well as the specific NSA surveillance programs, makes domestic total
information awareness possible, and in turn lays the groundwork for the other
two prongs of counterinsurgency in the domestic context.
+
+ [...]
+
+ This idea of an occupied territory, of a colony within a nation, resonates
+ perfectly with what we have witnessed in terms of the domestication of the
+ counterinsurgency. I would just push the logic further: we have not simply
+ created an internal colony, we have turned the nation itself into a colony. We
+ govern ourselves through modern counterinsurgency warfare as if the entire
+ United States was now a colonial dominion like Algeria, Malaya, or Vietnam.
+
+ [...]
+
+ These incidents—large and small, but all devastating for those targeted—also
+ serve another objective of the domesticated counterinsurgency: to make the rest
+ of us feel safe and secure, to allow us to continue our lives unaffected, to avoid
+ disrupting our consumption and enjoyment. They serve to reassure, and also, in
+ demonizing a phantom minority, to bring us all together against the specter of
+ the frightening and dangerous other. It makes us believe that there would be,
+ lurking in the quiet suburbs of Dallas or Miami, dangerous insurgents—were it
+ not for our government. And these effects feed into the third prong of a
+
+ [...]
+
+ We had seen earlier, within counterinsurgency theory, similar debates
+ between population-centric and enemy-centric theorists. The enemy-centric
+ approach tended to be the more brutal, but more focused. The population-centric
+ favored the more legal and social-investment approaches. I argued then that they
+ were just two facets of the same paradigm.
+
+ Here the debate is between population-and/or-enemy-centric theories versus
+ individual-centric theory. But here too, I would argue, this is a false dichotomy.
+ Again, these are just two facets of the same thing: a counterinsurgency paradigm
+ of warfare with three core strategies. Like the population-and/or-enemy-centric
+ theories, individual-centric theory naturally entails both incapacitating the
+ individual terrorist or insurgent—eliminating him and all of the active minority
+ —and preventing or deterring his substitution or replacement.
+
+ [...]
+
+ But rather than buy into this dichotomy of counterinsurgency and leaner
+ antiterrorism, what history shows instead is a growing convergence of the two
+ models in the United States since the 1960s. Counterinsurgency and domestic
+ antiterrorism efforts, entwined from the start, have converged over time. The
+ individual incapacitation strategy meshes perfectly into the counterinsurgency
+ approach. And it leads seamlessly from the domestication of the second prong of
+ counterinsurgency to the domestication of the third.
+
+### Distraction and diversion
+
+ MANY OF US WILL NOT RECOGNIZE OURSELVES, OR A MERICA for that matter, in
+ these dreadful episodes—in the waterboarding and targeted assassinations
+ abroad or in the militarization of our police forces, in the infiltration of Muslim
+ mosques and student groups or in the constant collection of our personal data at
+ home. Many of us have no firsthand experience of these terrifying practices. Few
+ of us actually read the full Senate torture report, and even fewer track drone
+ strikes. Some of us do not even want to know of their existence. Most of us are
+ blissfully ignorant—at least most of the time—of these counterinsurgency
+ practices at home or abroad, and are consumed instead by the seductive
+ distractions of our digital age.
+
+ And that’s the way it is supposed to be. As counterinsurgency is
+ domesticated, it is our hearts and minds that are daily being assuaged, numbed,
+ pacified—and blissfully satisfied. We, the vast majority of us, are reassured
+ daily: there are threats everywhere and color-coded terror alerts, but
+ counterinsurgency strategies are protecting us. We are made to feel that
+ everything’s under control, that the threat is exterior, that we can continue with
+ our daily existence. Even more, that these counterinsurgency strategies will
+ prevail. That our government is stronger and better equipped, prepared to do
+ everything necessary to win, and will win. That the guardians are protecting us.
+ The effort to win the hearts and minds of the passive American majority is
+ the third aspect of the domestication of counterinsurgency practices—perhaps
+ the most crucial component of all. And it is accomplished through a remarkable
+ mixture of distraction, entertainment, pleasure, propaganda, and advertising—
+ now rendered all so much more effective thanks to our rich digital world. In
+ Rome, after the Republic, this was known as “bread and circus” for the masses.
