I should also like to point out that, as much as I like Giorgio Agamben and think of him as an intellectual heir to the Situationist International, I think that there's a certain bitter irony to his life and work, which may have resulted from a failure to assess what happened to the Situationist International on his part. They originally set out to liberate the art world from the form of social control that it had established. They later became a living caricature of a clandestine spy ring. Agamben has stated that Walter Benjamin was the "antidote" that let him survive Martin Heidegger. He later became as a philosopher king. It is precisely the pretense which led Heidegger to support the Third Reich that Agamben later came to embody for the Left.
Though my somewhat troubled political history, I have kind of done something similar. Originally, I was operating under the assumption that the intelligence community, primarily the Central Intelligence Agency, a set of factions within MI6, and set of people to have come out of the Gehlen Organization in Germany, was primarily responsible for the development of the political project of Neo-Fascism and, therefore, most of the Western political plights, that is, of course, if you don't consider for the Russian Federation to be a Western nation. By thinking about the intelligence community for kind of an extensive period of time, I became subject to a certain pathology that eventually resulted in that I became as a living caricature of a spy. The fixation upon a set of political adversaries, often, at best, only those who are so responsible for whatever it is that has gone wrong in a person's life or mind, paradoxically results in that you come to an odd kind of similarity with them. It's how self-fulfilling prophecy functions.
Anyways, what I celebrate of Debord's political and philosophical legacy is his theory of The Spectacle. It is often assumed that The Spectacle is merely the mass media, which is a way of interpreting it, but I think that it would be better to take it for the entire political foray. In the late 1960s, due to the emergent popularity of Pacifism, there became what people call "the battle for hearts and minds". So as to highlight another political paradox, Richard Bartlett Gregg developed a concept for what he called "moral jiu-jitsu" in
The Power of Nonviolence. He theorized that Pacifists had the upper hand in any political dispute because of that they had the moral highground. This idea was later incorporated within the Hippie movement and the notable martial historical curiosity of The First Earth Battalion. The hippie's strategy of utilizing experimental psychology so as to bring an end to the Vietnam War could be cited as what had driven The Weather Underground mad and The First Earth Battalion later became American psychological operations, what people generally call "PSYWAR". Though I, admittedly, haven't read
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, I would suggest that Robert Jay Lifton's analysis of totalitarian psychological warfare relying upon what he called "thought-terminating clichés" to be to the point. What I suspect of The Spectacle is that it can be characterized as a kind of diffuse psychological warfare, though often limited by the legal prohibition against political coercion and that most people would prefer to celebrate a genuine life of the mind, and that, what is not tenable of contemporary politics is that people have become convinced of that, in order to counter the form of authoritarianism that is created out of a kind of cult pathology in believing in the necessity of psychological warfare, they should engage in it. It's why politics is so often characterized by thoughtless sloganeering and condescending appeals to a rather mythic mass. Information warfare, something that radically differs from what people could believe for our beloved free press to be, is the master's tool. The various classes who put it to use in their various attempts to secure and retain power is the master's house. The classes differ, but I would suggest that this is as true as it is in the United States as it was in the former Soviet Union.
To return to the original question posed in regards to change and individual liberty, I would suggest that there is a certain irony to Conservatism in that they originally set out to cultivate a way of life that they believe to be virtuous and that, in the process of attempting to retain the form of control that they secured so as to set this out, they invariably have created a socio-political, intellectual, and cultural climate that is nothing but hypocritical, cynical, and evidently corrupt. From Silvio Berlusconi to Donald J. Trump, it is nothing but all too readily apparent that the reactionary attempt to retain Conservative ruling orders by what, through a kind of botched pragmatism, has resulted in the form of "mob rule" that they pathologically fear.
How I think that political strategists develop machinations such as the presidency of either Berlusconi or Trump is that, at some point in their life, they had a vision for the world that they wanted to create, which, in the beaten process of bringing into fruition, they had somehow rationalized and justified its antithesis. As much as I appreciate and even have a gift for irony, particularly that which is dramatic, what, within a political context, is it other than to make light of any apparent hypocrisy? The Right tends to believe that politicians should be men who are worthy of respect. The two of them that I can name were Hans Scholl and Leszek Kołakowski. I, myself, am an Anarcho-Pacifist, but do think it rather cultish of the Anarchist movement to define Anarchy as the "abolition of all hierarchy". It's a way for them to absolve themselves of that there are people who do take on leadership roles, and often not well. It's also a way to skirt the charge of a certain degree of recalcitrance. Seeing that we don't live within a theoretical utopian society in the distant future, I acknowledge that, within any given social or political situation, there are people who are leaders and they ought to be worthy of respect. Though I am sort of a postmodern ethos that deconstructs the history of so-called "great men", I must admit that I do kind of long to see the day when these ostensive natural-born leaders become willing to engage within the difficult tasks from which a genuine Liberal democracy could be born.
That's kind of a lengthy cultural critique and I feel like I haven't quite answered your question.
How would you view the necessity of change which is often aimed at increasing individual liberty? — Levon Nurijanyan
I think that, at least, tacitly everyone, which is to say everyone who has a say in such matters, agrees to that we ought to let the world become as liberal as it can. Everyone who isn't engaged in some sort of political scheme or another, and there are right-wing intellectuals who are included within this "everyone", assumes that the democratic project ought to be undertaken so as to maximize liberty. True Conservatives tend to be concerned with the practicality of how this can be meaningfully effectuated. What people don't understand about the term, "reactionary", is that it was created to describe people who have no interest in doing this whatsoever and are merely clinging to what somewhat illusory power they have by more or less every means that are deemed to be necessary.
I am of a kind of "nihilistic optimism". I believe that freedom proliferates by its expression alone. To wax spiritual, I almost believe within a grand serendipitous project for the common liberation of all of humanity. When I consider my political experience, however, it often seems to me that, regardless as to what anyone does, only so much will ever substantially change. I am almost so inclined to suggest that. three-hundred years from now, we will finally recover from the aristocratic co-option of the Liberal democratic project and the distorted utopianism of more or less every totalitarian ideology, and a genuine Liberal democratic project will be finally established. In seven-hundred years, we could even see an ethical and equitable participatory democracy. I am only so hopeful, however.
What I think that everyone has to understand, in order to disengage from the spectacular battle for hearts and minds, however, is the world just becomes how it naturally does with or without you and will become all the more better should you, and I as well, let go of control and just let it be.