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
rights put out by the U.S.
State Department has this
primary characteristic: it
strives consistently and
without intellectual scruple
to put a good face on totalitarian
states within our sphere
of influence. The bias
is so great, the willingness
to accept factual claims
and verbal promises of
military juntas is so blatant,
the down-playing of the claims
and pain of the victims
of official terror is so
obvious, that these reports
are themselves solid evidence
of the primary official commitment
to the dispensers of terror
rather than its victims.
They constitute a defense
of client fascism, not of
human rights. The highly
touted "human
rights program" must
be understood in this context.
The
technique of "emphasizing
the positive" is also
used in other ways to whitewash
the behavior of the prime
sponsor of Third World fascism.
A familiar device is the
self-congratulation that
regularly attends any decrement
in barbarism or aggression.
For example, the regular
Washington correspondent
of the New Yorker, regarded
as a leading liberal commentator,
wrote in 1974 that "we
have brought ourselves satisfaction
and at least a modicum of
self respect by withdrawing
our combat troops from Indo-China
The Washington Post also
assures us, in an editorial
retrospective on the "good
impulses" that led to
such tragic error in Vietnam,
that the United States "in
the last days, made what
seems to us an entirely genuine
and selfless attempt to facilitate
a political solution that
would spare the Vietnamese
further suffering”--very
touching, after a quarter-century
of brutality and terror,
and also untrue.
Perhaps
a search through the records
of Murder Inc. would also
reveal documents praising
the thugs in charge for their
display of humanitarian benevolence
in offering a temporary respite
to its victims.
How the media cope with client fascist terror (II): The
pretense that the U.S.
is an innocent bystander,
rather than sponsor and supporter
of client fascism
The
military juntas of Latin
America and Asia are our
juntas Many of them were
directly installed by us
or are the beneficiaries
of our direct intervention,
and most of the others
came into existence with
our tacit support, using
military equipment and training
supplied by the United States.
Our massive intervention
and subversion over the past
25 years has been confined
almost exclusively to overthrowing
reformers, democrats, and
radicals-we have rarely "destabilized" right-wing
military regimes no matter
how corrupt or terroristic.
This systematic bias in
interventions is only part
of the larger system of connections--military,
economic, and political--that
have allowed the dominant
power to shape the primary
characteristics of the
other states in its domains
in accordance with its interests.
The
Brazilian counterrevolution
took place with the connivance
of the United States and
was followed by immediate
recognition and consistent
support, just as in Guatemala
ten years earlier and elsewhere,
repeatedly. The military
junta model has been found
to be a good one, and the
United States has helped
it flourish and spread. Torture,
death squads and freedom
of investment are related
parts of the approved model
sponsored and supported by
the leader of the Free World.
Terror in these states is functional,
improving the "investment climate," at
least in the short-run,
and U.S. aid to terror-prone
states is positively related
to terror and improvement
of investment climate and
negatively related to human
rights. It turns out, therefore,
that if we cut through
the propaganda barrage,
Washington has become the
torture and political murder
capital of the world. Torture
and political murder in
the United States itself
are absolutely and relatively
low, and obviously provide
no basis for such a harsh
judgment. But the United
States is the power center
whose quite calculated
and deliberate policy and
strategy choices have brought
about a system of clients
who consistently practice
torture and murder on a
terrifying scale.
Some
of the regimes in our sphere
of influence have a fair
amount of autonomy and may
do things on occasion that
our leadership does not like,
much as Rumania or Poland
in Eastern Europe may press
the limits of Russian tolerance.
When Guatemala or the Dominican
Republic go too far in seeking
independence or major socioeconomic
change incompatible with
the approved model, however,
the mailed fist will strike,
as in Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
Brazil, a substantial power
in its own right, can go
its own way in part, though
how far is not clear; it
was only as far back as 1964
that the United States intervened
to help mold Brazil into
a state more to the taste
of the U.S.-business community.
The U.S. sphere of client
states is as homogeneous--and
as agreeable to the interest
of the dominant power--as
the states of Eastern Europe
in relation to the USSR.
It
is convenient to pretend
that Guatemala, South Korea
and the Philippines are "independent" in
contrast to Rumania, Poland,
and Hungary which are "puppets" of
the Soviet Union. In this
manner U.S. responsibility
for terror in its sphere
can be dismissed, while
the Soviet Union's imposition
of tyranny and crushing
of freedom in its sphere
can be sanctimoniously
deplored. Given our role
in creating and sustaining
our terror-prone clients,
our training and supply
programs, our continued
support for them on all
fundamentals, their relative
homogeneity and role in
the U.S.-dominated global
economy, their alleged
Independence and our posture
of innocent and concerned
bystander must be taken
simply as principles of
state propaganda.
