Hegemony?

What is hegemony? More about the Institute.

A general definition from wikipedia:

Hegemony is the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. Hegemony controls the ways that ideas become “naturalized” in a process that informs notions of common sense.

Throughout history, cultural and political power in any arena has rarely achieved a perfect balance, but hegemony results in the empowerment of certain cultural beliefs, values, and practices to the submersion and partial exclusion of others. Hegemony affects the perspective of mainstream history, as history is written by the victors for a sympathetic readership. ~wikipedia

One man’s hegemony is another man’s civilization.

Theories of hegemony attempt to explain how dominant groups or individuals (known as hegemons) can maintain their power — the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate ones to accept, adopt and internalize their values and norms. Antonio Gramsci devised one of the best-known accounts of hegemony. His theory defined the State by a mixture of coercion and hegemony, between which he drew distinctions; according to Gramsci, hegemony consists of political power that flows from intellectual and moral leadership, authority or consensus, as distinguished from mere armed force.

Recently, critical theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have re-defined the term “hegemony” as a discoursive strategy of combining principles from different systems of thought into one coherent ideology. An example of this is the American project of discoursively tying together democracy, liberalism, freedom of trade and war on terror into one coherent bundle. ~wikipedia

Is ‘hegemony’ a natural part of your lexicon?

The use of hegemonic as an epithet is well documented in communist and socialist rhetoric and propaganda. It is synonymous with calling America an Imperialist power. As any well versed leftist knows the United States uses the oppressive capitalist system to maintain it’s hegemonic power over the world. Keeping the third world poor and stealing the resources that should rightly be held and utilized by workers committees and faithful people’s representatives in true democracies.

Communist dictator Hugo Chavez recommends Noam Chomsky’s book, “Hegemony or Survival,” during a speech at the United Nations. During which he also called Bush a devil and called for the overthrow of the evil American ‘empire’.

“The hegemonistic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species,” said Chavez, holding up a copy of Chomsky’s book and to the applause of many attendees. Chavez continued, stressing, “We appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our head. ~venezuelanalysis.com

Hegemonic is the word of choice for well educated marxists, leftists, and liberals.

The real joke is that even allowing for a generous interpretation of hegemony with the United States as hegemon, we are the most benign hegemonic power that has ever had the opportunity to rule. We can well imagine what kind of hegemonic power Hugo Chavez would fashion and use to rule over the earth. I suspect that all opposition would be silenced just as they are now in Venezuela. History, it seems, is ready to repeat itself.