Propaganda And The Politics Of Perception: Bush Coterie Of
Islamophobic Evangelical Christian Zionists
Writers Articles And Opinions
18 February 2010
By Michael Carmichael
War propaganda glorifies military indoctrination as
the highest form of patriotism while simultaneously
demonizing the enemies of the state.
Adolf Hitler realized the power of propaganda to mould
and shape public opinion. Hitler wrote a highly
informed essay on the powers of propaganda in his
political autobiography, Mein Kampf.
Modern governments employ propaganda to incite public
outcries for war in order to advance their agendas in
foreign policy.
War propaganda is nothing new. The dynastic Egyptians
created monumental sculptures that glorified Pharaoh
as a conqueror who personally executed - frequently by
fracturing their skulls with a mace - hundreds of the
enemies of his state. Thus, the public glorification
of war and its most heinous crimes has been with us
for thousands of years.
War propaganda is abundantly evident in the fabric of
our culture, and it presents no symptoms of weakness
or dissipation. Quite the opposite is true. The latest
film by Clint Eastwood, Flags of our Fathers,
is little more than war propaganda that glorifies
American military achievements in the context of a
racial enemy - the Japanese. Sadly, Clint Eastwood has
a long history of manufacturing films that are nothing
more than pulpish propaganda: Where Eagles Dare;
Heartbreak Ridge, Firefox and many other
glorifications of violence and the principle, “Might
makes right.”
While the primary purpose of war propaganda is to
manufacture public commitment to wars and their
inevitable crimes, in George Bush’s America
psychological warfare aimed directly at the American
public is designed to manufacture the political
platform to launch a perpetual state of war that will
produce a totalitarian regime headed by a
Commander-in-Chief who is nothing more than a military
dictator.
“Perception management” is another term used to
describe the process of transforming public opinion to
conform to a premeditated political agenda. Perception
management establishes underlying trends and
tendencies that drive the public perception of events
in the direction of war. During war, perception
management manipulates public opinion to accept the
horrific nature of war crimes as merely nothing more
than collateral damage, friendly fire and accidental
mishaps that are inevitable consequences of the fog of
war.
Psychological warfare training in George Bush’s
America has reached historic proportions. Social
influence, perception management and a full range of
persuasion techniques have permeated the American
government and are now deeply embedded into the fabric
of official culture - especially the US military. The
purpose of psychological warfare is to manufacture
public support for Bush’s wars and for future wars as
well as strengthening the powers of the state while
demonizing the enemies of the Bush-Cheney regime.
Concomitant with these assignments, psychological
warfare camouflages the most horrific war crimes and
makes them seem to be acts of virtue and valour that
are absolutely essential for military, “Victory.”
Language lies at the heart of propaganda. The language
of propaganda, psychological warfare and perception
management is grounded in ancient principles that have
been well known to leading sages, philosophers and
intellectuals for thousands of years. Confucius
believed that the disintegration of Chinese society in
his time was directly attributable to a general
deterioration of the language.
Confucius sought to improve language in order to
improve the society and culture. He wrote,
“The correct use of language leads to the correct
behavior of people”
In the Mediaeval Era of Latin Europe, Dante Alighieri
realized the power of language to order society. Dante
launched his quest for the perfect language to
communicate the highest levels of understanding to the
broadest number of people.
Dante taught that the development of a common language
could lead to the political unification of Italy, and
he proposed the establishment of a world government
predicated on smooth, fluent and deeply integrated
communications through a more perfect language.
In the Renaissance, Niccolo Machiavelli adapted his
own theories on the political use of language to the
high ideals of Confucius and Dante. Machiavelli wrote,
“Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a
prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and
not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been
that those princes who have done great things have
held good faith of little account, and have known how
to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in
the end have overcome those who have relied on their
word.”
In order to give a vivid example of a prince who used
language as craft, or spin or propaganda, Dante
described the political machinations of Pope Alexander
VI. He wrote,
“One recent example I cannot pass over in silence.
Pope Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men,
nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always
found victims; for there never was a man who had
greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths
would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less;
nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to
his wishes, because he well understood this side of
humanity.”
In the twentieth century, George Orwell emerged as one
of the leading philosophers of the Machaivellian abuse
of political language. Orwell wrote his classic
dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he
introduced his theories of Doublethink and Newspeak.
