MEDIA ROOTS– For decades, propaganda has been increasingly used by government’s worldwide as a tool for manipulating the masses. Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazism made extensive use of propaganda to retain control over their societies. However, it’s easy to overlook how major democracies routinely and habitually use propaganda for the same purposes as the aforementioned systems of governance.
Here in the United States, while the “War On Terror” and its accompanying “War On Truth” continues unabated, it is worth examining the US government’s extensive and shameless use of propaganda to rationalize its criminal acts and to control its citizenry.
Presently, the US government kidnaps people off streets worldwide and sends them to third world dictatorships to be tortured. This practice of kidnapping and exporting torture is ambiguously called “extraordinary rendition,” and all references to torture are downplayed as mere “harsh interrogations” or alternatively, “enhanced interrogations,” as if the person on the receiving end of torture were obtaining some sort of premium service.
The US press has helped the indoctrination process by regurgitating these propaganda terms without question. The NY Times referred to waterboarding as “enhanced interrogation” as soon as the US government started torturing, while previously having called it “torture” when done by other regimes. Moreover, when President Obama entered office, his administration re-branded the “War on Terror” to a much more vague and open ended term: “overseas contingency operations.” The obsequious press then diligently followed suit, as they always do.
What sort of ludicrous terminology can we look forward to next in the US propaganda effort?
Maybe I can speed things along by suggesting some equally as absurd euphemisms. First, it’s time for some RE-re-branding. “Harsh interrogation technique,” which has become a bit stale, should now be referred to as “coercive physical contact”. Also, the almost poetic term of “extraordinary rendition,” should be changed to a more explanatory term: “exceptional global removal.”
Even the name for the US government’s Department of Defense is Orwellian. The Department of Defense should really be called The Department of War and Imperialism, but the latter sounds so much more gentle. After all, who would object to our brave soldiers defending our country against enemies of foreign lands?
Our leaders in Washington don’t lie to us about these wars, they merely present us with an “alternate version of historical events.” President Obama has taken his assault on reality even further with his latest explanation of our Libyan engagement as–get this–“kinetic military actions.” Rather than describe the reality of the US military raining bombs on Libyan military positions, we are apparently using a “missile-based approach” to Libya instead.
One musn’t forget murder, which is something the US government does well and plenty of. Government propagandists could make the act so much more palatable by referring to murder as a “non-temporary incapacitation.” Just imagine:
“Your Honor, I did not MURDER those innocent men, women and children; in fact, I’m outraged by the accusation. I merely incapacitated them in a non-temporary manner!”
Perhaps the US government’s dictator allies around the world are not dictators after all. Alternatively, they are “political authority figures who sometimes engage in exceptional global removal, coercive physical contact and non-temporary incapacitation.” It just rolls off the tongue so nicely, doesn’t it?
For their coup de grace, Washington’s propaganda machine could also change, er rather “re-describe,” the word propaganda itself to “augmented-reality statements'” made by politicians for “non-truthful purposes.”
You see, I’ve just accomplished something important here. I’ve made heinous acts and other political crimes sound pleasant, uplifting almost– and dare I say it, downright presidential.
Written by Tom J. Wright
Photo by Flickr user Shannonyeh.photography
