Voordat mijn satelliet-internetverbinding op mijn berg in Italië uitviel, eindigde ik op mijn weblog met de conclusie dat ook de mainstream-opiniemakers
de wanhoop nabij zijn. Zelfs mijn oude vriend Ian Buruma beseft ergens diep in hem dat de Amerikaanse oligarchie en haar pleitbezorgers politiek, cultureel en moreel bankroet zijn, en het einde van het Amerikaans imperium nadert.
Wanneer Ian Buruma wereldwijd nu proclameert dat
freedoms must be defended, which is possible only when the threats are seen clearly. The moment people stop believing that the demagogues can be prevented from doing their worst is the moment we can be sure that it is already too late,
of in Nederlandse bewoordingen:
Hoe dan ook zal vrijheid verdedigd moeten worden. Dit kan alleen als we de gevaren scherp onder ogen zien. Pas als mensen gaan geloven dat zij niets meer kunnen doen om aan de grote en kleine demagogen weerstand te bieden, dan weten we zeker dat het te laat is,
dan is de vraag welke ‘freedoms must be defended,’ anders blijft Buruma’s waarschuwing slechts holle woorden. Is het de ‘vrijheid’ van wat oud-president Jimmy Carter de Amerikaanse ‘Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery’ noemt, en de parlementaire democratie heeft uitgehold? Is het de ‘vrijheid’ van de Amerikaanse elite voor wie — in de woorden van Henry Kissinger — het ‘uiteen laten vallen van Rusland een doel is geworden’? Of is het de ‘vrijheid’ van de corrupte Amerikaanse deep state om wereldwijd met geweld een neoliberale wanorde af te dwingen die 64 individuen zo rijk heeft gemaakt dat zij vandaag de dag evenveel bezitten als de helft van de hele mensheid tezamen? Heeft Buruma het wellicht over de ‘vrijheid’ van het Amerikaanse militair-industrieel complex om ruim de helft van de Federale begroting die het Congres kan toewijzen, op te slokken, ten koste van het welzijn van zowel de Amerikaanse bevolking zelf als de islamitische bevolking van het Midden-Oosten en de Maghreb? Het is een belangrijke kwestie ‘als we de gevaren scherp onder ogen’ willen ‘zien.’ Deze vragen kunnen niet achteloos terzijde worden geschoven, zelfs niet door propagandisten van de ‘oligarchie’ die zich momenteel publiekelijk afvragen of ‘we de signalen [herkennen] voordat het te laat is?’
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/how-to-tell-democracy-is-in-peril-by-ian-buruma-2018-07
Wat bedoelt deze mainstream-opiniemaker met ‘te laat’? Ik bedoel: ‘te laat’ voor wat? Buruma zelf licht een tipje van de sluier op wanneer hij benadrukt dat ‘het doel’ van ‘radicale nationalisten’ als Stephen Bannon, Theresa May, Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Marine le Pen, Victor Orban en Donald Trump ‘niet zozeer is om elites af te schaffen, als wel om zelf naar de macht te grijpen.’ Let wel, het gaat hem dus niet om de permanente westerse oorlogsvoering, waarbij NAVO-landen, onder aanvoering van Washington, betrokken worden. Zijn interesse is niet het massale geweld dat onder zowel Democratische- als Republikeinse presidenten wordt ingezet. Nee, zijn issue is de handhaving van de macht van de huidige‘elites.’ Daarom negeert hij dan ook het feit dat bijvoorbeeld de Amerikaanse agressieoorlog tegen Irak, volgens de normen van de Neurenberg Processen de ultieme oorlogsmisdaad is, aangezien daaruit alle andere oorlogsmisdaden onvermijdelijk voortvloeien. Destijds benadrukte de Amerikaanse hoofdaanklager in Neurenberg, Robert H. Jackson, dat
If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.
Het is belangrijk dit niet te vergeten, aangezien Ian Buruma in The Guardian van 16 juli 2002 onder de kop ‘Why we must share America's dirty work’ -- toen het Irak-debat in het Westen actueel was -- adviseerde dat ‘we’ moeten ophouden te ‘verwachten’ van ‘the US to do the dirty work for us,’ en dat ‘we’ weliswaar ‘cannot match the US’ maar dat desondanks de NAVO-landen:
can share more of its burden. If we want the Americans to sign up to the ICC (International Criminal Court. svh), we too must do the dirty work, and take the risk of being held accountable.
