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The Human Animal – Patriot Act

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

Through the paradox, semi automatically cocked
Cuz see the nightmares start when the alarm clocks stop
The tic toc, shattering the bricks and rocks
We lock stepping like skeletons ventilated in boxes
I drop lyrics with the spirit of Chiapas
They can’t stop us, running like ants under helicopters
Noxious, surviving living like insects
Held hostage, robbed, and fed to the monsters
I’m mad hostile, if ever the time right now
Before they contract Blackwater to your town
A soundtrack of dead babies and flat taxes
A new axis evil sequel they manufactured
A caste system, economics and captives
You either work for pennies serving man or become the master
The cash after the aftermath is what they really after
So it’s the Capitol we after

Chorus: The Human Animal

In the heart of darkness
Running with Marxists and anarchists
Bearing the scars of a death squad escape artist
Marksmen in a midnight dream
Whether we underground for life or bring the fight to the scene
This shit is combat, Kodak-rap, graphic and raw
Ripping lines of anthrax up in a bathroom stall
Bodies eviscerated, lives like suicides wasted
Pacing amid the fire so damn right we aggravated

Verse 2: The Human Animal

We got no antibodies, anybody liable to die
Running on landmines, out our fucking minds by campfires
We crimethinking, clitoris licking up on silk linen
Animalistic, I fuck synthetically gifted
Live it or act, black Oceaniac backgrounds
Soundtracks of the last American hometowns
With pounds of flesh, empty mouths, and a rosary
The whole ground frozen, no one left, and you lonely
The art of war in the final hour
Nouns and black powder, we kick it back with the mags howling
Black carrots, pissy milk, and blood cabbage
The farm dead but at least I got a healthy marriage
Paris, they set the fire like I burn blunts
The city streets where they scream cuz the flame hurts
The pain is pure, either maintain or die early
And only murder if deserving and the fur worthy

Bridge: The Human Animal

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane
It’s a motherfuckin airliner wrapped in flames
And as the window pane breaks like a new widow’s heart
A wind lifts through a city’s limbs ripped apart

Chorus: The Human Animal

In the heart of darkness
Running with Marxists and anarchists
Bearing the scars of a death squad escape artist
Marksmen in a midnight dream
Whether we underground for life or bring the fight to the scene
This shit is combat, Kodak-rap, graphic and raw
Ripping lines of anthrax up in a bathroom stall
Bodies eviscerated, lives like suicides wasted
Pacing amid the fire so damn right we aggravated

Verse 3: The Human Animal

Contagious hatred, no skin, no faces
Skeleton style, society with no races
Paper, our fate erased by the corporate caper
We getting money, fuck the world, y’all can save it later
Rapping like cheap labor wolves loving sheep flavor
Religious cavemen, Eucharist, and fake saviors
They want to take it and break it like we ain’t ready for
Metaphors shaped by raps packed with C-4
A semi-formal criminal kid, brick forest
Playing with mortars, cross bows, and blow torches
Morticious songs that more viscous
For war we all committed, together we omnipotent
The litmus negative, mental static, and medicine
Televised musical pharmaceutical sedatives
The menace chemist American mainstream
With a fetish for the death sex, executive dream

Chorus: The Human Animal

In the heart of darkness
Running with Marxists and anarchists
Bearing the scars of a death squad escape artist
Marksmen in a midnight dream
Whether we underground for life or bring the fight to the scene
This shit is combat, Kodak-rap, graphic and raw
Ripping lines of anthrax up in a bathroom stall
Bodies eviscerated, lives like suicides wasted
Pacing amid the fire so damn right we aggravated

Verse 4: The Human Animal

Sin in my eyes, city skies, cinematic mazes
Living in fire where the blind walk in empty cages
Amazing grace, level headed but decapitated
Assimilated triple-x sex mutilated
Imminent threats, method body control
We enter death through the medicine like chemical souls
In the snow fox guiles and the grime fatigues
Secret service trying to hunt us with snipers up in the trees
Enemies with a wiretap, name on file
Cuz I got ash in my lungs son of liberty style
Where I reside owls echo in the depths of horror
Cuz the night never ends and there’s no tomorrow
So they Our Father, names dissolved in flames
Bodies laying in the street and even cops are saying
The games over, silent as piles of child bones
Under bulldozers rolling to build new homes

