You have to distinguish who the propaganda targets and what those who legitimise their policies with propaganda have in mind or are impacted by. Efficient propaganda means the targets believe it, not necessarily those who conceived the propaganda. Hence a majority of the public opinion within the US can be sensible to ideas of "human rights", "freedom" and "liberty", but the political leaders, advisers and lawmakers who determine foreign policy might rather sensible to ideas of "free market", "business" and "anti-communism". The most successful propaganda in this scenario will be the one which successfully assimilates "human rights", "freedom" and "liberty" with "free market", "business" and "anti-communism". Does that mean that the ideas displayed in propaganda have power amongst those who make the decisions? Not necessarily, especially when imperialist "anti-communism" is anti-democratic, goes against human rights by breaching all basic liberties and limiting political freedom. The important thing for the propaganda is the ideas having power amongst the targeted audience.
You make a distinction between rulers and ruled which is not tenable in a true democracy as the rulers are drawn from the ruled. To keep this distinction you have to argue either 1. that the ruling class is recruited overwhelmingly from the scions of previous rulers, or 2. that those who rise from the masses to the ranks of the rulers change their ideology on the way. There is plenty of evidence that the ruling class perpetuated itself in power in the 19th century and before but the 20th century has large numbers of government leaders, ministers, department heads, parliamentarians etc. who come from middle and lower class families. Social mobility increased tremendously after WW2. It's been declining since the 1980s (which worries me) but that decline is small compared to the earlier huge rise. So the majority of the work has to be done by the second mechanism. You mention this below as well, so I would like to know why and how you see this happening. Which institutions are inculcating the new ideas? What is their success rate in turning minds? Is it, in your opinion, impossible to stay on the left when your income and power increase? Is it possible but rare? Does the ideological change as you climb affect all areas of politics and policy? Or are people perhaps indoctrinated before their rise? Does ideological conformity affect all classes? If so, how is it possible that a movement like in 1968 even formed? How do you know your view is free of ideological blinders?
Please note that I do not reject this argument out of hand. I've read my Gramsci and my Althusser (as well as my Marx and Lenin), I find both them pretty convincing but they still leave me with exactly the questions I'm now asking you. I think we need a bit of clarification because if you answer them as I do, there is room for agency and a real possibility of change.
My answers to my own questions: Schools, news media, other media, peer groups, etc. Quite successful but never totally and the success rate is going down (which liberates both smart and stupid people so there are problems with this as well). No, it's possible and not that rare at all. No, it affects finance/economy issues first and foreign policy views only indirectly. Yes, hegemonic ideology affects all classes but not completely, as 1968 shows. And finally, I don't know that I'm not biased, there is no escape from ideology and no secure ground to base your political views on.
I never denied that behaviours changed, we disagreed on why the behaviour changed and the scale of change.
Honestly, it seems to me that you minimize the extent of the change and ascribe almost all of it to external pressures. If NATO is really so unvarying in its goals then it is fundamentally incompatible with democratic government in its member states. Which in turn means you actually question whether those member states were, or are, democratic. I gather from your other posts that the influence of the USA on the alliance is a big factor here and I do agree that US democracy suffers many flaws, more than most of its European member states. But then to explain why they followed US leadership you have to either have recourse to a power political view of international relations or you have to argue that European member states too are not as democratic as they appear. So we return to the paragraph above.
Let us not confuse foreign policy with domestic policy. You can be in favour of overthrowing the government violently but then once you are in power stop interventions abroad like Vietnam. On the other hand it is true that proponents of violent world revolution supported interventions abroad, but I would have to look at the numbers there.
But you can't be a
pacifist in favor of violent revolution. Hence my argument that anti-imperialism was the more widespread attitude in 1968.
NATO was not a defensive alliance in the eyes of the anti-imperialist protesters, it was seen as an agressive alliance serving US imperialism. That view was backed up by the fact that the US military dominated the alliance completely, which always aligned upon US foreign policy. Said military and intelligence frequently intervened aggressively abroad.
Here I have more doubt, I don't see how individual shifts reflect that protesters weren't ideological or that the concerns were not founded in a coherent worldview. That rather reflects those protesters either becoming disillusioned and cynical, or simply becoming more wealthy and thus having an objective interest in now opposing such views. Others stayed true to their beliefs, and certainly were ideological.
