A Female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA. Oct 21, 1967. In the public domain. Author: S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson.
The Tragic Triumph of the Reagan Counter-Revolution
Against The Spirit of the Sixties, Now Counterbalanced by
the Rekindling of Candles in the Wind
by Stefan Schindler
The 1960s were a time of hope in America and the world. A time of questioning and protest. A renaissance of The Renaissance. The blossoming of a counter-culture committed to peace, freedom, and creative expression.
The Spirit of The Sixties carried over into the 1970s. America and the world saw the continuation and growth of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement; and, of course, the feminist protest against sexism, perhaps best captured in the bumper sticker: “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.”
Alas, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, as were the leaders of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.
Richard Nixon was elected president twice; then Gerald Ford pardoned him for crimes against humanity.
Jimmy Carter was convinced by his national security adviser to start a covert war against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan, which led to a Russian counter-intervention, which led to America’s creating, funding, and arming of Al Qaeda.
The liberal wing of the Democratic Party saw citizen activism as a “crisis of democracy.” Ronald Reagan applauded American-financed terrorists as “freedom fighters,” and launched the Bush-whacking of FDR’s socialist inspired “New Deal” for the American people.
Bush The First continued Reagan’s attack on America’s middle class and poor, as well as continuing Reagan’s wars abroad, saying, after America shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children: “I will never apologize for America, I don’t care what the facts are.”
Newt Gingrich, in one of history’s greatest ironies, was elected Speaker of the House, successfully championing lies, insults, and divisive sophistry as the road to power during the failed presidency of Bill Clinton, whose Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, said that half a million dead Iraqi children from American bombings and sanctions was “a small price to pay” for freedom, although Iraq was in fact no threat to America’s national security, and Saddam Hussein had long been Ronald Reagan’s favorite dictator.
The Cheney-Bush administration lie-launched America’s Second Vietnam War, this time in the Middle East, convincing Congress to pass the least patriotic legislation in American history, called “The USA Patriot Acts.”
Obama wasted eight years compromising, betraying his base, and succumbing to a cowardice of conscience that made possible the tragic triumph of a new Trumpeting of racism, sexism, militarism, economic apartheid, and fanatical pseudo-patriotism.
Recalling Jeremiah’s warning that “Ye shall reap the whirlwind,” I’m reminded of another bumper sticker: “God is coming; and, boy, is She mad.”
Statue titled, Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Pirelli, in front of Union Station, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: paul (dex) from Toronto.
In my last post, I discussed homogenization, a dangerous ideology. Today I discuss a competing ideology, Multiculturalism. An ideology is a systematic set of beliefs that define a preferred or favored vision of a way-of-life or governance or social formation. In many known ideologies, specific assumptions, premises, and historical foundations and arguments are advanced to promote and defend the ideology’s adoption or empowerment. Uses are often made of symbols, myths, and historical events and forces to enhance the appeal of ideologies, sometimes bringing them to mythic proportions. Scores of ideologies exist, especially within the economic, social, and political areas of thought and action.
Examples of ideologies shaping individual and nation behavior include capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism, feminism, Zionism, Marxism, militarism, libertarianism, state-ism, and anarchism. These examples embody different disciplinary (e.g., philosophy, economic, history, theology) and societal sectors (e.g., government, judicial, military, education, religion/faith-based) areas.
Often times, ideologies co-opt religious/faith based, moral, and media resources to further favored goals and ambitions. Nothing is as powerful as beliefs rooted in self-righteous justification in the cause of god or a supreme being. The use of force, violence, vilification, valorization, and legal advantages to promote “causes” is not uncommon. The concentration of power in an ideology’s movement can lead to excessive control and domination, gathering force as they become “crusaders” buoyed by good intentions and purpose.
The ideology of Multiculturalism is based on an appreciation and promotion of diversity among various cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. Multiculturalism considers diversity an essential resource for survival because it adds the virtues of resiliency derived from variation, alternatives, and choices in belief, behavior, and world views. It keeps options open.
When Octavio Paz, Mexican Noble Prize winner in Literature, claimed, “Life is diversity, death is uniformity,” Paz was calling attention to the fact that diversity is the very nature of life — an expression and revelation of life’s abundant manifestations and displays. I share this view, and have written of Lifeism, an ideology positioning “humans” as a part of life, rather than life’s dominant and preferred expression.
Multiculturalism as an ideology evolved in response to the events, forces, and personalities of the turbulent years and tears of change and social upheaval between 1950 and 1980. The post WWII years witnessed major socio-political changes and upheavals in the United States and the world, converging and consummating in new awareness and appreciation of the importance of diversity, justice, inclusion, political correctness, and the politics of identity. All found support in a multicultural ideology respecting human rights, equality, and dignity.
Multiple and Varied Cultures
These years experienced major cultural changes and massive social movements. There was a rising awareness — consciousness — that “culture” was a critical concept, and a major force in shaping individual and collective behavior. It became clear that “culture” was too critical to be reserved for esoteric studies of exotic tribes by anthropologists. Culture was present in the lives of all human beings, both internally and externally.
Table 1 lists some major social, economic, and political events, forces, and people shaping the emergence of contemporary Multiculturalism as an ideology.
