recently brought back to the charts via Stranger Things). Defeats may have been experienced during these eras, but they were also times of possibilities, of change, and of potential. Music has the ‘power to evoke and to inspire desire—feelings, dreams, hopes and that is power’ (p.465). History does not have to repeat itself.
‘Fight the Power’
We are lost in music. It comes at us from everywhere and we don’t listen to it chronologically. It surrounds us, ‘whether in a shop or a hipster café, coming from a phone on a bus or a muscle car on the street, heard in a film soundtrack or on a TikTok’ (p.456). However, the author argues that music does not ‘transcend its historical period’, rather it ‘testifies to its historical period’ (p.457). It offers us collective memory, and a collective memory of hope and the potential of change. Watch and listen to Public Enemy’s equal parts ‘rally, party, and revolution’ (p.462) or the Beloved’s ‘Sweet Harmony’ utopian pledge to ‘come together, right now, oh yeah, in sweet harmony’ or Stormzy’s pledge ‘to find a way/ To another day’ on ‘Blinded by Your Grace, Pt.2’.
This history is a history worth telling and a history worth reading. It gives a detailed voice to dissent and challenges the monochrome history of culture told by neoliberal apologists. Perhaps it needed a greater analysis of rave’s potential as a music and mass movement that threatened individualism, private property and the ‘Hip to be Square’ world view of the 1980s. Perhaps the language should have been more open and less technical, however these are minor quibbles in a great book. You and I might not agree with all the musical choices, or all the analysis, but it will challenge your view and I welcome its voice.
https://mronline.org/2024/09/25/mixing- ... ok-review/
First, Anthony Blinken targeted us. Then,… pic.twitter.com/zn68ywNCNM
🎖 “Unit 8200” intelligence unit, Paragon has attracted investment from American venture capital firms Battery Ventures and Blumberg Capital. According to experts, the lack of sanctions against Paragon by the Biden administration may indicate the company’s successful lobbying efforts. Wired claims that in 2019, Paragon hired consulting firm WestExec Advisors to advance its interests, ( 
Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
specific applications, and not full control over the device. This is how it differs from NSO Group.