Bridge: The Human Animal

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane
It’s a motherfuckin airliner wrapped in flames
And as the window pane breaks like a new widow’s heart
A wind lifts through a city’s limbs ripped apart

Chorus: The Human Animal

In the heart of darkness
Running with Marxists and anarchists
Bearing the scars of a death squad escape artist
Marksmen in a midnight dream
Whether we underground for life or bring the fight to the scene
This shit is combat, Kodak-rap, graphic and raw
Ripping lines of anthrax up in a bathroom stall
Bodies eviscerated, lives like suicides wasted
Pacing amid the fire so damn right we aggravated


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 5:31


Also Available In Stores

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Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Rock Around The Flock

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

I pump through the heart of the machine like morphine
Cuz we are not people, you and me are the bloodstream
Meaning we act different everything can change
If you can’t think for yourself, you been chained by the brain
I ain’t playin, as soon as the vaccine hit my veins
I became a fucking animal and switched my name
It’s all the same, every radio hit about getting laid
So I tell them all get naked likes it’s Abu Ghraib
And now you rocking pairs of nikes like they so damn fly
But if you ever smelt the sweatshop it’d make you cry
It makes me sick to see how they advertise LeBron James
When the kids who made his shoes are fiveSo if I ever met the man on one dollar bills
I’d spit in his fucking face for every Indian he killed
Straight crazy, I’m reading up on history in amazement
Like how the fucks our capital named after a racist

Chorus: The Human Animal

So we rock around the flock, rock around the flock
And now we rock around the flock, rock around the flock
And now we rock around the flock, rock around the flock
And now we rock around the flock, rock around the flock

Verse 2: The Human Animal

This is overnight shipping first class from Baghdad
They sent my little brother home wrapped in a black bag
Cuz he ain’t never had enough money for his tuition
I guess the free trade is education for killing
And is it really that big of a deal to get your dick sucked
Cuz your wife’s a dyke and ain’t giving it up?
Cuz while the topic of discussion was impeaching Clinton
We killed a half a million innocent Iraqi children
And that was only one of three reasons stated
Why al Qaeda brought the war to the states and made a statement
I hate this, cuz now it’s kids like us that gotta fight this
Moving through Fallujah like we vipers
I’m on the ground with a rifle under the sound of choppers
They got me locked in a prison holding inmates in collars
We told to follow but why would we ever do this
This isn’t part of our duty but the reason that we make music

Chorus: The Human Animal

So we rock around the flock, rock around the flock
And now we rock around the flock, rock around the flock
And now we rock around the flock, rock around the flock
And now we rock around the flock, rock around the flock


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 4:40


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Nuke Music

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

You call it education, I call it euthanasia
And now they watching me like they be targeting al Qaeda
Rock star behavior, get your shit on lock
Cuz you the next motherfucker that they send to get shot
Now every city and town is ground zero
The rain sizzles and the air considered lethal
Nobodies got hair and every hero dun died
See my mom would’ve cried but she dun lost her eyes
Hold your fire never, whatever this motive is
Is obviously more important than the innocence of kids
Cuz Bush ain’t never seen the little face on a girl
As she sits face to face with her mother who been killed
As he lays on his ranch, shit I wonder if he feels
Any sort of emotion for the woman he just killed
Cuz this fucking war is real and I don’t really feel you know this
Like how the fucks American idol get more voters

Chorus: The Human Animal

So turn the funk louder, sipping on liquor mix it with gunpowder
Out the pussy of the shotgun the sound shatters
Scatter your frame with that steel rain clatter out of rain clouds
Radioactive brainpower
So turn the funk louder, sipping on liquor mix it with gunpowder
Out the pussy of the shotgun the sound shatters
Scatter your frame with that steel rain clatter out of rain clouds