+ Today, it’s more like Facebook and Pokémon GO.
+
+ We saw earlier how the expository society entices us to share all our personal
+ data and how this feeds into the first prong of counterinsurgency—total
+ information awareness. There is a flip side to this phenomenon: keeping us
+ distracted. The exposure is so pleasurable and engaging that we are mostly kept
+ content, with little need for a coordinated top-down effort to do so. We are
+ entranced—absorbed in a fantastic world of digitally enhanced reality that is
+ totally consuming, engrossing, and captivating. We are no longer being rendered
+ docile in a disciplinarian way, as Michel Foucault argued in Discipline and
+ Punish. We are past notions of docility. We are actively entranced—not
+ passively, not in a docile way. We are actively clicking and swiping, jumping
+ from one screen to another, checking one platform then another to find the next
+ fix—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and on and on.
+ Winning over and assuaging the passive majority might be accomplished—
+ indeed, has been accomplished in the past—through traditional propaganda, such
+ as broadcast misinformation about the insurgent minority, and through the top-
+ down provision of entertainment to keep us from thinking about politics. The
+ new digital world we live in has rendered these older strategies obsolete. As the
+ counterinsurgency’s mandate to pacify the masses has been turned on the
+ American people, the third prong of modern warfare looks and works differently
+ than it did in previous times and in other places.
+ Things have changed. Just a few years ago, our politicians still had to tell us
+
+ [...]
+
+ Pokémon GO has already run its course, but that is to be expected. Another
+ digital obsession will follow. These platforms are supposed to capture all of our
+ attention for a while, to captivate us, to distract us—and simultaneously to make
+ us expose ourselves and everything around us. This is the symbiosis between the
+ third and first prongs of the domesticated counterinsurgency: while it pacifies us,
+ a game like Pokémon GO taps into all our personal information and captures all
+ our data. At first, the game required that players share all their personal contacts.
+ Although that was eventually dropped, the game collects all our GPS locations,
+ captures all the video of our surroundings in perfectly GPS-coded data, and
+ tracks us wherever we are. Plus, even though it is free, many players are buying
+ add-ons and in the process sharing their consumption and financial data. The
+ more we play, the more we are distracted and pacified, and the more we reveal
+ about ourselves.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The distractions are everywhere: e-mail notifications, texts, bings and pings,
+ new snapchats and instagrams. The entertainment is everywhere as well: free
+ Wi-Fi at Starbucks and McDonald’s, and now on New York City streets, that
+ allow us to stream music videos and watch YouTube videos. And of course, the
+ advertising is everywhere, trying to make us consume more, buy online,
+ subscribe, and believe. Believe not only that we need to buy the recommended
+ book or watch the suggested Netflix, but also believe that we are secure and safe,
+ protected by the most powerful intelligence agencies and most tenacious military
+ force. Believe that we can continue to mind our own business—and remain
+ distracted and absorbed in the digital world—because our government is
+ watching out for us.
+
+ The fact is, the domestication of counterinsurgency has coincided with the
+ explosion of this digital world and its distractions. There is a real qualitative
+ difference between the immediate post–9/11 period and today. One that is
+ feeding directly into the third strategy of modern warfare.
+ Meanwhile, for the more vulnerable—those who are more likely to veer
+ astray and perhaps sympathize with the purported internal enemy—the same
+ digital technologies target them for enhanced propaganda. The Global
+ Engagement Center, or its equivalents, will profile them and send improved
+ content from more moderate voices. The very same methods developed by the
+ most tech-savvy retailers and digital advertisers—by Google and Amazon—are
+ deployed to predict, identify, enhance, and target our own citizens.
+ were before or that we are experiencing a waning of civil and political
+ engagement. While I agree that the growing capacity of the state and
+ corporations to monitor citizens may well threaten the private sphere, I am not
+ convinced that this is producing new apathy or passivity or docility among
+ citizens, so much as a new form of entrancement. The point is, we were once
+ kept apathetic through other means, but are now kept apathetic through digital
+ distractions.
