Cultural imperialism in the late 20th century by James Petras 
 
China and the World 
Introduction

U.S cultural imperialism has two major goals, one economic and the 
other political: to capture markets for its cultural commodities and to 
establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness. The export of 
entertainment is one of the most important sources of capital 
accumulation and global profits displacing manufacturing exports. In 
the political sphere, cultural imperialism plays a major role in 
dissociating people from their cultural roots and traditions of 
solidarity, replacing them with media created needs which change with 
every publicity campaign. The political effect in to alienate people 
from traditional class and community bonds, atomizing and separating 
individuals from each other.

Cultural imperialism emphasizes the segmentation of the working class: 
stable workers are encouraged to dissociate themselves from temporary 
workers, who in turn separate themselves from the unemployed, who are 
further segmented among themselves within the 'underground economy'. 
Cultural imperialism encourage working people to think of themselves as 
part of a hierarchy emphasizing minute differences in life style, in 
race and gander, with those below them rather than the vast 
inequalities that separate them from those above.

The principle target of cultural imperialism is the political and 
economic exploitation of youth. Imperial entertainment and 
advertisement target young people who are most vulnerable to U.S. 
commercial propaganda. The message is simple and direct: 'modernity' in 
associated with consuming U.S. media products. Youth represent a major 
market for U.S. cultural export and they are most susceptible to the 
consumerist-individualist propaganda. The mass media manipulates 
adolescent rebelliousness by appropriating the language of the left and 
channeling discontent into consumer extravagances.

Cultural imperialism focuses on youth not only as a market but also 
for political reasons: to undercut a political threat in which personal 
rebellion could become political revolt against economic as well as 
cultural forms of control.

Over the past decade progressive movements confront a paradox: while 
the great majority of the people in the Third World experience 
deteriorating living standards, growing social and personal insecurity 
and decay in public services (while affluent minorities prosper as 
never before) the subjective response to these conditions has been 
sporadic revolts, sustained, but local activities and large scale 
protests of short duration. In a word, there is a profound gap between 
the growing inequalities and socio-economic conditions on the one hand 
and the weaknesses of revolutionary or radical subjective responses. 
The maturing 'objective conditions' in the Third World have not been 
accompanied by the growth of subjective forces capable of transforming 
the state or society. It is clear that there is no 'automatic- 
relationship between socio-economic regression and socio-political 
transformation. Cultural intervention (in the broadest sense including 
ideology, consciousness, social action) is the crucial link convertin 
objective conditions into conscious political intervention. 
Paradoxically, imperial policy-makers seem to have understood the 
importance of cultural dimensions of political practice far better than 
their adversaries.

Cultural Domination and Global Exploitation


Imperialism cannot be understood merely as an economic-military system 
of control and exploitation. Cultural domination is an integral 
dimension to any sustained system of global exploitation.

In relation to the Third World, cultural imperialism can be defined as 
the systematic penetration and domination of the cultural life of the 
popular classes by the ruling class of the West in order to reorder the 
values, behavior, institutions and identity of the oppressed peoples to 
conform with the interests of the imperial classes. Cultural 
imperialism has taken both 'traditional' and modern forms. In past 
centuries, the Church, educational system, and public authorities 
played a major role in inculcating native peoples with ideas of 
submission and loyalty in the name of divine or absolutist principles. 
While these 'traditional' mechanisms of cultural imperialism still 
operate, new modern instrumentalities rooted in contemporary 
institutions have become increasingly central to imperial domination. 
The mass media, publicity, advertisement and secular entertainers and 
intellectuals play a major role today. In the contemporary world, 
Hollywood, CNN and Disneyland are more influential than the Vatican, 
the Bibe or the public relations rhetoric of political figures. 
Cultural penetration is closely linked to politico-military domination 
and economic exploitation. U.S. military interventions in support of 
the genocidal regimes in Central America which protect its economic 
interests are accompanied by intense cultural penetration. U.S. 
financed evangelicals invade Indian villages to inculcate messages of 
submission among the peasant-Indian victims. International conferences 
are sponsored for domesticated intellectuas to discuss 'democracy and 
market'. Escapist television programs sow illusions from ?another 
world?. Cultural penetration is the extension of counter-insurgency 
warfare by non-military means.