Verse 2: The Human Animal

Fuck the American dream, I’m having nightmares
Waking up screaming but who the fuck cares right?
Somebody home prolly fuckin my wife now
While I’m out on the road trying to hold my whole life down
In giving you a sound that you never dun heard
Cuz these kids overseas got no choice but to serve
And they voice never heard cuz you been taught not to listen
How you call it independence when they die and you chilling?
So feel the ricochet bitch, this that riot soundtrack
When animals attack you and take their lives back
Political draft dodgers rich cuz of their fathers
These are the same men that did business with Osama
How easily y’all forget that, you citizens are rats
More worried for Paris Hilton than these kids in Iraq
But at last, I’m here, with no fear, this a blueprint
Our last minutes on earth, this is nuke music

Chorus: The Human Animal

So turn the funk louder, sipping on liquor mix it with gunpowder
Out the pussy of the shotgun the sound shatters
Scatter your frame with that steel rain clatter out of rain clouds
Radioactive brainpower


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 3:18


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Orange Carnage

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

Everlasting the cash the curse
You see we used to burn flags now we burn the church
I’m well versed with it, they made a virgin give birth with it
Now they drilling and killing the fucking earth with it
Now Hip-Hop, how the fuck you pissed?
Don’t read but know what a real terrorist is?
In America the interest is business kid
Propaganda of the masses like Hitler did
It’s international, greed never recognized borders
Keeping every kid in line with deficits and disorders
The side effects ignored cuz the more prescribed
Means more for motherfuckers like Merck and Pfizer

Bridge 1: The Human Animal

And now you think the fucking real world televised
And now you think the fucking real world televised
And now you think the fucking real world televised
How the fuck you think the real world televised?

Chorus: The Human Animal

Out the river they’re told the water cold so they all shiver
Sipping that Clorox liquor, the orange carnage
You know the carbonated brainwash
Spit it back in their face laced with napalm

Verse 2: The Human Animal

You see the death rates sky with the rise of Nasdaq
Privatized systems and military contracts
So we back to war but not before
Tax cuts for the rich while we fuck the poor
Cuz of the $84 billion already approved
Only one point two percent is going to schools
We need $500 more for them weapons and chemicals
And you wonder why these kids is shooting their classrooms
See the truth is they ain’t really fucking with improvement
Most people are stupid and news is useless
That’s how they gotta do it, if you knew what I knew
Then you would never be about it believing it all true
So it’s Eve and Adam instead of evolution
Atom bombs and nukes for the execution
How they using and manipulating the Constitution
All depends on if the nation never knew what they’re doing

Chorus: The Human Animal

Out the river they’re told the water cold so they all shiver
Sipping that Clorox liquor, the orange carnage
You know the carbonated brainwash
Spit it back in their face laced with napalm


Lyric Typography // The Human Animal - Orange CarnageLyric Typography // The Human Animal - Orange Carnage


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 2:53


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Kill Me

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

This is the year of the hunter, hear the gunners in trees
Just something about a battle that’ll numb your knees
We under cover of the moon with the tongues of thieves
While you a number being fed to the war machine
I got a bullet in my head, what I read was venom
So as of now, I ain’t stopping til the president beheaded
Nope, it ain’t Seven, it’s better, this Armageddon
The reason they call us rebels ain’t the way we dress

Chorus: The Human Animal

They’re trying to kill me, cuz they be making money off of coffins
The industry of freedom and that fee will cost you
They’re trying to kill me, and if they ever succeed
It means I’m only gonna sell a million more copies

Verse 2: The Human Animal

Focus, living in a mode of attack
Ulterior motives to leave a bar code on your back
We gon’ crash through the crowd, the color, the cobweb
Motherfuckers in your government are getting dropped dead
For the red, white, and blue, I don’t fight for you
You ain’t about the people, we nothing to you
But it’s us you live through so I’ll kiss your pistols
And rip into your history like knives in tissue

