Person with a dark cloud pouring rain only over his head, accompanied with social media platform logos. File photo
By Carlos L. Garrido – Jun 29, 2022
The philosophers Hans Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio argue in their text You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity, that society has undergone a qualitative transformation in the dominant identity building technology. Building on Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity, and on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of second-order observation, Moeller and D’Ambrosio hold that in an age like ours, where “second-order observation is pervasive,” profilicity is the dominant “technology for achieving identity.”[1] Although their text is thorough and contextual, one of the things absent is an examination of how profilicity is used to advance the interests of capital in its imperialist stage. It is this analysis which I will provide. First, this will be done by looking at the role profilic morality and ‘wokeism’ have played in imperialist narratives on targeted countries; and secondly, by looking at how general peer manipulation, through bots and censorship, was used by the US and its allies in the 2019 imperialist coup in Bolivia. To do this I must first clarify some of the terms central to Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s thesis.
Sincerity, Authenticity, and Profilicity
“In earlier times,” Moeller and D’Ambrosio state, identification “consisted in committing to the roles people found themselves in by embracing the norms and internalizing the values attached to these roles.”[2] This form of identity technology is called sincerity, it is “a mental and social method of achieving identity based on sincere role enactment.”[3] As capitalism and modernity develop, the hegemony of traditional role identities (i.e., sincerity) “began to appear as external facades imposed on people whose real self was to be found somewhere underneath.”[4] In this epochal transformation, authenticity emerges as the dominant identity technology for the new age. Here the social roles which dominated the age of sincerity appear as a ‘mask’ covering one’s authentic self. In the ”age of authenticity,” as Charles Tayler called it, we are asked to “discover or create an original self.”[5]
Accompanied by the ideology of individualism, authenticity has been central in all fields of capitalist culture. From Shakespeare, to Whitman, to endless Netflix movies and shows about finding or creating your ‘true self,’ modernity has breastfed us all with the jargon of authenticity. However, just like the contradictions of sincerity gave way to the development of authenticity, the contradictions of authenticity are giving way to the development of profilicity.
While identity is itself paradoxical (given that it attempts to pin down that which is inherently multifaceted and dynamic), each identity building mechanism developed its own specific contradictions. In sincerity one finds themselves torn by the “incompatible demands” of the “different roles held by a single person.”[6] This conflict reflects itself in most classical literature and can be archetypically seen in Sophocles’ Antigone, where a sister (Antigone) is torn between the duty she has to bury her brother (Polyneices), and the duty she has as a citizen to follow King Creon’s decry, which considers Polyneices a traitor undeserving of a formal burial. This contradiction in sincerity is depicted nicely in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, where he says that “both are in the wrong because they are one-sided, but both are also in the right.”[7]
Similarly, in authenticity we find another unique contradiction. As soon as “one follows the advice to ‘make one’s own path,’ one is already following a path recommended by others.”[8] As Elena Esposito said, “nothing is as unoriginal as the desire to be original.”[9] The paradox of authenticity is captured nicely in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, where the son of a Brahman (Siddhartha) breaks with the traditional role he would have had to enact under conditions of sincerity, and pursues to find (or create) himself. As Siddhartha says, “In the school of myself I want to learn, that is where I want to be a pupil, I want to get to know myself, the secret that is Siddhartha.”[10] Siddhartha’s path eventually leads him to recognize the general paradox of identity, namely, as Hegel elucidates in the Science of Logic, that “to be different belongs to identity, not externally, but within it, in its nature.”[11] This, for Siddhartha, is captured in the Om, where a “thousand voices” are embodied in “one single word.”[12]
Although not focused on by Moeller and D’Ambrosio, it is important to note that these transformations in the hegemonic identity technology were grounded on radical material transformations in society. Authenticity, for instance, arose in the context of a full transformation in the mode of production, i.e., a qualitatively new system (capitalism) emerged. Without capitalism the shift to authenticity is impossible. Likewise, profilicity has arisen under conditions of a revolutionized means of production – albeit not under a revolutionized mode of production, for in much of the world the dominant relations of production are still capitalist. Nonetheless, without the development brought about by the technological revolution of the recent decades, profilicity could not have hegemonized.
