As Antifascist Calling reports, the escalating violence in Mexico is a direct consequence of US policy, including the arming of that policy that distributed military grade weapons throughout the region, often into the hands of narcotics cartels that provided protection to traffickers, but also targeted political opponents of corrupt officialdom. Given the new gifts from the US Government to the Mexican Government for surveillance of communications, that means that whistleblowers, activists and journalists attempting to restore sanity to their country will be easier to identify and terminate.

For the moment, that kind of data in the US is used mainly by law enforcement against political opponents of neoliberalism, but if things work well for them in Mexico, national security criminal enterprises in the US could start using it themselves–against us.

Perhaps most perceptive of the social context within which it works, the commission’s 2012 report on the state-run residential schools for aboriginal children observes that, “The colonial framework of which they were a central element has not been dismantled.” Dismantling that framework, that was designed to destroy Indigenous community and culture, however, requires a new mindset and a change of heart in Ottawa–something that has yet to be seen.

In our Orwellian America, independent thought is a truly herculean achievement; with the indoctrination of young and vulnerable minds through media, education, and propaganda, it is amazing that any of us escapes the coordinated corrosion of democratic principles and practices, let alone manages to rethink, recover, regroup, and resist. From CIA-sponsored color revolutions to corporate paternalism, we are taught to be intellectually infantile and politically illiterate. Those who awaken from this L-dopa state are quickly categorized as non-conforming and shuttled off to re-education camps, prison plantations, or meaningless lives of poverty.

To accomplish this state of collective unconsciousness through mass communication, Madison Avenue played an essential role, often overshadowed by Wall Street, but always close to official engineers of the psychological warfare deployed by government agencies. Hijacking history helped, but even more effective are campaigns of racially diverse kids on TV singing songs about sharing Coca-Cola with the other kids of the world, or happy idiots waving CIA-purchased colored banners as oblivious dupes of Soros’ Open Society. Fascism, after all, cannot be billed as a hate campaign (even though it eventually foments them), but rather as a family friendly frolic in the festive fantasy of the fatherland. Now where did we see that before?

In December 2005, Public Good Project — an organization for which I’ve served as administrative director since 1994 — co-sponsored On the Border, a national human rights conference to explore patterns of violence associated with hate campaigns, and to discuss the recurrence of vigilantes as a political pressure group. Our research director Paul de Armond’s report presented at the conference, The Racist Origins of Border Militias, recounted the history of organized anti-immigrant violence over the last half century. On our website, other documents and reports examine hateful ideologies associated with this violence, and trace how they are transmitted throughout our society.

Writing recently in Indian Country Today, Devon G. Pena examines the ideologically hostile climate produced by exaggerated right-wing grievances in the United States. As a scholar of the ecology of fear and the climate of hatred it generates, Pena observes that learning peacefulness can transform our culture of violence, but it must begin with socializing our children in ways that value caring and sharing rather than glorifying violence. While this may be easier said than done in a society that exudes violence in all its ramifications as a virtue, discussing our disease of dominion is a good place to begin.