The White Man's Burden. In dit wereldbeeld wordt ‘het risico’ geaccepteerd dat ‘dirty work’ noodzakelijkerwijs leidt tot ‘collateral damage’ in het geopolitieke machtspel. Inderdaad, Buruma heeft gelijk dat 'Fascist rhetoric is creeping back into the mainstream. The old taboos are fading because of lost memory.' Hij is daarvan een sprekend voorbeeld.
De strijd tussen ‘liberals’ en ‘populisten’ mag dan wel over van alles en nog wat gaan, maar niet over het Amerikaans ‘exceptionalisme’ en de wil tot nog meer ‘Lebensraum,’ die daaruit voortvloeit. Wat we in de praktijk zien is dan ook een ordinaire machtsstrijd tussen verschillende politieke facties. De haat en minachting voor de zogenaamde ‘populisten’ weet mijn oude vriend niet langer meer te verhullen wanneer hij in NRC Handelsblad van donderdag 9 augustus 2018 het volgende beweert:
Opvallend is hoe vaak populisten vervallen in zelfbeklag, alsof Orbán, Salvini (partijleider van de Italiaanse Lega Nord svh) en anderen door de ‘Davos Partij’ zouden worden onderdrukt. Zij voelen zich buitengesloten, niet voldoende erkend, verongelijkt. Het is nu hun beurt om te heersen, en om wraak te nemen voor alle krenkingen die zij hebben ondergaan. Daarom is Trump, de ordinaire zakenman in onroerend goed met een kolossaal minderwaardigheidscomplex, hun held.
Let op de terminologie van ‘talking head’ Ian Buruma: ‘populisten, zelfbeklag, verongelijkt, heersen, wraak nemen, krenkingen, kolossaal minderwaardigheidscomplex, hun held.’
Dit is tendentieuze kritiek die de oorzaken van de opkomst van rechtse populisten en de ondergang van de sociaal-democratische, c.q. ‘liberal,’ elite onbesproken laat. De vraag zou moeten zijn: waarom bezit voor een aanzienlijk deel van de westerse bevolking het ancien regime geen geloofwaardigheid meer? Door epidemisch ‘zelfbeklag’? Door chronische ‘verongelijktheid’? Door een collectieve ‘wraakzucht’? Door een ‘kolossaal minderwaardigheidscomplex’? De massale culturele deprivatie van grote delen van de westerse bevolking, laat Buruma hierbij buiten beschouwing. Ik bedoel het volgende:
The American public knows far more information about sex-scandals, celebrities, Hollywood than they know about economics and the environment. That is by design.
Jeff Cohen. Shadows of Liberty. 2012
De culturele armoede van honderden miljoenen burgers in westerse democratieën is opzettelijk teweeg gebracht. In A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor (1967) beschrijft de Britse auteur John Berger dit fenomeen als volgt:
There are large sections of the English working and middle class who are inarticulate as the result of wholesale cultural deprivation. They are deprived of the means of translating what they know into thoughts which they can think. They have no examples to follow in which words clarify experience. Their spoken proverbial traditions have long been destroyed: and, although they are literate in the strictly technical sense, they have not had the opportunity of discovering the existence of a written cultural heritage. Yet it is more than a question of literature. Any general culture acts as a mirror which enables the individual to recognize himself – or at least to recognize those parts of himself which are socially permissible. The culturally deprived have far fewer ways of recognizing themselves. A great deal of experience — especially emotional and introspective experience — has to remain unnamed for them.
Daarbij geldt, zoals de Amerikaanse auteur Wendell Berry in zijn boek The Art of the Commonplace (2002) duidelijk maakte, dat
[t]he willingness to abuse other bodies is the willingness to abuse one's own. To damage the earth is to damage your children. To despise the ground is to despise its fruit; to despise the fruit is to despise its eaters. The wholeness of health is broken by despise. If competition is the correct relation of creatures to one another and to the earth, then we must ask why exploitation is not more successful than it is. Why, having lived so long at the expense of other creatures and the earth, are we not healthier and happier than we are? Why does modern society exist under constant threat of the same suffering, deprivation, spite, contempt, and obliteration that it has imposed on other people and other creatures? Why do the health of the body and the health of the earth decline together? And why, in consideration of this decline of our worldly flesh and household, our 'sinful earth,' are we not healthier in spirit?