New Features of Cultural Colonialism


Contemporary cultural colonialism [CCC] is distinct from past 
practices in several senses:

  (1) It is oriented toward capturing mass audiences, not just 
converting elites.

  (2) The mass media, particularly television, invade the household 
and function from the 'inside' and 'below' as well as from 'outside' 
and above.

  (3) CCC is global in scope and homogenizing in its impact: the 
pretense of universalism serves to mystify the symbols, goals and 
interests of the imperial power.

  (4) The mass media as instruments of cultural imperialism today are 
'private' only in the formal sense: the absence of formal state ties 
provides a legitimate cover for the private media projecting imperial 
state interests as 'news' or 'entertainment'.

  (5) Under contemporary imperialism, political interests are 
projected through non-imperial subjects. -News reports' focus on the 
personal biographies of mercenary peasant-soldiers in Central America 
and smiling working class U.S. blacks in the Gulf War.

  (6) Because of the increasing gap between the promise of peace and 
prosperity under unregulated capital and the reality of increasing 
misery and violence, the mass media have narrowed even further the 
possibilities of alternative perspectives in their programs. Total 
cultural control is the counterpart of the total separation between the 
brutality of real-existing capitalism and the illusory promises of the 
free market.

  (7) To paralyze collective responses, cultural colonialism seeks to 
destroy national identities or empty them of substantive socio-economic 
content. To rupture the solidarity of communities, cultural imperialism 
promotes the cult of 'modernity' as conformity with external symbols. 
In the name of 'individuality', social bonds are attacked and 
personalities are reshaped according to the dictates of media messages. 
While imperial arms disarticulate civil society, and banks pillage the 
economy, the imperial media provide individuals with escapist 
identities.

Cultural imperialism provides devastating demonological caricatures of 
revolutionary adversaries, while encouraging collective amnesia of the 
massive violence of pro-Western countries. The Western mass media never 
remind their audience of the murder by anti-communist pro-U.S. regimes 
of 100,000 Indiana in Guatemala, 75,000 working people in El Salvador, 
50,000 victims in Nicaragua. The mass media, cover up the great 
disasters resulting from the introduction of the market in Eastern 
Europe and the ex-U.S.S.R., leaving hundreds of millions Impoverished.

Mass Media: Propaganda and Capital Accumulation

The mass media is one of the principal sources of wealth and power for 
U.S. capital as it extends its communication networks throughout the 
world. An increasing percentage of the richest North Americans derive 
their wealth from the mass media. Among the 400 wealthiest Americans 
the percentage deriving their wealth from the mass media increased from 
9.5 percent in 1982 to 18 percent in 1989. Today almost one out of five 
of the richest North Americans derive their wealth from the mass media. 
Cultural capitalism has displaced manufacturing as a source of wealth 
and influence in the U.S.

The mass media have become an integral part of the U.S. system of 
global political and social control, as well as a major source of super 
profits. As the levels of exploitation, inequality and poverty increase 
in the Third World, Western controlled mass communications operate to 
convert a critical public into a passive mass. Western media 
celebrities and mass entertainment have become important ingredients in 
deflecting potential political unrest. The Reagan presidency 
highlighted the centrality of media manipulation through highly visible 
but politically reactionary entertainers, a phenomena which has spread 
to Latin American and Asia.

There is a direct relation between the increase in the number of 
television sets in Latin America, the decline of income and the 
decrease in mass struggle. In Latin America between 1980,and 1990, the 
number of television sets per inhabitant increased 40 percent,, while 
the real average income declined 40 percent, and a host of neo-liberal 
political candidates heavily dependent on television images won the 
presidency.

