Only then will we see if the virtuous gentlemen who make so many sacrifices to preserve "freedom" around the world are truly serious about democracy and the Bill of' Rights at home.
However, if
we understand correctly
the nature of the beast,
the more likely scenario
is that confronted with
a well‑organized
and conscious mass movement,
the self-assigned guardians
of' democracy will declare
that the rules of the game
are being
(T)he pursuit of the democratic virtues of equality and individualism has led to the delegitimation of authority generally and the loss of trust in leadership. The democratic expansion of political participation and involvement has created an “overload" on government and the imbalanced expansion of governmental activities, exacerbating inflationary tendencies in the economy.
And later in the text,
Every
social organization requires,
in some measure, inequalities
in authority and distinctions
in function. To the
extent that the spread
of the democratic temper
corrodes all these, exercising
a leveling and an homogenizing
influence, it destroys
the bases of trust
and cooperation among
citizens and creates obstacles
to collaboration for
any common purpose. (The Crisis
of Democracy, M. Crozier,
S.P. Huntington, J.
Leaving
the elegant mumbo-jumbo aside,
it's clear that the above
ruminations could not have
been penned by a believer
in authentic democracy.
But, then, it
is not too difficult to see whose authority and which socioeconomic
order the authors are
worried about. If the
history of our species is
any guide, people do not
become impatient and disenchanted
with "authority" or "leadership" as
disemboweled categories, but
only with very specific social arrangements
which may be discovered
to be against their interests.
Thus, in our country, or,
for that matter, in
the rest of the Western
bloc, the
people are not threatening democracy with
their demands, but, more
precisely, a
system of pseudo-democracy in
which oligarchic power, in
the name of democracy,
controls and co-opts all
major policy decisions
affecting the national
well‑being. The
real subversives are within
the system, not among the
powerless.
OVER
THE YEARS, capitalist democracy
in the U.S. has spawned
a very vast system of ideological manipulation
in order to survive and
go on legitimating itself.
It is a fair assumption
that if the American
people knew more about
the true purpose and nature
of our foreign policy of "pragmatic" support
for brutal fascists, they
might reject it altogether,
leaving the ruling orders
in something of a lurch.
It is important, therefore,
to understand how the news‑stream
is processed by the mind
managers, to decide which
items deserve inclusion,
exclusion, downplay or
distortion. Consider, if
you will, why was it so "natural" to
look upon the Iran hostage
crisis as one deserving
saturation and jingoist
coverage (with similar
treatment accorded Lech
Walesa and Solidarity
in Poland), while Tucapel
Jimenez, the very moderate
leader of the Chilean
workers' struggle, could
be shot and stabbed by
the junta goons in total
media silence and impunity.
And how do the bulk of
practicing journalists
arrive at the proper
slant to handle politically
delicate issues? As suggested
before, there is no conspiracy
to misinform the public
in the U.S., if by that
we understand a system
of mass communications
manned by journalists
and writers consciously
dedicated to manipulation
The problem is far more
subtle, as the ideological
bias is built into media
messages mainly as a
result of factors such
as these:
The
media share, by and large,
the political values and
prejudices of the System,
thus making their "regurgitation" seem
natural and an act of "free
will. " Furthermore,
as the case of El Salvador
illustrates, the global
interests of the media
bourgeoisie, as
a class of super-propertv
owners, agree totally with
the counter‑revolutionary
intentions of' tile American
government even though
dissension may sometimes
give tile impression of
an independent stance,
However it is usually methods,
not goals, that are questioned.
Moreover, correspondents
such as Raymond Bonner
of the (New York) Times, who
has shown how powerful
(and embarrassing) the
truth can be when
given even a tepid chance,
represent a young and extremely
fragile phenomenon subject
to cancellation at a moment's
notice.
The
media in America suffer
seriously from the flaws
and shortcomings inherent in
treating them as businesses,
or as simple merchandising
vehicles for economic
and political propaganda.
The "scoopism" syndrome,
the patent imbecilities
observed in the staffing
of media at all levels,
the pronounced desire
to avoid controversy
at all costs and
present, instead, escapist
and mind‑numbing
fare‑all
these are logical and
inevitable in a system
left entirely to the
logic of profit.
Media
owners and their agents,
usually of conservative
persuasion, easily control
contents through their rights
of ownership. Top editors
are hired (and fired) for
their capacity to please
the owner, financialIy
and politically. A diffuse
but effective political "line" is thus frequently established,
a situation that also
helps in the screening off of
potential "troublemakers," especially
at the point of hiring.
Thus, many American journalists don't have
to be disciplined by
the State censors. That
job has already been
done by the personnel
office and the rounds
of interview that most
candidates must survive
in order to land and
keep anything resembling
a decent and promising
position.