Chorus: The Human Animal

They’re trying to kill me, cuz they be making money off of coffins
The industry of freedom and that fee will cost you
They’re trying to kill me, and if they ever succeed
It means I’m only gonna sell a million more copies


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 2:07


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Pimp My Whip

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

Why we torturing a detainee when the real war criminal is Dick Cheney?
Running the country like a nazi while you think it’s democracy
They’re using bodies like pieces in monopoly
My technology is top advanced so when I drop flows ladies drop their pants
And when I rock shows they arrest my fans
Locked down holding dirty cops’ scalps in our hands, damn
I’m bout to pillage on these pilgrims
So high I’m on the other side of the ceiling
Don’t lie, giving the fuck $60 billion
When he spent the fucking 60’s draft dodging and chilling
Illing I let the chain hang soft like spaghetti
Only revolution I see is an ad by chevy
So they ain’t ready when this brainstorm break the levee
Said they ain’t ready when this brainstorm break the levee, get it

Chorus: The Human Animal

So let’s get it all in perspective
The reason we at war is cuz of foreign investment
Y’all appointed me to illustrate the obvious
Like how Congress being run by the lobbyists
So I’ma put this all in context
A few million dead, how you call that progress?
Just check where the checks are going
And who manufactured the noose that the soldier holding

Verse 2: The Human Animal

On behalf of us at vh-one
I’d like to welcome everyone to white raps and fun
Backpackers who can rap about gats and guns
Running their mouths like they really know what’s African
Like what the, I’m fucking nauseas you watch this shit
Then got the balls to tell me I should be like this
But y’all can suck a fucking mixture of this blood and cum
Every record exec and writer up at vh-one
This ain’t the type of music for stupid kids
Or YouTube bitches thinking that you cool and shit
Just sit down sons, you too politically correct
And if the old school sell out I ain’t fucking with respect
Had connects moving weight like dumb bells
But now I’m being hunted by this dumb fuck Rumsfeld
They said I gotta sound more dumb to sell
I got the jungle in my veins, y’all can fuck yourselves

Chorus: The Human Animal

So let’s get it all in perspective
The reason we at war is cuz of foreign investment
Y’all appointed me to illustrate the obvious
Like how Congress being run by the lobbyists
So I’ma put this all in context
A few million dead, how you call that progress?
Just check where the checks are going
And who manufactured the noose that the soldier holding

Verse 3: The Human Animal

I was breast fed diesel off of titties like gas pumps
Hung for the masses with the acid black tongue
Marijuana lunging lacing raps like a fascist
In a white-hooded disguise with eyes of Catholics
Now here we go again open fire we God-driven
Given a bounty so we outlaws stay hidden
In late tinteds sitting with ladies who stay chilling
Knowing any minute we could be littered and cease living
Elitist gimmicks in the mind of the beast
When I rhyme it’s like Che Guevara speak in his sleep
I’m rapping to eat, but rather put a army on its feet
Running wild in them DC streets playing for keeps
I’m a natural, born animal half man
I’ll roll up in your city burn that shit like Afghan
The one man that got the whole industry pissed
Cuz I asked Kunta Kinte if he wanted his whip pimped

Chorus: The Human Animal

So let’s get it all in perspective
The reason we at war is cuz of foreign investment
Y’all appointed me to illustrate the obvious
Like how Congress being run by the lobbyists
So I’ma put this all in context
A few million dead, how you call that progress?
Just check where the checks are going
And who manufactured the noose that the soldier holding


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 3:46


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Children Of War

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

Everyday they watched her like a target
From the mosque to the shop to the market
Then back home before the curfew started
They used to play cards, sip rum, and get retarded
Tales of back home and all the good times had
How they’re missing that good head living in Baghdad
‘What we should do’ one said with a grin on his face
‘Is run up in that young girl’s place and just take it
Yeah I know it’s crazy but the plan is perfect
All we gotta say is the man was an insurgent
The daughter just happened to get caught in the way
And when we done all we gotta do is light the propane
And as the evidence burns away
Just lay low and take cover for the next few days
So what you say, son? you in? you got my back rookie?’
“Yeah I’m in it’s been a minute since I had pussy”

