Author’s Note: ’60 Minutes’ is a bourgeois documentary series in the US that carries-out quite often undercover investigative work. However, the producers of ’60 Minutes’ are very careful about the type of crime (and criminals) that are snared its dragnet! It is also to very careful in the selection of ‘victims’ it makes! If not always ‘White’ – then they must be affluent and well-off! After-all, ’60 Minutes’ has to be careful not to cross the line when it comes to treading on the toes of the corporations (and their ‘lobbies’) which run America, and which make-up the bulk of their profits exploiting and oppressing the working-class of America, be they Black, White, Native American, Hispanic or Asian! These people comprise the greater percentage of America’s more than 330 million people! These people are subjected to the destructive myths of capitalism and have no collective power to confront the bourgeoisie as effective Unionism and Socialism are both discouraged in a country whose ‘White’ leadership ruthlessly pursues the path of rugged individualism – although, of course, it is only the ordinary ‘suffering’ American who in any way has to become ‘rugged’! The documentary you will see above is designed to outrage middle-America whilst ignoring completely the suffering of working-class America! Therefore, its self-righteousness is palpable! Surely, ’60 Minutes’ would have achieved a greater good if it had run a piece about how ordinary working-class Americans with disabilities or longterm illnesses fair in the face of the routine corruption employed by corporate America’s medical insurance companies? Could it be that this bourgeois ‘collective’ criminality is perfectly acceptable within the predatory capitalist system – but not the excessive individualism employed by Lawrence Stowe and his associates (exposed in 2010)? I shall probably write separately about the supposed ‘Chinese Spy‘ segment (linked to events in 2008) – which is part of the general racist anti-China policy pursued by the United States. The myth operating here, is that the US is pursuing an ‘anti-Communist China’ policy and that the racism it is perpetuating against ALL ‘Chinese-looking’ people should only be reserved for the citizens of Mainland China! In other words, the ordinary American consumers of this anti-China racism must become experts in ethnography and ‘Professor’ level experts in reading body-language, listening to speech and understanding non-European culture! NO! The US racism aimed at Chinese people is exactly the racism that was aimed at Chinese people two, three or even four hundred years ago by ‘White’ Europeans – and has never changed! The American ideologues now use the excuse of ‘politics’ to justify what they are doing! ACW (3.6.2022)
US anti-intellectualism possesses many layers, strands, orientations, adaptations, manifestations and functions! As a purely ‘American’ invention, it rates right-up there with consumer capitalism, mass-advertising and the reinvention (misappropriation) of world history! It probably begins post-WWI, but definitely has its hay-day post-WWII! Its primary purpose is to brainwash the American working-class and keep each individual worker ‘ignorantly’ separated from one another (as a means to destroy and prevent any form of ‘Socialist’ collectivity developing), and to keep the body of US-workers ‘isolated’ from psychologically, emotionally and physically ‘uniting’ with the International Working-Class (‘Proletariat’)! To any Americans reading this, this means that the US government structure pursues a path that ensures that each individual worker in the US keeps his or her gaze firmly (and ‘lovingly’) fixed upon the American ‘bourgeois’ system (like a moth attracted to a flame) and never looks elsewhere for unity or support! Religious ignorance features very highly in this most peculiarly ‘American’ of institutions and is studied in other countries as a very clear example of how a brainwashing system (perpetuated by a dominant political class) should be conceived, deployed and maintained!
Essentially, the central message of US anti-intellectual ideology is that exploiting one another for monetary profit is the be all and end all of any meaningful human existence, and that it is a grave and serious offense to think or believe otherwise! Quite naturally, as the White Europeans dominate the bourgeois, American political system, (despite substantial populations of non-White ethnicities), Protestant and Catholic Christianity are fully encouraged to the point where many online and televangelists earn tens of millions of dollars every year – simply because the only ‘collectively’ officially ‘endorsed’ by the US government has its origin in the congregations that serve as the faithful ‘flock’ which gather every Sunday morning – but which are asked by their spiritual leaders (who equate ‘income’ with ‘godliness’) – to continuously ‘donate’ (as it is ‘tax-free’ under the US system) their hard-earned cash to their ‘preachers’ so that they can continue to live lives of extreme opulence, luxury and decadence (including the routine use prostitutes and drugs, etc), whilst those around them remain impoverished by the very same (predatory) capitalist system that has enriched them! The ill, the poor, the desperate, the disabled and the lonely remain exactly in the material condition that the capitalist system has bequeathed for them – whilst their ‘pastors’ (‘he shall go by many names’) who exist at the top of this pyramid scheme are the only ones who experience any type of ‘miracle’ – and that ‘miracle’ remains entirely ‘material’ in nature (as more money equals more choice), but is continuously (and ‘falsely’) presented as being ‘spiritual’ or ‘other-worldly’ in nature (as if an unseen god has exercised his ‘divine will’ and ‘altered’ or ‘transformed’ all the material conditions of their ‘preachers’)! Money, and its gathering, remains the central tenant of (predatory) capitalism and the unbridled ‘desire’ to acquire fuels the very foundation of American culture!
