EMPERYALİZMİN MEŞRUİYET ARAÇLARI: ATOM BOMBALARI ÖRNEĞİ (original) (raw)

2022, Madde Diyalektik ve Toplum

Although the concept of legitimacy is emphasized with different reference points in various historical periods, in general, it can be considered as a precondition for the power to maintain its power. It can be said that the bourgeois class, which aims to strengthen its power and give it legitimacy in the capitalist mode of production, uses science for these purposes. However, science is not the only tool used in this context; It is seen that all material and mental tools that have been transformed into private property have been functionalized in these aims. In the twentieth century, some events caused by imperialism, which is a stage of capitalism, brought about the questioning of the system, and providing legitimacy required a more comprehensive intervention. The atomic bombs that the United States dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War can be considered as such an event. These bombs claimed the lives of approximately 350 thousand people, mostly civilians, caused diseases that lasted for generations and caused social and psychological traumas on a world scale to the present day. The main claim of our article is that the USA tried to justify this action and to cover up the destruction it caused by using both official discourses and media, education, and cultural tools in a manipulative way. Therefore, in our article, we will try to explain the means by which the bourgeois class tries to establish the legitimacy it needs to maintain its power, and what the function of science is in this process, based on the example of atomic bombs.