Profilicity, as the dominant mode of identity technology, is centered on second-order observation. As opposed to seeing something directly (first-order observation), second-order observation “sees something, or oneself, as being seen.”[13] Under these conditions the “complexity of the observation is significantly increased,” one has to observe not just a phenomenon, but how one is seen observing that phenomenon.[14]
For Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, the platform was merely seeking to “exploit a vulnerability in human psychology” by creating “social validation feedback loops” (SVFL) which function as a “little dopamine hit every once in a while.”[15] However, what he failed to foresee was the sociological influence Facebook would have as an identity building technology in the age of profilicity. In the age of profilicity, how the general peer views the world mediates my engagement with it – the movies I watch, the restaurants I go to, the hotels I stay in, etc., all of these decisions are mediated by my engagement with how the movie, restaurant, and hotel are rated. This mode of observation dominates not just how one sees the world, but also how one builds their identity in this world. Through our construction of profiles of various sorts (personal, business, academic, etc.), we curate a ”type of self-image that is not just seen but seen as being seen.”[16]
All “personal identity needs to be socially validated.”[17] In sincerity and authenticity this is done by “present peers,” that is, the specific individuals one is in direct contact with (family, friends, coworkers, etc.).[18] Under profilicity, social validation is given by the general peer, an impersonal abstract collective (e.g., number of viewers, subscribers, likes, etc.). Since our profiles are situated in different social settings, each social setting has its own general peer. The audience who reacts to one’s post on Facebook is different (sometimes more, sometimes less) from the audience who reacts to one’s posts on Instagram, and different from the audience who reacts to one’s posts on Academia. Each profile, however, engages with general peers which effect social validation feedback loops (SVFL). The success of our profile, i.e., of our identity, is measured by the reactions (likes, shares, retweets, etc.) of the general peer. Second-order observation allows us to curate our profile image as we would like to be seen as being seen, an assessment which shifts depending on the changing reactions of the general peer.
It is important to note that “new modes of identity do not simply replace older ones but coexist with them;” authenticity and sincerity are still around in the age of profilicity, but are in most cases “put in the service” of profilicity.[19] For instance, all the shows and movies on Netflix and other platforms championing authenticity are all working within the conditions of profilicity. The Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” which presents a profile-dystopic world wherein all human interactions are mediated through profile ratings, is itself participating in profilicity. The show, the platform hosting it (Netflix), and the production team and cast all participate in their own profile curations, wherein all of these interconnected profiles reciprocally boost each other and perpetuate positive social validation feedback loops. In essence, the hegemony of profilicity has created the conditions wherein critique of profilicity is necessarily done through profilicity itself.
Now that some of the central terms of Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s text are laid out, we can proceed to analyze some of the ways today’s hegemon imperial power (the US) attempts to spread its spheres of influence in the age of profilicity.
How Imperialism Functions Under Conditions of Profilicity
“Imperialism,” Lenin showed, “is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”[20] The countries in the mid/late 20th and 21st century which have broken out of this world order; which have been able to nationalize their industries and resources; which have become independent, to a greater or lesser extent, from global financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; and which have opted for a society which functions to promote the flourishing of their masses and the raising of their living standards; have all been subject to the full toolbox of imperialism in its attempt to resubordinate these regions under their sphere of influence.
1- Profilic Morality and ‘Wokeism’
The recent technological revolution which grounds the hegemonization of profilicity affords ‘new’ tools for the imperialist toolbox. Moeller, in his YouTube channel, Carefree Wondering, has explored how ‘Wokeism’ (a phenomenon he describes as a ‘civil religion’) has been utilized by the Central intelligence Agency (CIA) in their recent recruiting video depicting an anxiety disordered, ‘intersectional feminist’ woman of color from an immigrant background who is “unapologetically me” in the agency. The agency which has functioned as the arm of US imperialism since its founding must also curate its profile in tune with the ‘woke’ attitudes of the general peers in western liberal societies. It must be able to show how it too “embraces diversity.” The CIA’s woke moral profile, as Moeller rightly depicts, provides a “moral whitewashing” which “moralizes that which is immoral.”
