Power is both structural and ideological
Power always has an ideological shape and physical structures. It has both faces. It existed before capitalism, and will exist after it (if capitalism doesn’t kill us first). Human history has consisted of power consolidating and regenerating itself in new form over and over again — like the eponymous hero of the long-running British TV sci-fi series Doctor Who — as different groups have learnt how to harness it, usurp it and put it to self-interested use. Power has been integral to human societies. Now our survival as individuals and as a species depends on our finding a way to reinvent power, to tame it and share it equally between us all — and thereby dissolve it. It is the ultimate challenge.
Power can only perpetuate itself by deceiving us about what it has done in the past and will do in the future, and whether alternatives exist. Power tells us stories that it is not power — that it is the rule of law, justice, ethics, protection from anarchy or the natural world, inevitable. And to obscure the fact that these are just stories — and that like all stories, these ones may not actually be true, or may even be the opposite of truth — it embeds these stories in ideology. —Jonathan Cook, How we stay blind to the story of power
- see also: ideology cloaks power
- previously: don’t pledge allegiance to any one ideology, it’s a recipe for manipulation and disaster
- see also: power doesn’t need facts or evidence, just narrative and ideology