I did not say the protesters viewed NATO as defensive at the time, I said NATO claimed to be that (it's in the charter) and thus the difference between the protesters and NATO practice was, at the very least, much bigger than between the protesters and NATO theory. I understand that someone with a fundamental critique such as you will not be swayed easily, that's why I argued that most protesters do not have such a fundamental critique. They could be persuaded that NATO was okay if it started to live up to its ideals.
The biggest problem with your argument here is that it doesn't fit well with your argument at the top of your post. If hegemonic ideology is successful enough to persuade almost everyone who rises to a position of political influence, then it can hardly be at the same time so unsuccessful that masses of people in 1968 shared a fundamental critique of the capitalist-imperialist order. My solution to your conundrum here is that the hegemonic ideology was not so successful and that means that NATO leaders were at least partly persuaded by the criticism.
None of this is NATO living up to its ideal, in no case does NATO defend any population or encourage democracy in any way. It is merely NATO recognising a new de facto state of affairs, not NATO itself being the actor of a big shift. Things are happening, and NATO evolves as a consequence of events that are completely external to its own actions. The changes do indeed however show that the social movements have been weakened and the left marginalised, as the threat of the Soviet Union is reduced (meaning there is less of a need to counter-act in defence of the mixed economy with strengthening the welfare state) and economic crisis hits Western Europe after the Yom Kippur War leading to the 1973 oil crisis. This economic crisis, and the political, social and economic consequences of it, would be fatal to much of the labour movement, thus enabling a shift to the right of the whole society, including in foreign policy.
Yes, I said the causes of the shift were external. You put a lot of emphasis on economy and power balance because you don't believe a shift in NATO's ideology is possible. I've already explained why I think otherwise but I grant that your analysis here is consistent with your view in the top paragraph.
I disagree, there was a short period of pressure between roughly 1968-1973, but afterwards the counter-revolution was much more considerable and by 1980 you have for example Reagan and Thatcher triumphing with more reactionary values than the previous leaders.
Reagan and Thatcher were reactionary and disgusting in many respects but in their foreign policy they could not be as cynical as their forerunners. If you don't believe Reagan's words about democratization, believe his actions in standing aside when just about every friendly military dictator in Latin America was overthrown.
Except that the 1989 transition opened up for several potential outcomes, both as radical. It could have lead to an a non-Marxist-Leninist form of socialism (worker cooperatives, self-government or other bold experiences), it could have meant strong welfare states similar to Scandinavia or it could be a very radical form of neoliberalism striving towards total market control and very little democratic control over the economy.
Solidarność's platform on which they won the elections in 1989 was fundamentally incompatible with market liberalism, defending worker cooperatives, so it is wrong to say "it wasn't a problem". A such considerable shift happened in completely anti-democratic circumstances, with IMF holding Poland as hostage, giving little choice but to destroy the public services and state ownership. Such aggressive liberalisation is the problem here.
I don't think anyone in this thread suggested the successors to the Communist parties had much of a chance in Poland. I agree with the argument but it doesn't really respond to what I said.
I never said the whole process was anti-democratic, there you would have misunderstood me. There were free elections with pluralism, democratic liberties were put in place, with incidents as you say. That is not what I would cite as problematic, it is not the point of contention. The problematic aspect is that US-lead international institutions, such as the IMF, imposed a specific and very radical economic agenda, which was completely anti-democratic since it deprived voters of a choice and meant the elected government had no choice but to liberalise, deregulate and privatise. This is how the US ensured a country like Poland ended up like it wanted it to be.
Worker cooperatives were a feature of the transition stage when everyone still thought it was important to keep the rainbow coalition together. After that no form of socialism won much support among Eastern European voters. I agree with you that Soviet communism was a corrupt, perverted version of socialist ideals but public opinion is rarely so nuanced. You ascribe a lot of influence to the IMF but I doubt that, for two reasons. First, in Eastern Europe trade and transfers from the West were vastly more important to its economy. Second and more importantly, it seems to me that it wasn't necessary to pressure Poland and other Eastern European countries into Western-style capitalism, their newly risen elites and many of their voters wanted to go there. Once again we run into the ideology problem: If the East Bloc hegemonic ideology was as successful as its western counterpart, voters would have resisted the transition and IMF pressure was needed to force them. But that doesn't mean they had a firm grasp of the issue, it only means they had been ideologically schooled. If they did not resist transitioning to capitalism, as I say, then this hegemonic ideology must have been less successful than its western counterpart. But that raises the question why we are so sure that hegemonic ideology in the West was so successful.