The American working-class is deliberately kept in a collective state of religious ignorance as an inoculation against the development of any Socialist consciousness in the US! Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West (led by the US) was able to transmit en masse its religious ignorance into the post-Soviet space – together with its accompanying right-wing political ideology (as the two are inseparable) – as a means to ‘uproot’ the natural ‘collectively’ that seventy-four years of Marxist-Leninism had installed in the Russian mind! Whereas medical care must be paid for at the point of use in the US, it naturally follows that only the rich receive the best medical treatment and care! Everyone else must simply endure every psychological, emotional and physical malady that a human mind and body can experience – whilst continuing to ‘work’ in poorly-paid, dead-end jobs! Each American worker must, as an exploitable individual, keep their labour output at a reasonable level as expected by the US capitalist system they inhabit – a system which possesses ‘zero’ concern or compassion for their plight! The only conclusion that can be drawn, is that an American worker must ‘work’ or ‘die’ so that a rich over-class can continue to live their lives unaffected by the plight of proletariat that is collectively earning the ‘profit’ that forms the basis of the ‘luxury’ they routinely enjoy! Given this ‘dumbed-down’ situation (which sees psychological, emotional and physical profit on all sides), it is not to be marvelled at when such disempowered individuals turn to the inverted business of religion!
Of course, the ‘60 Minutes’ documentary series represents what the US system allows to pass as ‘intellectual’ within the general anti-intellectual milieu! There are limits to the causes that such bourgeois entities will expose, and the plight of the average working-class American is not one of them. Predatory capitalism, the ideology that spawns both ‘anti-intellectualism’ and its opposite as a limited and highly selective ‘intellectualism’, is NEVER directly questioned and its endless crimes committed against the American working-class are allowed a free hand to continue as an example of the American Way and how truly ‘free’ people are supposed to live! This is doubly true for the continuous War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity committed by the US (and Zionist Israel) throughout the world! None of the continuous crimes of capitalism is ever examined by such blatantly ‘pretensions’ programmes as ‘60 Minutes’ – which is obviously aimed at the richer inhabitants of the US who live in exclusive key political areas – those who are responsible for securing votes for prominent right-wing American political figures! Indeed, ultimately, these people end-up voting for the dubious personages such as Donald Trump – a right-wing Christian bigot who was unable to curve his obvious fascist temperament and Neo-Nazi agenda!
In the 2010 ‘60 Minutes’ documentary clip above (which will never be removed from YouTube as it appropriately ‘supports’ the US capitalist system), the obviously ‘fake’ preacher is a very good and genuine ‘capitalist’! What is the problem? Those with money are paying him – through effective advertising – hundreds of thousands of dollars for a service he provides! These people have obviously benefitted from the US capitalist system, and as the amounts are so large, can obviously afford genuine medical care, but they are choosing to exercise their ‘free will’ to opt for the religion pathway and see if ‘faith-healing’ will cure them! America is so collectively ‘stupid’ that a self-righteous, right-wing and obviously bourgeois documentary has established itself in the American psyche as being the arbiter of ALL knowledge! Although the US as continuously misrepresents the ‘Communist World’ as being exclusively ‘atheistic’ – it has presented itself as being continuously ‘free’ to choose whatever religious belief an individual might want to believe! Given that ALL religious beliefs are ‘false’ in the sense that none of them can be ‘materially’ proven as correct, why does ‘60 Minutes’ choose to focus on one ‘fake’ religious preacher that exists in a sea of ‘false prophets’? What does it matter what he says or does when the entire American system allows for – and accommodates – this type of ‘inverted’ thinking? The individual concerned seems ‘affronted’ by the way he is treated as ‘60 Minutes’ is breaking the implicit law of how the US functions behind the scenes! Given that NO religious beliefs are materially TRUE – and that it is not illegal for individuals to hold religious beliefs, take these beliefs literally and give money to the upholders of these beliefs – then where is the problem adding just one more falsity to the scales of illogicality? The producers of ‘60 Minutes’ uphold and perpetuate the very same (predatory) capitalist system whilst criticising just one very small aspect of its manifestation – as if a branch of a tree they own is offending them in some way because it has grown at an odd angle!
