From The Ramparts

Psychological Warfare Glorfying Imerialism

Psychological Warfare, Glorifying Imperialism

“The sad truth is that today government propaganda prepares its citizens for war so skillfully that it is quite likely that they do not want the truthful, objective and balanced reporting that hero war correspondents once did their best to provide. Studies carried out after the Gulf war by Dr David Morrison, of the University of Leeds, showed that if there were a British mistake that caused a war to go badly, most people in the study felt that this mistake should never be reported, or only after the war was over.”- Fighting Dirty, Phillip Knightley Guardian Unlimited

I rarely watch television but last night I was channel surfing waiting for the NBA Championship game to come on and noticed HBO was promoting a new series called Rome and the ABC Network heavily promoted two new series: Empire and Commander in Chief. It seems Hollywood has been recruited to step up the psychological war on the AmeriKKKan public to brainwash us into accepting the notion that imperialism is hip, the way to go and the way to be. This is not new, all leaders have to pump up and manipulate the masses for war, because unless the people are barbarians and savages ( like Europeans) waging preemptive war and invasion is not a top priority. Unlike the Europeans most people on the planet do not have an ongoing history of incessant wars. (Check out European history: the 30 year War, The War of the Roses, the 40 year War, the 100 Year War, the Crimean war, WWI and WWII etc) But even with that cultural legacy the AmeriKKKans who waged a genocidal war against the native inhabitants of this land sill have to be duped and tricked to line up and march off to a foreign land to fatten the bank accounts and holdings of the ruling elites at great sacrifice to themselves! During its history and even before there was a United States of AmeriKKKa, media has played a major factor in its policies of aggression. Pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers and later electronic means such as motion pictures radio and television have been used to incite the nation to war. The most famous example is the Spanish American War which was promoted and championed by two rival newspaper publishers, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst whose circulation wars helped spawn the popularity of “yellow journalism”. The two would go to any lengths to increase readership and sales to out do the other. As a result they pumped up the Cuban “revolution” and the USS Maine explosion to justify a war with Spain which at that time was a declining empire that had already been advocated by some as a way for AmeriKKKa to emerge as an imperialist naval power. The two newspapers helped whip AmeriKKKa into a war frenzy and after defeating Spain, AmeriKKKa gained Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Phillippines. Since the Spanish American War the media has played an integral part in all US Wars mostly as cheerleaders and stenographers for the ruling elites, with the exception of Vietnam.
During the tumultuous ‘60's and 70's an alternative media was born that challenged the propaganda of the Johnson and Nixon administrations and fiercely opposed the war in Southeast Asia and repressive police state tactics here at home. The military and government learned valuable lessons from that experience. Once the draft was abolished following the Vietnam debacle, the Pentagon set out to alter their relationship with the press to make sure the media did not undermine their agenda. The military moved to control the flow of information so there was little or no opposition to the invasions of Grenada, Panama or the Gulf War I. Once the media was consolidated under so called deregulation into the hands of a few conglomerates favorable to right wing ideology; the stage was set for what we see today corporate media as part of the economic and political hydra. During WWII the government enlisted Hollywood and the radio networks to shill for the war. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and to a much greater extent the present administration have the media in their back pocket. Even before 9-11 the mainstream media served as sycophants for the Bush administration, suppressing news like Bush being AWOL from the Air National Guard, his drug use, the stolen election of 2000, the corporate scandals that rocked Wall Street, government corruption and the massive malfeasance or treachery of 9-11. Now they are unabashed cheerleaders for the NeoCon agenda. They regularly push fiscal recklessness, militarism and imperialism on the “news” and “entertainment” fronts. Notice over the years, all the movies or television programs with Arab terrorists in the plot or the ones that subliminally promote a totalitarian police state. If you don’t go along, they paint you as the unpatriotic nuts. It is a vicious propaganda campaign. Don’t believe the hype! If it weren't for the openess of the Internet we would be in much worse shape. Now at least we have an alternative to their lies and foolishness. We must become more discriminating, discerning and selective in our media consumption. Conduct informal media literacy sessions in your home, question everything, even what I write, double check for accuracy and facts and then come to your own conclusions. We are being played every day and set up continuously to go along with their immoral agenda. Don’t allow them to piss on you and then convince you its raining!

-30-

posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 7:10 AM