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Wendy Brown
Zone Books, New York, 2015, 296pp., $29.95/£20.95 (hc), ISBN: 978-1935408536University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4AT, UK
Undoing the Demos argues that ‘neoliberalism is profoundly destructive to the fiber and future of democracy in any form’ (p. 9). More precisely, it is concerned with mapping the myriad ways in which neo-liberalism, conceived as a productive mode of reason that today saturates ever more spheres of life, articulates crucial elements of democratic language, practice and subjectivity ‘according to a specific image of the economic’ (p. 10). In so doing neo-liberalism directly assaults the democratic imaginary that animated so much of modernity, hollowing out liberal democratic practices and institutions while at the same time cauterising radical democratic expressions.
Undoing the Demos is divided into two parts: the first, ‘Neoliberal Reason and Political Life’, puts forward the book’s main argument and is moreover concerned with Michel Foucault’s account of neo-liberalism, developed in his 1978–1979 lectures at the Collège de France, and discusses its merits and its shortcomings in detail; the second, ‘Disseminating Neoliberal Reason’, is concerned with how neo-liberal rationality is extended to spheres heretofore untouched by economic parameters, including ‘statecraft and the workplace, … jurisprudence, education, culture, and a vast range of quotidian activity’ (p. 17). The central argument of the book is that ‘neoliberalism assaults the principles, practices, cultures, subjects, and institutions of democracy understood as rule by the people’ (p. 9). Brown sets out to understand how it does so and develops a theoretical framework, deeply reliant upon, but not uncritical of, Foucault’s seminal account.
In the first chapter Brown does the theoretical legwork upon which the entire argument rests. While democracy is understood simply (and, in my view, problematically – an issue I will return to below) as ‘rule by the people’ (p. 19; cf. pp. 9, 20, 178, 202, 209), neo-liberalism is understood, with Foucault, as ‘a distinctive mode of reason, of the production of subjects, a “conduct of conduct”, and a scheme of valuation’ (p. 21). Neo-liberalism, then, is not the name given to capitalism’s latest guise, nor is it an ideology that masks the resurgence of class politics. Instead, it is conceptualised as a mode of reason, a ‘political rationality’ (pp. 20–21; cf. Chapter 4), that today invades all spheres of life and recasts in an economic register their constituent concepts, practices, institutions, subjects and truths. Accordingly, the book is not concerned with studying neo-liberal techniques of government, but with the rationality, the regime of truth, that underlies them.
Chapters 2 and 3 offer a systematic reading of Foucault’s lectures on neo-liberalism (later published as The Birth of Biopolitics) and lead to a number of significant insights that expand the Foucauldian approach beyond his own groundwork. Importantly, Brown signals no less than 12 features of the contemporary neo-liberal landscape that Foucault could not account for because they either did not yet exist or were still only nascent (pp. 70–72). These include the rise of finance capital, permanent financial and social crises and crisis-fuelled austerity politics, the rise of governance, and, for Brown perhaps most profound, a number of changes within the neo-liberal subject, who is now tethered to competitive markets in such a way that she has lost all remnants of protection against brutal and impersonal market forces. This last feature is related to what Brown takes to be the biggest flaw in Foucault’s analysis: it is not attentive towards homo politicus and its subsequent extinction by neo-liberal reason. Homo politicus, referred to as the ‘demotic subject’ (p. 87), theorised first by Aristotle, whose morphology changes continuously throughout her odyssey through occidental thought – via, inter alia, Locke, Smith, Bentham, Marx and Freud (see pp. 87–99) – is finally usurped by homo oeconomicus. When the economic subject reigns, what is vanquished is the form of subjectivity that animates democracy – a member of a demos, a democratic citizen, an autonomous, sovereign, Kantian subject.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 – which make up the second part of the book – map the different ways in which neo-liberal rationality is disseminated through legal reason (Chapter 5) and through higher education (Chapter 6). This dissemination is made easier by contemporary governance practices (discussed in Chapter 4), which are ‘not identical with or exclusive to neoliberalism’ (p. 122). In other words: governance is not born of neo-liberal rationality, but once articulated to it, gives rise to novel ways of managing and disciplining subjects, states and firms. Governance practices thus provide the tools through which neo-liberal reason flows smoothly from sphere to sphere, including devolution, responsibilisation, ‘benchmarking’ and ‘best practices’ (see pp. 131–142). Through meticulous analysis of legal jargon, Brown shows, in Chapter 5, how the US Supreme Court opinions have in recent years been saturated with neo-liberal reason, thus assisting in discursively reconstructing democracy both at home and abroad. She further maps, in Chapter 6, how neo-liberalised higher education undercuts the formation of a critical, educated citizenry, without which democracy cannot survive.
