The Gray Monk

« Good bye, Mr Chips | Main | Born or made? »

January 05, 2005

Terrorism and freedom ....

Yesterday I received a "spam" e-mail offering me "A unique confidential report describing in great detail the horrible circumstance and true causes of death of Princess Diana." It is, from the address, sent by someone in Germany, but it is headlined as being from the "BRITISH PUBLIC COUNCIL ON PROTECTION OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH", an organisation who seems to have no legitimate existence. OK, OK, so by even mentioning them and their publication in a post I am giving them the publicity they seek - not so! I mention them only because the garbage they peddle is likely to be snapped up by any number of gullible "Diana freaks" who will believe any claptrap which exonerates Saint Diana and blames the Royals, the Government (and heaven knows I have little love for them!), or anyone else who might be construed as "robbing" them of their idol.

Reading the blurb that accompanied this e-mail, I found myself reading complete garbage about the supposed deliberate killing of the Princess and her lover which seems to utilise the unlikely agency of a paparazzi photographer ramming the heavy Merc off the road with a Fiat Uno. Frankly a scenario worthy of that other great purveyor of the truth, Michael Moore.

I have forwarded the e-mail and its content to the Security Services for one very good reason. This sort of disinformation is the classic tool of those who seek to disrupt, dismay and discredit an enemy. The enemy in this case is the entire West. Believe it or not, the US Security forces are supposed, according to this "confidential" report, to have been implicated in the supposed murder. So, apparently, was Mohammed al Fayed! Terrorism does not have only the "armed struggle" in its arsenal, as important is the propaganda effort which supports it by underpinning or promoting the "cause" and attracts recruits. By definition all propaganda is selective reporting; Goebbels, the inventor of modern "spin doctoring", always stated that a half truth was better than a lie because the part that could be confirmed would be taken to confirm the rest. Lenin used this rather more crudely to undermine the legitimately elected government in the run up to the "October Revolution" which swept the Bolsheviks to power.

Bombs and shootings get you into the news, but if you want to get a message across you need to have access to a good media system. That, in turn, has to be able to transmit believable information without being blatantly biased. So, you have a bunch of clever people who you persuade, through exploiting their desire to be seen as "championing" a "just" cause, and you get them to repeat or to present, as truth that the mysterious "they" don't want you to hear. Our own natural tendency to disbelieve anything from sources we have no reason to trust, anyway, then takes over and we start to think in terms of the slanted truth. Fahrenheit 911 is something I would put into this category. It has just enough of the truth to be verifiable in some areas, but then blends the author's fantasy in so cleverly that truth and fantasy become inextricably entwined and readily believed as "documentary" anywhere where there is no love for the US and its institutions.

The subtle art of sowing doubt is a well developed weapon in the arsenal of the left, it has been honed to a fine art in all our schools and universities to the point where the twisted half truths have become the accepted "fact", and the reality is often discarded as being "untrue" or "right wing propaganda". Good examples of how this vilification process can be orchestrated and conducted in the face of the realities and the truth can be seen in the anti-Rhodesian campaigns of the 1970's, where we were constantly bombarded with stories of the attrocities committed by the 100,000 white settlers against the oppressed majority population. The reality was somewhat different, with major infighting between factions within the "freedom fighter" parties and the tribes. The result we see today is of a hideous dictator who has presided over the destruction of a prosperous country, the impoverishment of its people, and the brutal murder of thousands of the people he "rules" while enriching himself and his cronies - yet not one word of this appears in the left controlled media. It simply does not fit the propaganda profile they promote.

Similarly Israel is now routinely seen as the "aggressor" in all the trouble in the Middle East. Years of propaganda about the oppression of the "Palestinian People" - a euphemism for those who have elected to remain stateless more than forty years after the original conflict - and the subsequent trouble, frequently provoked by the malicious as soon as there are Western and sympathetic media people about, is all laid at Israel's door. No one now dares to point out that the 1947 conflict was provoked by the manifest betrayal of the Jewish people in Palestine by the then British Government, nor to the intransigence of Arafat, himself not born in Palestine as he prefered to call it. UN resolution after resolution repeats the propaganda promoted by the anti-Israel coalition and the left wing politicians who fall over themselves to promote the Arab line and pour derision on the Jewish side. This is successful propaganda, half truth, half lie - but which is which?

