Unipolar, Hegemonic, Transatlantic Biases
The West as a Contemporary Entity (Excerpts from "We and the West" – 8/11)
What is “the West”? And how do we relate to it? Over the coming weeks, I will be pre-publishing excerpts from my book Wir und der Westen (und die Welt), ahead of the full English edition’s release under the title We and the West (and the World) later this year. The full list of excerpts is at the end of this post.
Reality and the narratives about it do not always align; indeed, they oftentimes diverge markedly. As I mentioned in passing in the introduction, a central insight of the social sciences is to treat such discrepancies not as rare exceptions, but as the rule. While conceptions and portrayals of a subject matter may approximate its reality fairly well, they can also be profoundly distant from it and all too often they are.
This phenomenon is widely recognized. Most people, for instance, would not simply trust a Habsburg chronicler from the Middle Ages who portrays King Rudolph as benevolent and beloved by the people. We understand that the chronicler’s dependent relationship on the monarch – his very existence and status likely depended on his writing in a certain way – makes a coloring and distortion (a “bias”) highly probable.
Beyond the individual chronicler, one must consider the broader societal circumstances and their embedding within a political structure. As the oft-repeated dictum that history is written by the victors of war expresses, there are also societal and political factors which transcend the individual. Access to certain influential positions is filtered. Those who do not think like “the regime” are sorted out long before they ever arrive at a position of influence.
To put it in an anachronistic and slightly exaggerated way: a republican (and thus anti-monarchist) democrat (and thus anti-oligarch and anti-imperialist) could never have become a chronicler for the Habsburgs in the first place. Likewise, a historian whose politics and ideology do not align with the interests of the war victor is unlikely to become the author of the official history textbooks. This is a fundamental problem that has to be dealt with in any society and era, in societies that think of themselves as free and democratic just like in any other.
The American intellectual Noam Chomsky, who demonstrated how elite circles in the United States dedicated themselves to the “manufacturing of consent” and “necessary illusions” for the general public, has also elucidated this phenomenon with exemplary clarity. In a 1996 interview with the journalist Andrew Marr of the British public-service (that is to say, state-proximate or state-supporting) broadcaster BBC, Chomsky explains how a kind of filtering system operating through all selection processes ensures that individuals holding dissenting opinions are weeded out.
Marr’s viewpoint that journalists behave in a highly critical way toward power is brushed aside by Chomsky as a self-serving view. When Marr asks how Chomsky can know that he [Marr] is self-censoring, Chomsky gets to the heart of the matter: “I don’t say you’re self-censoring. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
Similar to our awareness of chroniclers in pre-modern times, we also understand that, for instance, the Soviet government in Moscow was not always to be believed at face value. Certain ideological viewpoints and aspects of the political system made the dissemination of distorted perspectives – so-called propaganda – highly probable. Likewise, many people in the West today still expect that opinions from the Kremlin must be consumed with caution, as they are presumed to present a deliberately colored view of the world. Similarly, one expects from China, which holds a media model where informational freedom is not upheld as a paramount value and certain topics and opinions are subject to censorship, a tendentious distortion in its publicly accessible discourse. Everyone knows, including by the way any Chinese, that one ought to expect some aspects of truth along with some aspects of specifically colored representations regarding any politically salient matters.
What is interesting, however, is that it seems far less common to apply the principles underlying such expectations to ourselves and our own media. The conviction runs deep that in the “free and democratic West”, freedom of speech and of the press prevail and are genuinely reflected in public discourse. The mere attempt to portray the contrast between “here” and elsewhere as not quite so drastic can already provoke significant opposition and consternation among “Westerners”. But how convincing is it to believe that distortions and tendentious coloring in our public discourse are merely a minor, fringe phenomenon, and that fundamentally everything can be, and is, discussed and said without consequences? I believe it is worthwhile to interrogate this conviction from its very foundations.
All reality is perceived from a specific perspective, and is represented or communicated from a specific perspective with specific intentions. Every perspective, in turn, necessarily involves a selection, an emphasis, a filtering, and a framing of the facts to be presented. Even a journalist committed to the pursuit of truth cannot avoid deciding which aspects of a phenomenon deserve to be selected, which should be emphasized and which should be omitted, and how the whole should be framed.
The ideal of value-neutral representation is not without merit, but one rarely encounters it in its fully realized form. A more plausible and realistic ideal is to proactively account for the likely biases inherent in one’s own perspective. By disclosing the values one holds or the interests one serves, a speaker demonstrates awareness of his or her own limits – which everyone has. This allows the listeners to judge the coherence of what is said and the intellectual and moral integrity of who speaks.
I believe people intuitively sense this, and it is quite common to discern and value sincerity (that is, the relationship to truth – le rapport à la vérité – as the French lawyer and author Juan Branco once elegantly phrased it). However, in the jungle of ubiquitous propaganda and the manipulative communication of advertising and “public relations”, it is immensely challenging to navigate between false and correct ideas and to reliably classify facts as true or untrue.
When we read something or listen to someone, we are thus more or less aware that the author or speaker is adopting a specific perspective. The question is not whether there is a specific perspective and whether there might be inherent biases; the only question ought to be which perspective and likely biases that might be.
In part, the perspective in question will be individual, and one must investigate the person’s values, interests, ideas, and other preferences to determine it. However, to the individual layer must be added the dimension critically described by Chomsky: within any given society or milieu, a tendency toward a shared perspective is to be expected. The values, worldviews, interests, and ideas represented within a social or political entity will tend to cause a specific coloring or distortion of perspective.