Finally,
and perhaps most important,
the Cold War and the ideological
war waged on socialism
since the birth of' the Soviet
Republic have created an
"established" set
of practices and techniques
of misinformation, news
suppression and deleterious
journalistic reflexes throughout
the U.S./Western media
that seriously disfigure
most contemporary issues
Below we have
sought to analyze how these
various techniques and prejudices
have affected the presentation
of news about the Third World,
and foreign affairs, in general. jjjjjThe
semantics of "terror"
Among
the many symbols used to
frighten and manipulate the
populace of democratic states,
few have been more important
than "terror" and "terrorism." These
terms have generally been
confined to the use of violence
by individuals and marginal
groups. Official violence,
which is far more extensive
in both scale and destructiveness,
is placed in a different
category altogether. This
usage has nothing to do with
causal sequence, or numbers
abused. Whatever the actual
sequence of cause and effect,
official violence is described
as responsive or provoked
("retaliation," "protective
reaction," etc.), not
as the active and initiating
source of abuse. Similarly,
the massive long-term violence
the oppressive social structures
that U.S. power has Supported
or imposed is typically disregarded.
The numbers tormented mid
killed by state violence-
wholesale as opposed to retail
terror-during recent decades
have exceeded those of' unofficial
terrorists by a factor running
into the thousands But this
is not "terror",
although one terminological
exception may he note& w
hile Argentinian "security
forces" only retaliate
and engage g ge in "police
action," violence carried
out by unfriendly states
(Cuba, Cambodia) in a ay
tic d es i ig gn at t cc! "terroristic" The
question Of proper usage
is settled not merely by
the official or unofficial
status Of the perpetrators
of violence but also by
their political affiliations.
These
terminological device serves
important functions- that
help to justify the far
more extensive violence of
(friendly) state authorities
by interpreting them as "reactive," and
they implicitly sanction
the suppression of information
on the methods and scale
of official violence by removing
it from the category of "terrorism." Thus
in Latin America, "left-wing" terrorism
is quiescent after a decade
and a half of turmoil," the
New York Times explains in
a summary article on the
state of terrorism; it does
not discus any other kind
of violence in Latin America-CIA,
Argentinian and Brazilian
death squads, DINA, etc.
Their actions are excluded
by definition, and nothing
is said about the nature
and causes of this "turmoil." Thus
the language is well-designed
for apologetics for wholesale
terror.
This
language is also useful in
its connotation of irrational
evil, which can be exterminated without
questions asked. The criminally
insane have no just grievance
that we need trouble to
comprehend. On the current
scene, for example, the New
York Times refers to the "cold-blooded
and mysterious" Carlos;
the South African government,
on the other hand, whose
single raid on the Namibian
refugee camp of' Kassinga
on May 4, 1978 wiped out
a far larger number of people
(more than 600) than the
combined victims of Carlos,
the Baader-Meinhof gang,
and the Italian Red Brigades,
is not referred to in such
invidious terms. Retail terror
is "the crime of our
times" in the current
picture of reality conveyed
by the media; and friendly
governments are portrayed
as the reassuring protectors
of the public, striving courageously
to cope with "terror"
The limited concept of "terror" also serves as a lightning rod to distract attention from substantive issues, and helps to create a sensibility and frame of mind that allows greater freedom of action by the state. During the Vietnam War, students were the terrorists, and the government and mass media devoted great attention (and much outrage) to their frightful depredations (one person killed, many windows broken). The device was used effectively to discredit the antiwar movement as violence-prone and destructive the motive, of course, for the infiltration of tile movement by government provocateurs and it helped to divert attention from the official violence that was far more extensive even on the home front, not to speak of Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere. The ploy was amazingly successful in light of the facts, now documented beyond serious question, even though it did not succeed in destroying, the antiwar movement. The terrorism of the Vietnamese enemy was also used effectively in mobilizing public opinion, again a tremendous testimonial to the power of brainwashing under freedom, given the real facts of the matter.
The
shift in the balance
of terror to the "free
world"
Over
the past 25 years at least,
not only has official terror
been responsible for torture
and killing on a vastly
greater scale than its retail
counterpart, but, furthermore,
tile balance of terror appears
to have shifted to the West
and its clients, with the
United States setting the
pace as sponsor and supplier.
The old colonial world was
shattered during World War
II and the resultant nationalist-radical
upsurge threatened
traditional Western hegemony
and the economic interests
of Western business. To
contain this threat the
United States has aligned
itself with elite and military
elements in the Third World
whose function has been
to contain the tides of
change. This role was played
by Diem and Thieu in South
Vietnam and is currently
served by allies such as
Mobutu in Zaire, Pinochet
in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia,
and the Salvadoran Junta.
