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MY LAI VET SAYS: HERE IT
COMES AGAIN IN IRAQ
Tony Swindell
recalls "Butcher's Brigade" in '69; says "gooks"
have now become "ragheads", every adult male is an
"insurgent" ... atrocities against Iraqi civilians
are soon going to explode in America's face; US Government's courtroom jihads against terror
stumble. Alexander Cockburn on Lodi case where Feds paid $250,000
to man who "saw" world's three top terrorists at mosque.
As neocons
and Israel lobby howl for US to bomb Teheran, an Iranian outlines
simple path to peace. CounterPunch
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Search the archives of any left-of-center
website and you'll find no shortage of prose extolling the importance
of "getting the message out there." If only the huddled
masses could consume something more than a steady diet of corporate
propaganda...so the story goes. For example, try to imagine Ralph
Nader being included in the presidential debates. What a wake-up
call that would be, right? Well, not so fast...
Over the past 12-15 months,
both Ward Churchill and William Blum-two men with impeccable
radical credentials-have unexpectedly been thrust into mainstream
consciousness: Churchill all over Fox News and Blum interviewed
on CNN, MSNBC, etc. (Note: Joshua Frank, author of "Left
Out: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush," believes
Churchill and Blum have "in large part been on the defense"
and thus their 15 minutes was "a far cry than seeing a guy
like Nader in the debates.")
All this lefty exposure has
fortuitously taken place during a time of electoral fraud, blatant
lies leading to war crimes, the abandonment of New Orleans, and
many more events that could theoretically lead "Average
Joe" to question our (sic) system. Thus, in what seems like
an ideal climate for spreading the word, I'm looking around for
any indication that this recent exposure to Churchill, Blum,
and their ideas is having a palpable effect. Do we have more
progressive perspectives on TV? A growing, broader-based movement
for peace and justice? Media types now seeking out alternative
sources? Here's the specific question I posed to some colleagues:
Does/can mainstream exposure to progressive ideas really make
a difference?
"How can we tell?"
was Howard Zinn's response. "Most actions/events, if they
make a difference, make it imperceptibly," he says, "and
it's only the accumulation of small differences that may occasionally
reach a critical point and be identifiable as having been effective."
Joe Bageant, author of the
upcoming, "Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck: Dispatches from America's
Class War," sees things differently. "Jesus Christ,
fella," he told me, "I love ya, but don't you see that
both of those people (Blum and Churchill) are completely unheard
of by the majority of Americans? Ninety-nine percent of Americans
have never heard of either one of them. You gotta be an Internet
political freak to know who they are." So, Joe, I take it
you don't think there'll be much impact. "The short version,"
says Bageant, "is that until Ward is on Oprah nobody will
care except those who make so much political mileage from him,
both left and right in the newspapers, which, if you will remember,
the average family out here no longer gets or reads. The rest
of America is mowing their yards because it's spring."
"The exposure that Churchill
and Blum got was because of a sensationalist incidental event,"
says Michael Parenti. "Churchill talked about the Eichmanns
killed at the WTC-so outrageous it could not be ignored. It was
a hot story. Blum got a plug from bin Laden, same buzz. Where
in the major media are Churchill and Blum now? Do they have their
own talk shows? Are they regulars on panels? Back into oblivion."
William Blum took exception
with how I phrased my inquiry. "You're really stacking the
cards against the question," he counters. "I spoke
to tens of millions of people who had never before heard of me,
and I said lots of things they were very unaccustomed to hearing.
The result of that can't be seen or measured as easily as your
questions imply. Who's to say what the long-term effect of that
will be? I assume -- and it's only an assumption -- that it will
be positive, as one element among many of recent years of the
left getting the message out. It's only the total effect that
may have significant meaning."
Greg Elich, author of "Strange
Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit,"
wonders why the effect-if there is one-must automatically be
deemed positive. "For most viewers/listeners, the (left-of-center)
ideas are likely to come across as being from another planet,
so markedly different are they from the usual perspective presented
in the mass media" says Elich. "In such a context,
the presentation of radical ideas requires a long exposition
to first challenge a whole set of assumptions underlying the
corporate media viewpoint. Without that, the ideas are too easily
dismissed by most viewers/listeners. The problem, of course,
is that media are notoriously disinclined to allot significant
time to the discussion of ideas, preferring the 'sound bite'
treatment."
"Exposure does not help
very much because we are trying to expose a population that has
been brain-washed through years in the schools," declares
advocacy journalist, Rosemarie Jackowski. "When that kind
of thinking contaminates the educational process it cannot be
counteracted with the few (in comparison) books such as Zinn's.
The other side wins because of its volume. And once they have
won in the schools they then spread the propaganda in the media.
For meaningful change to occur it will take more than just exposure
to a different set of facts."
"It is not realistic to
expect that media exposure of radical ideas will have a lasting
effect with even one out of a thousand viewers/listeners,"
concludes Greg Elich. "For all that, I still think the effort
is worth making, on the rare occasion when opportunity presents
itself, because no battle is lost until one ceases to fight."
Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most
recently "50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to
Know" (Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web
at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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