DOUBLE SPEAK. P.R. VS. FACTS

When I was at school, aged 13, I wrote on my desk, in six inch high letters, possibly the shortest sentence in the English Language. “I’m Me”. Years later, I remembered writing it but couldn’t quite understand what I had meant by it. And then I did. I am not a Doctor, or a Lawyer, or a Subject, or a Junior. I am just myself.

I rejected all the labels and eventually concluded that there should be only two. The first is my name and it makes me unique. The second label is “human” and it makes me just the same as everyone else in my species. While this notation identifies uniqueness, it also suppresses ego… “I am unique… just like everyone else”.

Labels should be used sparingly as they are far too often used in one of the most insidious inventions of Power – Divide and Rule. One of the few exceptions to the use of labels might be that I would wish to know that the person who is offering me medical treatment has had some training and some experience.

Labels have been around as long as people have used name-calling as a way to mistreat other people. It is the central technique of the altogether more recent formalization of this process by Edward Bernays in the 1920s into a subject that  we now politely call Public Relations.

There is a growing consciousness regarding the use of labels. When a person’s proposed salary is discussed, it is immediately obvious if their race or gender figure in that conversation then racism and sexism are at play.

When a country looks for a pretext for war, soldiers only need to be told that those people are “the enemy”, with further justification being apparently unnecessary. The Public however need a little more convincing and so the enemy used to be  labelled “un-Christian”. If a fundamentalist religious war is being waged, then even in this supposedly advanced and modern era, the term “infidel” suffices for ISIS.

The label “Communist” used to be a sufficient pretext for outright killing but now it’s more the case that we are urged very strongly not  to elect them rather than actually murder them for their beliefs.

So then we arrive at “terrorists”. Surely we can justify murdering them?

Military Dictatorships routinely suppress dissent with outright murder of “terrorists” on the streets. So they must be terrorists, right? But they are unarmed.  No problem. Once we have murdered them, we can always place rifles in their hands and pretend they were terrorists.  Bringing us back to our friend Bernays and his Phoney Arms Ploy.

Eventually we will arrive in the future where it is not enough to call someone any name as a reason to kill them.  A more enlightened Public will demand to see verifiable evidence of an evil enemy at work  before giving their consent to the use of force.

In the future, as consciousness of manipulation develops, we will become fully  immune to the twisted language of Public Relations. This is already happening. And because everyone will be seen as human, there remains no justification for their murder.

The deception by which the media shape our reaction to events  is based on its selection of words and terms. George Orwell is  fast becoming the prophet of our time. He must have been aware of  the likes  of Edward Bernays when in 1949 he wrote probably his most famous book, 1984,  and came up with  the concept of double-speak, effectively another name for Public Relations, or Spin, and which today has become a  regular feature of  government briefings and news management. God forbid that they should jst tell us what happened – instead, our reactions to what we are told must be managed. By careful selection of “relevant” facts and judicious use of labels we must be led to the correct opinion.

Below are listed only some of the most common  concepts which  possess alternative means to describe them – a favourable  version when  the establishment does it and an unfavourable version  when the  official  enemy does it.

Bear in mind that  either  word  describes exactly  the same activity… 

ESTABLISHMENTOFFICIAL ENEMY
Armed ForcesArmed fanatics Terrorists
Peace Keeping Mission Intervention AdventureInvasion Annexation
Restore Order Protect National SecurityRemove Opposition
AccidentAtrocity
FirmRuthless
Free and Fair ElectionsRigged Elections
LegislateDictate
Law EnforcementRepression
One-off scandalSystemic Corruption
Intelligence ActivitySpies
EnquiryCover Up
War on DrugsAttack the Poor
Cut Public SpendingUndermine Living Standards
CulturePropaganda

Beyond the P.R. and the constant resort to Government Press Briefings and News management, it might be easy to lose sight of the fact that the Mainstream Media could instead simply present us with the Facts.

Before  the  media rush to report another foreign conflict, they  could always  attempt  to establish the context, the  facts,  through  a little investigative questioning and arrive at a few  substantive descriptions rather than double speak.

Here are a few honest questions that a decent-minded journalist, who has a few suspicions about their Government’s Press Briefing, might ask themselves before reporting the story about a conflict in another land.

Who are the Government? Were they elected by the people or imposed in a coup? This vital context is often omitted.

Which side are the vast majority of people on? Often, we see foreign mercenaries, boy slave soldiers and massive military aid on one side, and the vast majority of the population on the other. This is not a “Civil War”. Either the people are rising up against their Government, in which case it’s a Revolution, or the people are rising up to protect their Government in which case it’s to repel a sponsored Foreign Intervention.