How
the media cope with client
terror (III): “Atrocities
management” and
the demand for communist
abuses
Another
established technique for
diverting attention from
the ongoing torture and
bloodbaths and deteriorating
social-political environment
in Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
the Dominican Republic, and
Indonesia (to cite a few examples)
is to concentrate attention
on
This is not an absolute, however. The media occasionally present a glimpse of the real world of sub-fascist terror, a departure from orthodoxy that evokes predictable outrage on the part of guardians of the faith. Tom Buckley's New York Times review of the ABC documentary on torture in the U.S. sphere nicely illustrated the techniques that are used to overcome such occasional deviations. According to Buckley, ABC can't get it through its head that the United States “cannot easily transform repressive and unstable governments into humane ones. . ." and that "the United States, despite its best intentions, must balance what are perceived as its security and economic interests with the effort to improve human rights." Typically, it is presupposed, not argued, that the United States has "good intentions" but is limited in its ability to bring about reforms. Buckley evidently "can't get it through his head" that the United States has in fact imposed and supported these repressive governments and provided them with the means to remain "stable" in the face of popular reaction to their torture and repression.
Buckley complains further
that the ABC documentary "fails
to establish a historical
or social context," by
which he means: fails to
provide appropriate apologetics
for the U.S. role. His comment
is particularly interesting
in the light of the fact
that ABC, in a rare departure
from the standards of the
Free Press, did in fact make
some mention of the role
of U.S. economic interests
in the subfascist empire;
that is, did touch on the
actual historical and social
context, a serious lapse
from the point of view of
the New York Times. Buckley
further laments the failure
of the documentary to point
out that "we haven't
done badly on behalf of the
Jews of the Soviet Union"--which
is false, but even if true
would be about as relevant
as a defense of Soviet human
rights practices by a Russian
Buckley who objects that "we
haven't done badly on behalf
of the Wilmington 10." Finally,
in this review of a documentary
focusing on Chile, Iran
and the Philippines, Buckley
writes: "More to the
point is the fact that Communist
dictatorships" do
not permit free inquiry
into their repressive practices.
Why this has any point
bearing on the facts of
torture in the U.S. client
states or proper U.S. policy
towards that problem, Buckley
fails to explain.
In
the post-Vietnam War era
the need for Communist
abuses has been no less pressing
than before. More facts have
come to light on the scope
of U.S. violence in Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos, the
extent to which U.S. officials
lied to the public with regard
to their programs and methods,
and the brazenness with
which these officials defied
treaty obligations and international
law. Much as the government
and the media tried to
isolate the scoundrelism
of Watergate from the much
more profound immorality
of the "secret" devastation
of Cambodia, the linkage
between the two could not
be entirely concealed and
therefore tended to discredit
still further the campaign
to bring "freedom" to
South Vietnam. Counterrevolution,
torture and official murder
in Argentina, Guatemala,
Chile, and other U.S. satellites
was also reaching new peaks.
Thus, if Cambodian terror
did not exist, the Western
propaganda system would
have had to invent it.
THREE FEATURES OF THE PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN WITH REGARD to Cambodia deserve special notice. The first is its vast and unprecedented scope. Editorial condemnation of Cambodian "genocide" in the mainstream media dates from mid 1975, immediately following the victory of the so-called "Khmer Rouge." After that time the Western media were deluged with condemnations of Cambodia, including not only regular reporting in the press and news weeklies but also articles in such mass circulation journals as the Reader’s Digest (with tens of millions of readers in the United States and abroad), TV Guide, and for the intellectual elite, the New York Review, the New Republic, etc. In contrast, interpretations of developments in Cambodia that departed from the theme of systematic genocide received virtually no attention. The volume of the chorus proclaiming "genocide" and the careful exclusion of conflicting facts (and the context or history) made the occasional expression of skepticism appear pathological, much as if someone were to proclaim that the earth is flat.
A second major feature of the propaganda campaign was that it involved a systematic distortion or suppression of the highly relevant historical context as well as substantial fabrication--the grim reality evidently did not suffice for the needs of propaganda--and fabrication persisted even after exposure, which was regarded as irrelevant in the face of a "higher truth" that is independent of mere fact. Furthermore, the more inflated the claims and the more completely the evidence was presented in a historical vacuum, attributed strictly to Communist villainy, the greater the audience likely to be reached.
