by
Jason Hirthler
Part
1
In
Christopher Nolan’s captivating and visually dazzling film
Inception, a practitioner of psychic corporate espionage must plant
and idea inside a CEO’s head. The process is called inception, and
it represents the frontier of corporate influence, in which mind
spies no longer just “extract” ideas from the dreams of others,
but seed useful ideas in a target’s subconscious.
Inception
is a well-crafted piece of futuristic sci-fi drama, but some of the
ideas it imparts are already deeply embedded in the American
subconscious. The notion of inception, of hatching an idea in the
mind of a man or woman without his or her knowledge, is the kernel of
propaganda, a black art practiced in the States since the First World
War.
Today we
live beneath an invisible cultural hegemony, a set of ideas implanted
in the mass mind by the U.S. state and its corporate media over
decades. Invisibility seems to happen when something is either
obscure or ubiquitous.
In a
propaganda system, an overarching objective is to render the
messaging invisible by universalizing it within the culture.
Difference is known by contrast. If there are no contrasting views in
your field of vision, it’s easier to accept the ubiquitous
explanation.
The good
news is that the ideology is well-known to some who have, for one
lucky reason or another, found themselves outside the hegemonic field
and are thus able to contrast the dominant worldview with alternative
opinions.
On the
left, the ruling ideology might be described as neoliberalism, a
particularly vicious form of imperial capitalism that, as would be
expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of humanitarian aid and
succor.
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