Because its main aim is to study neo-liberal rationality, which has not been studied so rigorously before, Undoing the Demos is a timely and innovative book. At the same time, however, its scope invites some issues that have, on different levels and in different ways, a negative bearing on the strength of the argument. One such problem is that because Brown sets out primarily to understand neo-liberal rationality and how it is disseminated she pays little or no attention to elements that, although they fall outside of this scope, are arguably intimately related to the problem of rationality. For instance, the book does not engage in much depth with the problem of resistance to neo-liberalism (see pp. 220–222); with other de-democratising rationalities and their relationship to neo-liberal rationality; or with those theorists who were crucial in shaping the discursive framework from which neo-liberal rationality now draws (Röpke, Eucken, Hayek, Friedman, Becker and so on). The point is not so much that Brown should have investigated all of these separate issues, but that she provides few to no conceptual tools for investigating them or their relationship to neo-liberal rationality either.
A related concern is that Undoing the Demos is all-too-narrowly focused on a specific and contemporary (Anglo-)American form of neo-liberalism. While Brown acknowledges at the outset that she is aware of neo-liberalism’s internal complexity and heterogeneity (see pp. 20–21) the rest of the book falls short of developing a convincing account of how neo-liberal rationality functions when it enters into different contexts. This is a book about present-day North American neo-liberalism, and little work is done to move outside of that context, even to Europe, let alone the rest of the world. Accordingly, Brown’s ahistorical and geographically limited approach cannot explain how the neo-liberalisation of, for instance, British universities has insidiously merged with the already deeply entrenched class-based education system. Likewise, the reader is left guessing whether legal reason has been neo-liberalised in, for instance, Northern Europe in the same way as it has in the United States. Here again the point is not that Undoing the Demos should have been a book about contextually specific neo-liberalisms, but that it remains silent on the question of how neo-liberal rationality takes shape when it is inserted into the messy and complex landscape of micro-politics, where it will inevitably have to negotiate with pre-existing discourses or with stubborn remnants of previously hegemonic rationalities.
A final objection revolves around the notion of democracy and how Brown defines it. In defining democracy as ‘rule by the people’ Brown deliberately sticks to an ‘open and contestable’ (p. 20) understanding of democracy in order to show not just how a specific model of democracy (liberal, social, deliberative, elitist and so on), but also how ‘the bare promise of bare democracy’ (p. 203) tout court is undone. There are several problems with such a strategy. First, the Greek δημοκρατία does not straightforwardly translate into ‘rule by the people’, as Brown says it does (see pp. 19, 202), grounding the argument in a problematic claim from the start. Second, Brown wants to show that neo-liberalism is destructive of ‘democracy in any form’, meaning that it undermines the ‘bare promise of bare democracy’. However, it could be argued that this promise is not at all shared by all forms of democracy: Does Schumpeterian elitist democracy really promise that ‘all might be regarded as ends, rather than means’ or that ‘all may have a political voice’ (p. 203)? Notwithstanding Brown’s insistence on the openness of her definition, we appear to still be talking about quite a specific conception of democracy. Third, because of her definition, Brown’s primary focus is on the people that ought to rule – that is, on demotic subjectivity and the exercise of sovereignty. Yet this focus cannot capture how neo-liberal rationality rearticulates notions outside of that definition, such as, to name but one element, the legitimacy of the legislature (which surely is different both from the legitimacy of the state and from popular sovereignty, which Brown does discuss because they do fit inside the scope of her definition). Brown’s open and contestable definition, in brief, in fact limits her scope and thus the force of her argument.
While I think Undoing the Demos would have been all the better for pre-empting these issues, the book’s merits outweigh these shortcomings. Besides providing a theoretical framework that allows for a deep understanding of neo-liberal rationality, it does so accessibly. More than merely speaking to Brown’s comrades-in-arms on the Left, the book appears to be written for a broader audience and Brown’s familiar style – lucid and rhythmic yet rigorous – makes even intricate Foucauldian claims easily digestible.
Undoing the Demos conveys a sober and mournful message: democracy is under attack and it might not survive. The book will leave anyone looking for strategies of resistance disappointed. But whoever wants to understand the rationality that informs and governs so much of our lives today would do well to read it.
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Nov 03, 2015 | Dissent Magazine
Booked is a monthly series of Q&As with authors by Dissent contributing editor Timothy Shenk. For this interview, he spoke with Wendy Brown about her new book Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2015).
Timothy Shenk: You note early in Undoing the Demos that while references to "neoliberalism" have become routine, especially on the left, the word itself "is a loose and shifting signifier." What is your definition of neoliberalism?Wendy Brown: In this book, I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is "economized" and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification and monetization everywhere-that's the old Marxist depiction of capital's transformation of everyday life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres-such as learning, dating, or exercising-in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value.
Moreover, because neoliberalism came of age with (and abetted) financialization, the form of marketization at stake does not always concern products or commodities, let alone their exchange. Today, market actors-from individuals to firms, universities to states, restaurants to magazines-are more often concerned with their speculatively determined value, their ratings and rankings that shape future value, than with immediate profit. All are tasked with enhancing present and future value through self-investments that in turn attract investors. Financialized market conduct entails increasing or maintaining one's ratings, whether through blog hits, retweets, Yelp stars, college rankings, or Moody's bond ratings.
Shenk: Discussions about neoliberalism often treat it as an economic doctrine, which also means that they concentrate on its economic ramifications. You shift the focus to politics, where, you argue, neoliberalism has "inaugurate[d] democracy's conceptual unmooring and substantive disembowelment." Why does neoliberalism pose such a threat to democracy?