A third
striking feature of the campaign
was the constant pretense
that the horrors of Cambodia
are being ignored except
for the few courageous voices
that seek to pierce the
silence, or that some great
conflict was raging about
the question of whether or
not there have been atrocities
in Cambodia. In France and
the United States, in particular,
such pretense reached comic
proportions. This particular
feature of Western propaganda
was apparently internalized
by the intelligentsia, who
came to believe it in dramatic
defiance of the obvious facts.
To cite one example, in the
New York Times (22 September
1977) the well-known philosopher
Walter Kaufmann, often
a thoughtful commentator
on moral and political issues,
had an article entitled "Selective
Compassion" in which
he contrasts "the lack
of international outrage,
protests, and pressure in
the face of what has been
going on in Cambodia" with
the compassion that is felt
for the Arabs under Israeli
military occupation. His
comparison is doubly remarkable.
By September 1977, condemnation
of Cambodian atrocities,
covering the full political
spectrum with the exception
of some Maoist groups, had
reached a level and scale
that has rarely been matched,
whereas the situation of
the Arabs under Israeli military
occupation (or indeed, in
Israel itself) is virtually
a taboo topic in the United
States. For example, the
U.S. media are outraged over
the fact that children work
in Cambodia (rarely inquiring
into conditions or circumstances
or comparing the situation
in other peasant societies),
but accept with equanimity
what is called in Israel "the
Children's market," where
children as young as six
or seven years old are
brought at 4 a.m. to pick
fruit at subsistence wages
or less for Israeli collective
settlements. Similarly
the odes to Israeli democracy
that are a constant refrain
in the U.S. media are careful
to exclude any mention
of the fact that a system
of quasi-national institutions
has been established (to
which U.S. citizens make
tax-deductible gifts) to
ensure that land use and
development funds are reserved
to those Israeli citizens
who are Jews--comparable
anti-Semitic regulations
in the Soviet Union would
be a major scandal, and
would certainly not be
subsidized by the U.S.
government. Even the human
rights organizations in
the United States have
been scrupulous in suppressing
information about the treatment
of Arabs.
In
the light of the indisputable
facts, how can we explain
the fact that a literate
and serious person can believe
that "selective
compassion" in the United
States is devoted to Arabs
under Israeli rule while "strikingly" avoiding
what has been going on
in Cambodia, and can express
this astonishing view without
challenge--indeed, it is
received with sage nods
of approval. Only on the
assumption that Arabs intrinsically
lack human rights, so that
even the slightest attention
to their fate is excessive,
whereas the principles
of Western ideology are
so sacrosanct that even
a vast chorus of condemnation
of an enemy still does
not reach some approved
standard--that is, only
by a combination of chauvinist
and racist assumptions
remarkable when spelled
out clearly, though standard
among the Western intelligentsia.
Cambodia:
why the media find It more
newsworthy than Indonesia and
East Timor
The way in which the media
latched on to Cambodian violence,
as a drowning man seizes a
lifebuoy is an object lesson
as to how the U.S. media serve
first and foremost to mobilize
opinion in the service of
state ideology. When somewhere
between 500,000 and a million
people were butchered in
the anti-Communist counterrevolution
of 1965-1966 in Indonesia,
almost total silence prevailed
in Congress and in editorials
in the U.S. press--a few
tut-tuts, many more "objective" statements
of how this is beneficially
affecting the structure of
power in Southeast Asia,
how it shows the effectiveness
of our Vietnam strategy,
which is providing a "shield" for "democracy
in Asia," and some suggestions
that the "Communists" got
what they deserved in a spontaneous
uprising of "the people." This
bloodbath involved approved
victims and a political change
consistent with U.S. business
and strategic interests--what
we refer to as a "constructive
bloodbath" in the text
below. Even today, as regards
East Timor, where our corrupt
and brutal Indonesian satellite
(authors of the 1965-1966
butcheries) has very possibly
killed as many people as
did the Khmer Rouge, there
is a virtually complete blackout
of information in the Free
Press. This is a bloodbath
carried out by a friendly
power and is thus of little
interest to our leaders.
It is a "benign bloodbath" in
our terminology.
An effective propaganda apparatus
disregards such cases of violence.
It also downplay lesser but
significant terror and bloodshed
such as has prevailed in
Argentina in the years 1975-78
since, in the words of David
Rockefeller, "I have
the impression that finally
Argentina has a regime which
understands the private enterprise
system." Important lessons
are not to be drawn from
official terror in states
that understand the private
enterprise system, but Cambodian
terror, could usefully be
served up to the U.S. public
on an almost daily regimen.