Orwell defined Doublethink as,
“… the power of holding two contradictory beliefs
in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of
them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely
believing in them”
Orwell realized that the totalitarian state would
redefine the purposes of language. The purpose of
Newspeak, is to wage psychological warfare to manage
the political perceptions of the populace. He wrote,
“The purpose of Newspeak was to eliminate the
possibility of thoughtcrime … to make all other modes
of thought impossible. It was intended that when
Newspeak had been adopted … a heretical thought should
be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought
is dependent on words.”
For Orwell, the Machiavellian political abuse of
language had distorted society into an increasingly
malevolent form of tyranny. He wrote,
“Political language is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable.”
In Orwell’s depiction of the future, Newspeak and
Doublethink would eradicate the possibility of
protest, sedition, insurgency and rebellion against
the state.
In the first years of the twenty-first century,
Doublethink became the hallmark of the Bush Era.
George Bush, Dick Cheney and their minions in
Washington adopted Doublethink and Newspeak to coerce
and impel political acceptance of their outrageous
policies of perpetual war promulgated by a reactionary
totalitarian government that is indistinguishable from
the fascism and Nazism of the early twentieth century.
The core doctrine of the Bush Era is pre-emptive war.
When Bush argues for the right to wage war to prevent
war, he invokes Orwellian Doublethink by holding two
contradictory beliefs simultaneously while believing
both of them: that war is undesirable while a war to
prevent war is desirable.
The contradiction activating the Bush Doctrine is
invisible to Bush, Cheney and their minions in
Washington and elsewhere for they are the victims of
Doublethink. In academic discourse, the Bush Doctrine
of pre-emptive war has been equated with the idea of
committing suicide because of the fear of dying.
In the Bush Era, the American public are bombarded by
a continuous stream of propaganda designed to elicit
their political support for perpetual war and war
crimes as well as for a strong, centralized government
headed by a President who is little more than his
ceremonial title indicates, a Unitary Executive
functioning as Commander-in-Chief who is
indistinguishable from a military dictator.
Manufacturing consent for perpetual war is the primary
enterprise of the Bush-Cheney government. Not only are
citizens heavily taxed to support the increasingly
undemocratic policies of the Bush-Cheney government,
they are subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda
beseeching them to provide political support for
policies that undermine their constitutional rights to
freedom from unreasonable searches and seizure, habeas
corpus and the freedom of speech. Many Americans are
alarmed that the USA is now rated 53rd on the World
Press Freedom Index where it is tied for that dubious
distinction with the states of Tonga and Croatia.
Bush’s propaganda engines of perpetual war are driven
by: xenophobia; the demonisation of immigrants; fears
of foreign cultures - especially Muslims - and the
persistent application of fear and terror to the body
politic.
The Bush White House governs by public relations. Tony
Snow - a former news presenter for the right-wing Fox
News Network - has become the official spokesman for
the Bush-Cheney White House revealing the priority of
propaganda to the political objectives of the Bush
regime.
Confucius wrote,
“The correct use of language must begin at the very
top of government.”
In contrast to Confucius, the blatant perception
management and propaganda of the totalitarian regime
is abundant, clear and constant. For example, Dick
Cheney adopted the Hitlerian technique of the big lie
to launch the Iraq War, when he promised the American
people,
“I’m confident that our troops will be successful, and
I think it’ll go relatively quickly … Weeks rather
than months.”
Swiftly after the horrific tragedy of 9/11, Bush
defined the thoughtcrime of today by stating,
“Either you are with us or you are with the
terrorists.”
The modern state demonizes its opponents in order to
manufacture public consent for war. In the Bush Era,
the demonization of Muslims has been constant. Long a
central theme in the fire and brimstone culture of
American evangelical Christianity, the demonization of
Muslims has exploded into the mainstream of western
civilization. In order to understand this phenomenon
more clearly, we must examine a particularly revealing
aspect of this shameful legacy of American religious
traditions to focus briefly on the theological work of
an ancestor of the current president, George W. Bush.
