Five Characteristics of Neoimperialism - Cultural Hegemony and Fraud

Table of contents

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Brzezinski believes that “strengthening American culture as the ‘model’ of the world’s cultures is a strategy that must be implemented by the United States to maintain hegemony.”68 U.S. cultural hegemony is manifested principally through its control of media outlets and education, and through the propaganda function, both at home and abroad, of its literature and art, its liberal arts academia, and its values. The United States exports films, music, and literature all over the world. It controls almost 75 percent of the world’s television programs, and owns powerful film and television companies such as WarnerMedia, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Columbia Pictures, which every year produce dozens of high-budget films involving investments of hundreds of millions of dollars. Research and reporting carried out by the U.S. mainstream media effectively dominate the shaping of world public opinion. The United States also controls the authoritative journals that mold discourse in the area of liberal arts academia, and it is the United States that determines the standards of elite education. The 2020 QS World University Rankings provide an example. The top places in these rankings are all taken by U.S. universities, and this situation provides a powerful tool for spreading deceptive Western “universal values,” Western constitutional views, and neoliberal economic concepts throughout the world. The basic views of the U.S. liberal arts establishment have taken a firm hold on the elites and masses at home and abroad.69 For example, the United States extols vulgar examples of literary and artistic kitsch as distinguished works of culture, deserving of Oscars or Nobel Prizes.

Neoclassical economics (and its counterpart in the form of neoliberalism) is responsible for a string of economic crises and for increased polarization between rich and poor. Nevertheless, it is depicted as a scientific theory that promotes development, increases popular welfare, and is worthy of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. In the United States, works that do not conform to the literary, artistic, and liberal arts canons of monopoly capital are difficult to disseminate via authoritative media, while writers and artists of real distinction are excluded, suppressed, or defrauded. The United States also holds an absolutely dominant position in the global field of cyberspace. Of the thirteen root Domain Name System servers, nine are under the direct control of U.S. corporations, universities, or government departments, while another is directly controlled by a U.S. nonprofit organization.70 Using these root Domain Name System servers, the United States can easily steal global intelligence, carry out network monitoring, and launch cyberattacks. The surveillance program PRISM, revealed by Edward Snowden, shows that the United States has complete control over the hardware and software of networks globally, and is well able to monitor the entire world and strike any other country. Lastly, the United States controls the intelligence alliance known as the Five Eyes (the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), through which it conducts large-scale monitoring activities and exercises cyber hegemony domestically and internationally.71

The cultural hegemony of the United States, its control over liberal arts academia, and the fraudulent use to which these advantages are put also appear in the stances taken by the United States on questions of ideology and values. These stances are always hostile to socialism and communism, and restrict the development of socialist countries. Previously, the United States devoted most of its efforts to smearing the Soviet Union, but the main target is now China. Early in May 1990, Nixon stated frankly: “While rebuilding the relationship with China, it is very important that we continue to pressure them to abandon socialism. Because we will use this relationship to make China’s policies milder. We must stick to this key point.”72 According to survey data from the U.S. Pew Research Center—an organization surely influenced by U.S. cultural hegemony and fraud—74 percent of Chinese college or university graduates love U.S. culture.73 It is a fact that most Chinese liberal arts scholars who have studied in the United States favor its basic institutional academic theories. To varying extents, they worship, flatter, and fear the United States. This seriously affects the confidence of Chinese citizens in Marxist culture, in socialist culture, and in China’s own rich traditional culture, and needs to be eliminated as soon as possible.