Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 7:50 pmI don't doubt it could, but I'm still waiting to see an example and I keep being told it is my job to find one.
If the issues really concern you then yes it is your job to dedicate your own time to researching the assertions and accusations. It is your job also to be concerned about, and to become familiar with, the breadth and depth of the political and social conflicts that are roiling in the English speaking world as well as across Europe.
The issue of the MSM and its role in these consequential Culture Wars which are now described by one faction as struggles against "globalism" (quote/unquote: I find these terms to be abbreviations and as such inadequate for intelligent conversation), and the machinations of elite classes with extraordinary powers -- that too is a topic that only you could undertake to investigate.
As likely distinct from Immanuel Can I would recommend examining Chomsky's
The Manufacture of Consent. And additionally I would recommend reading
Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Ward Churchill/Jim Vader Wall) which describes in detail, and from a Left-Progressive (indeed radical) perspective how the FBI (federal political police) was employed against radical Black *liberation* groups and against the American Indian Movement on some of the reservations.
I would additionally recommend reading Edward Bernay's Propaganda. Therein he wrote:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda
And were you to desire to go farther I could also recommend Douglas Kellner's
The Persian Gulf TV War -- a startling perspective on an astounding and almost unbelievable employment of the MSM (it was largely CNN at that time) in the presentation of that war as a
TV spectacle:
Douglas Kellner's Persian Gulf TV War attacks the myths, disinformation, and propaganda disseminated during the Gulf war. At once a work of social theory, media criticism, and political history, this book demonstrates how television served as a conduit for George Bush's war policies while silencing anti-war voices and foregoing spirited discussion of the complex issues involved. In so doing, the medium failed to assume its democratic responsibilities of adequately informing the American public and debating issues of common concern. Kellner analyzes the dominant frames through which television presented the war and focuses on the propaganda that sold the war to the public–one of the great media spectacles and public relations campaigns of the post-World War II era. In the spirit of Orwell and Marcuse, Kellner studies the language surrounding the Gulf war and the cynical politics of distortion and disinformation that shaped the mainstream media version of the war, how the Bush administration and Pentagon manipulated the media, and why a majority of the American public accepted the war as just and moral.
My suggestion to you, and those who read here, is that we have a responsibility to gain a grasp of the power of media systems to manipulate and channel perspectives in our present. I do not recommend only seeing this as exclusively as a nefarious leftwing enterprise and I think it wise to pay attention to what Iwannaplato wrote about hybridization of political orientations. The issues resolve into question of power -- who has it, and who wields it. So with that said I suggest reading that Bernays paragraph.
What I have done here is to transgress that classical political lines. I have made references to intellectuals who are in no sense on the political right and have referred to their analysis of systems of power. (Additionally I would recommend
On Power & Ideology -- The Managua Lectures by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky in my view is an expert on Machiavellianism and regards all power-systems as population-management systems).
Well, Immanuel Can has made it clear he has no wish to provide evidence of lies, so over to you, Gus. What examples of lack of integrity and honesty, misrepresentation, cherry picking, distortion and part truths, from the media you think culpable, can you provide?
What surprises me about you Mr Boneman (Bonehead?) is the degree to which you seem, with all these glorious letters that follow your illustrious name, out of touch with a workable understanding of our present generally, but also about how our liberal societies were constructed and bolstered in the Postwar era. You seem unaware of the collusion between government, the Media Systems, and intelligence agencies.
The angle from which I would examine our present is one that can maintain this *distance* I often refer to.
Fancy that. Two theorists, two conspiracies. Subject to Immanuel Can's confirmation that his masters are not your masters.
In some sense, naturally, you are right to refer to *theory*. But the better word is *interpretation*. I am aware that you have said that a given set of facts can be, and are, interpreted differently by different people, and we have established as an agreement that people's
will enters into their interpretive projects -- so far so good.
But where I believe that I different from you is that you seem *mystified* and *stuck* in a morass in which (I gather) you assume there is no way to arrive at a truthful perspective or interpretation. My view is different: to the degree that we can drop our own *cherished theories* or our *preferred perspectives* as well as our own ideological desires, to that degree can we see into and through power dynamics and how they really operate.
The issue of Israel and Zionism is particularly knotty. In fact I could suggest it is an excellent model that should be studied to understand the issue of power & ideology -- a nexus of power machinations -- operate together. In order to *believe in Israel* (in the Zionist sense which is really what Israel
is) you have to both
believe something likely to be untrue and mendacious as a positive declaration, while simultaneously
disbelieving another set of things which are in fact true. To get a sense of what I am referring to we would need to get hold of, and examine, the works of those who have passed through the Machiavellian Mill and have come out the other side of it. For example (in respect to Zionism) Mike Peled who was born into an ur-Zionist environment and later turned against all its foundational tenets.