Like the CIA commercial, Moeller and D’Ambrosio argue that companies must participate in profile curation, given that “in profilic capitalism, profiles rather than products have become the primary source of profit, and this is what capitalists care about most.”[21] The speed at which the major companies in the West share #BLM during the 2020 protests, the pride flag in June, the #StandwithUkraine in the last few months, etc., shows how necessary participating in profilic morality is for companies today. However, Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s analysis of the relation of profilicity and capitalism is incomplete, for it omits an explanation of how profilicity relates to the central characteristics which make today’s capitalism a capitalist imperialism.
In the context of capitalist imperialism, Marius Trotter’s article on the “Rise of Woke Empire” fills in some of the gaps in Moeller’s analysis of the wokeism civil religion, and by extension, the gaps present in how Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s text observes the connection of capitalism and profilicity. In his article, Trotter argues that wokeism represents the new form in which “the United States will justify the right to dominate the world,” given that its “progressive cultural liberalism” will afford it the “moral superiority” to do so.”[22] CIA “coups would now be about deconstructing white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.”[23] Trotter nicely adds,
Facing a rising China and a resurgent Russia, the American ruling class needs a moralizing crusade to motivate its counter offensive against its enemies, both at home and abroad. Under the banners of Black Lives Matter, multi-colored Pride flags and trumpets announcing the correct gender pronouns, the guns of the American Empire will spread the creed of Woke Empire.[24]
It cannot go without notice that each ‘regime change’ attempt the US empire has waged over the last few years has sought to manufacture consent through woke profilic morality: Venezuela must be overthrown because Maduro is a dictator who oppresses his people and the LGBTQ community; Cuba must be overthrown because it is totalitarian and represses black and POC artists; a new cold war must be waged against China because it is committing a genocide against its Muslim Uyghur minority; Putin must be overthrown because he is anti-LGBTQ; the list can go on to include all countries which challenge, in various ways, the hegemony of US/NATO imperialism. Some claims, of course, are more factual than others. It is usually the case that the accusations made against socialist countries carry as much legitimate evidence as one could provide for Santa’s existence.
The hypocrisy of these condemnations is also clear to all familiar with the racist, sexist, and homophobic history of the US; a history often intertwined with the ruling class and state’s ardent anti-communism. However, the hypocrisy and the falsity of the allegations are beyond the scope of the analysis I seek to provide here. The point is that none of these ‘woke’ legitimations of imperialist narratives and ends are isolated; wokeism has developed as a necessary component of imperialist propaganda, it is today an essential element of the empire’s profilic morality, and hence, a key ideological foundation to attain and retain legitimacy. Today the moral crusade of woke imperialism masquerades as liberatory the most exploitative, oppressive, and environmentally destructive order humanity has seen.
However, it is essential to emphasize that attacking imperialist wokeism does not equate to an attack on the civil rights struggles for oppressed minorities or even an attack on their seeking of ‘recognition’ in bourgeois society. Communists have always been at the forefront of the struggles against racism, sexism, national chauvinism, and all other forms of bigotry. I am not condemning these struggles in the least bit, on the contrary, these are central to the struggle for socialism. However, the essential role wokeism is playing for imperialist propaganda is a truth we must tarry with. We cannot ignore this or label all who bring it up in a comradely manner ‘bigots.’ This ‘stick your head in the sand’ strategy is useless in the struggle for socialism. There is an objective contradiction here that we must study concretely, and on the basis of a concrete investigation, decide what are the best ways to overcome it.
