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Manipulating the Public
Mind
By Charles
Sullivan
09/29/05 "ICH" -- -- A sea of humanity
descended upon the nation’s capital yesterday to voice its
opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. My wife and I,
along with a sizable contingent from West Virginia, were among the
teeming throngs that flowed through the streets of the District of
Columbia like a raging river in the aftermath of a storm. The rally
was about more than the shameful events orchestrated by our
government in the Middle East, it was equally about U.S. imperialism
on a global scale. It was also about the Bush regime’s appalling
lack of concern for the Gulf Coast’s poor—particularly the
inhabitants of New Orleans. It was about the complicity of Congress
in the criminality of what passes for government in America these
days. Demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience will continue
throughout the weekend.
The turnout was immense. Trying
to estimate its size from within was like standing in the midst of a
forest and trying to gage its extent. You have to wade through the
crowd and take contingency samples; or get above it to gain an
appreciation of its size and scale. I spoke to a friend on a cell
phone while marching by the White House who was watching coverage of
the event on C-span. He informed me that C-span estimated the size
of the crowd at between two hundred thousand to a quarter million.
When I got home I looked at coverage of the event on NBC and CBS
which estimated the turnout as about half that of
C-span.
The major television networks will determine
how most Americans view of the event will be shaped. This is what
interested me--how coverage of the event would be presented to the
world. The manipulation of images and information is frequently
subtle but its effect on the public mind is often
profound.
None of the networks even carried excerpts
from the many excellent speeches being given by the likes of Cynthia
McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader and other social
justice luminaries. Those speeches—an important component of the
rally—laid bare the callous disregard the nation’s power brokers
have for life and habitat, especially the poor; and particularly the
black poor. By choosing to omit them the corporate media once again
failed to provide viewers with the information they need to make
them free. They carefully steered the public mind away from any
harsh criticism of the Bush regime and its corporate
looters.
The major networks have consistently
underestimated the size of anti war protests. This has been the case
with every march on Washington that I have participated in. By
deliberately under estimating its size the media gives the
impression that opposition to U.S. militarism and America’s war on
the poor and the working class is significantly smaller than they
really are.
CBS chose to highlight the three arrests
that occurred at the anti war rally on Saturday, rather than the non
violent protesters. The decision is disingenuous in that it plants
the seeds of thought in the public mind that peaceful demonstrators
are purveyors of violence. This is in fact rarely the case. When
violence erupts in otherwise peaceful demonstrations it is virtually
always the police and FBI plants in the crowd that causes the
violence. Remember cointellpro? It remains with us
today.
Although I heard that there would be small pro
Bush, pro war, counter demonstrations occurring simultaneously
against the tide of the main event, I did not see any of them.
However, CBS chose to play up these tiny, insignificant counter
demonstrations by interviewing Bush supporters but not the Bush
detractors. This is especially troubling because it gives the
impression that the counter demonstration, which was virtually
invisible to those of us in the streets, was much larger than it
really was. By deliberately under reporting the anti war turnout and
playing up the pro war side, reality was once again distorted into
unrecognizable, fantastic, miasmic forms in the public
mind.
The vast majority of American citizens have their
world view shaped by the corporate news media. Can there by any
doubt why the public mind is so distorted—so disconnected from
reality?
More totalitarian nations control the masses
through the use of brute force. We are seeing more and more of that
in the cities of America, as witnessed in the streets of New Orleans
recently. However, in comparatively free societies propaganda is the
weapon of choice; and it is no less intimidating and effective than
brute force.
No one is more effectively enslaved by the
power brokers in government than those who wear the chains of
servitude but think they are free. Unfortunately, the average
American has no conception of how effectively their perceptions are
shaped and manipulated by the media propaganda they unwittingly feed
into their unsuspecting minds.
Indeed, so superb are
the propagandists who control the flow of information in America
that the average American enthusiastically supports polices that are
detrimental to him. Thus we witness families that espouse political
and fiscal conservatism supporting huge tax cuts for the wealthy,
rampant corporate welfare, and the writing of blank checks for
endless war waged against the world’s working poor—and they are
themselves the cannon fodder for those wars. We are witnessing a
bizarre psychic phenomenon that is the physical and spiritual
equivalent of mass hypnosis. We seem almost incapable of waking
ourselves up; or looking away from the shining pendant that swings
before our glazed, vacuous eyes. Better not drink the kool
aid.
Charles Sullivan is a furniture maker,
photographer, and free lance writer living in geopolitical West
Virginia. He welcomes your comments at [log in to unmask].
Only the civil need respond.
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