Conspiracy theorist I freely acknowledge myself to be when it comes to governments and bureaucracies, but I do not subscribe, in the main, to the view that they have any defined or clear plan. It is far more the efforts to cover up their total incompetence and their complete destruction - frequently unwittingly - that I find objectionable. That said, I find myself constantly astonished when I run across people who one must presume to be reasonably intelligent, who actually believe their own propaganda! This is a government that is full of such people, and their poodles in the civil service have been swept into the same trap.

This is, of course, the ultimate danger with all propaganda. If it is believable and successfully supplants the truth, it becomes the accepted truth - think of the Emperor's new clothes - and no matter how frequently reasonable voices point out that the Emperor is in fact naked, the glory of the new clothes is all too frequently revived.

The most pernicious type of propaganda in our time is that promulgated by groups like the one I have referred to earlier in this post. It purports to be the truth, but isn't. It preys upon the average person's inability to verify facts and to penetrate often quite complex legal jargon or scientific argument. It is all too easy to exploit those who want to believe something and to feed them an alternative "truth" which is anything but. It is very much easier when there is something which is verifiable or held to be "common" knowledge within the lie to be propagated. Nor is it just the public who fall for this. Carl Sagan, whom I held in great respect for his ability to present his science in a very understandable and memorable format, fell into the trap of repeating a half truth, half lie in his last book. In this he quoted an earlier 19th Century source which stated that Galileo had been tortured by the Inquisition over his scientific theories. The half truth was that he had indeed been interviewed by them, the half lie was the subject of the interview. It had nothing to do with science and everything to do with his having pilloried the Pope of the day as an ignoramus. Not wise when the said Pope is funding your research and acting as your sponsor in society and in promoting your ideas!

This latest piece of trash peddled by some unheard of and no doubt quite fake organisation is just such a piece of work. The facts are that Diana died in a motor crash. That is verifiable by anyone, the lie is that she was murdered on the orders of some government, or governments, the Royal Family, Mohammed al Fayed himself, and a whole bunch of shady characters supposedly connected to the mob. It is dangerously pernicious because, as a character in one of Terry Pratchett's book "The Truth" frequently asserts, "a lie will have circumnavigated the world before the truth can get its boots on."

All too frequently, these believable lies are launched with only one intention, to bring doubt into people's minds about the veracity and truth as tested in courts (thereby undermining the courts themselves), to undermine the organs of government and of society. Once they take hold of the popular imagination (one recently crossing my horizon was the assertion contained in some Blogs, that Kerry polled more votes than G W Bush in the latest election), the truth is the casualty. The lie becomes the truth and ultimately we will all lose as our society becomes unglued, as its institutions and its customs are undermined, and is replaced by half truth and lies.

If anyone else recieves this e-mail, I suggest that you refer it to the appropriate authorities. It may be harmless, but do not forget that, post 9/11, all any terrorist needs to do (as the IRA have proved more than once in the UK) is suggest that there is another "spectacular" planned and name some believable locations for it to occur. Undermine confidence in a society and you can bring about its total demise in a very short space of time and with little more than a token effort.

Words have immense power. When the words are true and verifiable there is no problem; when they are used as weapons they become the means for the toppling of nations. It was said of Winston Churchill that he "mobilised the English language and sent it marching out to war." He did, and, when Britain lay defenceless in 1940 and 1941, his army of words sowed the doubts and bought the time needed to create the alliance that would ultimately overthrow Hitler and his allies. Unfortunately, since then, it is all too often the students of Goebels and Trotsky who have made most effective use of the language.

Posted by The Gray Monk at January 5, 2005 03:04 PM

Comments

Posted by: Slim Jim at January 6, 2005 03:21 PM