+
+Voting turnout and Trump election:
+
+ The voting patterns of American registered voters has remained constant—
+ and apathetic—for at least fifty years. Even in the most important presidential
+ elections, voter turnout in this country over the past fifty years or more has
+ pretty much fluctuated between 50 percent and 63 percent. By any measure,
+ American democracy has been pretty docile for a long time. In fact, if you look
+ over the longer term, turnout has been essentially constant since the 1920s and
+ the extension of the suffrage to women. Of course, turnout to vote is not the only
+ measure of democratic participation, but it is one quantifiable measure. And
+ electoral voting is one of the more reliable longitudinal measures of civic
+ participation. But our record, in the United States, is not impressive.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Despite all this, over 62 million people voted for Donald Trump, resulting in
+ his Electoral College victory. And it was by no means an unusual election. Voter
+ turnout in 2016 was typical for this country. About 60.2 percent of the
+ approximately 231 million eligible voters turned out to vote, representing about
+ 139 million votes case. That number is consonant with historical turnout in this
+ country, almost squarely between voter turnout in 2012 (58.6 percent) and in
+ 2008 (61.6 percent), but still above most presidential election year turnouts since
+ 1972. 16 In all categories of white voters, Trump prevailed.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The cable news network CNN captured this best in a pithy lead to a story titled
+ “Trump: The Social Media President?”: “FDR was the first ‘radio’ president.
+ JFK emerged as the first ‘television’ president. Barack Obama broke through as
+ the first ‘Internet’ president. Next up? Prepare to meet Donald Trump, possibly
+ the first ‘social media’ and ‘reality TV’ president.” 10
+
+ [...]
+
+ This new mode of existence and digital consumption pleases and distracts the
+ majority of Americans. The old-fashioned TV has now been enhanced and
+ augmented, displaced by social media on digital devices of all sorts and sizes—
+ from the Apple Watch and tablet, through the MacBook Air and Mac Pro, to the
+ giant screen TV and even the Jumbotron. And all of it serves to pacify the
+ masses and ensure that they do not have the time or attention span to question
+ the domestication of the counterinsurgency.
+
+ And, then, it all feeds back into total information awareness. Hand in hand,
+ government agencies, social media, Silicon Valley, and large retailers and
+ corporations have created a mesmerizing new digital age that simultaneously
+ makes us expose ourselves and everything we do to government surveillance and
+ that serves to distract and entertain us. All kinds of social media and reality TV
+ consume and divert our attention, making us give our data away for free. A
+ profusion of addictive digital platforms—from Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter, to
+ YouTube and Netflix, Amazon Prime, Instagram, and Snapchat, and now
+ Pokémon GO—distract us into exposing all our most private information, in
+ order to feed the new algorithms of commerce and intelligence services: to
+ profile us for both watch lists and commercial advertising.
+
+This is compatible with Shoshana Zuboff's Dispossession Cycle:
+
+ This third aspect of counterinsurgency’s domestication is perhaps the most
+ important, because it targets the most prized military and political objective: the
+ general masses. And today, in the expository society, the new algorithms and
+ digital-advertising methods have propelled the manipulation and propaganda to
+ new heights. We are being encouraged by government and enticed by
+ multination corporations and social media to expose and express ourselves as
+ much as possible, leaving digital traces that permit both government and
+ corporations to profile us and then try to shape us accordingly. To make model
+ citizens out of us all—which means docile, entranced consumers. The governing
+ paradigm here is to frenetically encourage digital activity—which in one sense is
+ the opposite of docility—in order to then channel that activity in the right
+ direction: consumption, political passivity, and avoiding the radical extremes.
+
+ What we are witnessing is a new form of digital entrancement that shapes us
+ as subjects, blunts our criticality, distracts us, and pacifies us. We spend so much
+ time on our phones and devices, we barely have any time left for school or work,
+ let alone political activism. In the end, the proper way to think about this all is
+ not through the lens of docility, but through the framework of entrancement. It is
+ crucial to understand this in the proper way, because breaking this very
+ entrancement is key to seeing how counterinsurgency governance operates more
+ broadly. Also, because the focus on docility—along an older register of
+ discipline—is likely to lead us into an outdated focus on top-down propaganda.