Het geloof dat het materialisme in zijn ultieme vorm, te weten: het consumentisme, de mensheid kan verlossen van het lijden én het kwaad is een diep verankerde waan. Maar door de massale culturele deprivatie is de massa niet in staat de eigen situatie te doorgronden, want, zoals de Noord-Amerikaanse hoogleraar Henry Giroux stelt,
When you can't translate private troubles into larger public issues, you have no way of understanding the forces of oppression in which you find yourself. One of the great successes of neoliberalism has been to eliminate all questions of the structural, the social — and how they work against people in ways that suggest that they should not be involved in collective action. It represents a form of organized powerlessness at the heart of neoliberalism.
De massamedia spelen in het proces van ‘georganiseerde machteloosheid’ een centrale rol, net als de geestelijkheid dit deed tijdens de middeleeuwen, voordat de boekdrukkunst haar intrede deed en het individu de kans kreeg ‘Gods Woord’ zelf te lezen, en daardoor de teksten kon interpreteren. Voorheen bepaalde alleen de klerikale elite van geletterden wat waar was en wat niet, wie gehoorzaamd moest worden en wie niet. Na ruim twee eeuwen modern kapitalisme en de uitvinding van internet, verkeert de mens opnieuw in een soortgelijke overgangsfase. Henry Giroux zette in dit verband op 29 september 2015 het volgende uiteen:
Too many people today learn quickly that their fate is solely a matter of individual responsibility, irrespective of wider structural forces. This is a much promoted hyper-competitive ideology whose message is that surviving in a society demands reducing social relations to forms of social combat. People today are expected to inhabit a set of relations in which the only obligation is to live for one’s own self-interest and to reduce the responsibilities of citizenship to the demands of a consumer culture. Yet, there is more at work here than a flight from social responsibility, if not politics itself. Also lost is the importance of those social bonds, modes of collective reasoning, public spheres and cultural apparatuses crucial to the formation of a sustainable democratic society.
In zijn boek America at War with Itself (2016) schrijft Giroux met betrekking tot het neoliberale kapitalisme:
This much promoted ideology, favored by the rich, suggests that human relations boil down to competition and combat. People today are expected to inhabit a set of economic relations in which the only obligation is to fight for one's own self-interest.
Hoewel mijn mainstream-collega’s het doen voorkomen alsof ze er niet bewust van zijn, is het voor iemand met een greintje verstand overduidelijk dat de neoliberale ideologie in hoge mate ondemocratisch is, zelfs anti-democratisch, en ‘also works to eliminate structural, systemic and social concerns from public discourse.’ Vandaar het belang van permanente propaganda. Zonder die hersenspoeling zou de politieke en financiële elite benevens de bureaucratie machteloos zijn. Het belang van een ideologische versie van de werkelijkheid werd al in de achttiende eeuw door David Hume ingezien toen deze Schotse Verlichtings-filosoof schreef over 'the easiness with which the many are governed by the few' en 'the implicit submission with which the men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.' Hume concludeerde in zijn essay OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT:
When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan (sultan. svh) of EGYPT, or the emperor of ROME, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion.
Op het beheersen van de opinievorming berust de macht van de elite. Vandaar het belang dat zij de massamedia in handen heeft. Onwelgevallige feiten en dissidente opvattingen kunnen zodoende weg worden gefilterd. In de woorden van de Amerikaanse socioloog C.Wright Mills is:
het doel van de opinie-organisatoren om de bevolking in een voortdurende staat van emotionele onderworpenheid te houden... Immers, als het maar eenmaal gelukt is om een mentaliteit van volgzaamheid en gehoorzaamheid te kweken, is het niet moeilijk meer om de mensen te doen geloven en te doen voelen wat men maar wil... hun opinies zijn parallel omdat ze alle uit één bron afkomstig zijn: die van de media.
Edward Bernays, grondlegger van de public relations-industrie, die door het tijdschrift Life in 1999 werd uitgeroepen tot 'one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century,' stelde al in 1928 dat 'the engineering of consent the very essence of the democratic proces' is. Bernays formuleerde dit proces als volgt:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
In zijn boek Corporate Public Relations. A New Historical Perspective (2011)c oncludeert de Amerikaanse historicus Marvin Olasky dat Bernays in het begin van de twintigste eeuw 'één van de eersten' was geweest
to realize fully that American 20th Century liberalism would be increasingly based on social control posing as democracy, and would be desperate to learn all the opportunities for social control that it could.
