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Thread 7926

Thread ID: 7926 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-07-06

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kminta [OP]

2003-07-06 23:02 | User Profile

[color=red]*"American urban (black) youth culture ... is a source of oppression for the ghetto youths of America. As it is a pernicious force for them, it is also a danger to the rest of the world." * [/color]

[color=red]Couldn't have said it better myself.[/color]

Cultural Exports uploaded 06 Jul 2003

Cultural Exports

During the height of the cold war, anti Soviet propaganda was spread through various diverse means. Significant amongst these, in the US, were the popular forms of media such as films and comic strips. The fear of the evil socialist state was conjured up in many of these cultural artefacts. But this was mainly for home consumption. The stocks reserved for export had a different flavour.

In 1965, the jazz musician Louis Armstrong made a historic tour, visiting East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Poland. This tour secured Louis Armstrong’s position as one of America’s most important cultural ambassadors of the period. However what most people at the time were unaware of, was that the tour had been orchestrated by the CIA as a cover for cold war surveillance. It was a coherent and systematically organised campaign of propagandising for a free and democratic nation - America.

Almost by definition the cold war, as it did not involve military directly, centred around cultural issues. The post war Soviet economy was in tatters. Therefore they went about attempting to win over hearts and minds using cultural forms. They considered that these could be done, on the cheap, with maximum impact and minimum input. They started to nurture a cultural product, which was good enough for export, in the form of the Bolshoi and the Kirov etc. Their best classical musicians, dancers and orchestras were showcased abroad as a cultural offensive strike. As a counter attack, the US offered up export quality indigenous American culture, jazz music.

The body responsible for this was the United States Information Agency (USIA). Their remit was to “explain” US policies abroad, but also to pass on American Culture. One of the great myths of the post war cultural boom is that it was left to develop separately from the CIA and other government forces. CIA men would always tag along on these tours in some clandestine cover. The CIA actually owned a jazz music record label. It was the CIA that set up an organisation known as the Psychological Strategy Board, which later evolved into the Operations Coordinating Board. These were the bosses of the USIA.

Although he was the most famous, Louis Armstrong was not the only musician that toured the Eastern Block at that time. There was also Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. It was by no coincidence all of them were black. The status of blacks in the US at the time was very low. This was the height of the civil rights movement in the US, something that the Soviets made a lot out of.

All this added to the brilliantness of the US’s cunning plan. Blacks had been mistreated in the US in general and these very same black musicians had suffered under segregation laws and other such issues. The Communists invited black musicians specifically because they were black, so that they could take the moral high ground. They thought they could highlight racial inequalities.

However this only aided the US objectives, as it was they that were seen to be an open society that could face up to their own internal problems. Ultimately, values of freedom and democracy were what allowed these people to go and perform in Eastern Europe. Also the nature of the music was important. Jazz is filled with its improvisations; breaks with musical conventions and its multi-racial element giving it a rebellious ambience. It seemed to epitomise the ideology of individualism and freedom of expression, pluralism and democracy itself.

Although many of these musicians had suffered at the hands of the establishment, they seemed to be willing participants in this conspiracy. Armstrong once pronounced on one of these tours, “I am not here for the American government; I am not here to visit your government I am here only to play for the people. This is no politics, there is only music and human understanding.” These musicians were used as pawns by the US government. They naively believed that they were spreading love and understanding through the universal message carried in their music. Armstrong knew that he was being used. However he genuinely believed in the power of his music to cross- political boundaries. All this soppy pathetic sentimentality merely added to the efficiency of the process of transfecting Western thoughts into the Eastern block.

Today the Soviet block is no more. However the success of the precedent set in the sixties still sustains. The process of exporting a culture that proselytises the pleasures of individualism and the fraternity of freedom continues unabated. The target audience is no longer Eastern Europe. It is the world. This time the setting is not dingy dark Bulgarian concert halls; it is MTV, Hollywood and the Internet.

The 21st century phenomenon of rap music has gone way beyond the barriers that jazz had breached. It is one of the only cultural forms that bridges a worldwide gap between rich and poor powerless and powerful. Hip-hop is the audio equivalent of the Big Mac. As Nike have come to symbolise the globalisation of consumer goods, and MacDonald’s have come to symbolise the metamorphosis of the fast food nation into the fast food world, Hip-hop has come to symbolise the ubiquitous junk music culture. As with jazz before it, rap music is an art form born of the black communities. It shares other similarities in its association with free expression, improvisation and ad libitum, breaks with convention, themes of racial harmony and rebellion against authority. It came out of the ghettos of New York, originally for home consumption. But now it has worldwide appeal, which is a relatively recent phenomenon.

