That too - their critical read of history basically dismisses the historical texts and inscriptions and monuments as being propaganda for the ruling class of the period, thus misrepresenting collapse, and then they just don't apply this to our world today.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

i want to believe that the author is well intention-ed and misguided; but their usage of terms like "1-per-cent " and "99 per cent" and the "benevolent societies" feels too much like liberal coopting and makes me suspect that they're trying to push a pro-american-empire agenda.

[–] QuietCupcake@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's the thing about propaganda and cultural hegemony (well, one of the things anyway) - the author doesn't necessarily have to have a conscious agenda in order to reaffirm and reproduce the dominant narrative which is based on the agenda of the ruling class. They propagate the agenda just by being steeped in the cultural narrative and taking it as "common sense" without even thinking to analyze it with anything near the kind of scrutiny they apply to other historic cultures. They probably think they're being strictly objective even as they push a very real but unrecognized liberal agenda.