I feel like this has been a concept for a long time within imperialist studies, but I can't find it. Surely it's a thing. What would you call it?

EDIT: thanks for all the brilliant responses

  • HeavenAndEarth [she/her]
    ·
    5 months ago

    This was a phrase I first saw used by Daniel Bessner.

    So what message would the average fourteen-year-old take away from Black Ops Cold War? To riff on a phrase coined by Mark Fisher, the game evinces an “imperialist realism” that can’t quite justify American actions abroad, but also can’t imagine a world outside of a militarily dominant U.S. empire. This idea is clearly expressed in Bell’s trigger phrase (“We’ve got a job to do”), which implicitly affirms that in the Cold War, and perhaps in every war, all a soldier can do is put his or her head down and get to work. Though nothing — not the CIA, not the Soviet Union, not even one’s own mind — can be trusted, no other world is possible, so you might as well support your own empire. https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-cultural-contradictions-of-call-of-duty/