Verse 2: The Human Animal

He licked her face while he raped her
Pulled his dick out and made her taste it
Pulling her hair, putting her face in it
His veins rushed the moment before he bust
Like the oil in the desert that they came to pump
And so he fucked like a soldier with his dick and bush
Gave her everything he had for as long as it took
And while the others looked on with shock and awe
She heard a shot and watched her father’s face paint the floor
‘Yeah they all dead every desert wall is red
Now let me get up on that shit and straight fuck her head’
He unzipped and slipped off the mask
Blood dripping from the pussy when he ripped her ass
See the scissors in her lung made it hard to gasp
All she wanted to do was die but knew she couldn’t do that
But then he grabbed her as he came and clutched his AK
Put it to her head and blew her brains away
And as the blood sprayed he pulled the barrel out her mouth
Stuck it where the cum coming out and blew her stomach out
And out the house they ran, the four man brigade
Al-Qaeda killers now turned insane
And when the neighbors saw the flames
They rushed into the house
Saw a body on the floor and two more on the couch
But see the fire grew strong and time was running out
So he grabbed her by the ankles and pulled the corpse out
That was right about the time when the cops arrived
But even they weren’t prepared for this type of surprise
See for 8 months she was able to hide
But now the holes in her stomach showed her baby’s eyes
Burned alive the unborn child survived
Even when they pulled the trigger and his mom had died
Birthed in fire a desert eagle rise again
From the ashes of his mom so now the plot revenge

CONTEXT

…the study of killing in combat is very much like the study of sex. Killing is a private, intimate occurrence of tremendous intensity, in which the destructive act becomes psychologically very much like the procreative act. – Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society”

Children of War uses a single event – the Mahmudiyah Killings – to illustrate the broader invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Mahmudiyah killings was the gang-rape and killing of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi by United States Army soldiers in March 2006, and the murder of her family. At the time, the story was ignored by mainstream news organizations in America (notice the British accent of the news reporter).

The individual characters are simply mirrors of the larger institutions involved. The young girl signifies the culture, or the “body,” of the occupied people. The soldiers symbolize the profiteers – the banks, engineering and construction companies, oil companies, computer system suppliers, military manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, etc – who reaped, and continue to reap, the massive financial benefits of war.

Given the nature of preventive war, it is essential that the target be virtually defenseless, very much like a victim of rape. The target must also be important enough to be worth the trouble. Iraq’s oil fields placed it in a position to finance enormous infrastructure and industrialization programs, and thus provided certain international and US companies with an enormous potential market. Thus, the soldiers are unable to resist the temptation of the woman’s “natural resources.”


Lyric Typography // The Human Animal - Children of War


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 5:10


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The Human Animal – Death Of Birth

Part of The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon Of Mass Communication

©REEVOLUTION. Released September 11, 2008

Lyrics

Verse 1: The Human Animal

The death of birth, mother earth’s abortion
Of the forefather slave owner field enforcement
A history of horse shit and piles of corpses
While our corporate education providing the reinforcement
The poorest underfunded, no government resources
The authors of democracy wealthy off of the slave market
Cave artist, harvest people the policy
Another dollar for the blood of the child born into poverty
Their silhouettes of death share the shadows of presidents
Holidays of holocaust so there’s military presence [presents]
Yes it’s hard to swallow when the water’s all black
Cuz the bodies in the river got no arms attached
The commissaries heavily armed, born for combat
With the mask of the savage worn for bloodbaths
Out the ashes of the flag, the fire, the contract
We on that ass faster than the second tower collapsed

Verse 2: The Human Animal

Living in a vivid captivity we act differently
In actuality the facts are the enemy
We hung by the Nasdaq, backs are bleeding
They never paid for the land, how they taxing freedom?
The religion of a demon, a government of a king
A fire for the carnage as artists we gon’ bring
Ain’t no talk anymore they can’t walk with a war
Mohawks are drawn, welcome to the terrordome storm


