"Crisis is often constructed to maintain power structures"

We should all be very alarmed when manufactured crises become the status quo

So my dear friends, when does a crisis become manufactured, and no more than political pyromania

“Citizens must actively question the narratives of crisis and the trade-offs authorities ask them to make, as society cannot regain its political and social agency or break the cycle of fear without this action.”— Mohammed Afroz

The title to this blog is a direct quote from the eminent French scholar Michel Foucault. He passed away in1984 so a lot has changed since he made this astute observation. We can only speculate on what he might have to say about the year 2025.

My first suggestion is that the word “often” would have to suffer the editors red pencil. Not only are we in a time of crisis we are in a circumstance where perpetual and manufactured crises have become the new status quo. Peace has become a mere hiccup between wars genocides and the pandemic of scandalous political behaviors and corruptions. We are very prone to crises when everything under the sun has been weaponized, starting with trillions of dollars squandered on military spending, establishing cultures of fear, loathing, endless duplicity and hypocrisies. Everybody from the top down becomes discombobulated including presidents and prime ministers. Populations are terrified and appalled and whole societies become frozen in time.

Societies can only exist where they are dynamic, adaptive, and progressive.

Up until the 20th Century wars were tribal, regional, national. Only in the 20th Century did we get around to hemispheric warfare and now the first truly global warfare where it is East vs West, hybrid and the battle for who is going to rule the world.

The problem being that prominent historians and international relations experts are telling us this is no longer possible. The world can only exist where there are hemispheric regional powers working together committed to a reasonable harmony and peaceful co-existence prevails.

In other words we are at a historic convergence where wars, great power competition threaten planetary survival. There is also great urgency to upgrade the quality and integrity of our governance. The intransigent West has abandoned democracy at a time most needed. It is the process where diplomacy, consensus and statecraft must prevail. War mongers, grifters, and Yahoos need not apply.

We are technological geniuses, but when it comes to governing our affairs we are socially retarded and endlessly corrupt. We see politics as a sporting event when in these times it is more important than ever.

Foucault might agree that societies adrift in stormy seas need “sea anchors” to slow them down and stabilize the ships of state.

In his article, The Politics of Fear: A Manufactured Crisis, political scientist Mohammed Afroz, points out“We live in an age of calculated chaos. From terror threats to economic instability—Behind every crisis we face, there’s a carefully crafted narrative designed to maintain the status quo.”

It is a profound indictment to say that “we live in an age of calculated chaos” where social and economic equilibriums and futures are sacrificed to the wars and tyrannies of a failed empire refusing to adapt to an ever changing world order and one of obvious merit compared to the flagrant criminality of the unipolar world. We forget too soon that our adaptability goes to the very essence of our existence.

Where our leadership retreats into authoritarianism it is a tacit admission of failure. Where they denigrate democracy they reject essential processes and value systems, accountability and responsibility. They are adrift in the Doldrums of their self-inflicted ineptitudes.

Authoritarianism lapses into demagoguery as the final nails in the coffin of democracy. There after we are left to self-serving demagoguery and the evil caprices of cabalists, with no regard for costs (social and financial) or consequences.

Afroz draws the following conclusion :

“We are witnessing how governments worldwide have exploited digital media and crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, to justify authoritarian measures and accumulate power, often at the expense of civil liberties.”

Is it really “governments worldwide” or more specifically Western governments as embodied in NATO, which sponsors endless wars for endless profits, where the Western media is nakedly propagandist, and countries around the world are rushing into the embrace of BRICS and a more just multipolar world? Why are no Western politicians speaking for peace and civility as they endorse forever wars and genocide. They know no candor, just lies, hypocrisies all descending into demagoguery.

Afroz poses a question where the answer is obvious:

“The modern world presents an apparent dilemma: Are we genuinely facing crises, or are these crises deliberately manufactured to maintain power?”

The crisis is very real as an empire seated in the West is in full decline and desperately refusing to take its place in the world as its dream of global domination is like a fast setting sun.

Long before Foucault’s time, crises and treachery have been deliberately manufactured to maintain power. The difference now is that manufactured crises are at their apogee, so global and so all pervasive planetary extinction looms ever larger.

Empire’s collapse as inevitable cycles of history. Five have collapsed in the last hundred plus years, most notably the British empire which was a prototype for the American empire and is now it is a fast fading colony and consort having had five prime ministers in the last ten years—not exactly a signal of political stability. Hitler’s Third Reich was supposed to last a thousand years, and was crushed out of existence in 8 years.

So many dream of empires when their own human fallibility destroys them; like the fate of Icarus flying too close to the sun in spite of his wise father’s warnings.

Governments of the West have retreated into their “safe havens” of authoritarianism and demagoguery in betrayal of the populations they are supposed to serve. The road to redemption is long and arduous.

What do you think ?