Balductum Musings

Category: Geopolitics

  • Liberty at the Precipice

    A dramatic meditation on six dark auguries

    “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
    — Hegel

    The dusk is thickening over the Western democracies. Their parliaments still convene, ballots are still cast, and constitutions yet adorn museum-lit vitrines; but somewhere in the glow of liquid-crystal screens the old promises of liberty are being quietly rewritten. Six contemporary thinkers—Varoufakis, Postman, Mbembe, Chomsky, Forrester, and Wolin—have each raised a different lamp to the gathering night. When their beams are allowed to overlap, they project an unsettling silhouette of the future. Let us follow those lights one by one, and watch how the figure of “freedom” changes shape.

    1. Varoufakis’ Technofeudalism: The New Lords of the Cloud

    Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism has molted. No longer a system of competitive markets exchanging commodities, it has become technofeudal: a realm where cloud capital—the softwares, platforms, and data vaults—replaces land, and cloud rents replace profits.

    • Ownership is concentrated in “fiefdoms” (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta) that levy tolls on every digital crossing.
    • Labourers do not sell labour so much as they perform obligations inside gated architectures: gig workers, app developers, even casual scrollers whose clicks mint behavioural surplus.
    • Law, tax codes, and infrastructure bend around the needs of these barons, just as medieval kings prorogued roads and rivers for dukes.

    Implication for liberty: freedom of enterprise and speech migrates from public law to private terms of service. One may roam the global village, but only so far as a moderator’s algorithmic gaze allows. Habeas corpus is replaced by habeas data: the right of the platform to detain your metadata in perpetuity.

    2. Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”: The Carnival That Swallows the Polis

    Neil Postman, writing before smartphones were dreamt, warned that television’s logic would drown politics in entertainment. The prophecy is now all-encompassing:

    • Images arrive in floods, “breaking news” every quarter-hour, flattening tragedy and trivia into the same spectacle.
    • The citizen is refashioned as a dopamine seeker; sustained attention—democracy’s oxygen—is asphyxiated by the scroll.
    • Because the electorate’s appetite is measured in micro-seconds, policy is drafted as pageant, not programme.

    Implication for liberty: A public that cannot remember yesterday cannot defend tomorrow. Constitutional guarantees survive on paper, yet the capacity to desire them withers. Where Tocqueville feared gentle despotism, Postman discerns the softer doom of jocular anesthesia.

    3. Mbembe’s Necropolitics: Zones of Perishable Life

    Achille Mbembe extends Foucault’s biopolitics into the domain where sovereignty chooses not how to cultivate life, but whom it may abandon to death. In the West this is often exported:

    • Refugees drown at fortified maritime borders;
    • Supply-chain labourers inhale toxic dust beyond the visible perimeter;
    • “Essential workers” in pandemics clock in beneath banners praising their heroism while lacking basic protections.

    Implication for liberty: Freedom becomes geographically and racially partitioned. Aerial liberties over Silicon Valley coexist with aerostat surveillance over Gaza; each presupposes the other. The right to life—the bedrock upon which the right to liberty stands—turns conditional, and so liberty erodes from below like foundations gnawed by tides.

    4. Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions: The Alchemy of Consent

    Noam Chomsky’s media critique reminds us that propaganda in democracies is not shouted; it is manufactured through selection, framing, and repetition.

    • Ownership of media clusters with ownership of lobbyists and think tanks;
    • Debate is bounded by the “thinkable,” while genuine alternatives are dismissed as naïve or extremist;
    • Citizens are presented a menu choice after the entrée has already been cooked.

    Implication for liberty: The ballot box offers choice without voice. The form of freedom remains—campaigns, editorials, opinion polls—but substance is continuously skimmed away like cream from milk, leaving a watery liberalism that can be drunk without risk by the powerful.

    5. Forrester’s Economic Horror: The Market without Jobs

    Viviane Forrester saw the globalisation of the 1990s birthing a paradox: soaring productivity coupled with evaporating employment.

