Mass Media as a Tool of Imperialist Manipulation: Analysis

An investigation into how the culture industry today, through video games and other works, plants the seeds of historical revisionism and remilitarization in the minds of common people.

Adorno and Horkheimer’s theoretical framework of the culture industry, despite its roots in the “theory first, praxis never” ideas of Western Marxism, can be linked today to modern cultural products such as games and animation.¹

It is quite clear that modern imperialism has evolved and developed a far more sophisticated and covert system for using mass media to export pro-war sentiment and support the military-industrial complex.

The core of this new form of the culture industry lies in the deep integration of entertainment and politics, subtly shaping the masses’ cognition and values through standardized production, pseudo-personalized packaging, and emotional consumption.

From indoctrination to immersion

Adorno and Horkheimer pointed out that the culture industry projects naked profit motives onto various cultural forms, eroding the critical nature of art through standardized production and causing the public to lose their ability to think independently while being entertained. Modern video games and animation take this logic to new heights; these are no longer only consumer products but interactive, immersive ideological carriers.

The American case

A clear example of this is the American case of Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Rockstar Games’ founder stated explicitly that the GTA series is fundamentally American and that its successes are inseparable from “American elements” such as “guns [and] larger-than-life characters.”

While the series seemingly satirizes American political corruption, consumerism, and racial issues, the core player behaviour, such as accumulating wealth through violent crimes and challenging established order, may actually reinforce a “might makes right” way of thinking and a push to return to the laws of the jungle.

This ultimately serves to rationalize and entertain capitalist desires and violent logic, thereby causing players to become numb to real-world American (and broader Western) hegemonic behaviour through virtual catharsis.

A more direct manifestation is that some Western games deliberately misdraw maps in the context of so-called “enemy” territories, incorrectly labelling places such as China’s Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region (XAR) and China’s Taiwan province.

This is a provocative use of “entertainment” products to lay low and test the waters of political agendas—or, in other words, an attempt to subtly undermine other countries’ sovereignty and serve their geopolitical strategies.²

To add, war games have also been noted as having “a growing influence on Western leaders,” and troops are known to have trained on immersive simulations.

Some mass-market video games are, furthermore, direct collaborations with or have been explicitly approved and funded by Western militaries, and writers and producers such as Call of Duty’s Dave Anthony have been recruited by the US Department of Defense (DoD).

The Japanese case

Japanese right-wing forces have in recent years utilized anime, manga, video games, and other media to implant militaristic symbols such as the Rising Sun flag and Unit 731 into popular culture.³ Researcher Matthew Penney describes this through the concept of “war fantasy.”

The Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines Class-A war criminals, once collaborated with the globally renowned IP Pokémon, turning it into a “must-visit” tourist attraction.⁴

The core of this strategy is to use so-called kawaii culture and everyday consumption to dissolve the seriousness and cruelty of Japan’s despicable historical acts, blurring the younger generation’s understanding of the guilt of their war of aggression through emotional identification.

While works such as Shigeru Mizuki’s The History of the Showa Era expose the cruelty of war, there is also a prevalent practice in Japan of portraying Japan as a supposed “victim” through artistic works.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Japan waged an imperialist war of aggression. Far from being a victim, Japan committed despicable acts across East and Southeast Asia, including the establishment of the “comfort women” sexual slavery system as well as biological experimentation.

This selective narrative, complementing games such as Kantai Collection (Kancolle) that moe-ify military weaponry, together constructs a “cultural field” that denies aggression and downplays guilt, creating a foundation for Japanese public opinion to break through its officially pacifist Constitution and move toward remilitarization, an act strongly opposed by the international community and contrary to the established postwar order.

Kancolle, specifically, officially collaborates with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), which continues to use the Rising Sun flag as well as martial songs, signs, and technical terms from the Imperial era.⁵

Female characters from Kancolle are largely sexualized and objectified. An article celebrating its 10th anniversary notes:

If I had to explain Kancolle to someone in a few words… it would be a game where shipgirls do battle against bikini monsters with the goal of taking just enough damage to blow your girls clothes off! … The theme of the game is collecting a fleet of cute girls that are actually anthropomorphized warships from World War II. You use them to do battle against the “abyssals,” a fleet of monster ship girls.

The JMSDF’s band has also performed popular anime soundtracks, including that of Space Battleship Yamato.

Lessons from Vietnam and Korea’s wars of resistance against US aggression

Historical wars such as Vietnam’s Resistance War against America and Korea’s Fatherland Liberation War offer lessons for understanding today’s cultural infiltration.

During Vietnam’s war of resistance, the US imperialists used disinformation to create pretexts for escalating the war and leveraged media outlets like Voice of America for wartime propaganda.

Today, this manipulation has shifted from official news to more covert and entertaining video games and social media. For example, some Western games are known to directly imbed “spy recruitment” advertisements, using part-time jobs and high salaries as bait for infiltration.

During the World Anti-Fascist War, the Japanese imperialists organized the “pen battalion” (pen butai) to glorify their aggression. After the end of the war, this force permeated the cultural sphere, and its narrative techniques have continued in contemporary animation and film.

Japan’s method of romanticizing and fantasizing about Japan’s war of aggression today is consistent with the literary propaganda of the “pen battalion” of that era, but its influence is far more profound today due to the reach of modern media.

Safeguard national cultural history, defend historical truth

Adorno and Horkheimer warned that the culture industry has once again degraded humanity, turning the masses into appendages of the machine; in contemporary times, games like GTA and cultural products like some Japanese anime are upgraded versions of this same culture industry, using entertainment as a guise for ideological infiltration.

Imperialist America focuses on strengthening the inherent logic of its global hegemony and geopolitical claims, while Japan focuses on glorifying its long history of aggression and paving the way to remilitarization.

For countries that have experienced this imperialist aggression, such as China, Korea, and Vietnam, contemporary cultural “soft infiltration” is like a second disaster, its harm no less than that of a direct military threat.

These attempts to sever authentic historical memory from the younger generation and replace it with beautified, fictional narratives that align with material interests are staunchly opposed by all peace-loving people.

It is crucial that critical thinking and wariness of potential manipulation by the culture industry be maintained in order to safeguard national cultural security and defend historical truth.

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1. I do not find it meaningfully contradictory for Marxist-Leninists to develop Western Marxist ideas for anti-imperialist, materialist analysis while continuing to reject Western Marxism as a political tendency (idealism, defeatism, inaction, retreat into academia, etc.).

As I have said before, “Theory without praxis makes one a scholar, not a Marxist‑Leninist.” Yet, while scholars such as those from Western Marxism are largely non-revolutionary, scholars may still form coherent analytical frameworks.

2. This is also seen in the anti-China rhetoric spewed by fans of K-pop groups. For instance, the “genderless” K-pop boy group XLOV includes Wumuti, an ethnic Uyghur from Xinjiang in Northwestern China, and Rui, who is from China’s Taiwan region. Some EVOLs (XLOV fans) have thus claimed that “Wumuti is not Chinese” and “Rui is Taiwanese,” showing their blatant disregard for history and international law. Xinjiang and Taiwan are inalienable parts of China’s territory, and both these members hold Chinese nationality.

3. I explore Imperial Japan’s history and modern legacy in my collection “Imperial Japan: Then and Now” on Unlearning Capitalism. You can also see the announcement, “Voice of the Proletariat Launches ‘Imperial Japan: Then and Now’ Collection on Unlearning Capitalism.”

4. The event was ultimately cancelled due to China’s protests, but the damage had been done.

5. Recently, the JMSDF also came under fire for self-identifying as “Japan Navy,” a term that blatantly violates its officially pacifist Constitution.