There is no magic 8-ball which gives us answers to how current contradictions will be overcome in the future. However, the central and decisive role the class struggle should have in our political practice and theory cannot be forgotten.[25] All that shines is not gold, and all that screams ‘liberation’ is not liberatory. As the Marxist tradition demonstrates, the struggles of oppressed and marginalized communities have not only been intertwined with the producing classes’ struggles against the dominant economic power, but have themselves – as Domenico Losurdo eloquently notes – been class struggles.
Nonetheless, these struggles are qualitatively different from the astroturfed ‘struggles’ fabricated by the US and NATO to gloss their conquest of resources, markets, labor, etc., with the ‘woke’ profilic ethic needed to legitimatize imperialist expansion today. If we are unable to comprehend the dialectical relation of form and content, we will constantly be fooled by an empire which provides the form of liberation devoid of liberatory content, and which uses this form to perpetuate the social order which requires liberation in the first place.
The purity fetish Marxists of the West (as I have called it in my previous work), lack the dialectical materialist analysis needed to see through these imperialist narratives.[26] Hence, their left-wing anti-communism, grounded on both this theoretical deficiency and on the fact that, as Vijay Prashad has said, they “live on the other side of imperialism,” puts them at the forefront of these imperialist narratives, and leads them to be the vanguard of a left-wing delegitimation of socialist and anti-imperialist projects in the global south and east. This is the ‘compatible’ left for Western capitalist-imperialism, and, as the work of Gabriel Rockhill on the global theory industry has shown, has been greatly funded and legitimized by the institutions of the capitalist-imperialism they fraudulently claim to be against.[27]
Today critique of imperialism necessitates a critique of the woke legitimations of imperialism; and just like we cannot allow the critique of woke imperialism to metamorphize into right-wing criticism of the struggle of oppressed and marginalized communities, neither can we let the tokenization of these struggles by the imperialist propaganda machine fool us into supporting their agenda of death and destruction.
2- The Artificial General Peer – A Tale of Bots: The Case of Bolivia
Besides the role profilic morality plays as a tool of imperialism, there are other forms in which profilicity can serve imperialism. As we noted above, the reactions of the general peer to contemporary events influences, through social validation feedback loops, how profiles are curated, and hence, how identity is formed. When posts which favor one interpretation of a specific contemporary event begin to spread, like wildfire, it creates the conditions for its further proliferation. How people will interpret that contemporary event will be mediated by the sorts of reactions they observe from the reactions their general peer has had to what has been posted – this is how second-order observation functions. Since morality under conditions of profilicity is determined by what is posted, that is, what you have put on your profile, to be ‘moral’ one is forced to put up content in line with the interpretation of the general peer.
However, if one is able to artificially manipulate the general peer to favor one or another interpretation of a specific contemporary event, then one contains in their hand the torch which decides which forests are worthy of fires, that is, which narratives will dominate the general peer, and hence, which view will hegemonize. And given that, as Lenin described, there is a “personal link-up” of monopoly capital and the government, the Silicon Valley monopolists which control the platforms on which profilicity takes place allow this narrative torch to be used at will by the state and the monopolist interests which it represents.[28] Effectively, this means that the general peer which people are seeking validation from is freely manipulatable to serve the interests of capitalist imperialism, and further, guaranteed to never let any dissenting ideas hegemonize. With bots the empire accomplishes the former, and if the bots fail and dissenting views arise, by censoring the key voices of dissent it accomplishes the latter.