To articulate this state of affairs of societally widespread biases is not, in itself, a value judgment, but is merely acknowledging its inevitability. If the tendency of a particular bias is problematic, as Chomsky observed in the case of the United States, then this tendency must be viewed critically. If it were to happen in a “good way”, it could be nothing more than a perhaps unavoidable, necessary, and even desirable mechanism.
To have certain fundamental norms based on core values within a society, and to see those guiding public discourse, could very well be a hallmark of a healthy society. The real question, therefore, is not whether such tendencies exist, but which ones exist, and whether they are the right ones. Which colorings and distortions tend to enter our daily lives through the media that “mediate” and deliver publicly available thoughts to us? And are the values reflected therein the right and good ones?
Even the most reflective individuals, who feel profoundly committed to truth and the common good, are not immune to adopting the dominant perspective that surrounds them. How could it be otherwise? It requires a tremendous effort merely to comprehend the more elementary parts of our lifeworlds and worldviews in their entirety.
Finally, in addition to unconscious and semi-conscious biases, there is the layer of conscious manipulation: the so-called propaganda or, in contemporary terminology, PR (public relations) of the “communications” and advertising industry. Here, the goal is deliberately to cast a subject in a specific light, to emphasize certain aspects and conceal others, and, typically, to advance a particular overarching narrative and framing.
In short, the purpose of this lengthy exposition is solely to demonstrate that we should fully expect a coloring and distortions in any perspective, including in the most widespread ones. The question is not whether colorings and distortions – biases – are there, but which ones are there. To take it one step further, it is most rational to expect that, in all likelihood, the power relations within a society along with influential interest groups, the dominant ideologies, and their foundational assumptions, will be reflected in these perspectival colorings.
Beyond the existing diversity of individual opinions, institutions and organizations such as the government, influential lobbies, mass media, certain international actors, business associations, and similar groups undoubtedly exert a perceptible influence on public discourse. But are there deeper, fundamental characteristics coloring the public discourse across the entire West and therefore in specific nations such as, for instance, Switzerland? What might that dominant “Western narrative” be that one can expect to find? The expected narrative, I suspect, is precisely going to be reflecting the discrepancy that exists between “the West” as it truly is and “the West” as it officially wishes to be portrayed.
As I have begun to outline, “the West” – a subsequent analysis below will clarify which parts of the West are truly meant – has striven for primacy within a unipolar global order in recent decades. In reality, it is the hegemon and is clinging to the preservation of the unipolar moment. Yet, it seeks to portray itself as a collection of democratic, human-rights-friendly entities promoting a peaceful liberal world order. Anyone lacking information about the actual realities would, quite rationally, expect the foundational assumptions embedded in daily narratives to reflect precisely the distortion shaped by these perspectives – a distortion of the West as presented through this particular bias, this self-serving lens.
To preview my assessment: I indeed believe that the principal bias of our time – the grandest narrative, the most comprehensive story – is the unipolar liberal-imperial ideology emanating from a transatlantically centered power bloc. I will elaborate on this in more detail below. It is the narrative propagated by an imperial version of the West, which portrays the West as being built upon superior moral values and as being, in reality, morally superior societies. This “good West”, according to the narrative, is not only permitted but obliged to intervene in the world and in allegedly less developed societies to advance its universal values.
This narrative originates from, among other places, Washington, London, and Brussels. It is the consensus master narrative of the American and British political establishments, as well as that of the EU and NATO. Throughout Europe, including in Switzerland, this “transatlantic unipolarism” has been the foundational assumption for generations and decades. To this day, this position maintains a virtual monopoly on interpretive authority. It sets the boundaries of what can be said and thought. Anything that runs counter to these assumptions meets with resistance and is forced into a position of justification.
One may approve of this fact or not. To deny it, however, strikes me as an indefensible position. While opinions may diverge in assessing this situation as good or bad and desirable or not, to fail to recognize this situation as reality seems to me, in the year 2024, to be utterly untenable.
Whether the transatlantic-unipolar interpretive authority – as it is implemented in reality – is good or not is the decisive point. And it is precisely on this point that everything stands or falls with the assessment of the West’s role in the world. If this assessment turns out to be positive, that is “good”, then one might discuss whether the transatlantic hegemonic unipolarity ought to be considered defensible. Even then, the burden of justification would not be small, but there might be reasons to enter an argument. Or, for instance, if there were no better alternatives, one might perhaps resign oneself lazily to the “way things are”. If, however, the role of “the West” is assessed as negative, that is “not good”, then a fundamental rethinking is required.
PRE-PUBLISHING HERE OVER THE COMING WEEKS
Excerpts from We and the West (and the World):
I. The West’s Emergence as a Historical Civilization
→ 1/11 The “West” Merely Relative? – Geographically Western Eurasia
→ 2/11 First Traces of the West 2500 Years Ago?
→ 3/11 Ancient Greece as a Key Reference – Not Only for the West
II. The West’s Trajectory toward Modernity
→ 4/11 Switzerland’s Emergence at the Heart of the West
→ 5/11 Western Expansion and Imperial Continuity
→ 6/11 The West in Modernity – The Measure of Almost All Things
III. The West as a Contemporary Entity
→ 7/11 The West in the Global Order
→ 8/11 Unipolar, Hegemonic, Transatlantic Biases
→ 9/11 Various Moral Souls in the West’s Breast
→ 10/11 Western Modes of Functioning – “Liberal” and “Democratic”?
→ 11/11 Barely Veiled Oligarchies? Truly Legitimate Social Order?
→ Bonus: Whither, Post-Unipolar West?