The Reverend George Bush was a cousin of President
George W. Bush’s grandfather. Reverend Bush’s
theological writings are well known to the Bush
family, but propaganda officials of the Bush
government have used their powerful offices to
suppress and camouflage this revealing relationship in
the American media - as well as shielding it almost
entirely from the global media. In April, 2005, a
propaganda official named Todd Leventhal of the Office
of Countermisinformation confirmed that Reverend
George Bush was, indeed, a relative of President
George W. Bush and his father, former President George
H. W. Bush.
In 1837, the Reverend George Bush wrote a book titled,
The Life of Mohammed: Founder of the Religion of
Islam, and the Empire of the Saracens. It should
be needless to state that the Reverend George Bush has
little complimentary to say about the founder of one
of the world’s great religions. Worse. Reverend George
Bush launched what should be considered a deliberate
attack on Mohammed, his teaching and the religious
tradition that he founded, Islam. The Reverend Bush
constantly referred to Mohammed as an, “impostor.” He
wrote,
“(Mohammed’s) whole history makes it evident, that
fanaticism, ambition, and lust were his master
passions . . . An enthusiast by nature, he became a
hypocrite by policy; and as the violence of his
corrupt propensities increased, he scrupled not to
gratify them at the expense of truth, justice,
friendship and humanity.”
From the theological writings of his ancestor, it
cannot be disputed that the family of President George
Bush has been incubating Islamophobia for at least
four generations.
In the current generation of the Bush family, the
George Bushes have surrounded themselves with a
fawning coterie of Islamophobic evangelical Christian
Zionists. For example, Franklin Graham is a family
friend of the Bushes. Franklin Graham controls a vast
and influential religious network called the Billy
Graham Evangelical Association that has an annual
income of more than $100,000,000 - most of which is
tax exempt. Even today, although the vast majority of
the American people oppose Bush’s wars, Franklin
Graham’s followers zealously support Bush’s wars and
his deeply unpopular neoconservative presidency.
Franklin Graham has made explicit statements
articulating his peculiar Islamophobic theology. He
stated,
“The God of Islam is not the same God of the Christian
or the Judeo-Christian faith. It is a different God,
and I believe a very evil and a very wicked religion.”
This statement reveals that Franklin Graham is poorly
informed in the field of comparative religions, a
tragic intellectual disability for a professional
evangelist.
The demonization of Muslims in popular American
culture is overt, in-your-face and taken as a matter
of course. In the massively popular television series
24, a Muslim villain named “Marwan,” held the
American hero, Jack Bauer, hostage. Muslims frequently
provide the villains in 24 in a process of
demonization that will reverberate for generations.
Confucius taught,
“The ruler must correct his own behavior for the
people to follow his leadership.”
In Bush’s America, the President and his retinue
frequently demonize whole nations and peoples. For
example, the “Axis of Evil” statement by President
Bush demonized two Muslim nations as well as one Asian
nation fostering a climate of fear, terror,
Islamophobia and a generalized dread of all racial
minorities.
In his State of the Union address in 2002, George Bush
stated,
“North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and
weapons of mass destruction, while starving its
citizens. Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and
exports terror, while an unelected few repress the
Iranian people’s hope for freedom. Iraq continues to
flaunt its hostility toward America and to support
terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop
anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a
decade. This is a regime that has already used poison
gas to murder thousands of its own citizens - leaving
the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead
children. This is a regime that agreed to
international inspections - then kicked out the
inspectors. This is a regime that has something to
hide from the civilized world. States like these, and
their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil,”
Unfortunately, President Bush, Vice President Cheney
and Prime Minister Tony Blair are not the only leaders
who contribute to the climate of terror and fear
through the media.
Many religious leaders in America frequently demonize
Islam and condemn Muslims. In Europe, His Holiness
Pope Benedict XVI made some insensitive remarks that
many Muslims believe were hostile to Islam - because
they contribute to the growing climate of Islamophobia.
At a high-profile address in Regensberg, His Holiness
Pope Benedict XVI quoted Emperor Manuel II Paleologus,
“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new,
and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,
such as his command to spread by the sword the faith
he preached.”
The process of demonizing Muslims and manufacturing
Islamophobia is now a global phenomenon. An example is
the Disney film, Aladdin, that was released in
the early 1990s. Many of the American soldiers now
serving in Iraq saw Aladdin during their
childhoods when they were vulnerable to psychological
programming and the demonization of foreign cultures
portrayed as inimical to core American values. In
Aladdin, the villains are all depicted as Arabs
speaking with Arabic accents, while Aladdin is
portrayed as an American youth with an American
accent. This tactic is nothing less than the
transparent demonization of Arabs - ie. Arabophobia.
The propaganda of Islamophobia infiltrates society
through the official pronouncements of government and
religious leaders that lead to the contamination of
the mainstream media. The headlines of newspapers in
the Occupied Territories proclaiming, “Vigilantes take
up arms, vow to expel, ‘Muslim Filth’” incite cultural
hatred, ie. Islamophobia. These headlines expose
attitudes that are the products of cultural prejudices
compounded by the global media campaign designed to
propagate Islamophobia as the primary strategy to
promote perpetual war.
