Manufacturing Discontent

Noam Chomsky is the eighth most cited source in history behind Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, Jesus, Plato and Freud and yet, despite still being alive, gets next to no mainstream media exposure.

Now, why would that be, girls and boys?

Our guess is that his being an Anarcho-Syndicalist/ Anarchist/ Libertarian Socialist (his self-description understandably varies dependent on the media outlet) is something that cannot be accommodated by the "unaccountable private tyrannies" that dominate.

And, before continuing, it is worth noting that six of the above are/were Jewish (Aristotle and Plato being the obvious exceptions).

And if anyone says Lenin wasn't Jewish, yes he was...

And if anyone says Shakespeare wasn't Jewish, yes she was - check Haaretz (the only non-terroristic mainstream Israeli media).

In 1988, Chomsky together with Edward Herman produced a Propaganda Model to explain the workings of the media in their groundbreaking work "Manufacturing Consent".

To avoid me waffling on and on, surely it is easier to reproduce the outline of this Propaganda Model in full.
We will then provide some recent examples of the suppression of Realities in support of this Model.
And then we will conclude with the usual pithy one-liners, smirking words and very short sentences.

Chomsky/Herman - The Propaganda Model

"The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.

In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behaviour and performance.

A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.

The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values. Within the limits of the filter constraints they often are objective; the constraints are so powerful, and are built into the system in such a fundamental way, that alternative bases of news choices are hardly imaginable. In assessing the newsworthiness of the U.S. government's urgent claims of a shipment of MIGs to Nicaragua on November 5, 1984, the media do not stop to ponder the bias that is inherent in the priority assigned to government-supplied raw material, or the possibility that the government might be manipulating the news, imposing its own agenda, and deliberately diverting attention from other material. It requires a macro, alongside a micro- (story-by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipulation and systematic bias."

So.
Let's do that thing...
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We intend to provide a brief overview of five event horizons from the perspective of this Propaganda Model.

(1) The imprisoning and release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and the hysterical reactions to the fake realities engendered.

(2) The selective coverage of the real situation regarding the Chilean miners released from Mina San José de Copiapó.

(3) The mainstream media coverage of the regressive spending cuts implemented by the Cameron/Hanging Chad government (incidentally, two more candidates for an auto da fé).

(4) The tapping of the mobile phones of the British "elite" by the Murdochracy.

(5) Football coverage in The Guardian/Observer outlets.

Whereas the media circus wish to manufacture consent, our aim, on the contrary, is to manufacture discontent and to invert the phases of the image so that illusion and fantasy are grounded somewhat nearer a Real Reality - from the neohyperreal to the nearly Real, which is as far as one may travel back in 2010.

The Lockerbie Bombing

In August 2009, we published a response to the release of Al Megrahi from a Scottish prison. Entitled "JUSTICE", this post may be accessed at http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2009/08/justice.html.

It is the responses, reactions and mainstream media stances following this justice that is of interest with respect to the Propaganda Model.

Once the initial posturing of untruth was put out there, every reactive reaction following was based on this fake foundation.
The governments of Scotland, England and the HyperImperium went for a fetishistic disavowal that was lapped up by the state controlling media of Britain and the state controlled media of the US so that, as time went by, the coverage became increasingly bizarre, indeed comical, if it were not for the deaths from Flight 103 and the human rights abuses experienced by Al Megrahi.

Individuals who understood the Reality were denied press access until the story had been relegated to the inner pages while other individuals were cowed into silence as their livelihoods and mortgages depended on supporting the phantasmatic fallacy.

One thing is certain though.
Thank goodness that none of this had anything to do with either geopolitical posturing or oil!

The Mina San José de Copiapó Miners

Oh! What a feelgood story!!
Who could fail to shed tears at the drip feed release of the thirty three miners from a fate worse than death?
But in the words of John Pilger: "However, like all great media events, it is a façade."

39 deaths occur every year in Chile's privatised mines.
Miners across the world noted that the disaster would not have occurred if there had been two egress routes but, of course, this would have eaten into private profits.
And we cannot have that.

Pilger: "On 30 July last, a labour department report warned again of "serious safety deficiencies" [at Mina San José de Copiapó], but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed.

Not only were global workers voices silenced by the mainstream media, but even the speech and the shift handover by the foreman to president Piñera following the release was edited - his comments about such a disaster "never happening again" mysteriously being replaced by numerous images of the smiling billionaire president and talking head inputs from ministers, prime ministers, psychologists, engineers, in fact any possible source other than the miners themselves.