In 2005, the Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS) in Bolivia achieved a historic victory, bringing to power a plurinational, indigenist, and socialist party headed by the person who would become the countries’ first indigenous president, the trade unionist Evo Morales. Within three years of its arrival to power, the MAS was promulgating a new constitution assuring that it had “left the colonial, republican and neo-liberal State in the past;” adding that they are forming,
A State based on respect and equality for all, on principles of sovereignty, dignity, interdependence, solidarity, harmony, and equity in the distribution and redistribution of the social wealth, where the search for a good life predominates; based on respect for the economic, social, juridical, political and cultural pluralism of the inhabitants of this land; and on collective coexistence with access to water, work, education, health and housing for all.[29]
The MAS fulfilled its constitutional promises, since 2006 “Bolivia’s real per capita GDP has grown at two times the rate for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).”[30] Given the socialist character of the growth, centered on “state-led industrialization under five-year development plan[s],”[31] it slashed poverty by more than half; increased life expectancy by nine years; increased wages fivefold; cut unemployment in half (making it the lowest in the region); abolished illiteracy; reduced infant mortality by 56%; underwent the construction of a universal health system which “guarantee[d] that 100 percent of Bolivians [could] access free, dignified service;”[32] it implemented state-owned banks and financial service measures to remove the previous decade’s neoliberalizations;[33] it nationalized the countries’ natural gas and other key industries and resources, using the revenues from these and other mixed industries to fund public projects and infrastructure, creating more than 670 thousand jobs in the process.[34] The list of achievements can continue, but this should provide a good idea of how the socialist transformation of the country released it from the hands of imperialism and allowed it to invest in its people and the all-round betterment of their living conditions.
Nonetheless, the president and revolutionary movement which held an 80% approval rating amongst the Bolivian masses[35] was challenged in the 2019 election on allegations of “irregularities” and “fraud” by the OAS Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation.[36] These allegations, which were challenged by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and which have been confirmed by MIT scientists and others to be false, nevertheless did their damage.[37] Soon after, the electoral minority opposition, united with “the chiefs of police and the armed forces,” demanded the “immediate resignation of Morales.”[38] As Vijay Prashad reports, “had the military stayed neutral… Morales might have remained in power,” however, “General Williams Kaliman, who was trained by the US military, asked Morales to step down.”[39] “It was,” as Prashad notes, “less a request than a demand. Morales had no choice. He had to resign.”[40] The White House promoted and praised this, stating that “Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.”[41]
“Hours after the resignation of Morales,” as Tathagatan Ravindran reported, “masked men removed the wiphala, the flag of indigenous self-determination from the top of the presidential palace and burnt it.”[42] The far-right had officially come to power. Jeanine Áñez, “which only won around 4% of the votes in the country in the 2019 elections,” proclaimed herself interim president.[43] From one day to the next, the US backed coup removed the successful socialist indigenous president and implemented a fundamentalist racist which called “indigenous religious practices ‘satanic’” and which warned against allowing the “savages” to return to power.[44] The month of the coup was marked not just by the persecution of MAS party leaders, but by the brutal killings of civilians protesting against the coup. As Harvard Law reports, the month after the coup was “the second-deadliest month in terms of civilian deaths committed by state forces since Bolivia became a democracy nearly 40 years ago.”[45]
The reasons for the coup were obvious. As the Country Commercial Guide (CCG) from the US embassy in Bolivia states,
Bolivia is rich in non-renewable natural resources. Mining and hydrocarbons are some of Bolivia’s largest export sectors, and there is still room to grow. In addition to presently mined minerals such as zinc, silver, lead, and tin, Bolivia boasts significant lithium deposits, which remain mostly unexploited.[46]
This wealth of resources was no longer up for grabs by US monopolies. The US State Department was open about this, stating in their 2019 Investment Climate Statements on Bolivia that “to comply with the 2009 Constitution… Bolivia abrogated the Bilateral Investment Treaties (BIT) it signed with the U.S. and a number of other countries.”[47] BIT, as Yanis Iqbal states,
