And so we turn our attention to the Forces that turn the heads of our aspiring youngsters towards the service of the greater good.
1928 – Edward Bernays – the father of Public Relations – “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society … it is the intelligent minorities that need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically”.
People are required to perform this task on behalf of the “intelligent” minorities. The State’s approach to journalists has shifted from co-ercion to bribery over the last century. The Sedition Act of 1798 made it a crime to utter or publish anything that brought high officials “into contempt or disrepute”. The Act was only overturned in the Supreme Court in 1964.
When it comes to exposing corrupt officials these days the emphasis is more on the journalist maintaining his career by not rocking the boat. More carrot than stick. And there’s plenty of journalists who like carrots. And who like to call themselves journalists, even if in reality they are only loyal mouthpieces, reciting the PR output of Government Departments. They will not be free-thinking types who question the essentially benevolent intent of Western society – they would not be hired if they were.
And so to the defence of this morally bankrupt “civilisation” enter the well-guarded intellectual traditions of the Media, the University Academics and assorted Public Relations types. The entire effort of these billion billion words of absolution is to explain Imperialism in benevolent terms such as “liberating people from their own repressive government or the international Communist conspiracy”. The simplest truths that show imperialism for what it is will be described as over-simplifications, one-off occurrences or inconsistencies. And if you don’t believe them, the police, the courts, the prisons (and the army if necessary) will help you believe – we see that you like revolution, but vote for us or we’ll bomb your children.
As I write this page in the nineties, I only have to go back to last night to find an example. The Americans went to fight communism in Korea in the early fifties, or to translate from media-speak, invaded Korea in the late forties, partitioning the country and maintaining a military occupation in the south ever since. There have been numerous protests in US-owned South Korea leading up to the one last week that was ended by the Military Police last night. Students are the educated part of the population with soap operas and other TV whitewashes ensuring that the rest of the public are kept in ignorance (as everywhere in the “free” west). Students are simply people with education and networks and the subsequent chance to come together and organise. 3,000 students occupied the university demanding that Korea be re-unified and that the US military occupation should end.
Enter the media. We are denied a student representative to speak directly to us. Instead, the media accuse the students of being communists organised by the north and wheel on a couple of well-heeled Americans and South Koreans to tell us so. We are also told that “most people” in South Korea are happy with the situation and do not back the students. Presumably they prefer foreign military occupation, sweatshop labour and a Police State to round up the entire population of the University.
The War Machine called Imperialism will at all times refer to itself as “Civilisation”. Racism ensures that all other cultures are referred to as savages, primitives, communists, extremists or some other fashionable dehumanising term that suggests that they are something other than people, hence making it OK to “civilise” them (subjugate and steal from them).
There are two conflicting stories from any Imperialist war released by two very different types of journalist. You can believe the official version of the invading interests released to the media by the War Office, and faithfully reprinted by the unquestioning journalist. Or you can believe the testimonies of the refugees fleeing from the invasion, reported by the questioning journalist, the one who dares to disbelieve the Press Releases of the War Office and go into the field and have a look and talk to actual people.
The record shows which group have the best reason to lie – the ones who get the “investment opportunities”. It is instructive to see how the media behave when the investors don’t get their way and the people have a revolution to throw out their dictator.
Let’s briefly return to 1984 and Nicaragua. Remember this? Elections return Sandinistas. This election discredited out of US media history but endorsed as free and fair by observers from the rest of the world. US favourite Cruz refuses to stand in “rigged” elections.
Although Cruz has no popular support in Nicaragua, the American Press tell the world he’s the main opposition and call the election (reviewing press coverage) a “farce” (17 times), a “sham” (10 times) and “phoney” (7), a “piece of theatre” (6) etc. British Tory MP observer says the elections were fairer than in Britain.
FSLN beat 7 other parties and get 67% of the vote in an 82% turnout. 2 days later Reagan gets much less in his election. Unsubstantiated Washington leak about Russian MiG aeroplanes sustains 5 day media crusade against Daniel Ortega’s new government. The media perpetuated Washington’s lie without checking whether there was any basis of fact. There was none. The absence of investigative journalists indicates the presence of willing propagandists – report it whether it can be substantiated or not.
The media lie for their Paymasters and perpetuate the theology of beliefs as fact. In return, they get to sell the Newspapers and get their cut of the proceeds of human mega-terror… Noam Chomsky eloquently describes them as “vigilant guardians protecting privilege from the threat of public understanding”.
The media bleat that they are objective but in Nicaragua, both the media and its readership recognise that newspapers are necessarily biased. They do not bleat the same pretence of neutrality that our media do and they are therefore free to read whichever point of view they believe in.
In the West, we are asked to believe that news reporting is not biased but objective. I need only go back one day before these lines were written to find an example that this is blatantly not the case.
On the BBC news yesterday (18/6/96), Alan Little reports on the “Civil War” in Sierra Leone. If it’s a civil war, then why do the “Government” (an unelected warlord) feel it necessary to use a group of South African mercenaries called “Executive Outcomes” to control a captive slave army of boy soldiers to fight the population, referred to in the news item as “rebels”. Why has the warlord not got a national army behind him? Because the “rebels” are in fact the rest of the population in the form of a popular liberation movement called UNITA.
