13 Aug The Press as Myth-Makers
In the pantheon of Marxist revisionists, the French syndicalist-turned-pragmatist Georges Sorel likely stands alone for diversity of thought, diversity of influences, and diversity of influence exerted upon subsequent generations. It is largely acknowledged, for example, that Sorel’s turn away from Marx and to nationalism and philosophical pragmatism helped carve out the intellectual path to power taken by Mussolini and his Italian fascists. Nevertheless, it is also the case that Sorel had a profound and essential influence on the opposite side in the Italian post-war struggle for ideological dominance, on the Italian Communists and their physically diminutive yet intellectually colossal leader, Antonio Gramsci.
In brief, Sorel is undoubtedly best known for explaining how best to create the pre-conditions the “workers of the world” purportedly sought. Sorel described the fundamentals of a revolutionary movement that could convincingly wield the threat of a violent “general strike,” which, he believed, could bring all production to a halt and result in the takeover of the means of production.
Of course, Sorel wasn’t really interested in a general strike, per se, which might be complicated and unpredictable. He was more interested in the idea of a general strike, in the “myth” of a general strike. Such a “glorious myth” would, Sorel reasoned, motivate workers to action and scare the bejeezus out of capitalists. The strike didn’t really need to happen. It only needed to attract heroes to the cause and inspire their glorious deeds.
Gramsci, in turn, took that idea of the “glorious myth” and applied it to his broader ideas about reconfiguring society. Specifically, he saw Sorel’s glorious myth as a tool that could be employed not just in an immediate context but in a more protracted context as well, forming the foundation for the new, socialist cultural hegemony that would replace the repressive and revolution-denying bourgeois version. All of the institutions of cultural transmission were, in Gramsci’s vision, expected to play a role in creating the new cultural consensus, but the press, in particular, was intended to play a more significant part in formulating the “myths” that underpinned and animated that consensus.
It mostly goes without saying that Gramsci’s cultural revolution – his “long march through the institutions” as Rudi Dutschke would later call it – has been enormously successful. The cultural institutions of the West have almost entirely succumbed to the post-bourgeois, post-Christian cultural ideal Gramsci and his contemporaries envisioned.
The press, among others, has played its role impeccably and has helped create the reality-denying, truth-abhorring cultural milieu in which we all swim. Ironically, it has done so while insisting that it is dedicated to facts and the propagation of “objectivity.” This is all part of the broader myth the press has created around itself, of course, portraying it and its members as the lone voices crying out in the wilderness, speaking truth to power, afflicted the comfortable, comforting the afflicted, and other assorted nonsense, as it uses its position to advocate for political and cultural ideas that suit its preferences more than anything else.
Interestingly, over the last few weeks and over the subsequent three months, the American press has been and will continue to be in the process of attempting to revert to Sorelian rather than Gramscian myth creation, hoping to craft a heroic myth so potent that it can overcome even its own reporting and criticism of just a few weeks and months ago. Indeed, the next three months will provide a real-world test of the press’s long-term success in the new fostering cultural hegemony and its ability to motivate “heroes” to the immediate mythological cause.
Or, in other words: the next three months will test the media’s power to shape an election narrative and to determine electoral results simply through the application of their myth-creatin skills.
As recently as sixty days ago, some in the media-Democratic establishment were calling for Kamala Harris to be replaced as Joe Biden’s running mate, given that she was a drag on the ticket. As recently as sixty days ago, some in the media were noting – rightly! – that Kamala Harris was one of the least popular vice presidents in American history. As recently as sixty days ago, some in the media stated openly that Kamala Harris had failed miserably at the one job she’d been given by President Biden, namely to address the crisis at the nation’s southern border. As recently as sixty days ago, Kamala Harris was considered an intellectual lightweight and policy neophyte at best, someone who understood neither the potential solutions to the nation’s problems nor the ideas supporting them. As recently as sixty days ago, Kamala Harris was a joke, a terrible politician who had never won a single primary vote, much less a majority of them in any city, county, or state. As recently as sixty days ago…well, you get the picture.
And speaking of pictures…today, not even thirty days after Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid, Kamala Harris is the subject of innumerable hagiographies and awe-inspiring, fawning portraits like the one below (from Marc Benioff’s Time magazine, natch). As the press continues its “reintroduction of Kamala Harris” – thereby conceding that her original introduction went pretty poorly – it has done everything in its power to disregard all previous perceptions of Harris and to convince voters that she represents something new, exciting, and “joyful.”
As an observer of politics, markets, and society, I am frustrated enough that the mainstream press these days engages predominantly in “narrative formation” rather than news reporting. This, I suppose, is the constant portion of its role in the new cultural hegemony, the Gramscian “language” of permanent myth-making. It is infinitely more frustrating to see the press engaged in acute Sorelian myth-creation as well, creating the conditions necessary to motivate the masses and to demoralize its enemies.
One needn’t be a fan of Donald Trump to find this maddening, as well as monstrous.