There is a simple truth that it grew as an urban art form from kids on the street with limited means and resources. There is a more complex truth that it was allowed to develop under the watchful eye of the powers that be, and was hijacked to serve the system for its own ends. Whether we choose to believe the simple or the complex, there are certain issues that we should take into consideration when analysing anything from black America. African Americans were not invited over the Atlantic for their own good. They were stolen from Africa and shipped in appalling conditions for the sake of slaving their lives away. The US brought the blacks over to serve them. It is naivety to think that things have changed. The US government has and always has had agencies to keep blacks in check.

The FBI established the COINTELPRO campaign to suppress internal dissents; the program against Africans was entitled: "Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist-Hate Groups Racial Intelligence"; the following is an excerpt from an FBI memo dated April, 1968: "The Negro wants and needs something to be proud of. The Negro youth and moderate must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries. Is it not better to be a sports hero, a well paid professional athlete or entertainer, a regularly paid white or blue collar worker, a peaceful human being with a family, or a person who at least is being accepted, than a Negro who may have got even with the establishment by burning it down, but who along with this, burned down his own home and gained for him and all his people the hatred and distrust of the whites for years to come?"

So it serves the US government to have a load of black youths aspiring only to be famous, and live a particular life style that never questions the authority of the state or reviews the injustices meted out to them throughout their history. It is better to have a community of young men and women interested only in wanting to jump up and down half naked, spitting profanities, insulting and degrading the female form, praising the pleasures of alcoholic beverages, advertising clothing brands, consumer goods and promoting luxury motor cars and encouraging excessive gasoline consumption. Who are these rappers benefiting, other than corporate America? Not to mention the powerful media conglomerates such as Time Warner, MCA, Viacom, News Corp. and others. These media fiefdoms, within the US, exert control on various communities and serve the interests of naught but the US national security establishment.

The minds of American people (black and white) are ripe for the polluting. What corporate America says is cool, is cool. What corporate America says is “black” is “black.” So Eminem, the planet’s best selling musician, is “black” because he fits the corporate image that MTV says is black. The music that blacks created has now become just another tool for the oppression of the African American. All of the music looks and sounds the same. The youth seem to be all talking, acting and dressing the same. This is because it is easier to control a monolithic people.

In the 1960s the jazz export was an exploitative con that benefited only the US government. What about this revamped form of a cultural export? It has all those same trappings and trimmings of jazz. There is a peculiar irony surrounding the fact that the blacks had lived in circumstances of poverty and deprivation yet in the world of MTV they are ghetto superstars. The image portrayed is one of youths getting to live a life style that should be aspired to. There is another irony in that one of the key hip-hop clichés is “keeping it real”. However there is very little reality behind the marvellously manicured image of hip hop. Yes its true that Eminem did come from a Detroit ghetto, 50 Cent did get shot nine times and caught a 9mm in the face, and Ice T, Snoop Dogg and countless others were once street thugs. All this just adds to the gangsta myth. But the fancy clothes that they wear on their videos, are chosen for them. The fast cars that they drive are hired merely for the video shoot, the scantily clad girls that they are surrounded by are also just for hire. These videos are nothing more than soft porn fantasies and adverts for the obscene overindulgence in consumer products. Who is keeping it real? Not the so-called artists for sure. Tupac Shakur, an almost legendary figure in the hip-hop world, lived that fantasy life. Yet he died penniless. The millions generated in records sales didn’t go to him, they went to his slave owner. As with Uncle Tom, Tupac’s cars, clothes and “cabin” belonged to his owner.

American urban (black) youth culture has come to dominate the global youth culture regardless of colour. This cultural onslaught is a source of oppression for the ghetto youths of America. As it is a pernicious force for them, it is also a danger to the rest of the world.

Salim Fredericks Khilafah.com Journal 6 Jumaad al-Oola 1424 Hijri 5 July 2003 [url=http://www.khilafah.com/home/lographics/category.php?DocumentID=7723&TagID=1]www.khilafah.com[/url]

Übeltäter

2003-07-06 23:11 | User Profile

China is having this same problem with negro-hipphopp culture.

Rumblestrip

2003-07-08 09:56 | User Profile

** The minds of American people (black and white) are ripe for the polluting. What corporate America says is cool, is cool. What corporate America says is “black” is “black.” So Eminem, the planet’s best selling musician, is “black” because he fits the corporate image that MTV says is black. The music that blacks created has now become just another tool for the oppression of the African American. All of the music looks and sounds the same. The youth seem to be all talking, acting and dressing the same. This is because it is easier to control a monolithic people. **

And remember who controls corporate America and the media that promotes corporate America...

You know... rhymes with "screws".