Op zijn beurt kwam de Amerikaanse historicus, professor Stewart Ewen, in zijn studie PR! A Social History of Spin (1996) tot de slotsom dat al vanaf de jaren twintig van de vorige eeuw
the mass media, dominated by commercial interests, would provide subservient channels through which as broad public might be schooled to a corporate point of view.
Bernays zelf wees zijn rijke opdrachtgevers in zijn boek Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) erop dat:
The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been possible so to mould the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
Natuurlijk werd hij rijkelijk beloond voor zijn inzichten in 'the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses,' die een 'indispensable feature of democratic society' was geworden, zoals hij het zelf zo treffend had vastgesteld. Vanaf toen wisten de 'invisible wire pullers,' zoals Bernays hen betitelde, hoe ze 'continuously and systematically' de voorname taak van het 'regimenting the public mind' konden concretiseren. Edward Bernays, tezamen met andere vooraanstaande Amerikaanse intellectuelen, waarschuwde de elite al een eeuw geleden voor de gevaren van de democratie. Immers, op die wijze konden grote groepen burgers een greep krijgen op hun eigen toekomst en dit zou de macht van de elite drastisch inperken. 'Freedom' kan alleen in handen zijn van de machtigen en rijken en hun woordvoerders in de mainstream media, die de middelen hebben om die 'vrijheid' vorm en inhoud te geven, waardoor het vandaag de dag
impossible [is] to overestimate the importance of engineering consent; it affects almost every aspect of our daily lives.
Voor zijn baanbrekende bijdrage aan de beheersing van de massa werd Bernays in 1949 door de prestigieuze American Psychological Association gehuldigd. Hoe invloedrijk de inzichten van Bernays waren, bleek hetzelfde jaar nog eens toen de redactie van het bekende Amerikaanse tijdschrift Fortune zonder enige ironie vaststelde dat
it is as impossible to imagine a genuine democracy without the science of persuasion [i.e. propaganda] as it is to think of a totalitarian state without coercion. The daily tonnage output of propaganda and publicity... has become an important force in American life. Nearly half of the contents of the best newspapers is derived from publicity releases; nearly all the the contents of the lesser papers... are directly or indirectly the work of PR departments.
Kortom, volgens de westerse elite is ‘ware democratie’ gebaseerd op permanente propaganda, en in dit opzicht verschilt de huidige westerse democratie niet van een totalitaire staat. Het was de grote joodse filosofe en politiek denker Hannah Arendt die in haar studie The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) het fenomeen totalitarisme diepgravend analyseerde. Wikipedia meldt daarover:
Arendt discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form of government. Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, says Arendt, insofar as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination. Arendt discusses the use of front organizations, fake governmental agencies, and esoteric doctrines as a means of concealing the radical nature of totalitarian aims from the non-totalitarian world. A final section added to the second edition of the book in 1958 suggests that individual isolation and loneliness are preconditions for totalitarian domination.
In dezelfde jaren twintig van de vorige eeuw benadrukte de invloedrijkste Amerikaanse mainstream-opiniemaker, Walter Lippmann, dat journalisten als ‘gespecialiseerde klasse’ de taak hebben om de ‘gemeenschappelijke belangen… die voor het overgrote deel de publieke opinie ontgaan’ zodanig te presenteren dat ze door de massa aanvaard worden, waarbij natuurlijk de ‘gemeenschappelijke belangen’ allereerst en vooral de rijke elite dienen. Met andere woorden: de westerse media moeten de visie van de machtigen propageren. Ook de Franse socioloog Jacques Ellul ging uitgebreid in op dit onderwerp. In zijn fameuze studie Propaganda. The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1965) benadrukte hij dat er twee verschillende vormen van propaganda bestaan, te weten de ‘agitation propaganda’ en de meer geraffineerde ‘integration propaganda,’ waarbij ‘propaganda is needed especially for the technological society to flourish, and its technological means – mass media among them – in turn make such integration propaganda possible,’ zoals Konrad Kellen schreef in een introductie van het in 1965 in Engels vertaalde boek. Kellen zelf wist waarover hij het had aangezien deze prominente geleerde in 1933 als joodse Duitser naar de VS moest vluchten en tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog deel uitmaakte van een ‘U.S. Army intelligence unit in Europe, working in psychological warfare, and being awarded the Legion of Merit.’ Ellul zelf schreef dat
The force of propaganda is a direct attack against man… The strength of propaganda reveals, of course, one of the most dangerous flaws of democracy. But that has nothing to do with my own opinions. As I am in favor of democracy, I can only regret that propaganda renders the true exercise of it almost impossible. But I think it would be even worse to entertain any illusions about a co-existence of true democracy and propaganda. Nothing is worse in times of danger than to live in a dream world. To warn a political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render a system.