+
+### Counterrevolution
+
+ The paradigm was refined
+ and systematized, and has now reached a new stage: the complete and systematic
+ domestication of counterinsurgency against a home population where there is no
+ real insurgency or active minority. This new stage is what I call “The
+ Counterrevolution.”
+
+ The Counterrevolution is a new paradigm of governing our own citizens at
+ home, modeled on colonial counterinsurgency warfare, despite the absence of
+ any domestic uprising. It is aimed not against a rebel minority—since none
+ really exists in the United States—but instead it creates the illusion of an active
+ minority which it can then deploy to target particular groups and communities,
+ and govern the entire American population on the basis of a counterinsurgency
+ warfare model. It operates through the three main strategies at the heart of
+ modern warfare, which, as applied to the American people, can be recapitulated
+ as follows:
+
+ 1. Total information awareness of the entire American population…: [by the]
+ [...] “counterrevolutionary minority.”
+
+ [...]
+
+ 2. … in order to extract an active minority at home…
+
+Shock and Awe:
+
+ 3. … and win the hearts and minds of Americans: Meanwhile, the
+ counterrevolutionary minority works to pacify and assuage the general
+ population in order to ensure that the vast majority of Americans remain
+ just that: ordinary consuming Americans. They encourage and promote a
+ rich new digital environment filled with YouTube, Netflix, Amazon
+ Prime, tweets, Facebook posts, instagrams, snapchats, and reality TV that
+ consume attention while digitally gathering personal data—and at times,
+ pushing enhanced content. They direct digital propaganda to susceptible
+ users. And they shock and awe the masses with their willingness to
+ torture suspected terrorists or kill their own citizens abroad. In the end,
+ entertaining, distracting, entrancing, and assuaging the general population
+ is the key to success—our new form of bread and circus.
+
+The "new shape" of the State (and it's partners), as a "loose network":
+
+ These three key strategies now guide governance at home, as they do military
+ and foreign affairs abroad. What has emerged today is a new and different art of
+ governing. It forms a coherent whole with, at its center, a security apparatus
+ composed of White House, Pentagon, and intelligence officials, high-ranking
+ congressional members, FISC judges, security and Internet leaders, police
+ intelligence divisions, social-media companies, Silicon Valley executives, and
+ multinational corporations. This loose network, which collaborates at times and
+ competes at others, exerts control by collecting and mining our digital data. Data
+ control has become the primary battlefield, and data, the primary resource—
+ perhaps the most important primary resource in the United States today.
+
+ [...]
+
+ This new mode of governing has no time horizon. It has no sunset provision. And it is
+ marked by a tyrannous logic of violence. [...] It is part and parcel of the new
+ paradigm of governing that reconciles brutality with legality.
+
+The unprecedented, self-fulfilling profecy:
+
+ We govern ourselves
+ differently in the United States now: no longer through sweeping social
+ programs like the New Deal or the War on Poverty, but through surgical
+ counterinsurgency strategies against a phantom opponent. The intensity of the
+ domestication now is unprecedented.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Counterinsurgency, with its tripartite scheme (active minority, passive masses,
+ counterrevolutionary minority) and its tripartite strategy (total awareness,
+ eliminate the active minority, pacify the masses) is a deeply counterproductive
+ self-fulfilling prophecy that radicalizes individuals against the United States.
+
+ [...]
+
+ “The Islamic State has called it ‘the blessed ban’ because it
+ supports the Islamic State’s position that America hates Islam. The clause in the
+ order that gives Christians preferential treatment will be seen as confirming the
+ Islamic State’s apocalyptic narrative that Islam is in a fight to the death against
+ the Christian crusaders. The images of Muslim visitors being turned away at
+ American airports will only inflame those who seek to do us harm.” 6
+
+ [...]
+
+ We are headed not, as Kant would have it, toward perpetual peace, but
+ instead, sounding the refrain of Nietzsche’s eternal return, toward an endless
+ state of counterinsurgency warfare.
projects / blog.git / commitdiff