The increasing penetration of the mass media among the poor, the 
growing investments and profits by U.S. corporations in the sale of 
cultural commodities and the saturation of mass audiences with messages 
that provide the poor with vicarious experiences of individual 
consumption and adventure defines the current challenge of cultural 
colonialism.

U.S. media messages are alienating to Third World people in a double 
sense. They create illusions of 'international' and 'cross class' 
bonds. Through television images a false intimacy and an imaginary link 
is established between the successful subjects of the media and the 
impoverished spectators in the 'barrios'. These linkages provide a 
channel through which the discourse of individual solutions for private 
problems is propagated. The message is clear. The victims are blamed 
for their own poverty, success depends on individual efforts. Major TV 
satellites, U.S. and European mass media outlets in Latin America avoid 
any critique of the politico-economic origins and consequences of the 
new cultural imperialism that has temporarily disoriented and 
immobilized millions of impoverished Latin Americans. Imperialism and 
the Politics of Language Cultural imperialism has developed a dual 
strategy to counter the Left and establishing hegemony. On the one 
hand, it seeks to corrupt the political language of the left; n the 
other it acts to desensitize the general public to the atrocities 
committed by Western powers. During the 1980's the western mass media 
systematically appropriated basic ideas of the left, emptied them of 
their original content and refilled them with a reactionary message. 
For example, the mass media described politicians intent in restoring 
capitalism and stimulating inequalities as ?reformers? or 
?revolutionaries?, while their opponents were labeled ?conservatives?. 
Cultural imperialism sought to promote ideological confusion and 
political disorientation by reversing the meaning of political 
language. Many progressive individuals became disoriented by this 
ideological manipulation. As a result, they were vulnerable to the 
claims of imperial ideologues who argue that the terms ?Right? and 
?Left? lacked any meaning, that the distinctions have lost 
significance, that ideologies no longer have meaning. By corrupting the 
language of the Left and distorting the content of the Left and Right, 
cultural imperialists hope to undermine the political appeals and 
political practices of the anti-imperialist movements.

The second strategy of cultural imperialism was to de-sensitize the 
public; to make mass murder by the Western states routine, acceptable 
activities. Mass bombings in Iraq were presented in the form of video 
games. By trivializing crimes against humanity, the public is 
desensitized from its traditional belief that human suffering is wrong. 
By emphasizing the modernity of new techniques of warfare, the mass 
media glorify existing elite power ? the techno-warfare of the West. 
Cultural imperialism today includes ?news? reports in which the weapons 
of mass destruction are presented with human attributes while the 
victims in the Third World are faceless ?aggressors- terrorists?.

Global cultural manipulation is sustained by the corruption of the 
language of politics. In Eastern Europe, speculators and mafioso 
seizing land, enterprises and wealth are described as ?reformers?. 
Contrabandists are described as ?innovating entrepreneurs?. In the West 
the concentration of absolute power to hire and fire in the hands of 
management and the increased vulnerability and insecurity of labor is 
called ?labor flexibility?. In the Third World the selling of national 
public enterprise to giant multi-national monopolies is described as 
?breaking-up monopolies?. ?Reconversion? is the euphemism for reversion 
to 19th century condition of labor stripped of all social benefits. 
?Restructuring? is the return to specialization in raw materials or the 
transfer of income from production to speculation. ?Deregulation? is 
the shift in power to regulate the economy from the national welfare 
state to the international banking, multi-national power elite. 
?Structural adjustments? in Latin America mean transferring resources 
to investors and lowering payments to labor. The concepts of the left 
(reform, agrarian reform, structural changes) were originally oriented 
toward redistributing income. These concepts have been coopted and 
turned into symbols for reconcentrating wealth, income and power into 
the hands of Western elites. And of course all the private cultural 
institutions of imperialism amplify and propagate this Orwellian 
disinformation. Contemporary cultural imperialism has debased the 
language of liberation, converting it into symbols of reaction.

