cj#1155,rn> Guidebook 1.e. "Decoding propaganda: matrix vs.reality"

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        A GUIDEBOOK: HOW THE WORLD WORKS AND HOW WE CAN CHANGE IT
        (C) 2000, Richard K. Moore
        http://cyberjournal.org

   Chapter 1:

   How does the world work today, and where is it headed?

        a. Globalization and the West: a covert coup d'etat
        b. Globalization and the third world: empire by another name
        c. Kultur-kampf: enforcing the New World Order
        d. Economic globalization: Robber Barons writ large
 ===>   e. Decoding propaganda: matrix vs. reality
        f. Capitalism's growth imperative and societal engineering
        g. Elite rule and the Dark Millennium

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   1.e. Decoding propaganda: matrix vs. reality

        "Pubic opinion in this country is
        everything."
        - Abraham Lincoln, speech, Columbus Ohio,
        1859.

        "You can fool some of the people all of
        the time, and all of the people some of
        the time, but you cannot fool all of the
        people all of the time."
        - Abraham Lincoln, speech, 1856

        "The great masses of the people in the
        very bottom of their heart tend to be
        corrupted rather than consciously and
        purposely evil...therefore, in view of
        the primitive simplicity of their minds,
        they more easily fall a victim to a big
        lie than to a little one, since they
        themselves lie in little things, but
        would be ashamed of lies that were too
        big."
        - Adolph Hitler, as quoted by William
        Blum in "Rogue State, A Guide to the
        World's Only Superpower," p. 11.

   The perspective on the world I have been offering
   you is substantially different than the 'consensus
   perspective' presented in the mass media, or by
   mainstream 'experts', or by Western public
   officials. Some of the factual information
   discussed here may have been new to you, but for
   the most part the evidence I have been using is
   rather familiar stuff, available from mainstream
   history texts and media sources. What I have been
   doing is inviting you to look at this familiar
   information in a different light, and I have been
   suggesting arguments as to why these alternative
   interpretations deserve your consideration.

   The perspective I offer is simply how the world
   looks to me, after years of putting two and two
   together, and learning from insights offered by
   others. I have no pretensions of being a scholar,
   but feel rather like the naive lad who pointed out
   what was to him obvious - the Emperor had no
   clothes. Today the global empire dresses itself in
   rhetoric and deception, reinforced daily by endless
   media repetition. My hope has been to help you to
   see through the veils - to look at the facts
   without the filter of mainstream interpretation -
   and to see for yourself in its naked ruthlessness
   the regime that is rapidly consolidating its
   control over our lives, our societies, and our
   future.

   Let us now turn our attention to the veils
   themselves - the fabric of mainstream mythology. If
   we want to understand how the world works today, we
   need to pay attention to the facts and discount
   media interpretations. But by also paying attention
   to the mythology itself, we can learn a great deal
   about what is being planned for our future. Lincoln
   may have exaggerated when he said public opinion
   was everything, but it is certainly true today that
   government actions and policies are always preceded
   and backed up by systematic media campaigns
   designed to justify those actions and policies. By
   observing these public-relations campaigns, and by
   identifying what we are actually being sold in each
   case, we can learn a great deal about the
   short-term and long-term intentions of the elite
   planning community.

   Earlier we looked at the word "development." When
   used in mainstream media, development clearly
   implies social and economic betterment, even if
   temporary setbacks occur in practice. Indeed, the
   betterment of underdeveloped societies is nearly
   always presented as being the _purpose of
   development programs. It is taken for granted - no
   evidence required - that development is a good
   thing and that Western policy toward the third
   world is guided first and foremost by altruistic
   motives.

   When words like 'development' are used in such
   euphemistic ways, we can think of them as code
   words. There is an obvious rhetorical meaning as
   well as a coded real meaning. If we know the code,
   we can understand what officials are actually
   talking about. When an official announces that a
   multi-million dollar development program is being
   launched in Nigeria, he or she reinforces mythology
   by showing once again how the West _gives away
   wealth_ to the needy. But that official is also
   making a statement about actual reality: a
   multi-million dollar subsidy is being planned for
   some corporate project in Nigeria - with the
   purpose of _extracting wealth_ from Nigeria.