Brown: The most common criticisms of neoliberalism, regarded solely as economic policy rather than as the broader phenomenon of a governing rationality, are that it generates and legitimates extreme inequalities of wealth and life conditions; that it leads to increasingly precarious and disposable populations; that it produces an unprecedented intimacy between capital (especially finance capital) and states, and thus permits domination of political life by capital; that it generates crass and even unethical commercialization of things rightly protected from markets, for example, babies, human organs, or endangered species or wilderness; that it privatizes public goods and thus eliminates shared and egalitarian access to them; and that it subjects states, societies, and individuals to the volatility and havoc of unregulated financial markets.
Each of these is an important and objectionable effect of neoliberal economic policy. But neoliberalism also does profound damage to democratic practices, cultures, institutions, and imaginaries. Here's where thinking about neoliberalism as a governing rationality is important: this rationality switches the meaning of democratic values from a political to an economic register. Liberty is disconnected from either political participation or existential freedom, and is reduced to market freedom unimpeded by regulation or any other form of government restriction. Equality as a matter of legal standing and of participation in shared rule is replaced with the idea of an equal right to compete in a world where there are always winners and losers.
The promise of democracy depends upon concrete institutions and practices, but also on an understanding of democracy as the specifically political reach by the people to hold and direct powers that otherwise dominate us. Once the economization of democracy's terms and elements is enacted in law, culture, and society, popular sovereignty becomes flatly incoherent. In markets, the good is generated by individual activity, not by shared political deliberation and rule. And, where there are only individual capitals and marketplaces, the demos, the people, do not exist.
Shenk: It's easy to depict neoliberalism as a natural extension of liberalism, but you insist that the relationship is much more complicated than that. You illustrate the broad transformation by examining the intellectual history of homo economicus, a term whose meaning you claim has shifted radically since the time of Adam Smith. How has "economic man" changed in the last century?
Brown: You're right, the relationship is quite complicated, especially if one accepts Foucault's notion that neoliberalism is a "reprogramming of liberalism" rather than only a transformation of capitalism. Here are the simplest things we might say about the morphing of homo economicus. Two hundred years ago, this creature pursued its interest through what Adam Smith termed "truck, barter, and exchange." A generation later, Jeremy Bentham gives us the utility maximizer, calculating everything according to maximizing pleasure, minimizing pain-cost/benefit. Thirty years ago, at the dawn of the neoliberal era, we get human capital that entrepreneurializes itself at every turn. Today, homo economicus has been significantly reshaped as financialized human capital, seeking to enhance its value in every domain of life.
In contrast with classical economic liberalism, then, the contemporary figure of homo economicus is distinctive in at least two ways. First, for neoliberals, humans are only and everywhere homo economicus. This was not so for classical economists, where we were market creatures in the economy, but not in civic, familial, political, religious, or ethical life. Second, neoliberal homo economicus today takes shape as value-enhancing human capital, not as a creature of exchange, production, or even interest. This is markedly different from the subject drawn by Smith, Bentham, Marx, Polanyi, or even Gary Becker.
Shenk: You mentioned Foucault just now, and you devote two chapters to him in the book, where you also call Birth of Biopolitics-the volume that emerged from lectures he gave in the late 1970s on neoliberalism-a "remarkable" work of "extraordinary prescience." But he also comes in for a hefty amount of criticism. What do you think Foucault got right, and what did he miss?
Brown: What's amazing about Foucault's lectures is that he grasped neoliberalism as Europe's present and future in the 1970s-before Reagan or Thatcher were elected, and before the Washington Consensus. What's also extraordinary is his appreciation of neoliberalism as a form of political reason and governing that reaches from the state to the soul, and not simply as economic policy. Then there's simply the fact that Foucault is a fearless, deep, and profoundly original political-historical thinker, who probes archives or a single utterance with equal brilliance and imagination. These features make Foucault's lectures illuminating despite the fact that he is mostly discussing neoliberal ideas, not neoliberalism as it has unfolded over the past three decades.
But there are some distinctive gaps in Foucault's account of what neoliberalism is and does resulting from his allergies to Marxism at the point in his life when he's giving these lectures. For Foucault, as I said, neoliberalism is fundamentally a "reprogramming of liberalism," not of capitalism, and there is astonishingly little discussion of the latter. He is also largely indifferent to my own central concern, democracy, which was true across his work. So one takes the useful insights and then builds on them. It would be silly to be an "orthodox Foucauldian" on the subject of neoliberalism, or for that matter, on any subject.
Shenk: What about the politics of Foucault's analysis? There's been a lot of debate recently about whether he was so attuned to neoliberalism's rise because his own work was compatible with neoliberalism. What's your position on this?
