How Political Elites Hijack Young Minds

The year is sometime around 1984. I am in my early-twenties. I am a punk and I live in a squat in Camden, north London with a gang of other scruffy ne’er-do-wells. I drink alcohol (a lot) and I have a huge trip with authority, which I project upon the world around me, seeing authoritarian over-reach in literally the slightest thing.

I remember attending “Stop the City.” It was a protest march, starting in the City of London and proceeding in ragtag fashion to Trafalgar Square. I think I took part because I massively fancied this student woman and thought that doing so would impress her.

I recall seeing a group of suited city bigwigs, standing atop the Bank of England, looking out over the crowd of scruffs facing off against the shields of the riot police below.

I think I now know what they were saying to one another. “You know, Gerald. If we could somehow get all these student and rebellious types on board with our agenda, that would be pretty nifty, no?”

Our protests, in that day, were no doubt pretty ineffectual. They actually seemed more of a societal ritual, like something out of a play by Jean Genet or Dario Fo. The anarchist could get beaten up by the cop. He would later gain status by showing his bruises or court papers. The judge could hand out sentences in a few days time. The reporters could take pics and allow middle England to see the great unwashed being dealt a firm hand.

But, despite the theatrics and amateurish organisation, the protest did at least feel real. We were real people raging physically about real issues, albeit ineffectually.

---

Fast forward twenty years. George W. Bush’s war in Iraq is not going well. It’s not so much what’s happening on the ground. They’ve got the war started okay, eventually. Tony Blair gave it a vaguely multilateral feel, but everyone knows it’s America’s war.

The sense of being invaded, due to the 9/11 attacks, drove the US to seek around desperately for an Arab state to drop bombs upon in retaliation. Even Bernie Sanders voted for it. The weapons manufacturers are loving it.

But there’s still a problem - it doesn’t look good. Everyone knows there are no WMD’s and that America is just bombing the crap out of an Arab state because of 9/11.

The EU are telling everyone that the Americans are disgraceful and that actually it is they who are the acceptable face of capitalism, not the US. The Chinese are not happy. The Russians neither. Islamic states look on as the “great Satan” continues to devastate their empire and there’s a huge resurgence in fundamentalism.

Basically, the whole thing is a PR disaster for the US.

GWB goes and is replaced by nice guy, Barack Obama. He consults the Europeans about every little thing. He’s not like his predecessor. He doesn’t don a stetson or steam in like Rambo. He’s the good version of capitalism.

The Americans and the EU still long to get their hands on all that oil and gas that so many Islamic states have. Carpet-bombing is now out of the question - only bad capitalists do that. But how about regime-change? Get rid of some dictators, and when the country seeks democracy, rush in and do some cool deals?

The EU and US have evil-looking Muammar Gaddafi in their sights. Surely, we can regime change him? The Arab Spring is kicking off and the West can finance local activists to start a revolution in Libya. Surely we can get that done without making a total mess of everything? Is that too much to ask?

Gaddafi meets a hideous fate at the hands of West-supported local groups. The West start cheering, “We did it! We made the world a better place!”

But there’s a problem. Turns out evil-looking Muammar was about the only thing holding Libya together. The poor got food stamps and he kept all the otherwise warring local groups in check. Now he’s gone and it’s like the gates of Hell have opened up in Libya. A total humanitarian disaster. Better keep that out of the Western media.

My mythical bankers are looking out upon the disaster and scratching their chins. “Nevertheless, Gerald, with a few tweaks maybe the strategy could be made to work.”

---

In the summer of 2022, International Relations scholar and member of the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, Christopher Mott, released a provocative paper that rapidly garnered attention. It was titled Woke Imperium - The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice & Neoconservatism.

I will put my understandings of it in the mouth of this banker type…

“What do you see, Gerald, when you look out at our geopolitical opponents around the world? Oh, no need to answer, old man. It was a rhetorical question. What I see are patriarchies, Gerald. You got this extended family system, in one form or another, wherever you look. And with an overarching patriarchal structure above it - governments, banks, organised crime - keeping everybody in line. What if we were to champion values in complete opposition to those? You know, make a few changes to how Western society looks and then get all the young people on board to push our revolution out into the world. Colour revolutions, that sort of thing. Those Arab-Springers got me thinking, you see, Gerald.”

“Russia, China, Iran, all the Arab nations - they’re rammed full of young people. People who can be converted to our cause. People who can drive regime change, from within. We champion social justice, inclusion, women’s rights, minority rights, gay and transexual rights - those Islamics will really hate that one! Then, when we’ve stirred the shit up mightily, and all our evil opponents have been regime-changed out of existence, well, then we can do what we like! We will rule the whole world. Quite a plan, eh, Gerald?”

---

I’m sitting in a wine bar in downtown Tbilisi, attending a meetup of travellers and expats. It’s October 2022. A young Asian-American woman, on hearing that I’m half-Iranian, proceeds into a frenzied monologue about the latest horrors of how the mullahs in Iran are treating women, which has been plastered all across the Western media for weeks. She’s not raging at me. She’s simply assuming that of course I totally support her cause.

I feel something of a dilemma inside. I don’t like the mullahs and would happy to see them go. I absolutely support women’s rights. But I’m also aware that most likely everything that she thinks and says about this issue has been placed in her mind by the state and media, for geopolitical reasons.

The repressed anger that she holds within, the tendency of all younger minds to seek to externalise personal angst onto issues in the world - both have been utilised by the state and media to simply weaponise her mind for their own ends. In my opinion, she has been totally played. And has no clue at all that this has happened.

The reason I’m really in a dilemma is because, throughout the recent history of Western physical or cultural incursions into Islamic states, nothing has ever ended well for the people.

Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan - we say we’re going to regime-change and install democracy. But what happens instead is regime-change followed by hell on earth. Because we don’t care. We care about issues but we don’t care about people. We want to signal that we’re good people. But we don’t care if the world ends up a worse place because of it.

Maybe the sustained political pressure from the Western media - the weaponising of Western minds - will finally have a positive effect. Maybe the funds and support that the West gives to Kurdish women’s protest groups will end up creating positive change. Maybe the mullahs will throw in the towel and install democracy. Maybe.

But, equally if not more likely, the mullahs, enraged at all the Western manipulation, will simply clamp down harder. Or the country will descend into its own chaotic hell.

Somewhere, if we’re going to be global, we all have to care more. Not about ideas. But about people.