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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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