Where have I ever said that? No, what I say, and I maintain this, is that Americans are the most propagandized and indoctrinated population in history. We are saturated with anticommunist propaganda from the time we are born–in schools, in the news media, in entertainment–everywhere. This comes from all sides of the political spectrum. In fact, liberals in the U.S. are often more rabidly anticommunist than conservatives, since they have to prove their anticommunist credentials. Anticommunism is our state religion.
I don’t blame people, or think they are stupid, if they entertain illusions about certain things. Propaganda is very effective, and has been developed to its highest form in the U.S. I was just as affected by it as anybody else, and developed as an anti-communist, pro-capitalist, red-blooded American. I continually find new illusions that I have maintained, new layers of indoctrination that must be unpeeled. I literally had no idea of the crimes the U.S. had committed, thought that the USSR was a totalitarian tyranny with no redeeming features, and that communism was a cancer to be wiped out. You know, all of the basic things that we are taught since birth to believe, that we are taught are obvious truths, to be accepted just as we accept that the sun comes up in the East.
I can give you some examples.
For some reason I remember quite clearly watching the news when I was about 13. This was at the height of the Cold War when the U.S. was attacking Nicaragua with its proxy mercenary army the Contras. I remember that the news reader (I think it was Peter Jennings) was reading a report about some Contra successes in shooting down Nicaraguan airplanes. I remember clearly having this overwhelming feeling of foreboding at the Nicaraguan regime, and hoping that the beleagured freedom fighters would be able to prevail against the enveloping darkness.
It was only many years later that I learned about the Sandinista revolution, and found that there was a vastly different interpretation of the situation, one where it was the U.S. that was the aggressor, one where the Nicaraguan people were defending themselves against a superpower attack. Yet, this interpretation would have been as foreign to me, at the time, given what I was shown, as the sun rising in the west.
Now, what is important about this is that, at that age, I could only have recieved this impression through a very careful presentation. It was not that the newsreader came out and said these things, but the assumptions that underlied the presentation. This is the true power of propaganda–in the unspoken assumptions, in the things we are told to take for granted. So often, they pass unnoticed directly into our consciousness, unseen and un-examined. There are countless examples.
Let me give you another example that is more straightforward propaganda, with plenty of conscious deception. The first time I ever heard of Mumia abu Jamal was on a 1998 20/20 episode. After watching this episode, I was totally convinced that Mumia was guilty of murder, and that he should be executed. Further than that, though, I was amazed that he had any supporters! How could those idiots support this guy, I wondered. Well, later I learned, at the urging of some friends, some more about the situation, and found that there was a much different interpretation of events. I discovered that 20/20 had not only misled with their presentation, but that they had lied outright on numerous points, and had left out information crucial to the defense. This was nothing less than a determined effort to convict Mumia in the popular press.
Here is the thing. This is the ONLY interpretation you will find in the mainstream mass media. If you want to hear things from Mumia’s point of view, you have to go to the alternative, dissident press. Thus the problem.
When I watched the 20/20 episode, I certainly wasn’t a gullible person, and considered myself to be pretty skeptical. I thought that, whatever their shortcomings, they wouldn’t stoop to outright lying, and that what they had to say would more or less match the actual facts.
This seems to be a pretty a pretty reasonable position. We generally are predisposed to think that people are telling the truth, more or less, especially when it comes from an established source. Yet, this is exactly the problem. Not only does the establishment not tell the truth all the time, but they lie to us continuously. The main media and other doctrinal establishments are heavily biased for the ideology of the ruling class. If we think about this, it is actually what we would expect. We should expect that the major institutions primary purpose for existing is to serve the interests of the powerful.
Thus, when people are misled, it is not because they are stupid. They have just been misled. I like to think of this quote from Ghandi:
“We don’t want to bring our opponents to their knees; we want to bring them to their senses.”