What specific events have occurred in the last few years before the conflict? Have the Government tried to act in the interests of their people and divest foreign powers of access to land or resources? Or have the Government acted against the people with brutal repression and attacks on living standards. Easy to check with a quick look at the Indices as we have done previously.

Which foreign Power have invested heavily in the Country and therefore have interests to protect. Is there evidence that implicates them in funding an uprising, an attack on the sovereignty of another Nation?

On this basis, objective reporting is easy.

The  fact  is that the media do not rush to answer any  of  these crucial  questions that will explain what is going on.  They  may claim  that  they don’t really know what’s going on  even  though thousands of East Timorese tried to tell them for twenty  years that an atrocity is being  committed  by  the Indonesian  Generals in their country. There are vast swathes  of legitimate  factual  reporting that the  media  dismiss,  ignore, deny,  repel, discredit or debate until everybody’s bored of  the debate  and the evidence can be quietly dropped.

A good example was economist Franklyn Holzman’s “Are the  Soviets really outspending the U.S. on defence?” (International Security, Spring  1980) which demonstrated that the calls for greater  U.S. weaponry on the basis of the “Soviet threat” were entirely spurious. This report was never refuted, but neither was it  promoted. It was simply ignored and forgotten and so the propaganda won the  argument, the truth was left behind and the  U.S.  continued with  arms proliferation for their own reasons which had  nothing to  do  with Soviet threats but of course everything to  do  with keeping their Third World despots armed to the teeth against  any popular  uprisings – the Rio Sumpul and Lempa River massacres  in El  Salvador  (’80/’81), the Contra War  against  the  Nicaraguan people (from 1979), and the slaughter of 50,000 Mayan Indians  in Guatemala  over  the  next 6 years through to  1986. 

The  Soviet Threat  had to be invoked (and the media had to buy  it)  because bullying  small states in Central America just doesn’t look  good in print.

Where  this isn’t evidence for the claim, in this case  a  Soviet threat, then it’s an exercise in Public Relations. Or instead you  can more accurately call  it lies, deception, distortion, omission, concealment or  misinformation  which  all seem to be OK by  Western  standards.  We all remember the Weapons of  Mass Destruction that we were told existed in Iraq, and the strenuous efforts of weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Dr David Kelly to assure the West before the War in 2003 that there were none. Dr Kelly’s apparent suicide at this time is still, nearly 20 years later the subject of great suspicion and many unanswered questions. 

Only when there  is substance, i.e. evidence, reason, logic,  witnesses  or other multiple forms of corroboration, then there is truth. If our Media were required to present evidence before going to print, and this was enforced by the threat of prison sentences, our Media would look different indeed.

As it stands there are sources to which the media will lend credibility. Top of the list. Government  departments. Even though they have often been exposed as partial at best and liars at worst. This doesn’t  stop  the media from rushing to these continually indicted sources for further  misinformation.

Media should not consider it a  requirement  of “balance” or “objectivity” that they report an  indicted source whose latest release again bears all the marks of concealment  and distortion. But they could at the very least run a few checks to see whether the official version has any substance. But misinformation is regularly reported. Mass Media mislead ya.

Beyond  this, the media’s refusal to investigate implicates  them in  the conspiracy to keep silent. The extent to which the  media inform  us defines how independent they are on the one  hand,  or how  servile and compliant they are on the other. Terms  such  as “civil  war”  and “communists” are, far more often  than  not,  a guarantee of a compliant media servility. Negligent, career-seeking  journalists  need to be replaced with  journalists  with  at least some interest in arming the public with the truth, not  the “line”.

As I review these lines in 2019, Donald Trump helpfully lends assistance to my position. He has his uses. Too stupid to understand the requirement to disguise true Imperial motives behind “earnest attempts to spread freedom and democracy”, Donald opens his big mouth.  On the 13th November, the Guardian reports as follows…

“Donald Trump has insisted that the US military presence in Syria is “only for the oil”, contradicting his own officials who have insisted that the remaining forces were there to fight Isis… Following Trump’s earlier insistence that his administration was solely interested in “keeping” Syrian oil, the US military deployed mechanised military units to oil fields in the east of the country.

However, seizing or benefiting from oil on a foreign territory, without permission from the sovereign authority, would be a violation of international law. Several US officials had sought to interpret the president’s remarks as the US meant to meaning that the denying Isis access to the oil ” (sic)  

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/13/donald-trump-syria-oil-us-troops-isis-turkey

Although the journalist’s grammar seems to derail a little in that last sentence – maybe due to apoplexy that a US President has in a second undone 100 years of carefully constructed propaganda – we finally hear straight from the Horse’s mouth… the US is not interested in fighting for democracy or against communism or terror.