    • Automation, off-shoring, and just-in-time logistics produce surpluses with ever fewer workers;
    • Welfare states, designed for cyclical unemployment, crack under structural redundancy;
    • A new caste of surplus people emerges—formally free, materially shackled.

    Implication for liberty: Classical liberalism equated freedom with the right to sell one’s labour. When labour is no longer wanted, liberty mutates into the right to hustle eternally—Uber by day, Etsy by night—under permanent precarity. Debt, not prison bars, becomes the new fetter.

    6. Wolin’s Inverted Totalitarianism: Governance by Managed Democracy

    Sheldon Wolin’s chilling coinage describes a system where corporate power usurps political life without the theatrical violence of 20th-century dictatorships.

    • Security agencies partner with tech firms, blurring public and private sovereignty;
    • Elections are ritual confirmations of elite consensus, not engines of change;
    • Citizens are spectators, politics a branded spectacle, dissent a demographic niche.

    Implication for liberty: The tyrant is no longer a moustached figure on a balcony but a placid circuitry ensuring that disruptive wills are absorbed or silenced long before they reach quorum. Totalitarianism is inverted: people are not coerced to idolise the state; they are coaxed to ignore it.

    Constellations: How the Six Lenses Interlock

    1. Varoufakis supplies the economic infrastructure (platform serfdom).
    2. Postman supplies the cultural superstructure (spectacular distraction).
    3. Mbembe exposes the sacrificial underside (zones of expendable life).
    4. Chomsky shows the linguistic machinery (manufactured consent).
    5. Forrester reveals the social fallout (precariat and redundant multitudes).
    6. Wolin maps the constitutional outcome (hollowed republic, corporate sovereignty).

    Together they describe a self-reinforcing circuit:

    Technofeudal platforms harvest data → Entertainment media lulls critique → Necropolitical frontiers externalise violence → Illusions manage consent at home → Jobless growth multiplies desperation → Inverted totalitarian governance stabilises the arrangement … which further empowers the platforms that began the cycle.

    Can the Circle Be Broken?

    1. Digital commons legislation could dissolve platform fiefdoms, but lobbyists writing “necessary” tech policy are the very vassals of those lords.
    2. Public-interest media could counter Postman’s spectacle, but attention itself is colonised by algorithms optimised for outrage and mirth.
    3. Transnational human-rights regimes could confront necropolitics, yet those regimes depend on the very powers deploying lethal peripheries.
    4. Education in critical media literacy could puncture necessary illusions, but curricula are increasingly outsourced to corporate ed-tech.
    5. Universal basic income could answer economic horror, but fiscal imagination is bounded by deficit phobias fanned by rentier classes.
    6. Constitutional reform could curb inverted totalitarianism, but such reforms require the mass mobilisation that the preceding forces relentlessly disperse.

    Hope, then, must recruit new energies: unions that span borders and sectors, whistle-blowers inside the algorithmic fortresses, artists capable of holding attention long enough for truth to ferment, and jurists who dare draft rights for the twenty-first-century subject—rights to data self-determination, to dignified redundancy, to the slowness indispensable for thought.

    Epilogue: The Flame and the Screen

    Liberty in the West was once pictured as a torch raised high. To keep that fire, citizens gathered in forums, argued, voted, sometimes bled. Today the torchlight competes with a trillion tiny LEDs, each promising easier warmth. The danger is not that the flame will be snuffed out in a single gust of tyranny, but that we will cease to notice its dimming, amused and scrolling beneath the neon canopy of our own captivity.

    Yet dusk is not night. The owl that sees in darkness has already taken flight, carrying these six grim insights on its wings. If we dare to look up, to read the shapes it traces across the fading sky, we may still decide that liberty is worth the costlier light of day.

  • Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions

    In Noam Chomsky’s work, particularly in his book “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” (1989), he explores how certain myths and misconceptions function as “necessary illusions” that help maintain existing power structures in democratic societies.