Hij toonde aan dat
In reality propaganda cannot exist without using the mass media. If, by chance, propaganda is addressed to an organized group, it can have practically no effect on individuals before that group has been fragmented.
En dit betekent dat
Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal – the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings… Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person.
Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every area of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude. The myth has such motive force that, once accepted, it controls the whole of the individual, who becomes immune to any other influence. This explains the totalitarian attitude that the individual adopts – wherever a myth has been successfully created — and simply reflects the totalitarian action of propaganda on him.
Not only does propaganda seek to invade the whole man, to lead him to adopt a mystical attitude and reach him through all possible psychological channels, but, more, it speaks to all men. Propaganda cannot be satisfied with partial successes, for it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion. As long as a noticeable or expressed tension or a conflict of action remains, propaganda cannot be said to have accomplished its aim. It must produce quasi-unanimity, and the opposing faction must become negligible, or in any case cease to be vocal.
Deze beschrijving verklaart een aantal irrationaliteiten en taboes van de westerse massamedia. Mij wordt regelmatig gevraagd waarom steekhoudende, plausibelere analyses, die ik doorgaans via citaten van deskundigen geef, door de commerciële media worden verzwegen. Immers, 'de vrije pers' claimt allereerst en vooral ‘vrij’ te zijn. Maar, zoals Ellul terecht schrijft,
Propaganda must be total... Propaganda cannot be satisfied with partial successes, for it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion.
Dit verklaart tevens waarom mainstream collega’s van mij, die ik al heel lang persoonlijk aanspreek op hun corrupte houding, nooit publiekelijk met mij in discussie durven gaan. Mijn kritiek moet juist ‘cease to be vocal,’ en dissidenten dienen, net als destijds in de Sovjet Unie, ‘become negligible.’ Internet is de samizdat geworden van het Westen, in de zin die de Russische schrijver Vladimir Boekovski eraan gaf: ‘Samizdat: ik schrijf zelf, ik redigeer zelf, ik censureer zelf, ik geef zelf uit, ik verspreid zelf en ik zit er zelf een straf voor uit.’ Alleen dan kan men ‘vrij’ zijn om de werkelijkheid te beschrijven, en van dit feit is de westerse elite diep doordrongen. In de woorden van Bernays:
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.
(Propaganda, 2005 ed., p. 71.)
Hij noemde 'this scientific technique of opinion-molding the “engineering of consent.”’ Bernays was ervan overtuigd dat de rijke elite zich moest concentreren op het ‘regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.’ Ook de invloedrijke Walter Lippmann was uiterst sceptisch over de mogelijkheid van een ware democratie in een complexe moderne samenleving. Het gewone volk kon, volgens hem, zijn eigen belangen niet gaan formuleren, want dan zou het een chaos worden. Het publiek mocht tijdens verkiezingen wel zijn stem geven aan — door coöptatie aangewezen — beleidsbepalers, maar verder niets. Om dit proces mogelijk te maken en zo glad mogelijk te laten verlopen, moest de pers worden ingezet. Zij was verantwoordelijk voor ‘het fabriceren van consensus… een zelfbewuste vaardigheid en standaard instrument van een regeringen die namens het volk besturen.’ En juist daarom was van ultiem belang dat de pers ervan doordrongen blijft dat zij ‘moet kiezen,’ want, de commerciële pers verkeert voortdurend in de situatie waarbij ‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,’ om president Bush junior eens te citeren. Jacques Ellul schreef dan ook over ‘the formation of men’s attitudes’ dat propaganda
must create a complete environment for the individual, one from which he never emerges. And to prevent him from finding external points of reference, it protects him by censoring everything that might come in from the outside.
