Panelist Says Bush Victory Made Possible by Cultural Oppression

Panelist Says Bush Victory Made Possible by Cultural Oppression
By Mike Rhodes
January 29, 2005

Porto Alegre, Brazil - The third day of the 5th World Social Forum got underway today with more speakers, workshops, movies, marches and other events. Many participants found it difficult to choose between Arundhati Roy, Eduardo Galeano, Noam Chomsky, Jessie Jackson, or the hundreds of simultaneous events taking place on the water front in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Whether your primary interest is environmental justice, media democracy, organized labor, or youth culture and music, there is something for you at the World Social Forum. The event has over 5,000 registered journalists, a youth encampment with a population of over 30,000, and about 120,000 registered participants. There are about 2,000 workshops, debates, panels, and performances taking place. The theme of the Social Forum is Another World is Possible.

Walden Bello, a panelist at a workshop today, was typical of the sharp analysis to be found at the Social Forum. Bello is executive director of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines. He was speaking today about cultural oppression and the role it played in the last U.S. elections.

Bello said “we are told neo-liberalism and militarism are the main problems of our time.” By neo-liberalism he is referring to capitalism’s ability to find new ways to maintain profit and privilege for the ruling class. He went on to say that while campaigns to limit the power of corporations and to stop the military industrial complex are important, we can’t forget about cultural oppression. Bello continues “The cultural dimension is what led the Bush administration to victory by drawing its support largely based on white people in the U.S. If we just limit our analysis to economics and say it is just the corporations or just say it is because of the military industrial complex, we haven’t got it. The Bush administration in fact appeals to traditional forms of cultural oppression through traditional forms of cultural ethnocentrism and of traditional and old forms of racism.”

“The vision that unites the Bush administration is the vision of a white Protestant male dominated society that is sort of the small town America of the 1950's this is the vision that led many people to vote for George W Bush. What were these people voting against? They were voting against blacks, they were voting against immigrants, the feminist movement, foreign imports and foreign ideas that are not American.”

“If we are going to understand the Bush administration we need to realize that it is out to create a cultural political hegemony that will allow it to rule for the next 50 years. The struggle against this cultural hegemony they are trying to build is just as important as the struggle against corporate capitalism and the struggle against militarism. It can’t be over stressed how our struggle whether it is in Brazil, India, or Asia - that the cultural component must be given as much play and as much emphasis as the economic and military component.”

“If we look at the situation in Latin America and in the Andes we can see that for the last 30 years, neo-liberalism has been adopted in every Latin American nation. Who suffered most? It was women and the indigenous populations. In Ecuador, in Bolivia in Colombia and in Venezuela, you can see a very strong correlation between market freedom and unfreedom, more poverty, more inequality for indigenous people and women. We find this in many other parts of the world - neo-liberalism and cultural oppression go together.”

The above is part of a speech given by Walden Bello at the 5th World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil on Saturday, January 29, 2005. The Social Forum will end on Sunday. For more information see: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br

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