“HELL, THE MUSICAL COMES TO THE VATICAN” read the
headline on the BBC News coverage of the announcement
that the Vatican has recently authorized a new popular
opera based on Dante’s Divine Comedy - one of
the greatest works of Christian literature. But, is
there a hidden agenda behind the launch of this major
new artwork? The BBC reported,
“(Marco Frisina), a Vatican composer is to stage an
opera based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, with visions of
Heaven, Hell and Purgatory… Organisers have asked
permission for the premiere to be held at the Vatican
in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI.” BBC
While this story seems innocuous enough, we should
turn to The Divine Comedy to examine its
potential for promoting the demonization of Muslims
and Islamophobia.
In Dante’s Inferno, the first part of The
Divine Comedy, Dante wrote his description of the
torments of Hell. In the Inferno: Canto XXVIII, Dante
places ‘Mahomet,’ ie. Mohammad, in one of the most
terrible, tortuous and tormenting tableaus in Hell.
Undergoing an infinite series of traumatic
mutilations, Dante’s ‘Mahomet’ is tormented by a
Satanic torturer armed with a massive sword called a
“falchion.” The sword-wielding demon slashes,
lacerates and mutilates ‘Mahomet’ repeatedly in an
eternal cycle of Satanic vengeance. After each one of
these horrific woundings, ‘Mahomet’ wanders along a
circuitous path whereupon his mortal wounds heal only
to be confronted again by the same sword-wielding
demon who slashes him - again and again and again in
an unending cycle of Hellish torture, mutilation and
punishment. When Dante witnesses this dreadful scene,
‘Mahomet’ turns to him, opens the gaping wound in his
chest and says,
“See now how I rend me; How mutilated, see, is
Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft
in the face from forelock unto chin; And all the
others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators of
scandal and of schism. While living were, and
therefore are cleft thus. A devil is behind here, who
doth cleave us. Thus cruelly, unto the falchion’s
edge . Putting again each one of all this ream…
In 1869, the Christian artist, Gustave Dore
illustrated Dante’s Inferno. Dore’s
illustration of ‘Mahomet’ did not create global
pandemonium at the time. In the twentieth century,
Salvador Dali produced some of the most outstanding
Christian works of art including: Christ of St John of
the Cross and The Madonna of Port Lligat. One of his
lesser-known works is his ‘Mahomet,’ whom he depicts
as slashed and lacerated following the model in
Dante’s Inferno.
Given the course of events in the first years of the
twentieth century from the language and wars of the
Bush-Cheney government and the statements of Pope
Benedict XVI in Regensberg, it is only prudent to ask
the following question. Will the forthcoming Vatican
opera contain any Islamophobic elements that might
enflame international tensions and foment wars against
Muslim nations?
Confucius taught that the ruler must govern via his
moral authority. He wrote,
“The moral character of the ruler is the wind, the
moral character of those beneath him is the grass.
When the wind blows, the grass bends.”
We have seen how the rulers, presidents,
vice-presidents, religious leaders and the Pope have
contributed to the demonization of Muslims and the
fomentation of Islamophobic wars.
The death toll for the wars of the Bush Era is a
secret number. Highly qualified scientists at Johns
Hopkins University calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had
died in the first three years of the war. It is now
one year later. We do not know the number of the
deaths, dismemberments, disabilities, disfugurations,
ravages, rapine and capricious slashings, shootings,
woundings, burnings, explosions and anarchic homicides
of the Bush Era, but we do know that secret number is
still ascending.
For his leading role in manufacturing wars and the
infinity of war crimes that are boiling out of the
cauldrons of war, George Bush is an indictable war
criminal. Last year, the European press reported that
Bush had negotiated the purchase of a vast rancho in
remote parts of Paraguay, a nation that refuses to
extradite war criminals.
Driven by despair and disgusted with the treachery of
their leaders who have cooperated with the warmongers,
the people of the planet are mobilizing like never
before in human history.
Empowered by their common sense of decency, their
desire for justice and their love of peace the people
of our planet are revolted by their disastrous
leadership. There is a growing sense of urgency.
The pace of change is gaining momentum. The people are
seizing the moment to make an impact on their
political institutions to bring war criminals to
justice.
The future is in the hands of ordinary people - like
those who are reading these words
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