a Cypherpunk not in our midst - "The End of Communism in Russia Meant the End of Democracy in the West"

Zenaan Harkness zen@freedbms.net
Tue Oct 27 03:27:01 PDT 2015


http://russia-insider.com/en/history/russian-thinker-1999the-end-communism-russai-signalized-end-democracy-west-alexander

This interview is from 1999, seems too long to copy and paste, and
there's no danger of it disappearing, so here's just a snippet:

"Q: All totalitarian systems had their own ideology. What is the
ideology of the new society you call post-democratic?
A: The most influential Western thinkers and politicians believe that
we have entered the post-ideological epoch. This is because by
“ideology” they mean communism, fascism, nazism, etc. In reality, the
ideology, the super-ideology of the Western world, developed over the
last fifty years is much stronger than communism or national
socialism. A western citizen is being brainwashed much more than a
soviet citizen ever was during the era of communist propaganda. In
ideology, the main thing is not the ideas, but rather the mechanisms
of their distribution. The might of the Western media, for example, is
incomparably greater than that of the propaganda mechanisms of the
Vatican when it was at the zenith of its power. And it is not only the
cinema, literature, philosophy - all the levers of influence and
mechanisms used in the promulgation of culture, in its broadest sense,
work in this direction. At the slightest impulse all who work in this
area respond with such consistency that it is hard not to think that
all orders come from a single source of power. It was enough to decide
to stigmatize General Karadžić or President Milošević or someone else
for the whole planetary propaganda machine to start working against
them. As a result, instead of condemning politicians and NATO generals
for violation of all existing laws, the vast majority of Western
citizens is convinced that the war against Serbia was necessary and
just. Western ideology combines and mixes ideas based on its needs.
One of these ideas is that Western values and lifestyle are the best
in the world! Although for most people on the planet these values have
disastrous consequences. Try to convince Americans that these values
will destroy Russia. You will not be able to. They will continue to
assert the thesis of universalism of Western values, therefore
following one of the fundamental principles of ideological dogmatism.
Theorists, politicians and media of the West are absolutely sure that
their system is the best. That is why they impose it around the world
without a doubt and with a clear conscience. Western man as the
carrier of these highest values is therefore a new superman. The term
itself is a taboo, but It all comes down to this. This phenomenon
should be studied scientifically. But I dare to say that it has become
extremely difficult to conduct scientific research in some areas of
sociology and history. The scientist who desires to research
mechanisms of democratic totalitarianism will face extreme
difficulties. He will be made into an outcast. On the other hand,
those whose research serves the dominant ideology are flooded with
grants while publishing houses and media are fighting for the right to
work with such authors. I have personally experienced it  when I have
been teaching and working as a researcher at foreign universities."



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