War abroad functions as domestic social control

Evidence

“No one must go hungry or thirsty; if anyone does, he’s for the concentration camp!” This joke from Hitler’s Germany might shine forth as a maxim from above all the portals of the culture industry. With sly naïveté, it presupposes the most recent characteristic of society: that it can easily find out who its supporters are. Everybody is guaranteed formal freedom. No one is officially responsible for what he thinks. Instead everyone is enclosed at an early age in a system of churches, clubs, professional associations, and other such concerns, which constitute the most sensitive instrument of social control. Anyone who wants to avoid ruin must see that he is not found wanting when weighed in the scales of this apparatus. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 115 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: World War II nations secured sacrificial war service through promises of lifetime social security — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1124; External wars are waged partly to keep the domestic population pliant. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 278; US wars abroad activate an internal racial border against domestic enemy-representatives — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 548 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• International relations logically follow domestic social-structural changes #complicates (0.78)
• Social control operates through voluntary organizations rather than formal coercion #complicates (0.76) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 115