   What we are seeing here are two parallel realities.
   There is an _actual reality, in which the West
   exploits the third world, and a mythical realm -
   what we might call a _matrix reality - in which the
   West seeks to help the third world. Most Westerners
   consider themselves relatively well-informed, but
   what eludes most of them is the all-pervasiveness
   of the Big Lie. As Hitler well understood, it is
   difficult for the average person to imagine that
   all the different media channels could be
   presenting the same fabricated matrix reality.

   It is not obvious how lies of such magnitude can be
   successfully maintained. Surely someone somewhere
   would blow the whistle - you cannot fool all the
   people all the time. The truth is that people blow
   the whistle time and time again - but what they
   reveal does not become part of matrix reality.
   Anyone can buy a copy of William Blum's "Rogue
   State" and learn the brutal truth about U.S.
   interventionism - but the rhetoric of 'altruistic
   cop' America continues nonetheless. The media does
   however let us in on 'little lies', of the sort you
   might see on CBS in their "60 Minutes." This meets
   the expectations of 'the great masses of people'
   and helps reinforce the myth of a free and
   objective press - while leaving the Big Lie
   undisturbed.

   There are many mechanisms which make the Big Lie
   possible. For one thing, mass media is a highly
   concentrated and centralized industry - itself part
   of the elite corporate establishment. Under
   globalization, the concentration of global media
   has accelerated, with 1,435 radio and television
   mergers in the U.S. alone between 1993 and the end
   of 1997 ( "Post-Corporate World," p. 42). The basic
   news spin regarding stories, and the selection of
   stories, is made at the corporate level, by a
   relatively small group of people, whose alignment
   with corporate interests is obvious.

   Social pressure is another mechanism which helps
   maintain the matrix illusion. Just as in the fable
   - when the crowd pretended they could see the
   Emperor's new clothes - few people want to be the
   one to contradict what everyone else seems to
   believe. Those who do so risk being labeled
   conspiracy theorists, fools, or worse. Imagine if
   some TV commentator had started reporting
   atrocities by the KLA during the recent bombing of
   Serbia - viewers would have called in outrage at
   this 'support for the evil Serbs'. Once a mythology
   takes hold, it becomes self-maintaining, especially
   when it is reinforced daily by seemingly diverse
   media sources.

   Regardless of the mechanisms, the observable facts
   are that the world presented in the mass media is
   more or less consistent across major channels - and
   that picture is of a fabricated world. In this
   matrix world, words mean the opposite of what they
   seem to mean, exploiters pose as benefactors, and
   absurdities are presented as established fact. The
   hold of this hypnotic matrix world over the public
   mind is incredibly strong, aided by Madison Avenue
   advertising techniques that work equally well when
   applied to ideologies and candidates as when
   applied to the selling of soap powder and blue
   jeans. The benefactors of the deception are the
   same as those who own and control the media - the
   elite corporate regime. It should be no surprise
   that the existence of that regime is not part of
   matrix reality, nor is it surprising that matrix
   reality is designed to promote the interests of
   that regime.

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Recommended reading.

Michael Parenti, "History as Mystery," City Lights Books, San 
Francisco, 1999.
    "Those who keep secret the past, and lie about it,
condemn us to repeat it.  Michael Parenti unveils the
history of falsified history, from the early Christian
church to the presnt: a fascinating, darkly revelatory
tale." <br>
 - Daniel Ellsberg, author of" The Pentagon Papers"

"Foreign Affairs," a journal published quarterly by the Council
on Foreign Relations, New York.
    The best source I've found to track the latest shifts in
the matrix and to glean an understanding of current elite
thinking. Some reading between the lines is called for, as
the journal frames its analysis in terms of US national
interests, failing to make the obvious links between
geopolitical and economic regimes.

Michael Parenti, "Make-Believe Media - The Politics of
Entertainment," St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992;
"Inventing Reality - The Politics of News Media," St.
Martin's Press, New York, 1993.
    "The Progressive called Michael Parenti's 1985 book,
'Inventing Reality,' 'essential to a fuller undrstanding of
what we read and see daily in the news media.  In
'Make-believe Media,' Parenti turns his eye to entertaiment
for an absorbing, controversial look at the way America's
'free and independent' television and film industries
actually promote the ideas of the economic and political
forces that control them."
 - book jacket

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