In de huidige werkelijkheid ‘[p]ropaganda cannot be satisfied with partial successes, for it does not tolerate discussion,’ en daarom moet de mens het geglobaliseerde neoliberalisme steunen. Een totalitair functionerend systeem accepteert namelijk geen enkel levensvatbaar alternatief. Die werkelijkheid verordonneert dat ook in een tijdperk vol massavernietigingswapens uiteindelijk alleen geweld een oplossing biedt. In die werkelijkheid kan de ongeveer 55 procent van de Amerikaanse stemgerechtigden die nog opkomt, kiezen tussen twee presidentskandidaten die beiden de Amerikaanse oligarchie in stand houden, en geen oplossingen hebben voor de rampen die de mensheid bedreigen. Hoewel de voltallige westerse mainstream-pers haar voorkeur uitsprak voor Hillary Clinton, verzweeg dezelfde commerciële journalistiek de context waarin de geschiedenis zich voltrekt, en die ondermeer helder wordt beschreven door de Amerikaanse politieke journalist/auteur Diana Johnstone in haar boek Queen of Chaos. The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (2015):
Baby boomer Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, one year before U.S. policy planner George F. Kennan famously wrote that: ‘We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population… In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.'
Hillary, a Republican and a ‘Goldwater girl’ in her youth, grew up with with the viewpoint of a rich and dominant America obliged to maintain its position on top of an envious and resentful world. This was the standard attitude.
It was the result of World War II. The United States won the war in the Pacific. In Europe, the overwhelming military victor was the Soviet Union — a reality that has been obscured by Hollywood movies and repeated celebrations of the D-Day landing in Normandy, overlooking the fact that the Red Army was already pinning down and defeating the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. But the economic victor of World War II was overwhelmingly the Inited States of America. In a world largely devastated and indebted by war, the United States emerged with the huge advantage emphasized by George Kennan.
Unfortunately, since then the United States has failed to develop any great national purpose other than staying on top.
In recent years, it has become more frequent to speak of the United States as an ‘Empire.’ Yet it is an empire like no other. The United States has military bases all over the world, but their aim
is more to preserve the post-World War II advantage than to expand in the ways previous empires expanded. The former European empires assumed some responsibility for the countries they conquered in order to exploit their riches more effectively. Alongside exploitation of local labor and theft of resources, previous empires built infrastructure and introduced certain beneficial measures to make their colonies run smoothly. The United States is an irresponsible their colonies run smoothly. The United States is an irresponsible empire. It devastates countries and leaves them in shambles, with no compensation. Its actions are increasingly destructive because the purpose is not in reality to build an empire, but to destroy real or potential rivals and so maintain the position of superiority gained in World War II.
The destructive nature of these wars is confirmed by the fact that on close examination, none of the recent U.S. wars have been ‘won’ in any meaningful sense. Temporary illusions of ‘victory’ have given way to the rise of hostile extremists. Most recently, the undeclared U.S. drone war against Islamists in Yemen led to an even more effective revolutionary uprising which seized U.S.-provided weapons and forced American officials to flee. Despite the disastrous results of one war after another in the Middle East, the War Party in Washington seems ready to plunge into yet another proxy war in Ukraine, this time against a much more powerful adversary. These are essentially ‘spoiler’ wars, intended to diminish potential rivals. They create deepening chaos and bitter enemies, with no real benefit to anyone.
Gezien vanuit deze bredere context zal duidelijk zijn dat de havik Hillary Clinton namens de ‘War Party’ naar voren werd geschoven om toekomstige oorlogen mogelijk te maken. Diana Johnstone merkt in dit verband op:
Barack Obama promised change.
Then, upon election, he chose Hillary Rodham clinton as his Secretary of State. This was an early sign that when it came to foreign policy there would be no real change - at least, no change for the better.
The first real test of ‘change’ in U.S. foreign policy came six months later on June 28, 2009, when armed forces overthrew the elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya.
It is easy to see what real change would have meant. The United States could have vigorously condemned the coup and demanded that the legitimate President be reinstated. Considering U.S. influence in Honduras, especially its powerful military bases there, U.S. ‘resolve’ (vastberadenheid. svh) would have given teeth to anti-coup protests in Honduras and throughout the Hemisphere.
That is not the way it happened.
Instead, we got a first sample of the way Hillary Rodham Clinton treats the world. She calls it ‘smart power.’ We can translate that as hypocrisy and manipulation.
