Kultural Marxism and Reflections on Venezuela’s Gramscian Fantasy of Exporting Revolution via a Long March Through United States Institutions
For over a decade Venezuela’s Intelligence Agency has operated a network in America to disseminate political values, beliefs, strategies, tactics, and knowledge from the Bolivarian Revolution to American audiences in hopes it would lead to political radicalization and domestic unrest such that a “multipolar” world would emerge.
This multi-faceted, multi-million dollar project inspired by Antonio Gramsci included funding and other forms of assistance to found or further develop: outreach programs which sought to unite poor Americans for economic and environmental justice; movements which seek to educate, agitate and mobilize African American and Latino communities for direct actions; support of alternative news outlets and messaging coordination with foreign state media; a large inauthentic coordinated behavior army of trolls to amplify their messaging; etc. in order to feed into the creation of a counter-hegemonic movement within America.
As participants were averse to sharing their funding, partnerships and end political goals to outsiders, prior to new technological methods involving data science on sources of public and private origin, documenting and charting these behaviors was difficult. Now, however, the unveiling of this information is on the immediate horizon.
This presentation will be an excerpt of an ongoing investigation into Social Media and Democracy by the author, a doctoral student in Innovation and Technology Management, former Marxist Reading Group presenter and applicant for a research grant in partnership with Social Science One and the Social Science Research Council. It will cover why Venezuela’s state media and their many U.S. partners will soon be removed from Social Media; why this isn’t censorship; and what this means for American democracy.
Keywords:
Political discourse in Popular Culture; Digital rhetoric and cultures; Data Science; Activism and commodification; Venezuela; Media Studies