Cultural Terrorism: The Tyranny of Liberalism

Just as western state terrorism attempts to destroy social movements, 
revolutionary governments and disarticulate civil society, economic 
terrorism as practiced by the IMF and private bank consortia, destroy 
local industries, erode public ownership and savages wage and salaried 
household. Cultural terrorism is responsible for the physical 
displacement of local cultural activities and artists. Cultural 
terrorism by preying on the psychological weaknesses and deep anxieties 
of vulnerable Third World peoples, particularly their sense of being 
?backward?, ?traditional? and oppressed, projects new images of 
?mobility? and ?free expression?, destroying old bonds to family and 
community, while fastening new chains of arbitrary authority linked to 
corporate power and commercial markets. The attacks on traditional 
restraints and obligations is a mechanism by which the capitalist 
market and state becomes the ultimate center of exclusive power. 
Cultural imperialism in the name of ?self expression? tyrannizes Third 
World people fearful of being labeled ?traditional?, seducing and 
manipulating them by the phoney images of classless ?modernity?. 
Cultural imperialism questions all pre-existing relations that are 
obstacles to the one and only sacred modern deity: the market. Third 
World peoples are entertained, coerced, titillated to be modern', to 
submit to the demands of capitalist market to discard comfortable, 
traditional, loose fitting clothes for ill fitting unsuitable tight 
blue jeans.

Cultural imperialism functions best through colonized intermediaries, 
cultural collaborators. The prototype imperial collaborators are the 
upwardly mobile Third World professionals who imitate the style of 
their patrons. These collaborators are servile to the West and arrogant 
to their people, prototypical authoritarian personalities. Backed by 
the banks and multinationals, they wield immense power through the 
state and local mass media. Imitative of the West, they are rigid in 
their conformity to the rules of unequal competition, opening their 
country and peoples to savage exploitation in the name of free trade. 
Among the prominent cultural collaborators are the institutional 
intellectuals who deny class domination and imperial class warfare 
behind the jargon of objective social science. They fetischize the 
market as the absolute arbiter of good and evil. Behind the rhetoric of 
'regional cooperation?, the conformist intellectuals attack working 
class and national institutions which constrain capital movements ? 
their supporters isolated and marginalized. Today throughout the Third 
World, Western funded Third World intellectuals have embraced the 
ideology of concertacion (class collaboration). The notion of 
interdependence has replaced imperialism. And the unregulated world 
market is presented as the only alternative for development. The irony 
is that today as never before the ?market? has been least favorable to 
the Third World. Never have the U.S., Europe and Japan been so 
aggressive in exploiting the Third World. The cultural alienation of 
the institutional intellectuals from the global realities is a 
byproduct of the ascendancy of Western cultural imperialism. For those 
critical intellectuals who refuse to join the celebration of the 
market, who are outside of the official conference circuits, the 
challenge is to once again return to the class and anti-imperialist 
struggle.

North Americanization and the Myth of an International Culture

One of the great deceptions of our times is the notion of 
'internationalization' of ideas, markets and movements. It has become 
fashionable to evoke terms like ?globalization? or 
?internationalization? to justify attacks on any or all forms of 
solidarity, community, and/or social values. Under the guise of 
?internationalism?, Europe and the U.S. have become dominant exporters 
of cultural forms most conducive to depoliticizing and trivializing 
everyday existence. The images of individual mobility, the ?self-make 
person?, the emphasis on ?self-centered existence? (mass produced and 
distributed by the U.S. mass media industry) now have become major 
instruments in dominating the Third World.