Is a form of international law that creates legally enforceable rights and entitlements for foreign investors. Under the international system of investor protection created by BITs, private investors can sue for damages while citizens of host states have no way to take direct action. Therefore, BITs are legal instruments of capitalist power consolidation.[48]
As Lenin had already foreseen, under conditions of capitalist-imperialism “the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world.”[49] In this context, as Iqbal states, “it is evident that American businesses were salivating at the prospect of accessing [Bolivia’s] lucrative natural resources and the only barrier to this was socialism.”[50] As the owner of the electric car monopoly Tesla (who would greatly benefit from access to Bolivia’s lithium) shows, Elon Musk’s salivation over the coup in Bolivia reached the point where, like a dog waiting for its owner to serve their food, he barked desperately on Twitter that “we will coup whoever we want.”[51]
A plethora of factors were behind the coup’s success – from repressive state apparatuses such as the police and military, to ideological state apparatuses such as the OAS, whose role in calling the election fraudulent set the justification down for the coup. Amongst the ideological apparatuses which provided the space to manufacture consent for the coup were social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
For instance, the head of social networks at Unidas Podemos, Julián Macías Tovar, showed how “more than 68,000 fake accounts were created on Twitter to support the coup in Bolivia.”[52] Within days the accounts of far-right opposition leaders Luis Fernando Camacho and Jeanine Áñez exploded in following. As Tovar notes, “Camacho’s account in just a few days went from having 2,000 followers to almost 130,000, of which 50,000 are accounts created during the first two weeks of November,” likewise, Áñez’s account “went from 8,000 followers to 150,000, more than 41,000 of those accounts were created in the last 15 days.”[53] Tovar adds that “in addition to following [the] coup plotters so that they have more followers and notoriety, [these accounts] also make RTs [retweets], comments and interact with other comments to place them in the high trending level.”[54]
On Facebook the infamous CLS Strategies, a US PR firm which runs, as Ben Norton showed, “industrial grade propaganda operations on social media,” made “55 fake accounts and 42 pages, along with 36 Instagram profiles” promoting Áñez, Camacho, and regime change propaganda.[55] A total of “509,000 unique accounts followed” these pages, liking, sharing, and boosting their content. Although the narratives these fake accounts shared were the same, to broaden their reach, the angles they would present the narratives from varied.[56] For instance, one of CLS’s accounts was a page called “MAS for Bolivia” which “sought to drive a wedge between Bolivians who had previously voted for the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party and the former President Evo Morales.”[57] Effectively, they worked to manipulate as many broad and diverse general peers as possible towards the same imperialist narrative.
RELATED CONTENT: Bolivia’s Great Victory Against US Imperialism and the Immense Challenges Ahead
The imperialist usage of bots and fake accounts engender an artificial general peer which functions as the condition for the possibility of imperialism’s control of a real one. This is because, at a certain nodal point, when the fake accounts and booster bots make something trend, the artificiality of the general peer’s reaction loses its artificial character, a real-people composed general peer picks up the baton from there and glazes the reaction with an ‘organic’ and ‘spontaneous’ vestment. In the age of profilicity, imperialism’s ability to control general peers is an indispensable tool for the attainment of its ends.
Regardless of how powerful the armed forces of an empire are, if it is not able to hegemonize the discourse on historical and contemporary events, its legitimacy – both nationally and internationally – will totter and make it susceptible to being overthrown. Firms like CLS Strategies, along with the complicit Silicon Valley social media monopolies, function as indispensable tools of capitalist-imperialism in the age of profilicity. At a time when identity is constructed through the curation of profiles mediated by second-order observation and general peer powered social validation feedback loops, the ability to manipulate general peers amounts to the unprecedented capacity of capital and the state to control what people think.
Additionally, the abstract character of this general peer conceals the manipulation itself. People construct their profile identities on the basis of how they would like to be seen as being seen, but the general peer doing the seeing has its eyes filtered through parental control imperialist glasses. How an event will be seen is determined by them – fake accounts will be made and boosted, dissenting accounts will be censored. This condition is depicted well in an old Soviet joke where a Russian and an American diplomat meet: the American asks “what are you here for,” the Russian replies “to learn about American propaganda techniques,” the American says, “what propaganda,” and the Russian replies “exactly.”