    The key necessary illusions Chomsky identifies include:

    1. The illusion of a free and independent media, when in reality media often serves elite interests through structural constraints, ownership patterns, and dependence on advertising revenue
    2. The myth that democratic governments primarily represent ordinary citizens rather than concentrated wealth and corporate power
    3. The illusion that foreign policy is driven by humanitarian concerns and democratic principles rather than strategic and economic interests
    4. The belief that economic systems like capitalism naturally serve the common good through “free markets” when they often concentrate wealth and power

    Chomsky argues these illusions are “necessary” from the perspective of power systems because they help secure public consent for policies that primarily benefit elites. His analysis draws heavily on earlier work with Edward Herman, particularly their “propaganda model” from “Manufacturing Consent,” which examines how media functions as a system for generating public compliance with established power structures.

    These concepts connect to Chomsky’s broader critique of how democratic societies manage popular consent through ideological systems rather than through more overt forms of control seen in authoritarian states.

    Chomsky provides numerous specific examples of these necessary illusions in practice:

    Media independence illusion:

    • Coverage of U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere showing systematic bias toward official narratives
    • Limited coverage of U.S.-backed human rights abuses (like in East Timor during Indonesian occupation)
    • The treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims in media coverage (extensive humanizing coverage of victims of U.S. adversaries versus minimal coverage of victims of U.S. or allied actions)
    • Corporate media’s narrow range of “acceptable debate” that rarely challenges fundamental power structures

    Democratic representation illusion:

    • Policy outcomes consistently favoring wealthy interests over popular opinion (citing studies showing minimal correlation between public preferences and policy except when aligned with elite interests)
    • The role of private campaign financing creating dependence on wealthy donors
    • Revolving door between government positions and corporate lobbying

    Humanitarian foreign policy illusion:

    • Supporting brutal regimes (Saudi Arabia, various Latin American dictatorships) while condemning human rights abuses selectively
    • The rhetoric of “promoting democracy” used to justify interventions with clear economic or strategic motives
    • The discrepancy between stated humanitarian goals and actual consequences in cases like Libya, Iraq

    Economic system illusion:

    • Portraying economic crises as natural disasters rather than systemic failures
    • Framing corporate subsidies as “free market” while labeling social spending as “government intervention”
    • The narrative of prosperity through deregulation despite evidence of increasing inequality

    Chomsky’s methodology typically involves detailed historical analysis comparing stated intentions against documented actions, and examining primary source government documents to reveal contradictions between public rhetoric and actual policy goals.

    Chomsky’s analysis draws on an extensive range of primary source documents and historical records to expose these necessary illusions:

    Government Documents:

    • Declassified National Security Council memoranda and planning documents (particularly NSC-68 and other Cold War strategy documents)
    • Pentagon Papers, which revealed contradictions between public statements and internal assessments of the Vietnam War
    • State Department policy planning documents from the post-WWII era, especially those authored by George Kennan
    • FOIA-obtained documents regarding U.S. involvement in Latin America, particularly Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador
    • Congressional hearing transcripts and intelligence committee reports

    Diplomatic Communications:

    • Declassified diplomatic cables showing private vs. public positions on human rights issues
    • Embassy communications regarding economic interests in regions of intervention
    • Internal assessments of foreign governments contradicting public portrayals

    Media Analysis:

    • Systematic content analysis of major newspapers and television coverage during critical events
    • Editorial patterns in mainstream outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and major networks
    • Comparative analysis of coverage between similar events that receive different treatment based on U.S. interests

    Corporate/Economic Documents:

    • Corporate board meeting minutes and internal strategy documents
    • World Bank and IMF policy papers and conditional loan requirements
    • Trade agreement texts and negotiation documents
    • Business press publications that often speak more candidly about economic motives than general news

    Historical Records:

    • Transcripts from the Constitutional Convention showing founders’ concerns about limiting popular democracy
    • Colonial administrative records revealing the true nature of imperial projects
    • Historical government planning documents about managing public opinion

    Chomsky’s methodological strength lies in his meticulous cross-referencing of official documents with historical outcomes, identifying patterns of behavior that contradict official narratives. He frequently cites internal planning documents where elites speak more candidly about actual motivations compared to public justifications, revealing what he terms the gap between “necessary illusions” and documented reality.

