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Culture no more? Newtopia takes a deeper look

© Glenn Brigaldino

The new "Newtopia-Magazine" is out, this edition discussing and exploring "The Culture Wars". The erosion of democracy and civil rights in the self-proclaimed US "Homeland" is as real as it gets, to the point of having installed institutional structures that in most other countries would be considered as nothing else but autocratic, authoritarian, even despotic.

This edition of Newtopia again succeeds at gathering dissenting views, hopefully not the views of the lat genuine democrats willing to stand up and speak out. Seen in the economic dimensions of globalization, changes in class relations are now well recognized as advancing towards ever-deeper divisions within and across nations; the have and have-nots, those with access and those without. Lesser understood and examined are the cultural implications of globalization, the underlying theme of this Newtopia edition.

For example when looking at attitudes on immigration, C. Shaw observes that " despite the fact that most Americans have personal or family stories of immigration to the United States, the country is currently experiencing a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment-feelings that have ebbed and flowed throughout our nation's history."

That fragmentation and sandbagging is an actual political reality across the political spectrum, and notably among the reactionaries of the so-called republicans, is portrayed by N.Council in his contribution "Irreconcilable Differences: Factional Politics in the Conservative Wing". Under the umbrella of the political "Right", fringes are radicalizing, positioning themselves for institutionalized dominance of fringe views, attitudes and religious blindfolds.

Indeed the cultural sphere has again, as long ago already seen by Antonio Gramsci, emerged as the fighting ground for influence over shaping the ideas that provide the reference points of national, increasingly global. M. and D. Weinstein discuss of language itself is being instrumentalized in the course of super-imposing political agendas of the few over the many. B.Clardy in his article extends the cultural prism to hip hop and rap. Yet while he expresses a personal hope that hip hop and rap " must continue to be the barometer by which we are able to determine our collective and global destiny" he appears to have overseen how commercialization has already long ago taken over just about the entire genre, either well before it could aspire to serve as a barometer or as it in parts and in early stages, had attempted to do so. Today, it is part of consumerism, its youthful adherents definitely more engaged in peer group identity conflicts and consumer (dress-up and listen-to) pressures than in any conscious social or political engagement.

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