- Paul J. Balles shows how the US media's application of
Joseph Goebbels's dictum that a lie, if audacious enough and repeated
enough times, will be believed by the masses has produced a plethora
of anti-Arab bigots, from the likes of Steve Emerson, Alan Dershowitz,
Caroline Glick and Ruth Conniff to the racist ranting of brainless lumpen
on the internet./
-
- More insidious than the wars with tanks and guns, aircraft
and bombs, missiles and guidance systems, shock and awe campaigns. The
wickedest wars are the wars for people's minds the propaganda campaigns
that exercise thought control.
-
- "Get control over radio, press, cinema and theatre,"
said Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister. He perfected
an understanding of the "Big Lie" technique of propaganda based
on the principle that a lie, if audacious enough and repeated enough times,
will be believed by the masses.
-
- Western brainwashing comes from the media. Readers, listeners
and viewers need to be aware of these propaganda sources. About the media
in general, Steven Salaita correctly observed:
-
- The flippancy with which US media apply the word "terrorism"
to Arab
- populations reinforces the notion that violence in
the Arab world is
- ahistorical and therefore senseless. Arabs in turn
become a people
- without narratives who belong to a culture incapable
of rationality.
-
- Steve Emerson has a website and blog with as much anti-Arab
ranting on it as any bigot might produce. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz
has implied that all Arabs are potential terrorists and therefore worthy
of slaughter. American Israeli Caroline Glick, Deputy Managing Editor of
/The Jerusalem Post/, writes two weekly syndicated columns preaching hard-line
Israeli propaganda.
-
- In /The Progressive/, Ruth Conniff validated the false
but widespread notion that while violence exists among both Arabs and Israelis,
terrorism is exclusive to the Arabs. When Arabs fight against Israelis,
the Arabs are guilty of "terrorist violence" but the Israelis
are engaging in "military reprisals".
-
- On anti-Arab radio you hear things like "Arabs love
dictators" and "Obama is an Arab," as if being an Arab disqualifies
one from humanity. If they aren't referring to Arabs as "camel jockeys"
or "rag heads", they're calling them as Islamo-fascists. Along
with O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck give Fox news stable
of anti-Arab propagandists.
-
- Hollywood films have been vilifying Arabs for decades.
Jack Shaheen revealed, in /The TV Arab/, how television stereotypes Arabs
as "billionaires, bombers and belly dancers".
-
- Even as a youngster, Shaheen was disturbed by the Arab
stereotypes in children's cartoon characters.
-
- In Shaheen's /Reel Bad Arabs/, a long line of degrading
images from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs
and gun-wielding "terrorists" have vilified Arabs since
the days of silent films.
-
- In his research, Shaheen identified more than 1150 films
that defile Arabs. His newest book, /Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs
after 9/11/, reveals how the film industry continues to shape American
understanding of Arabs and Arab culture.
-
- Muslim scholar Ziauddin Sardar made it clear that anti-Islamic
brainwashing is not new: "From the days of Voltaire right up to 1980,
thanks largely to the efforts of Enlightenment scholars, it was a general
Western axiom that Islam had produced nothing of worth in philosophy, science
and learning."
-
- That the propaganda has reached the masses should be
clear from some of the slurs on the internet, examples of which are displayed
here http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.
- view&friendId=866787&blogId=654459
-
- F**K ALL YOU SAND NIGGERS! I HOPE WE BLOW YOU ALL
UP AND TAKE THE
- ONLY THING YOU ARE GOOD FOR OIL!
-
- It wasn't enough to curse Arabs. He had to shout it,
writing his message in uppercase letters, revealing how effective anti-Arab
propaganda has been in America.
-
- Those who control the media control the mental attitudes
of the population; Americans have been programmed to hate Arabs and Muslims
and to love Israelis. How could compassionate Americans be nonchalant about
their slaughter of a million Arabs in Iraq, even though they know that
it was all based on lies? Decades of propaganda and brainwashing.
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor
and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For
more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
-
-
- http://www.uruknet.info?p=56786
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