When we think of counter culture, we mostly think of it as
things that are niche, contrary to the status quo, but entirely
recreational. Whilst counter culture always has its expressive and
artistic side, to only acknowledge this manifestation is to only scratch
the surface of a system of values and set of attitudes that define a
people’s state of being.
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The use of counter culture, and culture overall, is the management of
people, their norms, perceptions and their relationship to various
things. Therefore, the management of a people’s culture is to manage
their capacity as people and their direction.
It is for this reason that counter culture is so pivotal to any
freedom struggle and even any real change we see in society. It is
almost impossible without it and power structures know that all too
well.
Whilst we see counter cultures manifest in what we traditionally see
as culture itself, it broadly defines alternative socio-political
dispositions, whether it is revolutionary, drug and gun culture or more
mundanely in innovative workplaces. Nowadays, working culture is part of
any manager’s toolkit to boost performance at work, whereby they manage
people’s behaviour and enforce rewards and accountability to increase
and instil the right emotional and mental habits that are specific to
the workplace setting. Anyone who wishes for social change has to
utilise this to galvanise a disenfranchised and marginalised public who
do not identify with the status quo and who, at least, want to invest
their life into something else, in exactly the same way.
Key examples include how Gandhi, regardless of rumours of his
personal life, rallied the masses of Indians against British rule mainly
by values of self-dignity, peaceful resistance and self-determination.
Another is how the Black Panthers turned the poverty-stricken,
dog-eat-dog world of the ghetto into inclusive, collective communities
who supported each other and helped the vulnerable.
These examples illustrate how social reformers create a space in
society where the disenfranchised can be mobilised in similar ways that
is standardly easy for the status quo.
However the use of culture is also used by power structures to manage
the behavioural norms of their society. By ensuring that various organs
of our society all act and sing from the same hymn sheet, power
structures can consolidate their power, deliberate on their agenda and
rule.
They do this in a number of ways:
Sustaining the Status Quo
One of the obvious ways is that the state can utilise various media,
legal and private agencies to sustain a certain world view, so pervasive
and dominant that a human being will be affected at some level. An
obvious example was the “American Dream”. So dominant was this ideal,
that people of colour, whether Black, Latino or Arab, would believe in
it so much so that they would invest their entire life into it, no
matter how much they experienced the “American Nightmare”. So
influential was the idea of “success” and so narrowly defined by the
nation’s elite, it led people into assimilating into that ideal. In the
US case, a White Supremacist ideal.
However, power structures do not just use “normative” and respected
sides of society to maintain control. Where power structures see they
are losing leverage or desire more, they would employ radical counter
culture in society for the same effect. This was and still is being used
to great effect by the neo-conservatives’ Islamophobia Industry during
the War on Terror, as well as the use of state-sponsored Islamophobia by
military juntas against Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and support of the
969 Monks who persecute Rohingya Muslims.
Destroying and subverting the counter culture
If a movement gets out of control, one of the first actions a power
structure undertakes is to root out the elements that enable the
movement’s masses to organise effectively.
The assassination of black civil rights leaders did more than just
create a crisis of leadership. The messaging and narratives they
promoted set the direction as well as the tone, values of equality, and
mind-sets in which people demanded their freedom. The cultural
expression of “black is beautiful” actually encapsulated the natural
political expression of the demand for black equality in the US. The
embrace of that cultural narrative would not only urge that individual
to demand and struggle for their freedom, it also created a focus on
work that would be beneficial to the community as a whole.
With the jailing and assassination of groups like the Black Panthers,
the War on Drugs that followed was the State’s initiative to destroy
all the cultural development that made the ghetto a sanctuary for black
people and returned it back to the dog-eat-dog world it was once known
for.
Further to this, with the assassination of leaders such as Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King there was no other leader that could command and
tell the Black American story so powerfully. This vacuum enabled room
for the white power structure to do it for them; to define the term of
black equality and when progress is seen to be made, thus, subverting
the struggle from within.
Manufacturing their own
Sometimes a power structure can foresee what would occur if such an
action was taken by themselves. Whether through an uprising,
organisation or through economic self-sufficiency, if they could see it
coming they would take steps to pre-empt them.
Perhaps the most lasting example of this was the Sykes-Pico agreement
that was taken between the winning allies of WWI. They declared that
the spoils of war would split the now ex-Ottoman empire into their
annexation. Turkey gained Russia and what is now called Syria and
Lebanon went to France and lands of Palestine. Transjordan and Egypt
went to Britain. The 3 sons of the Meccan chief who were
British-sponsored and led the Arab uprising were allowed to inherit
Iraq, the Arab Peninsula and Egypt. However, a British sponsored coup
ensured that it was the Saudis that retained power and created a
colonial state in the Arab Peninsula until this day.
Across the Arab world, two things happened. Lands that were consumed
by Western colonialism either before or after WWI were divided by
artificial borders and the manufacturing of Arab nationalism by
“Lawrence of Arabia” became regimented with these borders. Once colonial
powers were kicked out, the powers always ensured that military juntas
ruled over them, helping to manage the region’s self-determination by
proxy. This was the case with the Alowites in Syria, Saudis and other
Arab principalities in the Arab peninsula and Egypt, Libya, Algeria and
Tunisia.
However, the brilliance of soft power was that the Arabs no longer
saw themselves as a singular, united people, but as separate people with
different identities distinct from each other. Those who, only a few
generations ago, saw themselves as fundamentally Arab and would have
resisted as one people, now saw themselves as a myriad of identities
(Egyptian, Syrian, Tunisian, Algerian etc.) and only struggled
politically for that particular identity. The military dictatorship was
there to ensure resistance was controlled but also that the culture of
Arab nationalism persisted. And, until this day it does.
The Arabs are perhaps today the most oppressed people in the world
and yet also the most divided. It all came down to managing their own
perception of themselves and their own culture as a people.
What Can Social Reformers Do?
The first thing that social reformers must be aware of is how power
structures manage and shape culture through their own agendas.
Consequently, one creates an intelligence of what will occur and gain
power to strategise against any power structure that wishes to subvert
your efforts.
The second thing is to start designing a culture that would suit your
aims. What values, ideas and impact would it have, to rally people and
ready them for a possibility that all of us are eager for. All in all,
it must be holistically enriching, urging the well-being and
emancipation of our political, social and spiritual encapsulation in
Brotherhood and Sisterhood. There has to be an appreciation that whilst
we need political emancipation, the real strength, colour and diversity
of that movement comes from the society they draw effort upon and of
course the values, capacities and mind-sets that are codified in their
culture.
It must be a big-tent for effective change, focused on pragmatism and
a “safe-space” to discuss ideas. Social reformers should not make the
mistake that all counter cultures fit all sizes. It would perhaps be
most wise to create various counter-cultures to activate various diverse
parts of our people, but ensuring they all share fundamental aims. This
de-centralised approach would also mean a greater resistance to
subversion and neutralisation from the Establishment.
The third and final point of attention is that the vanguards of the
counter culture need to stir, educate and direct the people. They must
keep channels of expression open and endeavour to create support
networks to aid development, innovation and to ensure that work is
firmly ingrained in every part of society, ensuring the most inclusive
path to freedom as possible.
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