by Richard Kostelanetz
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
–Frederick Douglass
When some press reported within an hour of the JFK assassination that the killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, don’t you wonder where the story came from? Yet, more suspicions if Oswald were publicly identified, before it happened? Similarly, how did American media report so quickly that Trump incited a riot at the US Capitol? A colleague predisposed to accept the press story telephoned me within an hour after it supposedly began. Did the story originate with reporters on the ground or flacks elsewhere?
Why did the MainStream Media broadcast only a bit of Trump’s speech to the peaceful crowd, excluding this part: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” If you didn’t hear “peacefully,” you know that publicists embedded in the MSM thinks you’re gullible (and are probably right).
Did the Capitol violence begin before Trump spoke? (I’ve yet to see a simple timeline.) Why haven’t, more than six months later, any of the arrested protestors gone to trial? Why are some still held in solitary confinement without bail? Why do their captors fear about normal judicial processes? What to conclude of the fact that the only person shot was an unarmed protestor?
Where was Antifa? Since the purportedly anti-fascist militia had participated in every recent mayhem, including an earlier one in Washington, DC, how can anyone believe that Antifa regulars were not among the Capitol protestors? At least one of those arrested had Antifa credentials, while others wore the black clothing unknown at populous Trump rallies.
Why did the capitol police visibly invite some protestors through the doors? Were they instructed to “stand down”? If so, by whom? The tooth fairy?
Why was the Mainstream Media (MSM) so quick to blame Trump, who explicitly had NOT encouraged violence? Nor did he say anything more inflammatory than has customarily been heard from Charles Schumer and Maxine Waters, among some other Democratic politicians. (Don’t mention Double Standards, which can be pesky)
Was the blame-Trump story written before the event happened? Some of the cameramen in the crowd seemed to know in advance what the story was. Others were demonstrably experienced with documenting mayhem. Who exactly advised The New Yorker to send a guy with a camera? Distrust any conclusions that are drawn too quickly, especially if they exploit partisan clichés. They are designed for people thought to be gullible. Later, often too much later, they are invariably disproven.
Why bother?
Distrust any signs of what Noam Chomsky called “the manufacturing of consent.” At this exercise the MSM has long been skilled and will remain skilled, until they discover that many, if not most, Americans have wised up. One is reminded of William Randolph Hearst’s reply to his agent in Cuba in 1898: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” In this case, if anyone misbehaved at the Capitol, the MSM had ready a story blaming Trump.
Why didn’t the purportedly literate MSM commentators remember the discrediting epithet of NIMBY–not in my back yard. Coined historically to discredit urban dwellers who didn’t want low-rent public housing constructed in their own neighborhoods, NIMBY now characterizes howls from politicians who, having encouraged comparable violent (and sometimes murderous) protests elsewhere in the US, experienced one in their own grounds. And they learned in their guts that they were as terrified as unelected Americans of protests outside their homes. (Don’t mention Double Standards.)
Why blame a million indubitably peaceful protestors for the actions of a few hundred? Is the aim to discredit the obvious theme of their mellow gathering–that much evidence suggests that both the recent presidential election and the earlier Democratic primary were indeed rigged by devious powerful insiders to deny democratic results. (Remember that Biden won few primaries, while Kamala Harris won none at all.)
When dubious politicians such as AOC invent stories that are factually implausible, you know they know that they’re late to the Gullible Game. As for other ulterior motives, remember as well that anyone challenging say, participation in forthcoming American military incursions can be portrayed as denying the authority of the first black Secretary of War. Thus can they be dismissed as racist and then as “white supremacist,” no matter how justified their complaint. Will some Biden dupes be surprised to find themselves designated as Gold Star parents or grandparents, likewise with no access to complaint?
Why bother to discredit Trump yet again? The first motive was discrediting anyone who thinks Biden’s elections corrupted. A second motive was setting up Trump for another impeachment whose machinery rapidly went into motion, so rapidly as if planned from the beginning, so that the strongest Republican candidate would not run again.
The exercise also established that Biden’s not the mushy liberal that Trump was, as anyone protesting Biden’s people will be slandered, arrested, blacklisted, subject to reprograming, etc., all in kangaroo courts like the second Trump impeachment. (The goal is eliminating any respect for pesky Double Standards, again illustrating Noam Chomsky’s warning about “manufacturing consent.”)
This is the face of totalitarianism beholden not to the working classes, as was Soviet rule purportedly, but to major corporations and the military-industrial complex, as was fascism, both requiring of its citizens not just unchallenged acceptance but nothing less than total obedience.
RICHARD KOSTELANETZ, the author of many books about art and culture, supported Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic primaries. Too old to fear blacklisting, he thinks that he risks nothing by declaring that neither Biden nor Trump got his presidential vote.
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One Response
As immigrant from Soviet Union I see “the coin from both sides” And looking at everything what is going on here very objectively. And what I see? Both parties – Republican and Democrats are working for their parties, for p[rinciples of their parties and for their own well being – NOT for the people of America. I state this based not only of observing reality, but from my own bitter experience talking in Albany with representatives from both parties. What I saw? Bad attitude, ignorance, impatiens, trying to “football”me somewhere else, negligence, lying.
I lost trust to any of them. The only I can say: GOD, SAVE AMERICA!!!