Empire and the Deep State
Skyhorse Publishing, 2022
Förläggarens beskrivning:
American Exception seeks to explain the breakdown of US democracy. In particular, how we can understand the uncanny continuity of American foreign policy, the breakdown of the rule of law, and the extreme concentration of wealth and power into an overworld of the corporate rich. To trace the evolution of the American state, the author takes a deep politics approach, shedding light on those political practices that are typically repressed in “mainstream” discourse. In its long history before World War II, the US had a deep political system – a system of governance in which decision-making and enforcement were carried out within – and outside of – public institutions. It was a system that always included some degree of secretive collusion and law-breaking. After World War II, US elites decided to pursue global dominance over the international capitalist system. Setting aside the liberal rhetoric, this project was pursued in a manner that was by and large imperialistic rather than progressive. To administer this covert empire, US elites created a massive national security state characterized by unprecedented levels of secrecy and lawlessness. The “Global Communist Conspiracy” provided a pretext for exceptionism – an endless “exception” to the rule of law. What gradually emerged after World War II was a tripartite state system of governance. The open democratic state and the authoritarian security state were both increasingly dominated by an American deep state. The term deep state was badly misappropriated during the Trump era. In the simplest sense, it herein refers to all those institutions that collectively exercise undemocratic power over state and society. To trace how we arrived at this point, American Exception explores various deep state institutions and history-making interventions. Key institutions involve the relationships between the overworld of the corporate rich, the underworld of organized crime, and the national security actors that mediate between them. History-making interventions include the toppling of foreign governments, the launching of aggressive wars, and the political assassinations of the 1960s. The book concludes by assessing the prospects for a revival of US democracy.
Om författaren:
Aaron Good has a PhD in Political Science from Temple University. His dissertation, “American Exception: Hegemony and the Tripartite State,” examined the state, elite criminality, and US hegemony. It was an expansion of a previously published article, “American Exception: Hegemony and the Dissimulation of the State.” Prior to completing his doctorate, he worked on the 2008 Obama campaign in Missouri. Born and raised in Indiana, he has since lived and worked in Taiwan and Shanghai. He currently resides with his wife and son in the greater Philadelphia area where he has been a history and social science instructor.
Recensioner:
“A gifted student of history, Aaron Good digs deep into its underbrush of confusion to bring out lucid insights into the American Empire – and the reasons for its behavior. This work again reminds us of the pernicious impact of intelligence and security forces and their role in undermining our integrity as a country.”
Oliver Stone, author and Academy Award-winning director, producer, and screenwriter
“Aaron Good has written a penetrating and highly original study of American exceptionism – the systematic overriding of law, often for the sake of national security. Recognizing that the records-based methods of academic historians are insufficient for an era of covert action agencies and plausible deniability, he surveys facts, normally suppressed, about the increased role of criminality in political activity, citing specifically assassinations, the ‘October Surprise’ of 1968, and the crimes of Watergate. He also critiques and advances on the efforts of previous thinkers like C. Wright Mills to conceptualize what he calls the tripartite state – ‘comprised of the democratic or public state, the national-security state, and the deep state.’ This is a valuable and much-needed book, an unparalleled synthesis of the emerging new critical perspective on American hegemony.”
Peter Dale Scott, English professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Coming to Jakarta and The Road to 9/11
“In The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone and I countered the dangerous myths of unbridled American rectitude and imperious exceptionalism. In American Exception, Aaron Good takes this a big step further, producing something we might call untold social science, a work that brilliantly illuminates the deep political forces that have animated the American empire throughout its volatile, troubled, and often violent history.”
Peter Kuznick, professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University
“Why does the US wage war and project coercive machinations abroad no matter the party leading Congress or the president in office? Good offers a piquant, rich, and memorable answer by excavating the hidden faces of power within the American state – or rather, states, each defined by their embedded interests, public countenance, and corporate stakeholders that operate in the hidden spaces of the national political economy. There is no triumphalist narrative here, only a grim but necessary recounting of how financial and security interests shaped US foreign policy at every turn across the past half-century.”
Sean Yom, associate professor of Political Science at Temple University and senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute
JOBs kommentar:
Good driver idag en viktig YouTube-kanal med samma namn som boken, American Exception. Se ett avsnitt om USA:s Mellanösternpolitik här.
“China held a grand gathering in Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square on Wednesday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.
President Xi Jinping delivered a speech and oversaw a military parade which proceeded in two steps: a military review by Xi and a march-past of troops.
A total of 61 foreign heads of state and government, high-level representatives of relevant countries, heads of international organizations and former political dignitaries were present at the commemorative event.
Before the beginning of the gathering, Xi ascended the Tian’anmen rostrum and shook hands with war veterans attending the event.
