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| Government |
| The End of the Soft-Power Delusion |
| 2020-01-01 |
| [National Review] After decades of wishful thinking, it’s finally become clear that cultural influence is no substitute for economic and military strength in foreign policy. On the night of October 2, 2019, Comedy Central broadcast the South Park episode "Band in China," a devastating satire of the way Beijing has used access to the Chinese market to shape how the U.S. entertainment industry operates. The plot involves one of the main characters’ going to China to try and sell marijuana, getting arrested, and being rescued by Mickey Mouse and the Disney corporation, whose subservience to China is emphasized. Disney agrees to kill Winnie the Pooh, supposedly for resembling the Chinese leader, in exchange for opening up the Chinese pot market. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., some of the other main characters are trying to make a movie while being supervised and censored by the Chinese military. "Band in China" made it clear that Hollywood’s soft power was no match for Beijing’s economic hard power. Indeed, the American entertainment industry has failed to have any cultural influence on China, while China has used its hard power to neutralize the influence of American culture. After the episode’s release, the idea that somehow soft power ‐ which is to say, cultural influence ‐ can be used to decisively change the behavior of foreign nations is, or should be, dead and buried. Soft power, when it does exist, flows directly from hard power. In the case of China, the belief that exposure to U.S. cultural products would help soften and democratize the country has been proven utterly false. In fact, as "Band in China" showed, it has been the Chinese Communists who’ve influenced America. In the mid 1990s, the idea that somehow soft power, by itself, would shape the post-Cold War world began to take hold. It emerged, naturally enough, from American universities, where an academic elite was all too happy to imagine that its influence on the intellectual and cultural landscape would correct the ugly and vulgar reality of military and economic strength that had, up to now, shaped human history. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #8 Then again, it seems the economic power that Trump is exploiting has a degree of effectiveness, though note well, its tied to the hard power to protect it from other attacks. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-01-01 20:22 |
| #7 microaggression |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-01 13:03 |
| #6 ^Lets not forget "socialist realism". |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-01-01 12:57 |
| #5 Ruprecht, I think the old (new) words are still the best words for the tactics you describe: agitprop newspeak and dezinformatsiya |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-01 12:15 |
| #4 What Dron said. So many foolish conceits took hold over our supposedly smart people during the last 25 years - bullshit, made-up terms like soft power undocumented immigrant responsibility to protect gender dysphoria black lives matter toxic masculinity white privilege |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-01 12:13 |
| #3 Soft power does work, just not on foreign nations that control access to info. Dems have been running on soft power for decades. How many liberals do you know that think they know everything that are totally uninformed and absolutely refuse to listen to alternate news sources... That's soft power. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2020-01-01 12:07 |
| #2 Yes, especially in the pop culture space, it's the "sucking" part of "sucking up" that the practitioners seem to be most adept at. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-01-01 07:24 |
| #1 There's no such thing as 'soft power'. As they say in China, power only flows from the barrel of a gun. One can create goodwill however. But the intent behind silly overtures is easily deciphered in the modern world. Asians despise pretense, because they do it better and more subtly. We pioneered in hypocrisy ! If you're genuinely disposed to doing good for others without expectation of reward, history rewards you with a legacy of latent credibility. Mutual respect and humility play a great role too. It cannot be purchased by entertainment, art, cultural appropriation or acknowledgement. The Trudeau School of Political Artifice that most of the liberal deepState belong to, is transparent and rather embarrassing. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2020-01-01 05:07 |