Media self-censorship: Or why two Soviet dissidents are worth more than 20,000 tormented Latins
The
system of self-censorship,
which pursues Communist abuses
avidly while studiously ignoring
the terror-ridden states
of Latin America, is not
a product of any explicit
conspiracy. There are powerful
governmental and media interests
that do try deliberately
to dredge up Communist abuse
stories as part of a systematic
effort at brainwashing. But
most
There
would be strong objections
to a constant stream of stories
on U.S.-created orphans,
prostitutes, starving children,
destruction of fields and
forests, and the continuing
hundreds of deaths in Indochina
from unexploded ordinance,
or on the depredations of
U.S. client states using
U.S. arms, as in East Timor.
No less hostility would be
engendered by a daily focus
on the prisons, tortures,
disappearances, and accounts
of refugees from Argentina,
Brazil, and Chile--these
are our clients and our banks
and major multinationals
are pleased with the "stability" brought
by the torturers. "Security" seems
a more acceptable basis for
supporting gangsters and
torturers than mere moneymaking,
so the former is always adduced
disingenuously as our sole
source of interest.
The
mass media everywhere tend
to serve the important interests
that dominate the state and
select and suppress facts
so as to convey the impression
that national policy is well-intentioned
and justified. Much the same
is true, quite commonly,
of those areas of academic
scholarship that deal with
contemporary affairs or social
issues. The difference between
a society with official censorship
(e.g., the Soviet Union)
and one without (the United
States) is real and significant,
but the extent and especially
the policy consequences of
such differences are often
overrated. There is a corresponding
tendency to underestimate
the significance of self-censorship
and the strength of the underlying
factors that make for unified
mass media support for foreign
policy--notably, the force
of nationalism, government
pressure and resources, and
the overlap and community
of interest among government,
media, and business leaders,
who jointly dominate state
policy-making. Thus, if the
dominant interests of a free
society call for a policy
of foreign aggression, the
mass media will voluntarily
mobilize the population as
effectively as under a fully
censored system. Mild indications
of doubt and reservations
on grounds of cost-ineffectiveness
have little influence on
policy, but do serve to convey
the erroneous impression
that the imperial effort
is based on democratic decision
making. As suggested earlier,
fundamental criticism that
openly rejects the basic
premises of the propaganda
system, especially
the assumption of the essential
justice and decency of any
major foreign venture, may be granted token appearance as an oddity in the mass
media, but is generally confined
to journals and pamphlets
that are guaranteed to reach
no more than a tiny fraction
of the population. Exceptions
to these generalizations
are rare and unusual.
In
the summer of 1978, the trials
of Aleksandr Ginzberg and
Anatoly Shcharansky in the
Soviet Union received far
more news coverage in the
mass media of the United
States than was accorded
the last 20,000 cases of
severe torture and murder
by U.S. satellite governments
in Latin America. Since official
torture and murder in Latin
America now appear to surpass
the level of such abuses
in the Soviet bloc and are
carried out by governments
nurtured, trained, and financed
by the United States, and
the international financial
institutions it dominates,
this is not a matter of the
pot calling the kettle black;
it is the stove calling the
kettle black! Yet the self-censorship
and ideological conditioning
of the media is such that
even the few remaining liberal
columnists seem hardly aware
of the ludicrous and hypocritical
imbalance. They write as
if the United States were
struggling valiantly, devotedly,
and with clean hands for
a better world in which human
rights will be respected,
and just happened to locate
two victims in the Soviet
Union, and miss, by chance,
the 20,000 brutalized in
its own backyard.
The
present article is an
adapted and expanded version of the
introduction to the Chomsky-Herman
classic The Political
Economy of Human Rights (South
End Press, 1979), and
reproduced here by kind
permission from the authors
and publisher. Noam
Chomsky and Ed Herman
require little
introduction. Chomsky
teaches linguistics at
M.I.T. He is the author
of numerous articles
and books on politics
and media, covering just
about every major issue
in contemporary affairs,
but with a concentration
on foreign policy. Edward
S. Herman, professor
of finance at the Wharton
School, University of
Pennsylvania, is also
the author of Corporate
Power, Corporate Control (Cambridge,
1981), and Terror and
Propaganda (South End
Press, 1982), among other
titles. For decades,
his insightful and courageous
contributions have empowered
countless activists working
to change American society.
Both writers were among
the first contributing
editors to Cyrano.
|