Neo-liberalism continues to thrive not because it solves problems, but 
because it serves the interest of the wealthy and powerful and 
resonates among some sectors of the impoverished self- employed who 
crowd the streets of the Third World. The North Americanization of 
Third World cultures takes place with the blessing and support of the 
national ruling classes because it contributes to stabilize their rule. 
The new cultural norms ? the private over the public, the individual 
over social, the sensational and violent over everyday struggles and 
social realities ? all contribute to inculcating precisely the 
egocentric values that undermine collective action. The culture of 
images, of transitory experiences, of sexual conquest, works against 
reflection, commitment and shared feelings of affection and solidarity. 
The North Americanization of culture means focusing popular attention 
on celebrities, personalities and private gossip ? not on social depth, 
economic substance and the human condition. Cultural imperialism 
distracts from power relation and erodes collective forms of social 
action.

The media culture that glorifies the 'provisional' reflects the 
rootlessnese of U.S. capitalism ? its power to hire and fire, to move 
capital without regard for communities. The myth of ?freedom of 
mobility? reflects the incapacity of people to establish and 
consolidate community roots in the face of the shifting demands of 
capital. North American culture glorifies transient, impersonal 
relations as ?freedom? when in fact these conditions reflect the anomie 
and bureaucratic subordination of a mass of individuals to the power of 
corporate capital. North Americanization involves a wholesale assault 
on traditions of solidarity in the name of modernity, attacks on class 
loyalties in the name of individualism, the debasement of democracy 
through massive media campaigns focusing on personalities.

The new cultural tyranny is rooted in the omnipresent repetitive 
singular discourse of the market, of a homogenized culture of 
consumption, of a debased electoral system. The new media tyranny 
stands alongside the hierarchical state and economic institutions that 
reach from the board roams of the international banks to the villages 
in the Andes. The secret of the success of North American cultural 
penetration of the Third World is its capacity to fashion fantasies to 
escape from misery, that the very system of economic and military 
domination generates. The essential ingredients of the new cultural 
imperialism is the fusion of commercialism-sexuality-conservatism each 
presented as idealized expressions of private needs, of individual 
selfrealization. To some Third World people immersed in everyday dead 
end jobs, struggles for everyday survival, in the midst of squalor and 
degradation, the fantasies of North American media, like the 
evangelist, portray ?something better?, a hope in a future better life 
? or at least the vicarious pleasure of watching others enjoying it.

Impact of Cultural Imperialism

If we want to understand the absence of revolutionary transformation, 
despite the maturing of revolutionary conditions, we must reconsider 
the profound psychological impact of state violence, political terror 
and the deep penetration of cultural/ideological values propagated by 
the imperial countries and internalized by the oppressed peoples. The 
state violence of the 1970's and early 1980's created long term, large 
scale psychic damage ? fear of radical initiatives, distrust of 
collectivities, a sense of impotence before established authorities ? 
even as the same authorities are hated. Terror turned ?people inward? 
toward private domains.

Subsequently, neo-liberal policies, a form of ?economic terrorism?, 
resulted in the closing of factories, the abolition of legal protection 
of labor, the growth of temporary work, the multiplication of low paid 
individual enterprises. These policies further fragmented working class 
and urban communities. In this context of fragmentation, distrust and 
privatization, the cultural message of imperialism found fertile fields 
to exploit vulnerable peoples' sensibilities, encouraging and deepening 
personal alienation, selfcentered pursuits and individual competition 
over ever scarce resources.

Cultural imperialism and the values it promotes has played a major 
role in preventing exploited individuals from responding collectively 
to their deteriorating conditions. The symbols, images and ideologies 
that have spread to the Third World are major obstacles to the 
conversion of class exploitation and growing immiseration into class 
conscious bases for collective action. The great victory of imperialism 
is not only the material profits, but its conquest of the inner space 
of consciousness of the oppressed directly through the mass media and 
indirectly through the capture (or surrender) of its intellectual and 
political class. Insofar as a revival of mass revolutionary politics is 
possible, it must begin with open warfare not only with the conditions 
of exploitation but with culture that subjects its victims.

