http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/klaus_mann.htm
1949: The current crisis - or, to be more precise, the permanent crisis of this century - is not limited to any particular continent or any particular social class. In this shrunken world of ours, all nations and all classes have to face the same problems and dangers. But if it is true that an intellectual is more keenly aware of the critical world situation than, say, a baseball champion or a chorus girl, it is also true that the European intellectuals are more directly, more vitally affected than their colleagues in Brazil or Australia or the United States. For it is one thing to meditate on the possible breakdown of civilization; it is an entirely different matter to see it happen. Certain apocalyptic events which may seem almost incredible to the student of philosophy in Kansas City or the poet in Johannesburg, ate only too familiar to the people of Berlin, Warsaw, Dresden, Rotterdam. In Vienna, Athens and London, the "falling towers" which T. S. Eliot saw in The Waste Land are not just poetic symbol any more. In the midst of ruins, in view of crippled me' and starving children, no adult, clear-sighted person can overlook or belittle the deadly seriousness of the permanent crisis.
1996: Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System" https://www.gongfa.com/geertz1.htm
It is one of the minor ironies of modern intellectual history that the term "ideology" has itself become thoroughly ideologized. A concept that once meant but a collection of political proposals, perhaps somewhat intellectualistic and impractical but at any rate idealisticÑ"social romances as someone, perhaps Napoleon, called themÑhas now become, to quote Webster's, "the integrated assertions, theories, and aims constituting a politico-social program, often with an implication of factitious propagandizing; as, Fascism was altered in Germany to fit the Nazi ideology"Ña much more formidable proposition. Even in works that, in the name of science, profess to be using a neutral sense of the term, the effect of its employment tends nonetheless to be distinctly polemical in Sutton, Harris, Kaysen, and Tobin's in many ways excellent The American Business Creed, for example, an assurance that "one has no more cause to feel dismayed or aggrieved by having his own views described as 'ideology' than had Moliere's famous character by the discovery that all his life he had been talking prose," is followed immediately by the listing of the main characteristics of ideology as bias, oversimplification, emotive language, and adaption to public prejudice No one, at least outside the Communist bloc, where a somewhat distinctive conception of the role of thought in society is institutionalized, would call himself an ideologue or consent unprotestingly to be called one by others. Almost universally now the familiar parodic paradigm applies: "I have a social philosophy; you have political opinions; he has an ideology."
2012: http://wydawnictwopodziemne.com/en/2010/01/12/english-a-question-of-discernment/
Michael Bąkowski has explained, very briefly, his hypothesis of how the extended “Final Phase” of the Soviet long range strategy is carried forward in Eastern Europe by a “third echelon” of Soviet leaders: including such figures as Yushchenko, Saakashvili, and Putin. Because of the inevitable decrepitude of old politicians, like Yeltsin and Walesa, Bąkowski believes that the Kremlin was compelled to deploy new politicians, initiating a new round of deceptions. This was necessary because the long range strategy failed to break up NATO by detaching Germany in a timely fashion; so the “Final Phase” of the strategy went into overtime. The Liberal Facade Theater Company of the USSR was tasked with a series of encore performances. Further concessions had to be made to liberalism, capitalism, and to economic survival. Of course, there is danger in necessities of this kind. The former Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO, and so have three former Soviet republics. If Moscow doesn’t like a political outcome in Eastern Europe, Russian tanks can no longer be called upon to intervene; and, on account of exit polling, electoral fraud carries risks (except in Russia, where the degree of control is maximal). The Soviet bloc has undergone structural changes.
2015: https://ehyde.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/erich-fromm-on-modern-idolatry-where-psychotherapy-and-religion-intersect/
“The threat to the religious attitude lies not in science but in the predominant practices of daily life.” writes Erich Fromm in his famous work, “Psychoanalysis and Religion.” He explains that, “man has ceased to seek in himself the supreme purpose of living and has made himself an instrument serving the economic machine his own hands have built. He is concerned with efficiency and success rather than with his happiness and the growth of his soul.”
This description of our situation (written in the 1950’s, but as relevant as ever) is a description of modern idolatry. Idolatry, in Fromm’s thought, is not a strictly religious term, and has less to do with the worship of a particular object and more to do with an orientation, an attitude towards life. It is an attitude which seeks the deification of things: of a nation, of business, machines, success, health, etc.
2016-http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/fascism-and-liberalism.html
This is an excerpt concerning the rise of totalitarianism within (neo)liberal societies published in my 2008/2011 book, Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life:
Totalitarianism and fascism take hold when populations organized around common articulations of national or racialized identity are mobilized by fear and anxiety. Yet, even while liberal rights are stripped, the liberal imagination cannot readily come to terms with creeping totalitarianism.
The banality of many domestic sovereign technologies, as illustrated by computerized surveillance, mystifies the consolidation of sovereign power (see Arendt, 1963).
In my 2016 book, Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability, I set out to identify the dissolution of liberal principles of government in the context of three crises, arguing that we see the rise of a predatory-state complex consisting of ruthless corporations and government agencies caught up in their own power-games, regardless of long term impacts for ecological sustainability (which is an existential crisis, as evidenced by the BP oil spill and the Fukushima disasters).
2021: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/09/joseph-mercola/american-medical-association-instructs-doctors-to-deceive/
The Winter 2021 “AMA COVID-19 Guide: Background/Messaging on Vaccines, Vaccine Clinical Trials & Combatting Vaccine Misinformation,”1 issued by the American Medical Association (AMA) raises serious questions about the AMA’s adherence to transparency, honesty, ethics and the moral standards to which it will hold its members.
The AMA was founded in 1847 and is the largest professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students in the U.S. According to the AMA itself, its mission is to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.
How then do they explain this “COVID-19 messaging guide,” which explicitly teaches doctors how to deceive their patients and the media when asked tough questions about COVID-19, treatment options and COVID shots?
AMA Teaches Doctors How to Deceive
“It is critical that physicians and patients have confidence in the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines as they become available for public use,” the “AMA COVID-19 Guide” states, adding:2
“To overcome vaccine hesitancy and ensure widespread vaccine acceptance among all demographic groups, physicians and the broader public health community must continue working to build trust in vaccine safety and efficacy, especially in marginalized and minoritized communities with historically well-founded mistrust in medical institutions.”
Go to the World Economic Forum website and read their pronouncements on health care and climate change. Study the videos. Get to know the lists of partners. They are shaping the narrative and own the mainstream press, governments, corporations, institutions.