A year after the coup, the MAS, led now by Luis Arce, would return to power in Bolivia. The revolution’s successes entrenched socialist consciousness deep in the masses, and no coup was going to remove them from the path of their revolutionary construction. Nonetheless, the hiccup presented a necessary learning experience, both for Bolivia and for the region, on how new profilic tactics are being mixed with the old tactics of imperialism.[58]
Conclusion
A successful resistance to imperialism today requires an understanding of how profilicity is used to hegemonize imperialist narratives. Whether through profilic morality or through general peer manipulation, imperialism has adapted and expanded its tactics to guarantee success in the age of profilicity. To combat this, we must first study the defining features of today’s dominant identity technology – Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s text is essential for this. Then, we must take their analysis back into the world and concretely study the ways profilicity serves imperialism. Once the new tactics of capitalist-imperialism are grasped concretely, we are in a better position to struggle against it. However, we are ourselves bound by the age of profilicity, and how we can use profilicity to our advantage – in light of free-range imperialist censorship – is a monster question we must attempt to answer through our struggles in the decades to come.
Notes and References
[1] Hans Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambriosio (2021), You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity, Columbia University Press. pp. 47.
[2] Ibid., pp. 10
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., pp. 12.
[5] Ibid., pp. 164.
[6] Ibid., 147.
[7] G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Vol 2, Translated by Peter C. Hodgson, Oxford University Press., pp. 665.
[8] Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile., Ibid., pp. 13.
[9] Ibid., pp. 172.
[10] Hermann Hesse (1922), Siddhartha, Barnes and Nobles Classics (2007)., pp. 34.
[11] G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic., Cambridge (2015)., pp. 358.
[12] Hesse, Siddhartha., pp. 106.
[13] Ibid., pp. 39
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., pp. 51.
[16] Ibid., pp. 55.
[17] Ibid., pp. 52.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid., pp. 225-6.
[20] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 22. Progress Publishers (1974)., pp. 266-7.
[21] Moller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile., pp. 108.
[22] Marius Trotter, “Rise of Woke Empire,” Midwestern Marx (January 03, 2022). Retrieved from: https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/rise-of-woke-empire-by-marius-trotter
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Class, of course, understood in a non-dogmatic sense, in line with the richness with which Marx, Engels, and Lenin understand it, and which Domenico Losurdo describes it in his text, Class Struggle.
[26] Carlos L. Garrido, “A Critique of Western Marxism’s Purity Fetish,” Midwestern Marx (October 13, 2021). Retrieved from: https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/a-critique-of-western-marxisms-purity-fetish-by-carlos-l-garrido
[27] See: Gabriel Rockhill, “Foucault, Anti-Communism, and the Global Theory Industry,” The Philosophical Salon (February 01, 2021). Retrieved from: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/foucault-anti-communism-the-global-theory-industry-a-reply-to-critics/
[28] Lenin, CW Vol. 22., pp. 221.
[29] “Bolivia (Plurinational State of)’s Constitution of 2009,” Oxford University Press., pp. 3. Retrieved from: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Bolivia_2009.pdf
[30] Yanis Iqbal, “Resurgence of Socialism in Bolivia,” Dissident Voice (October 28th, 2020).
[31] Yehenew Endegnanew and Dawit Tessema, “IMF Working Paper – Public Investment in Bolivia: Prospects and Implications,” International Monetary Fund (July 2019)., pp. 2. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/carli/Downloads/WPIEA2019151.pdf
[32] “Address by Mr. Evo Morales Ayma, Constitutional President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia,” United Nations General Assembly, Seventy-fourth session, 3rd plenary meeting (September 24, 2019)., pp. 37/60. Retrieved from: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N19/291/63/PDF/N1929163.pdf?OpenElement
[33] Natalya Naqvi, “Renationalizing finance for development: policy space and public economic control in Bolivia,” Review of International Political Economy, Volume 28, 2021 – Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1696870
[34] “Nationalization Added 670,000 Jobs to Bolivia’s Economy: CELAG,” teleSUR (October 8th, 2019). Retrieved from: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nationalization-Added-670000-Jobs-to-Bolivias-Economy-CELAG-20191008-0006.html
[35] “Evo Morales Receives 80 Percent Approval Rating,” teleSUR (July 27, 2014). Retrieved from: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Evo-Morales-Receives-80-Percent-Approval-Rating–20140727-0026.html
[36] “Did the OAS lie about Bolivia?,” CODEPINK. Retrieved from: https://www.codepink.org/did_the_oas_lie_about_bolivia and Mark Weisbrot, “The OAS Lied to the Public About the Bolivian Election and Coup,” Common Dreams (November 19th, 2019). Retrieved from: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/19/oas-lied-public-about-bolivian-election-and-coup
[37] Ibid.