Brown: Well, on the one hand, Foucault's degree of sympathy with what he was studying is not, for me, particularly important. The usefulness of certain historical accounts and theoretical formulations turns on their capacities for illumination, not on the theorist's political affinities. (No one who mines the history of political theory to think about our present can draw only from theorists whose affinities line up with contemporary progressive values. None would survive the test, and that's also a poor approach to learning from great minds.) Moreover, he didn't and couldn't have anticipated the neoliberal formations we are grappling with today. On the other hand, the idea that Foucault was deeply attracted to neoliberalism for its "emancipatory" dimensions strikes me as incompatible with a careful reading of his lectures where, among other things, he considers neoliberalism as a novel form of governing human beings that requires the individual, as human capital, to become a "portfolio of enterprises" and that makes us into both "producers and consumers of freedom." Foucault's signature theoretical move is to grasp human beings as produced by governing powers, not "freed" by them.
Shenk: Homo economicus is a fairly common term; less common is the notion you oppose it to, homo politicus. What's the genealogy of homo politicus, and how is it related to its more famous counterpart?
Brown: To understand what neoliberalism is doing to democracy, we have to return to the point that, until recently, human beings in the West have always been figured as more than homo economicus. There have always been other dimensions of us imagined and cultivated in political, cultural, religious, or familial life. One of these figurations, which we might call homo politicus, featured prominently in ancient Athens, Roman republicanism, and even early liberalism. But it has also appeared in modern democratic upheavals ranging from the French Revolution to the civil rights movement. Homo politicus is inconstant in form and content, just as homo economicus is, and certainly liberal democracy features an anemic version compared to, say, Aristotle's account of humans as realizing our distinctively human capacities through sharing rule in the polis. But it is only with the neoliberal revolution that homo politicus is finally vanquished as a fundamental feature of being human and of democracy. Democracy requires that citizens be modestly oriented toward self-rule, not simply value enhancement, and that we understand our freedom as resting in such self-rule, not simply in market conduct. When this dimension of being human is extinguished, it takes with it the necessary energies, practices, and culture of democracy, as well as its very intelligibility.
Shenk: Some of the major interpreters of neoliberalism, especially those who approach it from a Marxist perspective, depict it as a straightforward byproduct of 1970s economic turmoil and backlash against welfare states led by a revanchist capitalist elite. It seems like you're not satisfied with that interpretation. This is a big question, but do you have an alternative explanation for how we got here?
Brown: That's too long and complicated a story to rehearse here but I can say this. For most Marxists, neoliberalism emerges in the 1970s in response to capitalism's falling rate of profit; the shift of global economic gravity to OPEC, Asia, and other sites outside the West; and the dilution of class power generated by unions, redistributive welfare states, large and lazy corporations, and the expectations generated by educated democracies. From this perspective, neoliberalism is simply capitalism on steroids: a state and IMF-backed consolidation of class power aimed at releasing capital from regulatory and national constraints, and defanging all forms of popular solidarities, especially labor.
The grains of truth in this analysis don't get at the fundamental transformation of social, cultural, and individual life brought about by neoliberal reason. They don't get at the ways that public institutions and services have not merely been outsourced but thoroughly recast as private goods for individual investment or consumption. And they don't get at the wholesale remaking of workplaces, schools, social life, and individuals. For that story, one has to track the dissemination of neoliberal economization through neoliberalism as a governing form of reason, not just a power grab by capital. There are many vehicles of this dissemination-law, culture, and above all, the novel political-administrative form we have come to call governance. It is through governance practices that business models and metrics come to irrigate every crevice of society, circulating from investment banks to schools, from corporations to universities, from public agencies to the individual. It is through the replacement of democratic terms of law, participation, and justice with idioms of benchmarks, objectives, and buy-ins that governance dismantles democratic life while appearing only to instill it with "best practices."
Shenk: Undoing the Demos covers a sizable amount of ground in just over 200 pages, but, as your discussion of governance just now indicates, you also spend a lot of time with specific instances of neoliberalism in action. My favorite of these more focused studies is your extended analysis of Citizens United. What does that case tell us about neoliberalism more generally?
Brown: Progressives generally disparage Citizens United for having flooded the American electoral process with corporate money on the basis of tortured First Amendment reasoning that treats corporations as persons. However, a careful reading of the majority decision also reveals precisely the thoroughgoing economization of the terms and practices of democracy we have been talking about. In the majority opinion, electoral campaigns are cast as "political marketplaces," just as ideas are cast as freely circulating in a market where the only potential interference arises from restrictions on producers and consumers of ideas-who may speak and who may listen or judge. Thus, Justice Kennedy's insistence on the fundamental neoliberal principle that these marketplaces should be unregulated paves the way for overturning a century of campaign finance law aimed at modestly restricting the power of money in politics. Moreover, in the decision, political speech itself is rendered as a kind of capital right, functioning largely to advance the position of its bearer, whether that bearer is human capital, corporate capital, or finance capital. This understanding of political speech replaces the idea of democratic political speech as a vital (if potentially monopolizable and corruptible) medium for public deliberation and persuasion.
Perhaps what is most significant about the Citizens United decision, then, is not that corporations are rendered as persons, but that persons, let alone a people, do not appear as the foundation of democracy, and a distinctly public sphere of debate and discussion do not appear as democracy's vital venue. Instead, the decision presents speech as a capital right and political life and elections as marketplaces.
