Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles; site uicsl.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack From: pollack@uicsl.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Whoa! WHAT propaganda campaign? Message-ID: <28100009@uicsl.UUCP> Date: Sat, 22-Sep-84 19:35:00 EDT Article-I.D.: uicsl.28100009 Posted: Sat Sep 22 19:35:00 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 19:23:11 EDT References: <592@hou5a.UUCP> Lines: 80 Nf-ID: #R:hou5a:-59200:uicsl:28100009:000:3976 Nf-From: uicsl!pollack Sep 22 18:35:00 1984 (new slogan for anti-aparthiedists -- Slavery is Forever) I remember when Tom Craver RAN this notesfile a few years ago. He has a particularly insidious way of stifling debate by making opponents feel that they have not done enough homework to answer. I will not respond with a complete compiled list of propaganda; I have other homework. Here is one example: Newsweek last fall had an issue called: "Nicaragua: The Revolution Betrayed" in which a reporter purportedly interviewed 4 or 5 people before and after the overthrow of Somoza. Uniformly they said that "Things under Somoza were bad, you know, but the Sandinistas ain't better." This story was clearly propaganda. The writer interviewed many people, with both positive and negative things to say, but they were not the same people which she had interviewed before the revolution. Some Anonymous Editor rewrote her story as the ideologically useful tale it was. The NYT had a small article about how the reporter resigned in disgust. Tom mentioned the Big Lie technique - to say, again and again, that the CIA overthrew Allende in Chile. Its true! They overthrew Chile in 73, Guatemala in 54 and Iran in 54. You prove they didnt (Have some time for more homework? ) They are trying to do it to Nicaragua ("Oh, we're only trying to stop the flow of arms to Communist Rebels...") and we won't know for at least 10 years how they did it to Maurice Bishop. Thats not the Big Lie, because it is documented. The Big Lie has been practiced extremely well our President in calling Nicaragua a Soviet Base, A Prison State, a Marxist-Leninist Totalitarian Regime again and again until it is echoed by the Media ("The Marxist Sandinistas...") as if it were fact. And you and I both know that Electricity in El Salvador does not aid sick babies in hospitals. The way that propaganda is practiced in our country is by omission. No, our newspapers are not controlled as they are in Guatemala or the Soviet Union, but editors have a tendency to downplay news which is harmful to the image of "America the Good" and upplay news which promotes "Russia the Bad." While Solidarity was striking and getting arrested in Poland, tens of thousands were getting massacred in El Salvador and Guatemala. Has anyone ever heard of East Timor? Do you know what percentage of Puerto Rican and Native American Women have been "voluntarily" sterilized? Do you know why the Genocide Pact has never been ratified? For an In-depth analysis of how our propaganda system works, Read the Intro to Chomsky - "The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism". Highlights include: 1.2 The Semantics of "Terror" Only used to describe violence by students and other radicals. Official state violence is called "retaliatory police action." 1.5 How the Media Cope with Client Fascist Terror: Suppression plus an Emphasis on the Positive When news of violence by our client states must be reported, it is always "a response to Left-wing agitation" and accompanied by "preponderant attention to the rationales, explanations, claims of regret and imminent reform" by the dictators. 1.6 The Pretense that the U.S is an Innocent Bystander "It is convenient to pretend that Guatemala, S. Korea and the Phillipines are "independent" in contrast to Rumania, Poland and Hungary, which are Soviet puppets..." 1.9 Media Self-Censorship: Or Why Two Soviet Dissidents are worth more Than 20,000 Tormented Latins. Why there is good press coverage of Scharansky. Of course, some would say that Chomsky is a Marxist-Leninist-Anarchist- Bolshevik-Communist-self-hating-Jewish propagandist. If you are firm in your conviction that the NYT includes "all the news thats fit to print" this book won't bother you at all! But if you want to know how propaganda is practiced by a "Free Press" (as well as by a master of the trade), it is a worthwhile book. Jordan