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Role of Media 2

Welcome to the commentary for the “Role of Media 2” and this section is subtitled early history of propaganda. And I think it’s interesting that early propaganda, state sponsored, government sponsored propaganda in the modern world begins in the United States. You know, we always think about Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, you know, with that kind of propaganda or North Korea.

But in fact America started this kind of modern propaganda and I think America is still the master of propaganda. You know, the kind of propaganda you see in China, that you see in North Korea; it’s kind of very crude, crude meaning simple. Everybody knows its propaganda, it’s obvious and because it’s so obvious, it’s less powerful.

But we see here, in this article, how in the United States this early propaganda started, and it was very, very effective and also interesting that it started with a war, in this case word war I.

So, at that time, the American population did not want to fight a war in Europe. They did not believe that Germany was their enemy and in fact Germany was not the enemy of the United States. Germany was the rival of England. But the Woodrow Wilson’s government wanted to fight in the war, right? They wanted to join the war.

But the problem was the American people did not want to do it. They were basically peaceful. So what did the government do? The government as well as the business establishment and the media, they’re all working together. They created a huge propaganda campaign, lots of lies. And they told all these horrible stories about the Germans in world war I, that Germans were killing Belgian babies and murdering Civilians and all these horrible atrocities.

And while that was true in world war II, the German Nazi party certainly committed a lot of atrocities in world war II, but in world war I it was a totally different German government. They were not a Nazi government. They were no worse or better than the English government, quite similar I think.

So, they were not doing these things. These were lies, for the most part they were lies. But the newspapers were spreading these government lies, these US and British government lies. And the intellectual population of the United States at that time wanted America to join the war, start becoming more of an empire, so they also spread these lies.

And in a short time, six months, the peaceful American people were changed into war-mongerers. They wanted to kill, they wanted to attack the Germans. They thought the Germans were totally evil and they had to be destroyed. Sound familiar? Yes.

So, and it worked very, very well. And it worked so well that the government and the media and the business establishment in the United States, they realized, wow, these are powerful technics. We can use them for other things.

And they used them against the unions, at that time unions were growing more powerful. Worker’s groups were fighting to help American workers, so that American workers would have better pay and American workers would have better working conditions and that children would not be forced to work.

All of these kinds of issues the unions were fighting for and they were getting stronger. And of course the big business people, the big corporations, the big companies didn’t like it. And so, they realized, we can use the same technics against the unions that we used against the Germans.

And so they started spreading lies in newspapers about unions, how unions were Communist and unions were anti-American and unions were violent and unions were criminals.

And they succeeded again, once again. They succeeded and unions were, not totally destroyed, but they were weakened, very, very much in the United States. So, workers had less power, fewer rights and big business got stronger and stronger, which continues to this day as well.

And they also started up the big Communist Scare, that was kind of together with the anti-union Scare. They put the Communist and unions together and attacked them as terrible horrible enemies. All the newspaper joined in.

Because of course, the newspapers are owned by large companies. The newspapers are owned by very rich people, very big corporations and they have the same interest as American government. In fact, increasingly they control the American government. I would say right now in America they do control the government, totally.

And so they used these same technics against the Communist, against the unions, any internal threat. Any internal enemies they didn’t like in America, they used it against them and it succeeded. They learned a lot from this.

Now of course, as we can see in America today, these technics are still used very powerfully. In fact, they’ve gotten more powerful with television. And we saw exactly, it’s almost scary to read this article by Chomsky about world war I; because, it’s exactly the same thing that happened with the Iraq war. We saw the same thing.

People really didn’t want to attack Iraq, there was no reason to attack Iraq. The American people really were reluctant to do that. And so, the Bush government started creating lies. And they worked with Fox news and CNN and all the major media, The New York Times, all these large corporate media companies joined in.

And they started spreading lies about Iraq. Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. Iraq was getting Uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Iraq had chemical weapons. The Iraq government was murdering people in Iraq. All of this just repeated again and again and again, constantly repeated in the media, in the newspapers, on the television.

Of course, we know now. Well, most of us knew then, that they were lies. And of course, now we know for sure they were lies. But at the time, it worked very well. In a very short time, in a few months, the American people became fanatics again.

They wanted to attack Iraq and destroy the Iraqis. We had to kill Saddam Hussein; because, Saddam Hussein was Hitler, the same as Hitler, a terrible evil monster. And so again they whipped up that hysteria and America went to war. It worked very well again.

And, we can see now that the Bush government is starting to try to do this yet again with Iran. Again we’re seeing all these stories about the Iranians are working on nuclear weapons. Of course, there is no proof about this. They just have a nuclear program, nothing about a nuclear weapons.