Standing beside Xi on the Tian’anmen Rostrum were Russian President #VladimirPutin and #KimJongUn, top leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with more than 20 other foreign leaders.”
Den första delen av filosofen vid Villanova University utanför Philadelphia Gabriel Rockhills länge omtalade och med stort intresse emotsedda trilogi om västmarxismen utkommer, meddelar han, i december på Monthly Review Press, och kan nu förbeställas.
Rockhills många nättillgängliga presentationer under de senaste åren har visat att hans tänkande saknar vad jag skulle vilja kunna kalla en värdekonservativ dimension, det som vi kan urskilja aspekter av hos en Michéa i Frankrike och som i USA Maupin, Haz och andra nu sedan ganska länge mer eller mindre förstått nödvändigheten av. I själva verket uppvisar han till skillnad från de övriga nämnda vissa drag av det som kom att utmärka den marxism – och därur utvecklade postmarxism – han kritiserar, en av de saker som Haz tagit fasta på i sitt dock alldeles för långtgående förkastande av honom.
I stället är hans bidrag den detaljerade vidareutvecklingen av framför allt Domenico Losurdos typ av analys av framväxten av, orsakerna till och krafterna bakom den “kompatibla vänster”, den kapitalets vänster, som till slut helt enkelt övergick i postmarxismen och kom att bli den nästan totalt dominerande under den nyliberala, unipolära atlanthegemonins era: den politiska korrekthetens och wokeismens överbyggnadsvänster, som pophögern uppfattar som “kulturmarxismen”.
Haz förmår inte göra rättvisa åt detta arbete. Bl.a. beror det på att han har en faiblesse för Žižek, som Rockhill avfärdar som “capitalism’s court jester”. Ingenting tyder på att Haz behärskar franska, och han har inte som Rockhill i många år studerat under just vad som i USA simplistisk-karaktäristiskt nog sedan länge kommit att kallas den “franska teorins” ledande figurer i Paris, och där publicerat åtskilligt på franska. Ändå inte bara försvarar han distinkta temata i denna teori, utan menar sig kunna sätta sig till doms över Rockhills bristande förståelse för dess specifikt europeiska drag.
Det framstår inte som i allo övertygande, men mer finns förvisso att säga om hans argument rörande just Žižek och Rockhills förståelse av denne. För Haz har såtillvida utan tvekan rätt, som Rockhill i detta sammanhang inte närmare ingår på Žižeks egentliga och specifika tänkande och helhetskaraktären av hans verk, utan mest tar fasta på enskilda politiska uttalanden och ställningstaganden.
Att Rockhill gör så får sin förklaring i hans biografi och därur följande psykologi, motivationen för hans nuvarande arbete. Han är inte längre intresserad av Žižeks eller den franska teorins inre intellektuella värld i sig, bortom de politiska samband han upptäckt. Hans hela framtoning är den av en man som är förkrossad över att i många år ha låtit sig vilseledas av den teori som han egentligen på annat sätt än Haz är direkt förtrogen med, men som han kommit att inse i det väsentliga är en förlängning och variation av det äldre imperialistiska indoktrineringskriget och dess manipulerade radikalism. Allt Rockhill säger andas dåligt samvete över detta, ett skuldmedvetande, en överväldigande ånger.
Detta trauma är alltså den uppenbara drivkraften bakom hans forsknings omorientering. Han förskräcks över vad han bidragit till att ställa till med, vad han förstört, och vill nästan desperat motverka vad han uppfattar som effekterna av även sitt alldeles egna tidigare arbete, förhindra den katastrof han nu ser att de kommer leda till om de inte elimineras. Det är ett intressant och hittills ovanligt fenomen.
Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? offers a crash course in the history of imperialist propaganda, as well as in the Marxist method for analyzing culture and ideology. Author Gabriel Rockhill demonstrates the explanatory and transformative superiority of a dialectical and historical materialist approach, while elucidating how the world of ideas is a crucial site of class struggle. He then engages in a meticulous counter-history of the Frankfurt School – which made a foundational contribution to Western Marxism – by situating it within the global relations of class struggle and the imperialist war on actually existing socialism. With the explicit and direct backing of powerful elements in the capitalist ruling class and the world’s leading imperialist state, the Frankfurt School developed a widely promoted form of compatible critical theory as an ersatz for dialectical and historical materialism. The volume concludes by bringing to the fore the positive project that serves as the guiding methodological framework for the work as a whole: a thoroughly anticolonial and anti-imperialist Marxism dedicated to building socialism in the real world. Drawing on extensive archival research to pull back the curtain on ruling class machinations, Rockhill’s book elucidates how the intellectual world war on the socialist alternative has sought to shore up and promote a “compatible left” intelligentsia while misrepresenting, maligning, and trying to destroy the revolutionary left.