[38] Tathagatan Ravindran, “Neo-liberal Restoration at the Barrel of a Gun: Dissecting the Racist Coup in Bolivia,” Economic and Political Weekly (July 2020)., pp. 21.
[39] Vijay Prahsad (2020), Washington Bullets, LeftWord Books., pp. 166.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Mark Weisbrot, “Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia,” The Guardian (September 18, 2020). Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silence-us-backed-coup-evo-morales-bolivia-american-states
[42] Tathagatan Ravindran, “Neo-liberal Restoration at the Barrel of a Gun: Dissecting the Racist Coup in Bolivia.,” pp. 21.
[43] Ibid., pp. 22.
[44] Mark Weisbrot, “Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia.”
[45] Fabiola Alvelais et. al., “Summary executions and widespread repression under Bolivia’s interim government reports rights advocates from Harvard and University Network for Human Rights,” Harvard Law Blog (July 27, 2020). Retrieved from: https://hrp.law.harvard.edu/press-releases/black-november-report/
[46] “Bolivia – Market Overview,” Export.Gov (July 12th, 2019). Retrieved from: https://www.export.gov/article?series=a0pt0000000PAtLAAW&type=Country_Commercial__kav
[47] “2019 Investment Climate Statements: Bolivia,” US Department of State. Retrieved from: https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-investment-climate-statements/bolivia/
[48] Iqbal, “Resurgence of Socialism in Bolivia.”
[49] Lenin, CW Vol. 22., pp. 260.
[50] Iqbal, “Resurgence of Socialism in Bolivia.”
[51] “‘We will coup whoever we want’: Elon Musk sparks online riot with quip about overthrow of Bolivia’s Evo Morales,” RT (July 25th, 2020). Retrieved from: https://www.rt.com/news/495820-musk-coup-bolivia-lithium-tesla/
[52] “Non-Existent Support: 68,000 Fake Twitter Accounts Supporting the Coup in Bolivia,” Orinoco Tribune, (November 27th, 2019). Retrieved from: https://orinocotribune.com/non-existent-support-68000-fake-twitter-accounts-supporting-the-coup-in-bolivia/
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Ben Norton, “U.S. govt-linked PR firm ran fake news networks for right-wing Latin American regimes,” The Grayzone (September 6th, 2020). Retrieved from: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/06/cls-strategies-facebook-propaganda-venezuela-bolivia/
[56] Ibid.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Although I have focused on Bolivia here, similar profilic tactics have been used in the empire’s attacks on Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other anti-imperialist countries in the region. To read more on how these tactics have appeared in the attacks on Cuba check out my article “Anti-Government Protests in Cuba Provoked by U.S. Embargo Has Right-Wingers Salivating at the Prospect of Regime Change,” CovertAction Magazine (August 12th, 2021). https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/08/12/anti-government-protests-in-cuba-provoked-by-u-s-embargo-has-right-wingers-salivating-at-the-prospect-of-regime-change/ and for more on how these tactics have been used in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, etc. see Ben Norton, “U.S. govt-linked PR firm ran fake news networks for right-wing Latin American regimes,” The Grayzone (September 6th, 2020). Retrieved from: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/06/cls-strategies-facebook-propaganda-venezuela-bolivia/
Carlos L. Garrido
Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE.