But again, they’re trying to scare the American people that Iran will get a nuclear bomb, and they’re going to bomb America with their nuclear weapons. Which of course, is a big lie, but they keep repeating it again and again and you’re seeing it on all the cable shows, the news shows, more stories about Iran getting a bomb.

Every time Iran’s president makes some comment about Jewish people or the Holocaust, it’s on the news all the time. We see stories about how the Iranians are helping to attack people in Iraq, attack Americans in Iraq. So, this propaganda again is starting and they’re, of course, trying to do the same thing. They’re trying to whip up a hysteria in America against Iran.

Now, I don’t know if it may work or it may not work, this time, because some people in the top of the government, some intellectuals, some of the powerful business establishment don’t want to attack Iran.

So you might see a little more division in the newspapers and in TV; because, these people with all the power and the money are a little bit divided about what to do about Iran. So that’s why it’s not quite as powerful yet. But, it still might work if they wanted to.

And finally, you might have laughed a little bit when you hear the mini-story. You might recognize the characters, Hugo and Georgie. Talking of course about Hugo Chavez down in Venezuela.

And we have seen this kind of propaganda against Chavez and against Venezuela very strongly in the United States. It’s amazing how strong the lies and the propaganda are, about Venezuela and especially Chavez.

And so in the newspapers, it’s always these terrible things about Chavez. Chavez is a dictator, Chavez is the next Castro and Bush just keeps repeating the same lies that he’s a dictator, a dictator, a dictator.

And of course, you know he was elected, Venezuela is a democracy, but it doesn’t matter. You know American propaganda works on emotion not on logic, and that’s one of the key powers of American propaganda, compared to, say North Korea or other kinds of propaganda.

In America it works on emotion. Logic doesn’t matter, the facts don’t matter. What they do is they just, they create emotion, especially using fear and patriotism too, of course. So, they just create a fear that Chavez is a dictator. Chavez is evil. Chavez is, you know, going to destroy us all, that kind of mentality.

And so they just keep telling stories in the New York Times, on TV. It’s always, they find something negative about him to paint him, to show him as a terrible dictator, and they never mention the elections. They never mention that he’s actually part of a democracy, none of that. And of course, they never talk about anything good that he’s doing to help poor people, etc.

So we get a very strong propaganda that it kind of starts with the president and the government, but then it’s repeated by the corporate media, the large companies. So, the New York Times, Fox news, CNN, they all repeat this propaganda and after it’s repeated again and again and again and again.

So, if you ask most Americans, what kind of government does Venezuela have? “Oh, it’s a dictatorship, it’s just like Iraq was” right? “It’s a horrible dictatorship”. That’s what it is and that’s what they believe; because, the propaganda works very well.

It’s a little depressing to be honest, being an American sometimes. When you realize how this happens and how in a country that is supposed to be free, I guess that’s more of the propaganda, that people are controlled so much.

But, you know, people are kind of free here. We can choose to do other things. We can disagree with the government, but the problem is that the government and the business establishment and the media are all basically controlled by the same, you know, group of very wealthy people.

And the way they control people is not by force so much. They don’t really arrest people and shoot them. I mean it happens a little bit. But mostly they control people with thought control, mind control. They do it with the news and the media. That’s how they control the American people.

If they want to go to war then they just show lots and lots of stories about how this evil dictator Noriega in Panama or the president of Iran or Saddam Hussein, there’s always a new one, every time, there’s a new one.

And they just make him into evil, terrible, horrible person. They compare him to Hitler, always compare him to Hitler, and the American people get really angry and upset and they go to war. It works every time.

Alrighty, well that’s our depressing commentary. Hopefully, I don’t know, I try to find something happier next time, but it is true. You know, don’t believe the propaganda that America’s the free peace loving nation.

Because, while most Americans do in fact support peace, they also are very easily controlled by the media. Their use of the media and their trust of the media is the problem.

And that’s why we have the American army in Iraq and possibly attacking Iran and interfering in South America and doing terrible things in Central America and doing terrible things in Africa, that’s why. Because, the American people are controlled by this kind of propaganda. And therefore they either support this kind of thing or they don’t know about it.

Ok, well hopefully that will change in the future. I don’t know, maybe I’ll have to move to another country. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this commentary and this article. I do think it’s an important topic and a very interesting topic to think about.

If you have a chance go to the forums and write a forum entry, write a form, a small paragraph or maybe a couple paragraphs about this article. What do you think about this? What do you think about this idea of American propaganda? Do you agree with this article? Do you disagree? Does this happen in your own country? I’m curious. So, please write about it.

Ok, see you next time. Bye-bye.