We are told that Sierra Leone has a number of diamond mines. We are not told who is paying for all the mercenaries or their weapons to fight for the right to exploit the diamonds. The US is heavily involved in neighbouring Liberia, and in Nigeria (high grade oil), just a little further along the West African coast. Nigeria elected a government on the 12th June 1993 which was thrown out by General Abacha’s coup. Check who’s making the money out of Nigeria’s high grade oil these days.
Meanwhile, back in Sierra Leone, “Executive Outcomes” have just arrived from nearby Ghana (Cocoa) where they have propped up another unelected ruling body and helped them to achieve “pacification” – terrorising the population into silence, not to be confused with peace.
So this “civil war” as Alan Little likes to describe it is lined up as follows – One Warlord armed by an un-named foreign power (almost inevitably the US because of neighbouring involvement), one group of South African mercenaries and one captive group of slave boy soldiers taken from their parents. Versus the population.
A civil war suggests that one half of the population fights the other half. This is evidently not the case. More accurately we have foreign intervention to prop up a dictator to gain access to the diamond mines. Alan Little only has praise for Executive Outcomes for bringing “peace” to nearby Ghana and for offering the same service to the tyrant in Sierra Leone. We see in this one article alone, fairly typical of the pattern of foreign reporting, that there is gross misuse of the terms “Civil War”, “Government”, “rebels” and “peace”.
“Civil War” means foreign-backed military government banking media industry, versus the people (the privileged thousands versus the dispossessed millions); “Government” means despot; “rebels” means the population. And “peace” in these terms means slaughtering, terrorising and pacifying the population to steal their country and open it up to foreign exploitation.
Preserving National Sovereignty doesn’t appear to be a right for the people of Sierra Leone. According to the BBC the “Rebels” have been subdued by the Government’s army with a little help from mercenaries and peace will soon reign. They are blind to the fact that peace in these terms means removing the population. Their only problem is that there are so many of us, and the more they kill us, the more we breed, and the more they oppress us, the harder we fight. Nature’s way of keeping a balance.
Power understands that slaughter creates martyrs and armed resistance. Hence the need for manufacturing consent. Once the people believe your lies then they will not resist you.
Foreign conflicts are reported as civil wars regardless of whether there is foreign intervention. Even if a tiny minority of fascists are supported by foreign weapons, training and mercenaries and set themselves against the entire population, this is still reported as a civil war. If a dictator is supported by the west, the media will still report a civil war even though the dictator sets himself against the entire population. The Americans during Vietnam admitted that “the Generals are all we’ve got” and yet we were told that the US were assisting the Vietnamese fight the communists. We weren’t told that “the Vietnamese” just meant a few dozen Generals.
The media therefore refer to the Generals as “the Vietnamese” and to the population as “the Communists”. “Communists” and “terrorists” are thus people arming themselves to avenge the slaughter of their families by western-backed fascist generals; people looking to reclaim their land; looking for the right not to be tortured. With US foreign policy unable to keep its fingers out of anybody’s affairs is there really even such a thing as a civil war these days? When the beneficiaries of a “civil war” are a foreign power, it’s not a civil war it’s empire building, sponsored mercenaries overthrowing popular national struggles for independence.
Consider these ordinary people who are driven to pick up a gun and ask yourself this – how much would they have to do to you before you were prepared to arm yourself and risk your own life against a trained soldier or mercenary? How much? Would they have to plunder your ancestral home? Rape your wife? Would they have to kill your brother to incite you to such extreme behaviour? Or maybe your entire family? Fundamentalist extremist crazyheads are in the tiny minority here. The majority of people who take up arms are not born terrorists. They are driven to it by foreign powers executing their families.
By writing these words, they could say that I have been radicalised. They can paint me as a dangerous Communist liable to throw a bomb at any moment. Then can come and kill me before I do so. The one hole in the argument? At the end of the day, the act of terror is committed not by me, but by them. They can pretend I was violent but where is the proof? Do they need any?
People who pick up guns to fight against terror are not communists, fundamentalists, gooks, extremists or terrorists. Be very suspicious when you hear such words being used to dehumanise an entire population.
The motive for armed revolt is not communism, it’s self-defence, revenge, a fight for basic human rights. People all over the world are the same as us with the one difference that they have had to watch their families being slaughtered. Only their experiences at the hands of dictators make them do what we ourselves would eventually do under the rule of such barbarity from a Shah in Iran, or a Somoza in Nicaragua, or a Batista in Cuba. The regime that replaces American power is better simply because it is the choice of the resident population. If they choose “communists” or Sandinistas or muslim rule (“Islamic fundamentalism”) that is their choice whether we in the West approve or not.
Remember that the British funded extreme Protestantism in Northern Ireland as a way to combat local Republican sentiment demanding Home Rule. Leon Uris’s excellent docu-drama novel “Trinity” outlines the Establishment’s experience in Divide and Rule. To this day, there are Wahhabi Mosques in the UK that unlike other forms of Islam, preach violent Jihad. Bizarre as it may appear, they receive support from our Government.