Under frequent U.S. sponsorship
the neo-fascist National
Security State and other
forms of authoritarian
rule have become the dominant
mode of government in the
Third World. Heavily armed
by the West (mainly tile
United States) and selected
for amenability to foreign
domination and zealous
anti-Communism, counter-revolutionary
regimes have been highly
torture- and bloodshed-prone.
In
the Soviet sphere of influence,
torture appears to have been
on the decline since the
death of Stalin. In its 1974
Report on Torture, Amnesty
International (AI) notes:
Though prison conditions and the rights of the prisoners detained on political charges in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union may still be in many cases unsatisfactory, torture as a government-sanctioned, Stalinist practice has ceased. With a few exceptions (see below) no reports on the use of torture in Eastern Europe have been reaching the outside world in the past decade.
In
sharp contrast, torture,
which "for the last
two or three hundred years
has heen no more than a historical
curiosity has suddenly developed
a life of its own and become
a social cancer." Since
it has declined in the
Soviet sphere since the
death of Stalin, it would
appear that this cancerous
growth is largely a Free
World phenomenon. It has
shown phenomenal growth
in Latin America, where,
as Al points out:
There
is a marked difference between
traditional brutalitv stemming
from historical conditions,
and the systematic torture
which has spread to many
Latin American countries
. within the past decade.
Amnesty
International also notes
that in some of the Latin
American countries "the
institutional violence and
high incidence of political
assassinations has tended
to overshadow the problem
of torture." The
numbers involved in these
official (wholesale) murders
have been large. For example,
Al estimates 15,000 death
squad victims in the small
country of Guatemala between
1970 and 1975, a thousand
in Argentina in 1975 before
the military coup and the
unleashing of a true reign
of' terror.
The
Al Annual Report for 1975-1976
also notes that "more
than 80% of the urgent
appeals and actions for
victims of human torture
have been coming from Latin
America." One
reason for the urgency
of these appeals is the
nature of this expanding
empire of violence, which
bears comparison with some
of the worst excrescences
of European fascism. Hideous
torture has become standard
practice in the U.S. client
fascist states. In the
new Chile, to savor the
results of the narrow escape
of that country from Communist
tyranny:
Many
people were tortured to death
(after the military coup
of 19731 by means of endless
whipping as well as beating
with fists, feet and rifle
butts. Prisoners were beaten
on all parts of the body,
including the head and sexual
organs. The bodies of prisoners
were found in the Rio Mapocho,
sometimes disfigured beyond
recognition. Two well-known
cases in Santiago are those
of Litre Quiroga, the ex-director
of prisons under the Allende
government, and Victor Jara,
Chile's most popular folksinger.
Both were detained in the
Estadio Chile and died as
a result of the torture received
there. According to a recurrent
report, the body of Victor
Jara was found outside the
Estadio Chile, his hands
broken and his body badly
mutilated. Litre Quiroga
had been kicked and beaten
in front of other prisoners
for approximately 40 hours
before he was removed to
a special interrogation room
where he met his death under
unknown circumstances.
Such horrendous details could be repeated for many thousands of human beings in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador, Indonesia, U.S.-occupied South Vietnam up to 1975, and in quite a few other U.S. client states. They clearly reflect state policy over a wide segment of the U.S sphere of influence. As already noted, much of the electronic and other torture gear was U.S. supplied, and great numbers of client state police and military interrogators are U.S.-trained.
Latin
America has also become the
locus of a major diaspora,
with hundreds of thousands
of academics, journalists,
scientists, and other professionals,
as well as liberals and
radicals of all social
classes, driven into exile.
This has been a deliberate
policy of the military
juntas, which one distinguished
Latin American journalist
calls a "lobotomization" of
intellect and the "cultural
genocide of our time," with
the purpose of removing any
source of social criticism
or intellectual or leadership
base for the general population.
Another aspect of the same
strategy, of course, the
widespread use of torture
and political assassinations
to create "a climate
of fear and uncertainty to
discourage any form of opposition
to the ruling elite." To
find comparable flights
into exile on a continental
scale, one would have to
go back to the experience
of fascist Europe, 1933-1940,
which provides numerous
parallels.
The
churches versus the totalitarlan
free enterprlse
| |||||||||||||
Since
the installation and
support of military juntas,
with their sadistic tortures
and bloodbaths, are hardly
compatible with human
rights, democracy and
other alleged Western
values, the media and
intellectuals in the
United States and Western
Europe have been hard
pressed to rationalize
state policy. The primary
solution has been massive
suppression, averting
the eyes from the unpleasant
facts concerning the
extensive torture and
killing, the diaspora,
the major shift to authoritarian
government and its systematic
character, and the U.S.
role in introducing and
protecting the leadership
of this client fascist
empire. When the Latin
American system of torture
and exile is mentioned
at all, it is done with
brevity and "balance." The
latter consists of two
elements: one is the
regular pretense that
terror is a response
to left-wing guerrilla
terror and that the killings
on each side are in some
kind of rough equivalence.
