During election 2000, Bush paid campaign
operatives posing as ordinary voters shoved people and
banged on doors at the Miami-Dade canvassing
offices in an effort to stop the Florida vote count.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said
he detected "a whiff of fascism" in their tactics.
Some people criticized Nadler for drawing
the comparison, but, of course, not all forms of fascism
have to equate precisely to the classic
form represented by Hitler or Mussolini. Fascism doesn't have
to involve mass genocidal slaughter, nor
does it have to be equal in degree to the fascism practiced by
members of the Axis powers. Traits
of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism,
belligerent militarism, meshing of big
business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy,
subversion of democracy and human rights,
disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight
corporate/government control of the press.
Today all of those conditions exist in our country to a degree.
Let's focus on corporate/government control
of the press - specifically corporate control of U.S.
television news networks. According
to a March 24 article, "Protests Turn Off Viewers" by
Harry A. Jessell, Click
Here 45 percent of Americans rely on cable channels as their
primary
source of news, and 22 percent get most
of their news from broadcast networks' evening
newscasts. Only 11 percent rely on
other forms of media as their principle source of war news.
Our corporate controlled TV networks might
as well be state controlled, because they promote
the war and Bush policies fairly consistently
and have virtually eliminated all dissenting voices.
NBC fired Phil Donahue despite his good
ratings, saying in an internal network memo they didn't
want to air Donahue's anti-war views.
Peter Arnett was fired for giving an interview to Iraqi TV
and merely stating the obvious on a number
of issues. For example, Arnett said media reports of
civilian casualties had helped the "growing
challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war."
According to William Shirer (THE RISE AND
FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, Ballantine Books, 1950),
the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933,
ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything
which "tends to weaken the strength of
the German Reich or offends the honor and dignity of Germany."
The Nazis forced dissenting journalists
out of business and consolidated the press under party control.
U.S. television news networks have been
consolidated under the control of a handful of corporations.
America doesn't need a "press law" prohibiting
the airing of anything which might weaken the strength
of Bush's war policies, because the corporate
owners of today's television networks are in total
agreement with the state.
It is irrefutable that corporate owners
of American television networks want only pro-Bush, pro-war
opinions aired, because those are virtually
the only views that are in fact aired. The Phil Donahue and
Peter Arnett firings, especially when coupled
with the NBC internal memo explaining the Donahue firing,
also indicate this is true.
Do the various TV networks do a good job
of informing the public, or do they more often propagandize?
Propaganda is aimed at the emotions, while
news sources that disseminate factual information aim toward reason.
In NAZI GERMANY: A NEW HISTORY (Continuum
Publishing, 1995), Klaus P. Fischer says Hitler
promoted "a system of prejudices rather
than a philosophy based on well-warranted premises, objective
truth-testing, and logically derived conclusions.
Since propaganda aims at persuasion rather than
instruction, it is far more effective to
appeal to the emotions than to the rational capacities of crowds."
If you've spent much time watching the pro-Bush,
pro-war cable television news programs, you can't help
but notice they manipulate (whether deliberately
or not) the viewing audience's emotions rather than
appealing to viewers' logic.
That is, instead of providing the American
public with a broad range of necessary facts and varied viewpoints
about the war, the TV networks exploit
emotions by urging the audience to focus on and identify with the
day-to-day plight of individual soldiers
and their families.
There's nothing inherently wrong with empathizing
with the troops. However, when that aspect of war
news is heavily emphasized at the expense
of hard facts and varied debate, the networks serve the
purpose of managing the public mood rather
than informing the public mind.
According to Klaus Fisher, the Nazis eliminated
from state media any ideas that clashed with official views.
He writes that permissible media topics
for public consumption included war itself and the Nazi movement;
support of Nazi soldiers; praise for Hitler
and "celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death
when it is the service of the fatherland."
Today's Bush-friendly TV networks have also
deemed only certain subjects "permissible," as evidenced
by the irrefutable fact that they only
cover a narrow range of subjects. Coincidentally, the proverbial
network "list" would read virtually the
same as the list in the paragraph above. Permissible topics include
praise for the "war;" praise for the administration's
policies; support for our soldiers; praise for Bush and
the "celebrating the thrill of combat and
the sacredness of death when it is the service of" (in this case)
the Homeland - even though there is no
rational link between attacking Iraq and defending our soil.
Of course, who needs rationality or facts
from TV news when the American public already has enough
information about world events? In
a March 26 article for Editor and Publisher, "Polls Suggest Media
Failure in Pre-War Coverage," reporter
Ari Berman refers to a Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll.
This poll showed 44 percent of respondents
believed "most" or "some" of the September 11 hijackers
were Iraqis. Only 17 percent gave
the correct answer: none.
In the same poll, 41 percent said they believed
Iraq definitely has nuclear weapons.
As Berman points out, not even the Bush
administration has claimed that.
Berman also refers to a Pew Research Center/Council
on Foreign Relations survey showing that almost
two-thirds of people polled believed U.
N. weapons inspectors had "found proof that Iraq is trying to
hide weapons of mass destruction."
