reprint: Propaganda Overload

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2001/0929/fea14.htm Saturday, September 29, 2001
Propaganda overload

Connect: A media jihad has broken out in the US. But this may kill one of the fundamentals of democracy that the 'freedom' fighters claim to be defending, writes Eddie Holt.

The intensity of the media civil wars which have erupted in Ireland and Britain is alarming. Seldom, if ever, has the tone of the verbal conflict been so raw, bitter and poisonous as it is over opinions on George Bush's response to the slaughter in the US. Denunciations and tauntings of journalists and media outlets - print and electronic - who dare to question Bush's strategy have frequently been hysterical. Sections of the right-wing press have, it appears, launched a jihad against liberal comment and analysis.

In Ireland, this jihad is being led by the Sunday Independent. In Britain, the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Daily Mail and the Sun rant against any dissent from the Bush crusade (his own word). It's a peculiar defence of democracy and the plurality of voices. Certainly, the US, which is mature and wise enough to have the first amendment in its Constitution, guaranteeing that Congress cannot pass any law which would interfere with free speech or a free press, seems ill-served by the Irish and British Bushites.

That is not to say that liberal or left-wing commentators, who insist that the use of force cannot possibly prevent even more suffering, are right. Perhaps a brilliantly targeted and executed campaign (against whom or what remains a problem) might be the best possible answer. I don't know, you don't know and the media mullahs, Talibanic in their zeal, don't know either. But it's an undeniably monstrous irony that the putative defenders of the "free world" should sound so ferociously illiberal about open debate.

To question George Bush is not to support terrorism. To question George Bush is not to aid and abet the enemies of the US. To question George Bush is not anti-American. (After all, more than half of the Americans who voted in last year's election did not want him as their president.) In fact, to question George Bush is to be pro-American and to reinvigorate one of the greatest traditions in the culture of the Western world. The alternative means a return to a form of fundamentalism - totalitarianism, really - which almost wrecked the world half a century ago. Perhaps what's most dispiriting about the verbal jihad is the haste and opportunism with which it has resurrected long-festering agendas. Inter-media spats are characteristically egocentric, exhibitionist and embarrassing although they can, in moderation, be funny and arguably even ventilating. This time however, the venom unleashed - from both sides but overwhelmingly from the right - is frequently not just lively or even risible polemic but full-blown propaganda. Examples are many but don't deserve repeating.

"To force people into the neat uniforms demanded by dogmatically believed-in schemes is almost always the road to inhumanity," said Isaiah Berlin, a lifelong defender of civil liberties. "We can only do what we can: but that we must do, against difficulties."

If one of the aims of the wannabe defenders of the "free" world is to trample sober, dissenting voices in their own countries, then the attacks on New York and Washington may add to the already appalling death toll. They may kill one of the fundamentals of democracy that the "freedom" fighters claim to be defending.

It is, of course, in the nature of journalism that sobriety and proportion cannot generate the excitement or furore of wild, or even robust, invective. Thus sensationalism and souped-up controversy are among the oldest tricks of the trade. Fair enough. But the news of the past three weeks has been so sensational that the usual columnar devices are not only not required but can be obscene and dangerous - petrol on an already raging fire. People are already frightened enough without being pounded by propaganda.

Perhaps even to point that out is a form of propaganda? People must make up their own minds on such a subjective matter. Yet surely what everybody in the world needs now is to be calmed - not to the point of not understanding the gravity of current events but to the point of being calm enough to understand that gravity.

The sideshow of ruthlessly uncivil media civil wars increases the sense that the problem is as simple as Bush's threat that you're either for him or for terrorism.

It's not, of course.

The issues are complex and therefore individual opinions represent a continuum between extremes. At one pole, there's unquestioning loyalty to Islamic jihad and at its opposite there's a veneration of the Western McWorld. Mercifully, few people adhere to either extreme. In the Irish and British media, of course, the poles are somewhat different (thankfully, at least Islamic jihad has not been endorsed). However, they unnervingly echo the ideological divide that obtained until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The same old cultural and ideological factions appear to be clashing again. Indeed, the chill of the Cold War is petrifying opposing positions in a back-to-the-future regression. Even the term "war on terrorism", used by George Bush and Tony Blair, is contentious. Certainly, there is a contradiction in asserting that there's no difference between, say, the IRA and Islamic terrorism while simultaneously insisting that IRA murders were the work of common criminals - beneath being dignified by the term "war" - but the murders in New York and Washington were unquestionably acts of war.

The question then arises: is the distinction between criminal mass murder and war to be determined by scale? Neither the IRA, nor, so far as we know, the perpetrators of the savagery in the US, represent nation states. Are we back to the moral morass of "an acceptable level of violence" (common criminality) and an unacceptable level of violence (justifying use of the term "war")? There is a lack of consistency evident: if people see terrorism as indivisible - and there's logic in that - then it follows that responses to it must be consistent.

Anyway, the point is that it's not anti-American to try to see all sides of the argument. In fact, it's anti-American (at least in the sense of being anti some of the best traditions of America) not to. There is, as yet, no conclusive evidence that the "prime suspect" Osama bin Laden was responsible for the butchery in the US. Perhaps he was, but where's the evidence? If a government, albeit a despicable government, is to be "removed" for harbouring bin Laden, it's not too much to ask for reasonable evidence to justify such a move.

Clearly, some people are responsible for the mass-murder in the US - as people were responsible for mass-murder in Birmingham and Guildford. Back then, the wrong people were arrested, beaten-up and convicted while the guilty parties remained at large. A repetition of such injustice could only add to the hatred that fuelled the vile attacks on the US. To say as much is not anti-American. After all, many Americans are saying the same, even if the US political establishment has pragmatically and predictably closed ranks to demonstrate unity in a time of crisis.

In attempting to savage journalists such as Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Fintan O'Toole - though their arguments too must be scrutinised - the right-wing press has tried to bully us all. Maybe it was to be expected but it was impossible not to suspect that guerrilla actions against rivals were being waged under cover of the big story. Sure, there's irony in even saying as much and perhaps the media civil wars are just acute examples of media narcissism. Nonetheless, the strident tones have been remarkable.

The bylines involved in media spats are incidental. Readers rightly regard journalism about journalists as trivial and incestuous. But the attacks against liberal analysis have been such that their intensity and proliferation require comment. Perhaps they reveal more about media competition than they do about anything else. Then again, perhaps not: nobody should have to tolerate terrorism but neither should we have to tolerate terrorism on the tolerance of dissenting voices.

---

in the words of a really smart dead guy:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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Original file name: Propaganda overload - converted on Wednesday, 10 October 2001, 17:00