The reinvention of the odious Piñera by the world media managed to avoid Reality, as one would expect.

Pilger: "Piñera is a billionaire who controls a slice of the mining, energy and retail industries. He made his fortune in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup and during the free-market “experiments” of the zealots from the University of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys. His brother and former business partner, Jose Piñera, a labour minister under Pinochet, privatised mining and state pensions and all but destroyed the trade unions. This was applauded in Washington as an “economic miracle”, a model of the new cult of neo-liberalism that would sweep the continent and ensure control from the north."

A masterpiece of reason and justice!

The Wunch Of Bankers

£81 billion of public spending cuts targeting the poor, the disabled, the disenfranchised, the north, the ill without private health insurance and the public sector in general, all to grab back the loot which, after all, hasn't disappeared - the booty sits in the offshore accounts of the Wunch of Bankers and their state enforcers who created the Depression.

Which makes the heavily promoted (by the mainstream press) Banking Levy all the more sickening.
Not only will the levy only target the Wunch of Bankers for £2.5 billion. but also this levy will only be phased in from 2013.
2013?
Phased in??

The Economist: "The current government argues that the total package hits the rich more but that is largely because of a tax rise introduced by the last government. Inevitably, this will have a bigger impact on consumption since the poor have a higher marginal propensity to consume. Then there is the politicial/moral issue. The package creates the understandable impression that the poor are paying the price for the folly of the bankers."

As Economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz comments: "... perhaps it is better to admit failure and move on than to extract a high price in unemployment and suffering in the name of a flawed economic model."

Still, surely we may rest assured as Lloyd Blankfein, the Goldman Sachs CEO has pledged "rigorous" self-examination.

I'll fucking self-examine you, you fascistic bastard...

The Murdochracy

The Andy Coulson story has been nicely sidelined just as it was looking like the mainstream media would have to face up to the fact that the Murdochracy utilises tactics more akin to gangland Glasgow than the Fourth Estate.

Simple...

Who is going to stand up to the Murdoch masonic mafiosi when fulsome details of every illicit personal penetration, corruption and criminality is to be exposed and called real news?

The fact that Coulson keeps his job as Tory Communications chief while the disabled are kicked out of their wheelchairs is indicative of the power of the Beano Men.

The Guardian

We have blogged repeatedly, some might say obsessively about the role of John Colquhoun in manufacturing football 'news' at The Guardian/Observer.

The last few months have witnessed plentiful examples of ludicrous coverage in support of the likes of David James, Steve McClaren, Theo Walcott, Scott Carson, Liverpool FC/Roy Hodgson, Chris Kirkland, usually under the pen-name Louise Taylor.
We are beginning to believe that Ms Taylor is actually Colquhoun in cross-dressing mode.

For the analytical amongst you, we suggest a little practical test.
List the articles emanating from "Taylor" and compare with the club and player contacts at the Key Sports agents.
Excellent stuff!

And meanwhile, Harry Redknapp and Mike Dean mugged Fulham last weekend, so much so that Redknapp wasn't willing to be interviewed following the game.
And why does the man bristle so much when the word "sweeteners" is mentioned?
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These macro observations could, if we could be bothered, be mimicked by the micro.
As Chomsky has pointed out, US client terror states eg Colombia, Israel, Indonesia, South Korea, Chile are gamed as "fledgling democracies" while the equivalent strata of nation state outside the US sphere of influence are always "rogue states".

Chomsky: "In sum, the mass media of the United States are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion. This propaganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass-media concentration right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news management."

Chomsky on Orwell (for a British perspective): "In free England, he writes, ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. He gives some examples, and only a few sentences of explanation, but they capture important truths. "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England," Orwell wrote, "is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for any official ban." One reason is the centralization of the press in the hands of "wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics." Another, and I think more important reason, is a good education and immersion in the dominant intellectual culture, which instills in us a "general tacit agreement that `it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact.""
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I know.
An optimistic ending is needed...

Slavoj Žižek: "... if we come to 'know too much' to pierce the true functioning of social reality, this reality would dissolve itself."

Jean Baudrillard: "Every system that approaches perfect operativity, simultaneously approaches its downfall... it approaches absolute power of total absurdity... nothing remains for us to base anything on. All that remains for us to do is theoretical violence."

Without realising it, a builder that I passed by the other week encapsulated the neohypereality very nicely...
"I don't know what's going on! I'm in the middle of Manchester and it is a strange world."

Indeed it is!

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