Shenk: You're clear that democracy is an ideal that deserves defending, but you're skeptical about actually existing democracy, which you describe as a system where "the common rage of the common citizen has been glorified and exploited." And you worry that matters could get much worse, with democracy as we know it giving way to "a polity in which the people are pawns of every kind of modern power." Do you see a tension between your tributes to democratic ideals and your grim assessment of its current state?
Brown: Democracy is always incomplete, always short of its promise, but the conditions for cultivating it can be better or worse. My point was that democracy is really reduced to a whisper in the Euro-Atlantic nations today. Even Alan Greenspan says that elections don't much matter much because, "thanks to globalization . . . the world is governed by market forces," not elected representatives. Voting has been declining for decades everywhere in the Western world; politicians are generally mistrusted if not reviled (except for Varoufakis, of course!); and everything to do with political life or government is widely considered either captured by capital, corrupt or burdensome -- this hostility to the political itself is generated by neoliberal reason. Thus, today, the meaning of democracy is pretty much reduced to personal liberty. Such liberty is not nothing, but could not be further from the idea of rule by and for the people.
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S. Gonzalez "Conspiracy analyst" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews4.0 out of 5 stars Believed is happening,More Info About the Book,MANUEL ESTEVE - See all my reviewsDecember 11, 2010 This review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)
About the bookAmerica is at war. But this is not a conventional war waged with tanks, battleships and planes in conventional battlefields --at least, not yet. It is a secret, insidious type of war whose battleground is the people's minds. Its main weapons are mind viruses disseminating mass brain-washing through propaganda disinformation, cunning, deception and lies in a large scale not used against any people since Nazi Germany. Though important, these elements are just part of a series of carefully planned and executed long- and short-term psychological warfare operations. In synthesis, it is a psychological war --a PSYWAR.
If an unfriendly foreign power had carried out against the American people the actions carried out by Wall Street bankers, Oil magnates and CEOs of transnational corporations entrenched at the Council on Foreign Relations and its parasite organizations, we might well have considered it an act of war. Unfortunately, most Americans ignore that they are under attack. The reason is because, like Ninja assassins, the main weapon used by the conspirators who have managed to infiltrate and take control of the U.S. Government and most of American life has been their invisibility.
For almost a century, this small group of conspirators have been waging a quiet, non-declared war of attrition against the American people, and it seems that they are now ready for the final, decisive battle. Unfortunately, as the last two presidential elections showed, the brainwashed American people reacted by changing the puppets, leaving the puppet masters in control.
This book studies in detail the origins of the conspiracy, who the conspirators are, the main elements of this PSYWAR and, what's more important, how we can fight back and win.
About the Author
Cuban-born Servando Gonzalez got his training as a historian at the University of Havana. He has written books, essays and articles on Latin American history, intelligence, espionage, and semiotics.
Servando is the author of Historia herética de la revolución fidelista, The Secret Fidel Castro, The Nuclear Deception and La madre de todas las conspiraciones, all available at Amazon.com.
He also hosted the documentaries Treason in America: The Council on Foreign Relations and Partners in Treason: The CFR-CIA-Castro Connection, produced by Xzault Media Group of San Leandro, California.
What the critics are saying
Servando Gonzalez' exposé of the Alien Queen, also known as the CFR, could easily alter the future of Western civilization and America for the good. These are times when a single man may make great contributions to the cause of human dignity and freedom.
--Kevin E. Abrams, co-author with Scott Lively of The Pink Swastika.Thoreau wrote, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." Servando Gonzalez didn't waste any time hacking at the branches, and reveals the very crooked roots of evil. This is a most impressive book. A must read.
--G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island.Servando Gonzalez has studied in detail the men and organizations that rule the world. This book reveals the true story of how Fidel Castro came to power, and discusses the powerful group that has kept him in power for almost fifty years. It is one of the most important books of this decade. Read it and learn about the invisible forces that direct the course of world affairs.
--Stanley Monteith, author of Brotherhood of Darkness.Read this book. Read it carefully. It not only tells you what's happening today but, with very well chosen historical perspective, it lets you look down the road of the recent past for proof of what it says. That is the best way to learn to look at the future in order to fathom what is coming your way. And what is coming our way in the U.S., Europe --the whole world-- is riddled with grave dangers, pitfalls and perils.
--Adrian Salbuchi, author of El cerebro del mundo: la cara oculta de la globalización.Edward Bernays wrote, "We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." However, Servando Gonzalez, an astute researcher and author, masterly divulges the machinations behind many historical and contemporary events and reveals who is really managing the presidential puppet strings. As Servando maintains, the new American Revolution, using covert warfare, is a conflict without guns. Rather, the ammunition is lies and psychological warfare and every American citizen is a target. It is a fabulous book, a must-read!
--Deanna Spingola, author of When the Power Elite Rules.Book's Content
Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People
Contents
Preface
Conspiracies and Conspiracy "Theories"
Espionage and Skepticism
Historians and Intelligence Analysts
The Art and Science of Historical TradecraftIntroduction
A Fractured America
The Covert American Revolution
Who Are the New World Order Conspirators?
The Secret War Against the American People
Walking Back the CatChapter 1. Is There an Invisible Government of the United States?
The CIA as Scapegoat
The Council on What?
