First off,I’d just like to clarify something. Despite what some may feel has beenimplied by the title of this post, I am not accusing Mr Cowell – a precious UKnational treasure, not to mention new age patron-saint of the booming male-botoxmarket – of being a fascist.
Not in aslanderous sense, and not in an ideological way.
And it reallyhas nothing to do with the man’s tendency of coming out with those scathing, schadenfreude-satingremarks that audiences across the globe so enjoy. He can mercilessly demolish asmany teenage dreams of pop stardom as deems necessary, and I won’t even think aboutcaring. Really.
So, if you’restill reading at this point, you’re probably asking – what’s all this aboutthen?
Well, theNazi thing is for the sake of an analogy - one that the most people willunderstand.
I'm going to 'fess up' and let you in on what this is really about. We’re going to have a quick investigative dip into a parallelof functions, of roles in our societies!
Exciting!!
Aha. But we arenot talking about any old archetypal National Socialist party member either - our comparison is withnone other than Dr Joseph Goebbels, a man who served as the propaganda ministerin, and was (arguably) primary orator for the most notorious oppressive regime frommodern history.
So, to cutthough the cheap round, to the sweet tender sirloin that everybody reallywants, here it is:
Our friend Mr Cowell essentially does the same job in themodern high tech media driven anglosphere, as Dr Goebbels did in Nazi Germany.
And so you say,‘How’s that then, Supervised Love, you complete lunatic?’
Well,firstly we should take a look at exactly what it is that Dr Goebbels did. Andremember, we are talking about in terms of FUNCTION, not exact institutional positionsor ideological perspectives.
Essentially,the government controlled propaganda ministry of any country (in the sense weusually associate with ‘oppressive’ regimes in the west today) has the job of preventingthe public from receiving information that may cause them to question thepresent government or system.
This can bedone in two ways - firstly, by censoring and choking out the information thatpeople can receive (such as in past western and current ‘oppressive’ regimes),and secondly, by flooding the people’s lives with so much useless informationand distractions that everything else is lost (more on this part later).
And so, thejob of a propaganda minister is essentially to divert attention away from whatthe elite are doing with the economy/military and so on – so the public willnot develop their own ideas and interfere. In Dr Goebbles' case, a lot of thiswas done through fear based ideological and nationalistic mediums, such asreporting tyranny and war crimes committed by Britain, Russia and America – theevil and inferior foreigners, funded by duplicitous Jewish bankers, werethreatening to destroy the paradise Nazi Germany was attempting to build etc. TheGerman people needed to unify in order to defeat the terrible enemy and obtainthe dream.
People canonly build opinions or personal values on the things they can see andunderstand for themselves. In the case of Nazi Germany, we often hear about howmany people were happily complicit with the way things were going, at least, untilit all starting going down der toilette.
But the truth is,the Germans were no more innately evil than anyone else in the world. They werejust the victims of extreme managerial ideas. They were guided by the narrowscope of information they received – largely from Joseph Goebbels and themachine under him.
But ofcourse, these sort of knowledge-throttling shenanigans don’t happen in the westtoday, do they?! Perhaps in the third world, even still in places like Russiaand China - but the west has left them behind.
Wellactually, yes we have.
Our governmentsdon’t control all that much information and they don’t really have the power todo it.
So how isit that our western governments aren’t constantly losing control to the onslaughtof new, progressive ideas? How is it that the well known social and economicinjustices in the west just keep on happening?
Well, asReagan and Thatcher would have told you, if we let the ‘free market’ reign, itwill pretty much take care of everything.
The invisible hand of the marketshall provide.
And oh, hasnt it just?
Rememberthat thing earlier, where we talked about there being two ways to controlinformation? Well, in the west, we have the second one. And guess what? Itworks really really well. It works a whole lot better than any amount of secretpolice and nationalist state broadcasts.In thewest, we have so much information, so many ways to entertain ourselves, gratifyour egos and satisfy our base needs, that, well, how many of us can really bebothered to learn how to challenge a government?
How many ofyour friends get exciting by politics?
Alright, sothis may not be as true if all your friends happen to be private school educated Ivy-Leagueor Oxbridge graduates, but those kids are deliberately groomed to become membersof elite groups, and someone’s got to be able to run the place, right?
SimonCowell’s entertainment institution (among others), has emerged from the freemarket to take the place of the propaganda ministries of old. They serve to stupefyand pacify the majority of the public via dreams of physical and sexualperfection, of glittering pop star status.
The stuff weare fed is so nice, easy and sweet to digest, that we don’t want to swallowanything else anymore. Anything that requires us to use our brains gets ignoredand lost in the sickly sweet cloud of teary love songs, premier league matches,vapid soap operas and forever younger skin.
Alright, I think the point has been arrived at. Time for some appropriately earnest closing remarks I believe.
Joeseph Goebells, you were responsible for oppressing the people, for keeping them bogged down with the trivial and the titillating. You prevented them from thinking about the things that mattered, and from realising the true reality of their condition.
Simon Cowell, you are responsible for oppressing the people, for keeping them bogged down with the trivial and the titillating. You prevent them from thinking about the things that matter, and from realising the true reality of their condition.
See what I did there? With the words and stuff? Thats, how Simon Cowell is really just like aNazi. A particular one.
You get the idea.