The second is the generous
and preponderant attention
given to the rationales,
explanations and claims
of regret and imminent
reform on the part of
the official terrorists.
When elements of the
mass media go a little
beyond this pattern,
as they do on occasion,
their efforts are not
well-received by other
members of the establishment.
Thus, an unusually frank
ABC documentary on "The
Politics of Torture" was
greeted by the New
York Times with petulance
and hostility for failing
to see the problems posed
by "security and
economic interests" and/or
neglecting the abuses
of the Communists. |
 |
The
mass media also feature
heavily the positives of
our military juntas, especially
any alleged "improvements"--release
of political prisoners,
an increase in GNP, an
announced election to be
held in 1984, or a slowing
up in the rate of inflation--typically
offered without reference
to a base from which the
alleged improvement started.
The parlous state of affairs
that made the military
takeover a regrettable
necessity is also frequently
emphasized, in preference
to any discussion of the
needs and interests of
international capital.
The military juntas and
dictators in the U.S. sphere
of influence have become
quite adept at making the
appropriate gestures, timed
to coincide with visits
of U.S. dignitaries or
congressional consideration
of budget appropriations.
By these tokenistic and
public relations devices
the dictators demonstrate
improvement, our leaders
show that we are a force
for liberty, and possibly
a small number of prisoners
may be freed, all this
without seriously disturbing
the status quo. Client
fascist tokenism is often
a collaborative effort
of dictator and U.S. sponsor,
both concerned with improving
an image without changing
anything fundamental. The
Free Press can be counted
on to accept these tokens
at face value and without
analysis or protest.
A
striking example of these
procedures is the case of
Iran, where a brief experiment
with democracy and independence
was terminated by a CIA-sponsored
coup in 1953, leading to
the imposition of a regime
that became one of the terror
centers of the world. According
to a report of the International
Commission of Jurists:
The tremendous power wielded by the SAVAK (secret police) is reflected in the fact that the chief is given the title of Deputy Prime Minister. The SAVAK permeates Iranian society and is reported to have agents in the political parties, labor unions, industry, tribal societies, as well as abroad--especially where there are concentrated numbers of Iranian students.
The
number of officially acknowledged
executions of political prisoners
in the three years prior
to 1977 was some 300; and
estimates of the total number
of political prisoners run
from 25,000 to 100,000. They
are not well-treated. Martin
Ennals, Secretary-General
of Amnesty International,
noted that Iran had the
... highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.
The
Iranian secret police received
generous training and support
from the United States,
which deluged its Iranian
client with arms, "priming" it,
as a Senate report noted,
to serve as the gendarme
for U.S. interests throughout
the crucial oil-producing
regions of the Middle East.
When the Iranian people rose
in an astonishing and completely
unexpected demonstration
of mass popular opposition
to the terror and corruption
of the Shah, the Free Press
obediently described this
bloody tyrant as a great "liberalizer" who
was attempting to bring to
his backward country the
benefits of modernization,
opposed by religious fanatics
and left-wing students. Newsweek
described the demonstrators
as "an unlikely coalition
of Muslim fundamentalists
and leftist activists" (22
May 1978) while Time added
that "the Shah also
has a broad case of popular
support" (5 June 1978).
Citing these and many other
examples in a review of
press coverage, William
A. Dorman and Ehsan Omad
write that,
"We have been unable to find a single example of a news or feature story in the mainstream American press that uses the label 'dictator' to describe the Shah."
There
is barely a mention in
the media of the facts on
the magnitude of corruption,
the scale of police terror
and torture, the significance
of the fantastic expenditures
for arms--the police and
military establishments
are probably the only elements
of Iranian society that
could be described as fully "modernized"--and
the devastating effects
on the majority of the population
of the agricultural reforms
and urban priorities.
As
the Shah's U.S.-armed troops
murdered hundreds of demonstrators
in the streets, President
Carter sent his support,
reaffirming the message he
had delivered in Teheran
several months earlier, when
he stated at a banquet:
Iran under the great leadership of the Shah is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership, and to the respect, admiration and love which your people give to you…
Meanwhile,
the Pentagon dispatched
arms and counterinsurgency
technology, while the press
deplored the failure of the
Iranian people to comprehend
the Shah's beneficence or
described him as "not repressive
enough--the "saddest
aspect of developments in
Iran," according to
the liberal New Republic.
Much emphasis was placed,
as usual, on his promises
of reform. The servility
of the media could hardly
have been more dramatically
displayed. Certainly, none
of the Khomeini regime's
barbaric features can serve
to deny this shameful record.
The annual survey of human