Active Measures in US Colleges

Propaganda as a Tool of Influence.

The present at Columbia and other Elite Colleges

We all watch events at colleges and universities with a measure of alarm. Yes, while it is clear that American speech laws are very elastic, more so than in Germany, for example, the reality is that we are quickly reaching the edges of speech laws. We may be crossing into incitement or worse. So, I want to do a somewhat historic dive because it is precisely at colleges that what we call active measures seem to have the most dramatic effect. Let me clarify: we call it active measures, and we call all of it disinformation, but in reality, it is old-fashioned propaganda.

It is also the embrace by academia, in particular the Liberal Arts and history professors, of some ideas that they transform into a theory of everything. These days, it is the postmodern world, where facts are replaced with context and oppressor-oppressed ideology. These are nothing more than facile explanations of the world, where Colonialism becomes the explanation of all ills. In its most extreme form, it seeks to destroy the modern liberal order and the United States.

As I wrote about this crisis, I was there when Jaques Derrida and Michelle Foucault entered academic discourse. They were not supposed to be a theory of everything but a way to approach things like understanding the Mexican Inquisition in its last days during the Mexican War of Independence. This is precisely how I used the Archeology…