Table 1:
Examples of Forces, Events, and People Associated with Multiculturalism
(Circa Post WW II Period – alphabetical order)
Assassinations and Overthrows
Civil Rights Movement
Consciousness of Ideologies
Counter-Culture Movements
Developments in Information and Communication Technologies
Drug Subcultures (e.g., Marijuana, Cocaine, Hallucinogens)
Ethno-Cultural Conflicts/Ethnic Cleansing
Fall of Berlin Wall
Feminist Revolution
Globalization
Liberation Psychologies
Massive International Migrations Waves
New Political Alliances and Unions (e.g., EU, NATO)
New World Order Efforts
Post Modernism
Racial Protests and Riots
Post WWII Colonial Wars and Liberations (Africa, India, Indonesia)
Refugee and IDP Problems
Vietnam War, Balkan Wars,
Wars and Conflicts in Middle-East and West Asia
War on Poverty (Johnson Era)
Understanding Culture
Although culture had long been a topic of study, especially in anthropology and history, social upheavals of the 1950-1980s brought an acute awareness of the socio-political contexts of culture. Colonialism was revealed not as an inevitable unfolding of change as “civilized” progress but as invasive and exploitive abuses to control and suppress mind, behavior, and social position formations. Minority populations, conquered people, and occupied nations understood the cultural relativism, and the possibilities of release and escape from the chains of dominant social, political, and economic orders.
The term “culture” became applied with accuracy and regularity as a noun/adjective: the culture of poverty, the culture of racism, the culture of violence, the culture of oppression, the culture of colonialism, the culture of war. Culture was no longer confined to an ethnic tradition or identity; it was recognized as a complex clustering of self-perpetuating historical, societal, and moral forces, shaping and being shaped, by hidden ethoses, institutions, and definitions of personhood (e.g., “institutional racism”).
Culture was now to be studied, understood, and scrutinized as an explanation for understanding past, present, and future. Social, political, and economic leaders with insights into the abuses of history maintained in dominant cultures challenged sources of domination and control. Leaders became lightning rods for social change – voices crystallizing protests, and illuminating abuses and violence inherent in power asymmetries. It was a time for change in the social fabric and the moral order.
The tolls of raising consciousness regarding marginalized people brought violence and death to many leaders. Consider the examples of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Caesar Chavez, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Ignacio Martin-Baro, as well as elected national leaders considered threats to existing Western social orders, including Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Mandela in South Africa, Zapata in Mexico, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Here William Blum’s (2004) book, Killing Hope, Stephen Kinzer’s (2006) book, Overthrow, and Chalmers Johnson (2010), book, Dismantling the Empire, become essential reading – harbingers of our future, by acknowledging past crimes and offenses. The social, economic, and political roots of “culture” became the path to for understanding injustice and resisting oppression. Multiculturalism became an ideology for correcting for history’s abuses. Colonization is always colonization of mind (Goodman & Gorski, 2014).
Multiculturalism in Counseling, Psychology, and Psychiatry
It was only a matter of time before revolutionary thinkers–including Paulo Friere (1997) in his volumes on pedagogies and Ignacio Martin-Baro (1994), in his volume Writings for a Liberation Psychology– recognized the inherent abuses associated within Western psychologies of political domination, repression, and control. Tod Sloan (1997) acknowledged this reality when he concluded Western psychology was a source for perpetuating “Westernization” as an ideology, replete with its ill-suited values and methods for a changing world.
Multiculturalism acknowledges and emphasizes the role of the distribution of “power” in every domain of human activity. All relations are ultimately about power and its distribution. Even those areas claiming immunity from political interference and power distribution are, in fact, subject to it by guiding thought and practices according to the preferences, wishes, and concerns of those in power.
The term “inclusive” became popular to describe to the importance of “including” people – giving them access and acceptance – because they had been ignored or denied a spectrum of opportunities and services. The playing field was being expanded, but it did not guarantee those in power would yield their largesse. We know that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and this was the case in our nation and around the world as Western political and economic dominance pursued hegemony.
With hegemony came abuses of invading and occupying another nation — often a third- world nation — by imposing and infusing cultural values and traditions. It was a new way to conquer and control using American popular culture as the strategy for control and domination (e.g., individualism, consumerism, commodification, competition, materialism, celebritization, corruption, technology). This was now the pathway for forcing a “homogenization” of world cultures. Differences existed, but efforts were made to deny them because they challenged the hegemony of those in power. The task for the government/corporate system was invasion by “cultural” conquest, and “colonization of mind” (e.g., Goodman & Gorski, 2014).
Amidst an ocean of ideological struggles in a global era, it is clear “Multiculturalism” was, and is, the essential ideology for a global era! Accepting and implementing this ideology among individuals, groups, and nations remains the task of our times. In contrast to homogenization, the preferred ideology of those in power and position seeking control and domination, Multiculturalism embraces the reality of life’s diversity and differences – the beauty of variation. All other ideologies “pale” in complexion, complexity, and comparison.
Author: Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. He is the author and editor of twenty books, and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice.
A Female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA. Oct 21, 1967. In the public domain. Author: S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson.
