The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
I am pretty sure billionaires pay bot farms to defend them online so a lot of it is that and the rest are the maga idiots who couldnt stop supporting pedos if their life depended on it.
You can find an example of such operations here:
Last summer, after Old Joe Biden was forced out of running for reelection and Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democrat candidate for president, the far left’s propaganda arm (that is, the establishment media) made a massive push to make this failed vice president and longtime party hack seem new and appealing. A key part of this effort was a gaggle of young “influencers” who took to Instagram and TikTok with an enthusiastic pro-Harris message. It was sincere, it was spontaneous, it was exciting — or at least that’s what it seemed to be. Now (I know, knock me over with a feather) it turns out that the whole thing was faked: the entire Harris bubble was the artificial creation of a bunch of leftist billionaires.
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony helps explain this. The superstructure of a given society eminates the values and ideology of the ruling class. This often creates false consciousness.
Because they are idiots.
Not really.
Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.
It applies just as much to billionaires in general as it does to imperialism.
Does this mean according to theory that America is doomed at least until everything implodes to the worst possible outcomes?
Not necessarily! Here’s the final call to action from this incredible essay:
The good news is that we’re further along than we think in overturning this state of affairs. If we relinquish anarcho-liberal fantasies of utopias where we no longer work, if we instead accept that we are workers, if we are able to do so with pride, many realistic victories turn out to be very much within reach. Everywhere that workers already work hard, they simply need to socialize the fruits of their already-socialized labour. Admittedly, reorganizing production isn’t a trivial task. However, the point here is that our social mechanism already offers ample proof that our skills and abilities are in plentiful supply. We already accumulated Alexandrian libraries of scientific knowledge as well as entertainment, and the ability to produce infinitely more without any “help” from capitalists!
Capitalists don’t fear individual rebels. They shower us with such bohemian stories. They fear exactly the opposite: the proliferation of an authentic working-class consciousness that pointedly rejects their “idle rich” lifestyle as everyone’s ultimate ideal. The hatred of “herd mentality” ultimately derives from the aristocratic hatred of the collective wisdom of the underclasses, of their choosing to work together in order to defend themselves from predators that would otherwise pick them off one by one. The project of repurposing this elitist attitude towards utopian goals is a dead end.
If you want to be radical, then, begin by radically rejecting the oldest and most vicious and most widespread bit of ruling class ideology: the idea that there is no wisdom whatsoever to be found in the behaviour of the masses. Reject the idea of “brainwashing,” and insist on seeking the kernel of intelligence and truth and wisdom in everyone’s current actions, even when they seem repulsive or hopelessly short-sighted. Identify where exactly you can intervene, and with whom, in such a way that it dovetails with existing tendencies, but always with an eye to revolution and the prize of a better future. Address yourself to reality in just this way, and you might just begin to change it.
In other words, maintaining revolutionary optimism and treating people not as though we are some intelligent superiors, but instead fellow workers with aligned interests, we can genuinely enact change through organizing.
They’re hoping to become one, someday, somehow.
They’ve been conned, and it’s not their fault. It is up to the people who see things objectively to kindly guide their attention towards the class war, 's the only way to win it.