The second story, if not entirely fabricated, serves as an excellent example of US (Eurocentric) racism, and exhibits a clear manifestation of ‘anti-intellectualism’ when warning the US working-class NEVER to develop any sense of unity or international collectivity with the working-class of China! If that were to happen, then an international unity between the working-class of China and the working-class of America would completely ‘undermine’ the bourgeois control of the US! If the collective working-class of America simply ended its ‘false consciousness’ and stopped its voluntary enslavement to the ‘White’ bourgeoisie – then a Socialist Revolution could well happen across North America! The bourgeois could be disempowered and removed from power as the working-class seize the means of production and hold individual bourgeois politicians accountable for the many crimes they have committed around the world using the US military and US economic terrorism! The racist aspect of this section of ‘60 Minutes’ assumes that the Communist Party of China (CPC) – which has done far more than any other government in its short historical existence to relieve poverty in the world – is as ‘stupid’ as the US bourgeois system and the average US citizen produced by this anti-intellectual aberration! The whole notion that a White American working for the ‘Pentagon’ is stupid enough to become entangled by a ‘Han’ Chinese National (supposedly working as an ‘Intelligence Officer’) and then voluntarily compromise his own freedom and safety (within the American system) by divulging trade secrets to a country that the US government continuously refers to as an ‘enemy’ – even though no state of war exists between the two countries (despite intense US provocations over Taiwan) – is beyond belief!
This is ironic happening in a country where inverted belief systems associated with religion are common-place and preferred over any system of Socialism! This incident appears ‘scripted’ and ‘fabricated’ and is based upon the false US assumption that the Intelligent Services of China only employs, trains and deploys ‘Intelligence Officers’ of the Han (Chinese) Nationality – when the stupidity of such an assumption should be clear to all freethinkers not exploited and oppressed by the thinking associated with US anti-intellectualism! Why would an ‘Intelligence Agency’ recruit people who physically look entirely ‘different’ to the enemy populations they are attempting to infiltrate and compromise? The British Intelligence Agencies, for instance, recruit heavily from the ethnic minority populations of the UK for careers in various forms of espionage, although, of course, much of this activity is boring and routine, being associated with long-term and authentic diplomatic postings overseas that are entirely bureaucratic in nature and not necessarily ‘illegal’ in any way! Indeed, although most countries employ extended ‘diplomatic’ activity (including the UK and US – both countries of which employ Western-born Chinese people for diplomatic and spying activity within China), China would not necessarily deploy ethnic Han Chinese people amongst predominantly ‘non-Chinese’ populations! Of course, friendships can and do develop between people of different nationalities all the time, but the sharing of publicly available cultural knowledge is not, in itself, a crime. The line is crossed, of course, when specific information of a sensitive nature is acquired in an under-hand way. The British and US pursue this course all the time around the world – much of it now involving the internet and ‘remote’ work (through ‘hacking’ another ‘crime’ the West falsely projects upon China and North Korea – manifesting the racist US troupe that all Asians are natural experts at computer science and the manipulation of communication technology)!
The point is that ‘60 Minutes’ presents a false dichotomy between ‘correct’ knowing and ‘false’ behaviour. It is a programme which assumes to dominate free thought in an ocean of anti-intellectualism. In a country of hundreds of millions, only ‘60 Minutes’ possesses the ability to think clearly! In many ways, as a non-American ‘looking into’ American culture it is obvious to myself that there is a lack of genuine individuality in the sense that ALL Americans are intellectually disempowered by the (predatory) capitalist system the loyally serve! ‘60 Minutes’ assumes that a structured story must be fabricated out of thin air which possess a beginning, a middle and an end, and has a clearly discernible ‘good’ and ‘evil’ dichotomy! The moral thrust is simple – the readership is directed to only prefer and enact the ‘good’ and to reject, demonise and ridicule that which is declared to be ‘evil’! What we see here, whilst peering through these murky waters, is that in the US religious belief is both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ because it is preferred over Socialism – whilst China (and by logical extension – the ‘Chinese’) – are merely pure ‘evil’ with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever (all the Americans reading this are ‘nodding’ not because they ‘agree’ with the point I have made, but rather because the ‘vehicle’ of that point resonates with the deepest levels of their cultural programming)! The objective reality is quite different. All religious belief is stupid because it is not true. This is a correct assumption regardless of whether a religion is believed to be true or not – such a distinction is subjective and does not affect the objectivity of reality. An element of the American bourgeoisie is clever because it surreptitiously controls the genuine use of correct science and generates a powerful military and opulent, material society – but the price it pays in keeping its working-class stupid and disunited is the widespread manifestation of religiosity and anti-intellectualism! China, (and Chinese people) on the other hand, are obviously neither ‘evil’ nor ‘stupid’ and are in fact one of the most intelligent and advanced ethnic groups on the planet!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 