Risk and Extortion XVII: The PMC and Staatsräson

The blog entry on scapegoats has already argued why the Stranger is the perfect candidate for Scapegoat, as the stranger is among us but does not belong to us; thus, the Stranger is easily associated with “the Enemy Within”. Without making a case for Jewish Exceptionalism as anything but Myth, the force of this Myth is entrenched not just within the Staatsräson of the State of Israel but within every Nation State whose own imperial-colonial past may come back to haunt them otherwise. The silent axiom of this Staatsräson is that imperialism is always wrong unless it is done in the name of a superior civilization, i.e. “ours”. Thus, the Myth of Jewish Exceptionalism as become the origin story of the entire self-deception of “Western Civilization”.  The Triadic Identity Structure – Friend/Foe/Stranger – therefore forms the cornerstone of a Staatsräson that misconceives its self-justification for civilization, including its universalizing-imperial appeal to – for example – Human Rights, which it has never ceased to violate in the name of the same Staatsräson.

The Professional Managerial Class has an expertise in deploying its privileged status as a means for manipulation and sanctioning of propaganda. They are of course also experts in self-deception as they misconceive themselves as the Establishment whereas they are only its stewards; they misconceive their virtue hoarding as defence of civilization; they misconceive their particular class-interests as universal humanism. Deploying strategies of deflection and projection, the PMC are the prime example of the neurosis of modernity and become exactly what they fear. This is why many members of the PMC  can disidentify with certain forms if identity politics through the invocation of identity politics. The phenomenon of Progressive Except Palestine (PEP) is a typical symptom one finds in the discourses espoused by members if the PMC. The fact that this phenomenon is not causing a huge identity crisis amongst them and – instead – is often an amplification of their virtue-hoarding, is not simply the result of a poverty of critical self reflection, it is enshrined in the very warped self-identification of the PMC. To be a member of the PMC without recognizing it as a specific class with specific class-interests is the corner stone of its identity politics.

The PMC are also the main anchor of the deployment of risk-discourse as a means to extort more money from those who have the least of it. Slowing down Climate Change, expanding Military Defence, supporting Ukraine, supporting Israel, investing in High-Tech and AI, economic competitiveness etc., whatever the PMC are raising awareness of and supporting government spending for, always involves some kind of risk-discourse. Risk-discourse has become the language of extortion.

As has been hinted at before, extortion is one of the favorite means of governing of the Kakistocracy, along with bribery and blackmail, but it is the one least acknowledged. Bribery is widespread and to a large extent legalized as long as its serves the interests of the Establishment. For example, lobbying often involves material and immaterial transactions that are either completely legal or, by means of clever accounting, are not traceable as illegal, for example through the deployment of shell companies in the Bahamas or Virgin Islands. Blackmail is slightly more difficult to trace, because – at least up until the first presidency of Donald Trump, it was still considered too dodgy to admit. By modelling his style of government onto that of organized crime, however, the Trump regime is now to a considerable extent run on the basis of blackmail.

Extortion, however, is the most important pillar of kakistocratic governance. Extortion, for example access to minerals in Ukraine through the threat of withdrawing military support, is better than blackmail because it generates income. The mode of governance of Trump II is completely embedded in extortion: tarrifs, Greenland, the use of ICE to deport protesters, the pressure on large law firms to provide pro bono legal services to Trump, all are examples of extortion. There is a grey area between the state and organized crime and it often involves politics, economics/finance and sex and drugs and rock and roll.

It is only logical that the PMC is completely blind to this. It is also logical that in sociological theory, organized crime never plays a prominent role. It is nicely carved up between organizational sociology and the sociology of crime and deviance. The first specialization is that of “normal systems and structures”, the second field of specialization mainly concerns poor sods who are treated as individually or socially pathological. In its blindness to the workings of kakistocracy, mainstream Sociology simply becomes a mouthpiece of the PMC, depicting a society in its own image.

Extortion and Blackmail are highly profitable operations and thus fully rational. As I have explained before, if you can control who should arrest you and who should convict you, you have nothing to fear. This is how the Blackmail and Extortion Ring around Jeffrey Epstein might have worked. Videorecording powerful men having sex with underage girls is a perfect way to get them to help you whitewash tax evasions, organize illicit arms deals, buy you political influence, court orders, and of course law enforcement agencies that are looking the other way, for example in the name of national security. (Why else is the Department of Homeland Security involved in the case against Sean Combs?) But why is Sociology is silent about the pivotal role of organized crime in creating and maintaining a social order that is favourable to only a very few? The answer to this is fairly simple, as members of the PMC, those who earn a living doing Sociology have a vested interest in keeping up the pretense that the normal order is not only legal and legitimate, but also that its legality and legitimacy are morally embedded and normatively secured. Sociology cannot fathom a notion of a normal State that is not legal, legitimate and normatively anchored on a reasonable moral foundation. Sociology, being an intellectually poor offspring of Kantian Angst and Conceited Hegelry, is too entrenched in the interest of Staatsräson that it simply has no appetite for thinking outside of the box.