Limits of Cultural Imperialism

Against the pressures of cultural colonialism is the reality 
principle: the personal experience of misery and exploitation imposed 
by Western multinational banks, the police/military repression enforced 
by U.S. supplied arms. Everyday realities which the escapist media can 
never change. Within the consciousness of the Third World peoples there 
is a constant struggle between the demon of individual escape 
(cultivated by the mass media) and the intuitive knowledge that 
collective action and responsibility is the only practical response. In 
times of ascending social mobilizations, the virtue of solidarity takes 
precedence; in times of defeat and decline, the demons of individual 
rapacity are given license.

There are absolute limits in the capacity of cultural imperialism to 
distract and mystify people beyond which popular rejection sets in. The 
TV ?table of plenty? contrasts with the experience of the empty 
kitchen; the amorous escapades of media personalities crash against a 
houseful of crawling, crying hungry children. In the street 
confrontations, Coca Cola becomes a molotov cocktail. The promise of 
affluence becomes an affront to those who are perpetually denied. 
Prolonged impoverishment and widespread decay erode the glamour and 
appeal of the fantasies of the mass media.

The false promises of cultural imperialism become the objects of 
bitter jokes relegated to another time and place.

The appeals of cultural imperialism are limited by the enduring ties 
of collectivities ? local and regional ? which have their own values 
and practices. Where class, racial, gender and ethnic bonds endure and 
practices of collective action are strong, the influence of the mass 
media are limited or rejected.

To the extent that preexisting cultures and traditions exist, they 
form a ?closed circle? which integrates social and cultural practices 
that look inward and downward, not upward and outward. In many 
communities there is a clear rejection of the ?modernist? 
developmental- individualist discourse associated with the supremacy of 
the market. The historical roots for sustained solidarity and anti-
imperial movements are found in cohesive ethnic and occupational 
communities; mining towns, fishing and forestry villages, industrial 
concentrations in urban centers. Where work, community and class 
converge with collective cultural traditions and practices, cultural 
imperialism retreats.

The effectiveness of cultural imperialism does not depend merely on 
its technical skills of manipulation, but on the capacity for the state 
to brutalize and atomize the populace, to deprive it of its hopes and 
collective faith in egalitarian societies.

Cultural liberation involves not merely ?empowering? individuals or 
classes, but is dependent on the development of a socio-political force 
capable of confronting the state terror that precedes cultural 
conquest. Cultural autonomy depends on social power and social power is 
perceived by the ruling classes as a threat to economic and state 
power. Just as cultural struggle is rooted in values of autonomy, 
community and solidarity which are necessary to create the 
consciousness for social transformations, political and military power 
is necessary to sustain the cultural bases for class and national 
identities.

Most important, the Left must recreate a faith and vision of a new 
society built around spiritual as well as material values: values of 
beauty and not only work. Solidary linked to generosity and dignity. 
Where modes of production are subordinated to efforts to strengthen and 
deepen longstanding personal bonds and friendship.

Socialism must recognize the longings to be alone, to be intimate, as 
well as to be social and collective. Above all, the new vision must 
inspire people because it resonates with their desire not only to be 
free from domination but free to create a meaningful personal life 
informed by affective non-instrumental relations that transcend 
everyday work even as it inspires people to continue to struggle. 
Cultural imperialism thrives as much on novelty, transitory relations 
and personal manipulation, but never on a vision of authentic, intimate 
ties based on personal honesty, gender equality and social solidarity.

Personal images mask mass state killings, just as technocratic 
rhetoric rationalize weapons of mass destruction ('intelligent bombs'). 
Cultural imperialism in the era of 'democracy' must falsify reality in 
the imperial country to justify aggression ? by converting victims into 
aggressors and aggressors into victims.

Hence in Panama the U.S. imperial state and mass media projected 
Panama as a drug threat to young people in the U.S., as it dropped 
bombs on working class communities in Panama.

The experiences of El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980's is 
illustrative.

Nicaraqua's Sandinista government in the 1980's and Chile under 
Allende in the 1970's are emblematic.

The case of Uruguay and Argentina in the 1970's and 1980's under the 
military regimes.
 

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