This claim was never made by Hans Blix or Mohammed ElBaradei.
The same survey found 57 percent of those
polled falsely believed Saddam Hussein assisted the 9/11
terrorists, and a March 7-9 New York Times/CBS
News Poll revealed that 45 percent of respondents
believed Saddam Hussein was directly involved
in the 9/11 attacks.
TV news reporters have done little to correct
the public's misconceptions. On the contrary, network
reporters and their guests have often helped
bolster the false impressions by mentioning September 11,
or the threat of terrorism by Al Qaeda,
and the "threat" posed by Saddam in the same breath.
Individual TV reporters aren't always free
to choose the information they pass along to the public.
CNN now has a relatively new "script approval"
system, whereby journalists send their copy in to
CNN chiefs for sanitizing. In his
article, "Guess who will be calling the shots at CNN," British war
correspondent Robert Fisk of London's Independent
quotes a relatively new CNN document
(dated Jan. 27), "Reminder of Script Approval
Policy."
The policy says, "All reporters preparing
package scripts must submit the scripts for approval.
Packages may not be edited until the scripts
are approved. All packages originating outside
Washington, LA or NY, including all international
bureaus, must come to the ROW [a group
of script editors] in Atlanta for approval."
William Shirer comments on the Nazi party's
control of press, radio and film. "Every morning the
editors of the Berlin daily newspapers
and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the
Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry
to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what
news to print and suppress, how to write
the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or
institute and what editorials were desired
for the day. In case of any misunderstanding, a daily
directive was furnished along with the
oral instructions."
In an interview
with TomPaine.com, Janine Jackson of the media watchdog group,
Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said that
the group examined two weeks of nightly television news
coverage. FAIR found that 76 percent
of all news sources or guests on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS's
NewsHour were "current or former government
officials," leaving little room for other diverse voices.
In addition, FAIR found that only 6 percent
of those sources were skeptical about the war. Jackson
noted that "on television news at night,
there's virtually no debate about the need to go to war." It would
further public understanding if the TV
networks would offer substantial debate on the following:
The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq
has alienated many world leaders and lost this country the
respect of millions of citizens around
the globe. The Bush team has created instability in the Middle
East
and risked retaliation. They've undercut
the U.S. economy with the financial cost of this endeavor.
They've increased the likelihood that worldwide
nuclear weapons proliferation will increase.
And, according to a recent Red Cross report,
they have likely helped create a horrifying number
of human casualties and a rapidly expanding
humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Click
Here
The content of television news lacks range
and diversity, but the way the news is presented is also
disturbing. Television reporters
often deliver news of the "war" with apparent breathless excitement,
as if they're giving play-by-play descriptions
of football games. People are dying in this conflict.
Civilians are caught in the middle, being
blown to pieces or losing loved ones. Children are left behind
when their soldier-parents are killed.
Instead of presenting news of this "war" with giddiness, wouldn't it
be more appropriate, more human, for network
reporters to take a somber, respectful approach?
On TV, we see bombs dropping from a distance.
Network commentators seldom offer the public close-ups.
In his article, "Military precision versus
moral precision," Robert Higgs, writes that the much-used JDAM
bombs dropped in Iraq kill most people
within 120 meters of the blast. According to Higgs, such a bomb
"releases a crushing shock wave and showers
jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed,
shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing
cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping
away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction."
Click
Here
Just yesterday I heard a TV reporter describe
certain casualties with the sterile phrase, "This is what
war does." Well, it isn't "war" that
bursts sinus cavities and rips away limbs - nothing as nebulous as that.
George W. Bush and his administration have
done these things. They have directly ordered that these
things be done. The bombs' shredding
of flesh and crushing of human cells didn't just passively "happen."
In an April 5 article for The Mirror, "The
saddest story of all," reporter Anton Antonowicz describes
an Iraqi family's loss of their daughter.
"Nadia was lying on a stretcher beside the stone mortuary slab.
Her heart lay on her chest, ripped from
her body by a missile which smashed through the bedroom
window of the family's flat nearby in Palestine
Street."
Nadia's father said, "My daughter had just
completed her PhD in psychology and was waiting for
her first job. She was born
in 1970. She was 33. She was very clever. Everyone said
I have
a fabulous daughter. She spent all
her time studying. Her head buried in books."
Nadia's sister Alia said, "I don't know
what humanity Bush is calling for. Is this the humanity which
lost my sister? It is war which has
done this. And that war was started by Bush." Click
Here
Today we're again getting a whiff of fascism
from the Bush administration. This isn't the equivalent
of Hitler or Mussolini - just sort of a
creeping fascism light - and the corporate controlled television
news networks are only one example of the
way even light fascism undermines American values.
With the Bush administration and television
networks currently fixated on the high melodrama of
"winning" the "war" and sprucing up its
aftermath, they don't have much time to reflect on whether
winning at any cost is a good idea.
Whether the slaughter in Iraq and its aftermath "go well," the "war"
has already destroyed many lives in Iraq
and the U.S. and damaged the American character and
democracy at home. For thoughtful
people in this country, the question has never been "will we win,"
but "at what cost?"