    The Pentagon Papers provide some of Chomsky’s most compelling evidence of necessary illusions in practice. Here are key examples he frequently cites:

    Gap Between Public and Private Rationales:

    • While publicly claiming intervention in Vietnam was to defend South Vietnamese independence and prevent the spread of communism, internal documents revealed U.S. policymakers were primarily concerned with maintaining U.S. credibility and preventing a successful model of independent development outside Western economic control
    • Documents showed officials privately acknowledged the conflict was not about defending against external aggression but rather an internal Vietnamese struggle in which the U.S. had inserted itself

    Deliberate Deception:

    • The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, used to justify major escalation, was revealed to be dramatically misrepresented to Congress and the public
    • Internal assessments indicating the war was unwinnable continued for years while public statements maintained optimism about military progress
    • Documents showed officials were aware bombing campaigns were ineffective militarily but continued them for political and psychological purposes

    Imperial Planning:

    • Papers revealed post-WWII planning that identified Southeast Asia primarily as a resource area to be integrated into the U.S.-dominated economic system
    • The threat of an independent Vietnam was characterized in economic terms – the “domino theory” was about economic models rather than military conquest

    Disregard for Vietnamese Self-Determination:

    • While claiming to support Vietnamese democracy, internal documents revealed U.S. opposition to elections mandated by the Geneva Accords because intelligence indicated Ho Chi Minh would win approximately 80% of the vote
    • Evidence that the U.S. installed and maintained dictatorial regimes in South Vietnam despite rhetoric about democracy

    Policy Continuity Across Administrations:

    • Documents showed remarkable continuity in Vietnam policy across Democratic and Republican administrations despite public perception of differences
    • Revealed bipartisan commitment to the same fundamental objectives regardless of public messaging differences

    Chomsky used these revelations to demonstrate how the “necessary illusion” of America defending democracy against aggression contradicted internal government understandings. He argued the Papers exposed not just lies about specific events, but a fundamentally different conception of America’s role and motives than what was presented to the public – revealing the systematic nature of necessary illusions in foreign policy.

    The Pentagon Papers provide some of Chomsky’s most compelling evidence of necessary illusions in practice. Here are key examples he frequently cites:

    Gap Between Public and Private Rationales:

    • While publicly claiming intervention in Vietnam was to defend South Vietnamese independence and prevent the spread of communism, internal documents revealed U.S. policymakers were primarily concerned with maintaining U.S. credibility and preventing a successful model of independent development outside Western economic control
    • Documents showed officials privately acknowledged the conflict was not about defending against external aggression but rather an internal Vietnamese struggle in which the U.S. had inserted itself

    Deliberate Deception:

    • The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, used to justify major escalation, was revealed to be dramatically misrepresented to Congress and the public
    • Internal assessments indicating the war was unwinnable continued for years while public statements maintained optimism about military progress
    • Documents showed officials were aware bombing campaigns were ineffective militarily but continued them for political and psychological purposes

    Imperial Planning:

    • Papers revealed post-WWII planning that identified Southeast Asia primarily as a resource area to be integrated into the U.S.-dominated economic system
    • The threat of an independent Vietnam was characterized in economic terms – the “domino theory” was about economic models rather than military conquest

    Disregard for Vietnamese Self-Determination:

    • While claiming to support Vietnamese democracy, internal documents revealed U.S. opposition to elections mandated by the Geneva Accords because intelligence indicated Ho Chi Minh would win approximately 80% of the vote
    • Evidence that the U.S. installed and maintained dictatorial regimes in South Vietnam despite rhetoric about democracy

    Policy Continuity Across Administrations:

    • Documents showed remarkable continuity in Vietnam policy across Democratic and Republican administrations despite public perception of differences
    • Revealed bipartisan commitment to the same fundamental objectives regardless of public messaging differences

    Chomsky used these revelations to demonstrate how the “necessary illusion” of America defending democracy against aggression contradicted internal government understandings. He argued the Papers exposed not just lies about specific events, but a fundamentally different conception of America’s role and motives than what was presented to the public – revealing the systematic nature of necessary illusions in foreign policy.