The Science of Historical Forensics
U.S. Presidents on Blinders
CFR's Inside Critics
The CFR Octopus
The CIA's True BossesChapter 2. Spying: The Rockefellers' True Passion
The Inquiry: First U.S. Civilian Intelligence Agency
House-Wilson: A Typical Case of Agent Recruitment
Wilson: The First Successful U.S. Puppet President
The Family that Spies Together . . .
Nelson and David Inherit Their Grandpa's Passion for Spying
The Family Tradition ContinuesChapter 3. The Council on Foreign Relations: The Conspirators' Secret Intelligence Agency
The Conspirators Create an Anti-American Monster
The CFR: Second U.S. Civilian Intelligence Agency
A Very Secretive Organization
The CFR: an Association of Criminal Traitors
The Invisible Government of the United States
The CFR Conspirators Take Early Control of the Press
The Conspirators Extend Their Control Over the Press, the Arts and the Academia
The Conspirators Infiltrate the Two Parties
The Conspirators Infiltrate the State DepartmentChapter 4. The OSS: of the Bankers, by the Bankers, for the Bankers
American Intelligence Before and After WWI
Was the OSS an Intelligence Agency?
OSS: The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
OSS: The Conspirators' Fifth Column Inside the U.S. Armed Forces
The Assassination of General PattonChapter 5. The National Security Act, the CIA and the Creation of Artificial Insecurity
The National Security Act of 1947 and the Origins of the National Security Council
U.S. Presidents as CFR's Puppets
The National Security Council: a Key Tool of the CFR Conspirators
Why the CIA?
The CIA: The Conspirators' Secret Military Arm
The NSC Illegally Authorizes the CIA to Conduct Covert Operations
Covert Operations: The CIA's True and Only PurposeChapter 6. The CIA's "Failures"
The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight?
The Gang That Shouldn't Shoot Straight
CIA's Failed Assassination Attempts on Fidel Castro
The CIA's True Role
Team B VS Team A
The Two CIAs
CFR Conspirators Create CIA B
American Patriots Working for CIA A
HUMINT VS TECHINT
Enemy Moles Inside the CIA
Angleton's Deep GameChapter 7. The Cold War PSYOP
The CFR Conspirators Use the CIA to Recruit Fidel Castro
The Bogotazo False Flag Operation and the Cold War PSYOP
The Agent Provocateurs
Planting False Clues
Was Castro a Communist?
The Bogotazo and the Assassination of Gaitán
An Intelligence Analysis of the Bogotazo
Gaitan's Assassin: A Manchurian Candidate?
An Intelligence Analysis of Gaitán's Assassination
New Pieces of the Puzzle
The Bogotazo: Still a MysteryChapter 8. The CFR Mole Infiltrates the Soviets
The Destruction of Russia and the Creation of the Soviet Union
Khrushchev's Peaceful Threat
A Spy is Born ... or Made?
Fidel Castro to the Rescue
The Bay of Pigs PSYOPChapter 9. Agent Castro Warms Up the Cold War
The Soviets Swallow the Dangling Bait
The CFR's Agent Provocateur Strikes Again
Khrushchev Tries to Get Rid of Castro, But Fails
Castro's Good Job on Behalf of His CFR Masters
The Latin American Guerrillas and Other PSYOPs
Fidel Castro and the 9/11 False Flag Operation
The Castro-Chávez PSYOPChapter 10. PSYOPs Against the American People I
A War in the People's Minds
PSYOPs Do Exist
The War-for-Eugenics PSYOP
The Anti-Christian PSYOP
The Gay Movement PSYOP
The Gay Marriage PSYOPChapter 11. PSYOPs Against the American People II
The Environmental PSYOP
Anthropogenic Global Warming?
The Two Party PSYOP
The War on Terror PSYOP
The Obama PSYOPChapter 12. Castro's Cuba: A Testing Ground for the New World Order?
The Cuban Economy Before Castro
Cuba as a Testing Ground
Castro's Cuba: a CFR Conspirator's ParadiseChapter 13. The End of the CIA and the Beginning of the New World Order
The CFR Conspirators Take Control Over the U.S. Military
The CFR's Fifth Column Inside the U.S. Armed Forces
Faithful to Two Flags?
The CFR Conspirators Destroy the CIA They Don't Need Anymore
The "Support Our Army" MythEpilogue: What Can We Do to Win This War?
Is the U.S. Becoming a Totalitarian Dictatorship?
Ballots or Bullets?
Why They Hate Us?
The Conspirators' Final Push for the New World Order
PSYWAR and Mind VirusesAppendixes
Appendix I. A Chronology of Treason
Appendix II. The Evaluation of Information: Intelligence, the 9/11/2001 Events, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
Appendix III. Hegelian-type PSYOPS. False Flag Operations: Bogotazo and 9/11/2001From the Preface
This is a book about a conspiracy. It is not, however, about the imaginary "vast right-wing conspiracy" mentioned by Hillary Clinton. Neither it is about the alleged "conspiracy of ideas" carried out by well-intentioned, honest people engaged in "an ideological battle," mentioned by Congressman Ron Paul.
