Cold War Canada: Ongoing state support for East European émigré groups with deep fascist roots

“Manufacturing Consent”
… for fascism

“If the triumph of communism
is the worst imaginable result,
the support of fascism abroad
is justified as a lesser evil.”

In 1988, just before the destruction of the USSR, #Herman and #Chomsky published a theory on the use of mass media “to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior” that “integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.” (p.1.) The media’s “societal purpose,” they explained, is to “defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state.” (p.298.)

This propaganda model focused on five thematic “filters” of the mass media:

size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth and profit orientation…;
advertising as primary income source …;
reliance… on info. provided by government, business and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power;
“flak” as a means of disciplining the media;
“anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. (p.2.)

With the “specter” of communism as “the ultimate evil,” the media created a “cultural milieu in which anticommunism is the dominant religion.” By “elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics,” the media used it as a “potent” “political-control mechanism.” This “fragment[ed] the left and labor movements” and sidelined “social democrats” accused of being “too soft on communists.” While many Cold War “liberal” progressives supported US-led wars justified with anticommunist pretexts, “others lapsed into silence, paralyzed by the fear of being tarred with charges of infidelity to the national religion.” (p.29.)

By stirring “anti-Communist fervor … the demand for serious evidence in support of claims of ‘communist’ abuses is suspended, and charlatans can survive as evidential sources.” These “charlatans” take “center stage” as media “experts” and “remain there even after exposure as highly unreliable, if not downright liars.” (p.30.)

Source: Edward S.Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 1988.



Source: Ukraine: A Captive but Unconquerable Nation, Bulletin of the World AntiCommunist League, Jun 1969

The Civil War: A Brief History of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada
https://aftershock.news/?q=node%2F1419406

#europe #Western #coldwar #USA #US #canada #ukraine #Vietnam #Iran #Guatemala #Brazil #Dominican #NATO #propaganda #fascism #anticommunism #mccarthyism #russophobia #anti-Russia in #soviet #USSR #russian #ukrainian #Russia #history

#Chomsky did a great deal of work explaining how media (then) didn't have an immediate interest in presenting ideology but conveying what was popular and what sold.

Revolution has never been popular, the idea or proposal for anything revolutionary has received resistance from the exploited and the oppressed just as from the oppressors and the exploiters.

Then there was the song, the revolution will not be televised . :)

#500characterlimit

@aspensmonster

There is a difference between "corporate media" as in NYT preventing any other expression than their own managed rhetoric, and something like fb/twit/reddit/...

For example you can start a "room" on reddit and critically analyze where and why has Marxist theory failed, or how Marxists treating original theory as holly script have prevented revision of theory when it is needed. On lemmy m-l fediverse servers your material just gets deleted and account banned.

see #Chomsky

@aspensmonster

Noam Chomsky:

It is not war, it is murder.

#Israel #Gaza #Palestine #Genocide #Chomsky

"For Chomsky and Robinson, these claims are nonsense. Not only did the young American republic fulfill its Manifest Destiny by waging a genocidal campaign against the indigenous population, but it has since backed a bevy of brutal dictatorships, intervened to thwart democratic processes in many countries, and waged or backed wars that killed millions of people in Indochina, Latin America, and the Middle East, all while falsely claiming to be defending freedom, democracy, human rights, and other cherished ideals. U.S. officials are quick to condemn others when they violate international law, but they refuse to join the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty, and many other global conventions. Nor do they hesitate to violate the United Nations Charter themselves, as U.S. President Bill Clinton did when he went to war against Serbia in 1999 or as President George W. Bush did when he invaded Iraq in 2003. Even when undeniably evil acts are exposed—such as the My Lai massacre, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, and the CIA’s torture program—it is low-level personnel who get punished while the architects of these policies remain respected members of the establishment.

The record of hypocrisy recounted by Chomsky and Robinson is sobering and convincing. No open-minded reader could absorb this book and continue to believe the pious rationales that U.S. leaders invoke to justify their bare-knuckled actions."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/11/15/chomsky-foreign-policy-book-review-american-idealism/#cookie_message_anchor

#USA #Imperialism #Idealism #ForeignPolicy #Chomsky #Warmongers

"The "one of the most criminal armies in the world" is also profoundly immoral. No need to be a spiritual authority to arrive at this conclusion, considering the low standards to which they (and many illegal settlers) have descended."

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine

@palestine
#IDF
#settlers
#Chomsky