Contrary to the official line that the US has been shamefully peddling for the last century, Trump comes right out and tells it exactly how it is… the US is a rogue state that has no interest in the sovereignty of other nations, or International Law, or in fighting for democracy. It’s all about grabbing resources. The western propaganda machine falls apart in front of our very eyes.

Citizens who have done exactly the same as Trump, asserting the true priorities of Western Governments many times in Public over the years have been met with sneering and contemptuous disdain by Politicians who condescend that we idiots have no proper grasp of the complexities of Politics.

In the meantime the State and the Media will do what they can to repair the damage. State Officials will scramble around trying to re-interpret what the President said. The Guardian disappeared the story once it had been online on their front page for only a matter of minutes.

The corrupt career journalist is actually not a journalist, they are propagandists. When they continually quote an  indicted  source, refuse  to  lend credibility to the other side  and  refuse  to investigate beyond what their government source has told them,  what would you call them? I would call them cynical cowards and prostitutes, protecting their own careers by  repeating the lies of the powerful. Or are they just doing their job and trying to pay the mortgage? Both.

The  objective  and  method of Public Relations  is   to  ignore, dismiss, ridicule the negative, and to exaggerate and  publicise the  positive. The PR therefore only reveals the hyped  positive. In contrast, the actual reality may be a negative that far outweighs a hyped positive. In this  way, regression can be presented as progress.

Take  the example of Indonesia. Ignore death  squads,  widespread torture,  and mass repression. Emphasise things like the  release  of three  political  prisoners (to co-incide with the  visit  of  an American diplomat). Add a few abstract claims with no substantive basis  like  “moving towards democracy” (a slightly less rigged election?).  Abstract claims are preferable because they don’t  actually  involve a requirement to then go and do anything. 

The evidence is building a damning picture of our earnest reporter…  the  corrupt, cowardly,  partially-sighted,  career-minded propagandist will deliberately fall for the cheap conjuring trick of the Government spokesperson. The propagandist will report what he  sees in the left hand which bears the public relations  package,  the false positive, the gesture – i.e. relief aid,  earnest attempts at negotiation, improvements just around the corner.

The propagandist will not report what he sees (or refuses to  see)  in the  right hand, i.e. the main part of the story – arms  for  the dictator, ignore the torture and other human rights abuses,  keep stealing  the  crops and the minerals. In the left  hand  is  the relief  work to save a few locals, but in the right hand  is  the military  aid that helped your dictator slaughter the  locals  in the  first  place. The military aid dwarfs the  relief  aid.  The numbers  killed dwarfs the numbers saved. The reporter  sees  the  dwarf in the left hand, but fails to spot the giant in the  right hand. Some oversight.

To  invert an observation by Edward S. Herman … the test  of  a state  propagandist, as opposed to an independent journalist,  is that  serial  lying by his sources will not cause  him  to  doubt their next statement. The opposite of investigative journalism is propaganda.  The absence of the one indicates the  presence  of the other.

How  is  it  possible to spend one hour every day  devoted  to  a newspaper  (any newspaper) that after 10, 20, 50 years  gives  no realistic  (fact-based) understanding of any one  single  country throughout the entire world? US interventions to acquire  foreign land  and resources are written out of media history. The secret war against Cambodia. Half a  story (i.e. US and other Imperialist crimes omitted) will never  enable understanding, hence the confusion that calls itself a news item. If  this  appears as confusion, the excuse is  given  that  these things  are  too  complex to put in a few simple  words,  and  of course then there is the risk of over-simplification. e.g.  someone’s building an empire.

Over-simplification  is  allowed only if it puts forward  a  pro-government  point of view. The US Government wished to crush  the anti-fascist resistance in Greece after the second World War. All that  was  needed was a simplified analogy to  Congress  by  Dean Acheson to justify the slaughter. He offered the idea that Greece was like a rotten apple that would infect the rest of the  barrel (Western Europe, Africa, Asia Minor, Iran and all to the east) if the  US  did not intervene. This moronically simple  analogy  was deemed  sufficient  to re-install the Monarchy  who  were  fascist sympathisers during World War 2.

A news media that constantly defaults to military and government  Press  Conferences and Wire Services does not permit journalists to equip  their readers  with  the truth, only the “line”. The line  is  “applaud what is ours, attack what isn’t”. Information from  international Aid  agencies,  local  voluntary groups on the  ground  and  even witnesses  do not establish the “line”, they only provide  ironic contradiction or “isolated incidents”, if reported at all.

The  Military/Political Wire Service comes in to the  media  HQs. The  filter operates and the News Report goes out,  excluding  US implication;  hyping and applauding legal US actions;  demonising the enemy no matter what the facts, or the evidence.

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