It is about a real vast right- left-wing conspiracy carried out by a group of criminal psychopaths without any ideology at all except maximum power and control. To carry out their plants, the conspirators usually resort to deception, coercion, extortion, usury, racketeering, Ponzi schemes, theft, torture, assassination and large-scale mass murder.
The ultimate goal of these conspirators is the total destruction of the American republic as we knew it and the creation of a global communo-fascist feudal totalitarian society under their full control --a society they euphemistically call the New World Order.
The conspirators are a small group of Wall Street bankers, oil magnates and CEOs of transnational corporations, most of them senior members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Though their push for total control of the U.S. government began in 1913 during the Wilson administration, since the end of WWII it has become a fully developed psychological war of immense proportions secretly waged against the American people. Key elements in this secret war have been the Department of State, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as some of the conspirators' secret agents like Allen Dulles, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Fidel Castro.
This conspiracy resembles a gigantic puzzle of which many pieces are missing or have been intentionally placed in the wrong place in order to mislead. This explains why most analysts who have studied the phenomenon using the analytical method have failed to find the true source of the problem.
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Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Comment Comment (1)
5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a roller coaster...,
This book is a roller coaster. It questions most of your accepted ideas about the Council on Foreign Relations, the OSS, the CIA, Castro, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, 9/11 and many other events we take for granted. After reading this book I agree with the author's assertion that most of what has been written about the CIA - pro and con - is simply hogwash.September 13, 2010 Gonzalez's theory about the two CIAs after the Team A -- Team B deception is very convincing. This may explain why this is at the same time the most anti-CIA and the most pro-CIA book ever written. (The book is dedicated to Arthur B. Darling, the first CIA official historian.)
Moreover, this is the only book I have read that provides a logical explanation to the CIA's seemingly illogical abandonment of HUMINT for its current widespread use of TECHINT, and why good CIA officers have been abandoning the Agency.
Also, after reading many books about James Jesus Angleton, this books dissects his behavior and shows what he really was: a traitor and a common criminal serving not the American people but his true masters, the Wall Street bankers and oil magnates who created the CIA.
A must read for CIA former and current officers, particularly the ones in the intelligence area.
By
Cquevedo - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)
This book reads like a spy novel. In almost every single page I found shocking assertions and theories -- supported by more than a thousand scholarly footnotes.After enumerating the long list of CIA's failures, many books about the CIA rhetorically ask the question: "Why the CIA has been so stupid?" After reading Gonzalez' book now I ask myself, how I have been so stupid to believe the assertions that the CIA guys --or, much better, the people who control the CIA-- are stupid?
In his book Gonzalez shows how, since its very conception, the CIA has never served us, the American people, but the Wall Street bankers, oil magnates and CEOs of transnational corporations who created it. The time is ripe to get rid of the CIA and the rest of alphabet soup of intelligence organizations who use taxpayers money to protect the interest of international bankers and transnational corporations.
Ah, and before we close the CIA building and throw away the key, I would like to see destroyed the bust of William Donovan decorating its vestibule. While the traitor who ordered that assassination of General Patton got a statue, the heroic, patriotic general's memory has been covered with mud. What a shame!
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars very interesting book,By
Bondolfo Shamitoff (San Francisco) - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)
I had a chance to read and advance copy of this book and it was very interesting. I am a fan of conspiracy theory books and historical books so this was right up my alley. What I realized though, after I read more and more of the book is that this is not your typical book on this subject. It backs ideas up with facts and has lots of good footnotes which I will use for future reference. This type of subject matter may not be for everyone, but considering how things are going in this country, it might be worth the read.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Could not put it down!,By
Luisa - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)
Had a chance to purchase a copy of the book this past Saturday, started reading it then and finished it this morning. Mr. Gonzalez has done such a remarkable job of analyzing historical events in detail and providing so much key evidence that his claims must be taken seriously. I'm not going to go into every detail about the book, but if you believe that everything in this country is not as it seems and that we are being lied to by our government now and have been lied to in the past, read this book.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Quick Up-To-Speed Study,By
Rose M. Aasen-rojas "rose" (atlanta) - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)Gonzalez in his engaging prose brings you quickly up-to-speed in the globalist plan and the players. In spite of the abundance of typos and editing errors along with some stilted English phrases, the book will be difficult to put down; and when it ends, you'll want to know more. Hopefully,the second printing will be better-edited.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Warning, you will not be able to go back to where you were before, after reading this book!,By
boatsmac (James McDonald) (San Diego) - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)I am an honorably discharged Veteran with 20 years of military service and because I've questioned the actions and motivations of the CFR, Homeland security, the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building and the events of 9/11, I have been labeled by my government as a potential terrorist. I am ashamed, hurt, confused and feel alarmed.
Why and how did it get to this point?
If you want to understand, put on your seat-belt and prepare yourself when you read Servando Gonzalez's Psychological Warfare and the New World Order.
The wealth of historical, empirical proof within this work will rock your world. Just when you think that you have reached the climax of evidence, the next wave of proof makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up!
This book will affect you in a way that you will never be able to walk down American streets again without recognizing that you could be seen as nothing more than cannon fodder for a ruthless and cunning organization that has been working for a goal for over a hundred years.