Lyric Typography // The Human Animal - Death of BirthLyric Typography // The Human Animal - Death of Birth


Data


Writer: The Human Animal
Producer: The Human Animal
Label: REEVOLUTION
Project: The USA Project: Hip Hop As A Weapon of Mass Communication
Album: United States of Auschwitz
Released: September 11, 2008
Recorded: 2008
Length: 2:54


Also Available In Stores

iTunes // Google Play


Additional Links

Listen to The Human Animal on Soundcloud
Subscribe to The Human Animal on YouTube

The USA Project: Book List

Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States


A People’s History of the United States

by Howard Zinn

Featured on the song “Patriotism.”


Howard Zinn - You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times



Bill Moyers - Moyers On Democracy


Moyers On Democracy

by Bill Moyers

Featured on “Sheep” and “Real Estate of Mind.”


Confessions of an Economic Hit Man


Confessions of an Economic Hitman

by John Perkins

Featured on “Kill People” and “Burn Black.”


John Perkins - The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men Jackals and How to Change the World



Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine


The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

Featured on “Democra Sees A Dead Body.”


Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything Capitalism vs The Climate


This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate

by Naomi Klein

Featured on “Democra Sees A Dead Body.”


Sheldon Wolin - Democracy Incorporated Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism



John Robb - Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization



Chris Hedges - War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning



Chris Hedges - Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle



Nassim Taleb - Antifragile



Naomi Wolf - The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot



Noam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media



Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything



Power Inc The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government



Matt Taibbi - The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap



Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries



David Rothkopf - Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making



 Chrystia Freeland - Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else



Inverted Totalitarianism, Superpower, And Managed Democracy

Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Democracy-and-the-Specter-of-Inverted-Totalitarianism-0

Sheldon Wolin is Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University.