I am not religious but what has been going on in America and the rest of the world, is truly evil. It's a force that is working to insure billions of people will suffer and who is left will serve the masters of the New World Order.
This is not science fiction, not some crazy story of some sick delusional nut, this is reality of elements within our government.
Servando Gonzalez will guide you through this strange and factual journey about what is really going on in America and elements with in our government. If you don't care about your love ones, if you don't care about your honor, if you don't care about knowing about what you can do to protect yourself against this force, don't read this master piece of factual work.
***Fair warning*** The knowledge in this capstone of work will affect you personally!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Really good,By
DBA Susy (Boca Raton, FL USA) - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)
Totally worth a read if you want to understand what's going on in this country. Explains a lot in a way that's very believable. The author builds upon his premises brick-by-brick, so stick with it, even if it seems to bog down at little at some points - it's worth it.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Mother of all Conspiracies,By
applewood (everywhere and nowhere) - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)Literally. Servando Gonzalez's book on psychological warfare looks at the people and organizations (and their motivations) of the conspiracy behind all other conspiracies.
For decades I've read of the main conspiracy-related events of my life time, the who's and why's behind - JFK's and RFK's assassinations, the Contra/Arkansas cocaine/arms trade and Whitewater money laundering scandal, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 attacks - and have been fascinated, shocked, outraged, bewildered and disgusted. This book goes right to the heart of the agenda behind these various events, and shows them to be mere layers in a much larger onion. This book provides a clear overview but is also full of fascinating details, especially on how Castro was a CIA agent and how his rule of Cuba has not been what it seems, as well as providing a run down of some of the current PSYOPs being run on the American public.
Gonzalez's own review here gives an outline of the details better than I ever could so I will keep this short. I came across this book after reading a lengthy review by Gonzalez for a different book on Amazon, greatly impressed by his intellect and perspective. At first I was leery of purchasing his book because many of these reviews appear written by friends of his (single review reviewers always make me skeptical). However this book delivers, and as another reviewer commented here, it will change your understanding, views and perhaps life. It has quickly risen into the top 10 list of influential books I've read. I'd even venture say it is essential.
My main complaint is that while well informed, and intelligent Gonzalez's writing is often dense and repetitive (as well as having a fair number of typos), and so apparently rushed to press without thorough editing. Given the timely need of this book this is excusable, but hopefully will be remedied in a second edition. More importantly I was sometimes left wondering how Gonzalez knows all these (specific) people are CFR members/agents? And this uncertainty of mine, and implied dependence on him, left me in doubt about the whole thesis (are we both just paranoid delusional? lol!).... But perhaps such doubt (in the face of my own mix of information and disinformation) is a healthy thing.
Many times when talking with friends about conspiracy ideas and theories they inevitably ask two fundamental questions; 1) who is behind it all, and 2) why?
This book answers both clearly;
1) The Council of Foreign Relations (via the National Security Council, the CIA and increasingly the US military command) and various sister organizations (The Trilateral Commission and The Bilderberg Group). Many individuals are identified, most of these are familiar public figures (as most high level government appointees and elected officials are drawn from this elite group).
2) The New World Order - global domination for sustainable control and order by the super-rich elite (the .0001%, not the mere, ordinary, scape-goated/smoke-screened "1%"). The effect could well be a return to a new feudal age, with almost all of us in a "safe" but unfree and impoverished serfdom (kind of like with the Cuba "experiment"). The kicker being that to do this, "us" will probably be less than a quarter (and perhaps much less) of those now alive.
And it also answers the question of how.
"But the conspirators who planned to bring a revolutionary change of government in the United States to implement the communo-fascist regime they call the New World Order were a bunch of physical cowards, who didn't have the courage to risk their lives in a revolution by gun play. Consequently, despite the fact that the political system they wanted to implement was a mixture of communism and fascism, they neither adopted the revolutionary tactics of open insurrection favored by the Communists, nor the coup d'etat techniques of the Fascists, but the evolutionary, infiltration techniques advocated by the British Fabians." (pg. 40)
The tools to achieve this Brave New World vision include any and all available. For some it is direct warfare (the Middle East), for others, famine and eugenics (Africa), and for American's it is mainly mind control (mass hypnosis and indoctrination) and psychological warfare (destabilizing events leading to doubt, confusion, fear, depression and helplessness). Of course this plan is not a given (even though already far along in it's realization). There are other forces for change, sanity and awakening in the world today.
This is where you and I come into play....
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!,By
Frances Fletcher - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People (Paperback)This is a well-documented expose of the puppet masters that pull the strings of the United States Government.
As a retired police officer and intelligence analyst, I read this book with validation of the ideas presented in the fore front of my mind. I used two bookmarks while reading. One bookmark kept my current place and the other marked the corresponding footnotes. The footnotes are detailed and accurate and led to even-more paths of discovering the truth.
This book is proof that the United States Government has been usurped by the Council of Foreign Relations, transnational corporations and Wall Street bankers.
Every chapter is a light bulb going off in your mind. The author has brilliantly gathered pieces of the puzzle and assembled them into a coherent picture.
This book is essential for understanding what has happened to our country and what is still happening. It is a MUST read!