Inverted Totalitarianism

  • A new type of political system driven by abstract totalizing powers; one that succeeds by encouraging political disengagement rather than mass mobilization; relies more on “private” media than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda reinforcing the official version of events
  • Not governed by personal rule (is largely independent of any particular leader and requires no personal charisma to survive); the leader is not the architect of the system but its product; its model is the corporate “head,” the corporation’s public representative
  • Has emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation’s public traditions
  • A system which professes to be the opposite of what it is; disclaims its real identity, trusting that its deviations will become normalized as “change”
  • Reflects the belief that the world can be changed to accord with a limited range of objectives (i.e. ensuring that its energy needs be met, that “free markets” be established, military supremacy maintained, “friendly regimes” be in place considered vital to its own security and economic needs)
  • Promotes “managed democracy” worldwide – a political form in which governments are legitimated by elections they have learned to control
  • Enthusiastically exports culture and jobs while missing no opportunity to weaken trade union power at home and abroad
  • Evinces no interest in abolishing the system that enables them to maximize power: a free politics, under the right conditions and controls, interposes no barriers to their kind of totalizing power – the “right conditions” refers to the porousness of institutions that enables a different form of power – one ostensibly nonpolitical in its origins, unbound to constitutional limits or to democratic processes (call it “corporate power”) – to turn access or simple influence over legislators and policy-makers into copartnership – the incorporated state
  • Does not require as the condition of its success the overthrow of the established system; has no plan to suppress all opposition, impose ideological uniformity or racial purity, or seek the traditional form of empire; allows free speech, venerates the Constitution, and operates within a two-party system that, theoretically, secures a role for an opposition party; does not depend upon resentments against the prevailing form of government or social system
  • Disclaims its identity; detaches democratic myths from democratic practices enabling mythology, passivity, and empty forms to serve a type of totalitarian regime
  • Evolves from “strong democracy” instead of a “failed” one
  • Exploits what appear to be formidable political and legal constraints, using them in ways that defeat their original purpose without dismantling or overtly attacking them; exploits institutions to facilitate certain favored forms of power while checking rival ones
  • Wields total power without appearing to (without establishing concentration camps, enforcing ideological uniformity, forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual); seeks to preserve an economy of fear and not saturate the market (ensuring domestic tranquility)
  • Economics dominates politics; what seem like reductions in state power actually increase it; power is exercised in a context where the participants know their cues
  • Replaces a politically engaged citizenry with legislative institutions design to “stand in” for the people; creates a system of “misrepresentative or clientry government”; eliminates direct connections between the citizen and government; relegates the political existence of the citizenry to a shadow-citizenship of virtual participation during the intervals between elections
  • Promotes demobilization making it difficult to form coherent majorities around common beliefs
  • Is the true face of Superpower; represents a blend of powers comprising the business corporation, the organization of science for continuous advance, and the systematic conversion of new scientific knowledge into new technological applications, esp. military ones; each of these powers is a presumption of virtually limitless development, a dynamic which governs economic behavior, the pursuit of knowledge, the production of culture, and military weaponry
  • Radically opposes democratic conceptions of power; both democracy and the political become distorted when the scales are continually expanded; an enlarged spatial scale both requires and promotes a technology of power that can make occupation and rule effective
  • Is legitimated and fueled by an ideology; ideology can be as vital a part of the technology of power as any mechanical invention, provided it is a dynamic – that is, if it possesses a “thrust” forward in time to accompany the occupation of new space; reassures that the technology of power is guided by some higher principle
  • Systematizes and exploits a dynamic complex of pre-existing powers to create the preconditions for Superpower: the availability of a totalizing technology of power and an accompanying ideology that encourages the regime’s aspirations to global domination; the primary power complexes include the state, corporate economic power, the powers represented in the integration of modern science and postmodern technologies, a military addicted to technological innovation, and a religious fundamentalism that is no stranger to politics and markets
  • Is a dynamic complex of powers – powers which constantly supersede their own previous limits and are totalizing in the sense that infinity, or the persistent challenging of the constraints of existing practices, beliefs, and taboos, rather than simple superiority, is the driving force; this force is accompanied by a systematic effort to establish the conditions that facilitate power and eliminate those which interfere
    • Culturally embedded memetic structures seeking complete control over organization (infinity)
    • The systematic effort is enacted through human agents
  • It coexists easily with a culture of softness, indulgence, and fantasy
  • Has a revolving door; a dual system of state and corporate power where individuals share experience in government and are intimately familiar with the inner workings of the corporate world
  • Thrives on a politically demobilized society, that is, a society in which the citizens, far from being whipped into a continuous frenzy by the regime’s operatives, are politically lethargic; political futility is systematized and apathy results as a political response
  • Aims at fashioning followers rather than citizens by furnishing substitutes such as “consumer sovereignty” and “shareholder democracy” that give a “sense of participation” without demands or responsibilities; prefers a citizenry that is uncritically complicit rather than involved
  • Crystallizes by providing a stimulus to rouse the apathetic just enough to gain support and obedience; the threat of terrorism supplies this element, evoking fear and obedience on demand without causing paralysis or skepticism
  • Provides “politics all of the time” but a politics largely untempered by the political; absent is the “political,” the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests
  • Evolves as a scarcely noticeable and undramatic convergence of tendencies and unintended consequences with no abrupt discontinuity; a historically rooted (i.e. corporate powers of the 1800s, …); unprecedented in its union of corporate and state power (systemization and the shared culture of partners)
  • Begins to crystallize amidst the affluence of the world’s most dynamic economy; creates an economy of fear, a system of control whose power feeds on uncertainty, yet a system that, according to its analysts, is eminently rational
  • Cultivates a loyal intelligentsia (intellectuals, scholars, and researchers) of its own through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors

Superpower

  • Is the union of state and corporation in an age of waning democracy and political illiteracy
  • Has its own “constitution,” its own “more perfect union.” Its constitution is about powers whose scope and influence derive from available resources, opportunities, and ambitions, rather than legal limits. Its composition is meant for “increase,” not constraint – not based on the intentions of the framers but on the unlimited dynamic embodied in the system whereby capital, technology, and science furnish the sources of power – has no inherent political authority, the constitution for preservation has limited authority while its actual power is dependent upon those who operate the constitution for increase – these two constitutions, one for expansion, the other for containment, form the two sides of inverted totalitarianism
  • Depends upon the symbolic relation between two elements – one political, the other economic.
    • Empire – consists of large military might, of bases scattered throughout the globe, of arms sales, of alliances and treaties with comparatively weak client states – has only customers and clients, dominated markets instead of incorporated provinces
    • The Globalizing Corporation – brings to foreign countries economic goods and services as well as the softening power of cultural influences and products
  • These elements transform the “homeland” from a self-governing, predominantly inward looking political society into a home base for international economic and military strategies
  • The “dynamic powers” of science, technology, and capital (vital to the imperial reach and the globalizing drive of corporations) are the basis of the new system of power – politics and governance are a strategy based upon the powers that technology and science (including psychology and the social sciences) have made possible – exploitation of these powers enables their owners to redefine the citizenry as respondents rather than actors, objects of manipulation rather than autonomous
    • A key feature of these “dynamic powers” is their distance from the experience of ordinary beings
  • Insulating status ascribed to imperial affairs, the secrecy and inhibitions beginning to envelop domestic politics and the operations of globalizing corporations have the net result of excluding the public from a deliberative role in each and all of the major preserves of modern power – the demos is free to enjoy the results of its exclusion but as no claim to significant political power – thus democracy, like empire and globalization, gains a universal status, but what it universalizes is not the practice of self-governing democracy but American power
  • State power not only relies upon corporate power for the conversion of scientific advances into technological achievements but depends heavily on corporate personnel for policy advice and managerial skill
    • The political is managerialized – politics, elections, and the operation of governmental departments and agencies are routinely considered managerial rather than political skill
    • Results in a decline of public ethic and ideal of civil service
  • Corporation and state are indissolubly connected – privatization becomes normal and state action in defiance of corporate wishes the aberration
  • An attempt at reconstituting the nation’s identity (not just a system of aggrandizing power)
  • Signifies form-free power, sophisticated and “advanced”
  • Cannot mean “government by the people”
    • Not practically because the global “responsibilities” of Superpower are incompatible with participatory governance
    • Not theoretically because the powers that make Superpower formidable to not derive either from constitutional authority or from “the people”
    • The condition for the ascendance of Superpower is the weakening or irrelevance of democracy and constitutionalism, except as mystifications enabling Superpower to fake a lineage that gives it legitimacy
  • Represents a substantive transformation where a corporate or economic model of governance is superimposed upon a political form whose constitution consisted partly of republican, antipopulist elements and partly democratic elements
  • Depends on censorship of popular protest and other mechanisms to isolate democratic resistance, insulate society from hearing dissonant voices, and hurry the process of depoliticization
  • Terrorism, power without boundaries, becomes the template for Superpower; the measureless, the illegitimate, becomes the measure of its counterpart

Managed Democracy

  • The application of managerial skills to the basic democratic political institution of popular elections
  • The expansion of private (i.e. mainly corporate) power and the selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry
    • Not driven by desire to control, but from the realization that governance can be accomplished thru “private” mechanisms largely divorces from popular accountability and rarely scrutinized for their coerciveness
  • Free market – not simply about buyers and sellers or producers and owners, but about power relationships that are fundamental to the management of democracy
  • The union of corporate and state power means that instead of the illusion of a leaner system of governance there is a more extensive, invasive system – one removed from democratic influences and hence better able to manage democracy
  • Depends upon managers – managers are the product and creation of corporate culture
    • Corporate culture is the norms and practices operative at various levels of the corporate hierarchy that shape or influence the beliefs and behavior of those who work in a particular institutional context – not confined to the corporation
  • Requires a process by which “extreme” views are filtered and control rests with a favored guardian group, the “right people,”
  • Capable of exporting democracy – states (and their ruling classes) are preselected by the conquerors and rewarded with being the first to gain a foothold in power – they are expected to produce the political structures of a democracy in which power is distanced from the people in whose name it is to be exercised