In early June 2009, Hillary flew to Honduras for the annual meeting of the Organization of American States with one thing in mind: how to prevent the lifting of the 47-year-old ban excluding Cuba, which a large majoritv of the OAS now considered ‘an outdated artifact of the Cold War.’ Moreover, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador would go as far as to characterize the ban, for some strange reason, as ‘an example of U.S. bullying.’
So Hillary and staff solved the problem by pouring the old wine into a new bottle. No more Cold War, no more ‘communist threat.’
‘Given what President Obama had said about moving past the stale debates of the Cold War,’ Hillary wrote in er memoir Hard Choices, ‘it would be hypocritical of us to continue insisting that Cuba be kept out of the OAS for the reasons it was first suspended in 1962, ostensibly its adherence to 'Marxism-Leninism' and alignment 'with the communist bloc.’ It would be more credible and accurate to focus on Cuba's present-day human rights violations, were incompatible with the OAS charter.’
Hillary has a strange definition of hypocrisy. She sees nothing hypocritical in simply changing the pretext for exclusion, while never mentioning the historic reasons for U.S. hostility: the expropriation of U.S. property that liberated resources for social welfare, education and one of the best free medical systems in the world, as well as intense political pressure from the dispossessed Cuban diaspora in the United States.
She sees nothing hypocritical in inventing a transparent device to keep Cuba out while pretending to let Cuba in: ‘What if we agreed to lift the suspension, but with the condition that Cuba be reseated as a member only if it made enough democratic reforms to bring it in line with the charter? And, to expose the Castro brothers' contempt for the OAS itself, why not require Cuba to formally request re-admittance?’
Indeed, this proved just hypocritical enough to persuade the fence-hangers, Brazil and Chile, to go along.
Vooral de ommezwaai van Chili was opmerkelijk aangezien het juist de VS is geweest die de vernietiging van de democratie en de mensenrechten onder president Allende mogelijk maakte door de militaire coup van 1973 te organiseren. Ook de militaire dictatuur die van 1964 tot 1985 in Brazilië, met steun van de VS, de democratie en de mensenrechten schond, kon in 2009 de Braziliaanse autoriteiten niet van keuze doen veranderen. Vanaf de eerste helft van de negentiende eeuw heeft de VS de geschiedenis van Latijns-Amerika op een uiterst bloedige manier bepaald, en Hillary Clinton zou daaraan geen eind hebben gemaakt. Van belang is te weten dat in Honduras, volgens het CIA-Factbook, ‘nearly 65% of the population in poverty’ leeft, en ‘about one-third of the people are underemployed’ terwijl het land ‘suffers from extraordinarily unequal distribution of income,’ waardoor een kleine elite er schatrijk is, en door Washington en Wall Street in het zadel wordt gehouden. Diana Johnstone wijst erop dat:
Hillary began her diplomatic career in Latin America, marked by rebranding hostility to any independent socio-economic policy from ‘anti-communism’ to defense of ‘human rights,’ by transparent hypocrisy enforced by arm-twisting, and by enforcing the Monroe Doctrine in both domestic and international affairs.
During her visit to Honduras, her host, President Manuel Zelaya, annoyed her. She didn't like his white cowboy hat, she didn't like his dark black mustache, and above all, she didn't like his fondness for Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. But she was hypocritical about that, too. ‘I pulled Zelaya aside into a small room and played up his role and responsibilities as host of the conference. If he backed our compromise, he could help save not just this summit but the OAS itself. If not, he would be remembered as the leader who presided over the organization's collapse.’
Hillary left Honduras satisfied at having ‘succeeded in replacing an outdated rationale with a modern process that would further strengthen the OAS commitment to democracy.’
Shortly thereafter, President Zelaya was overthrown.
The context of that coup d'état makes the motivation clear.
Manuel Zelaya was a traitor to his class. Although a landowner from a wealthy family in the lumber industry, Zelaya had developed populist ambitions to liberate his country from its longstanding status as the ultimate banana republic. The country is divided between a small selfish wealthy class and the mass of dirt-poor inhabitants whose only prospects tend to lie in drug smuggling. Fierce competition in the narcotics trade contributes to Honduras holding the highest murder rate in the world. In addition the U.S. Air Force base at Soto Cano has served as the organizing center of two of the most vicious ‘regime change’ operations in history: the 1954 overthrow of reformist president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala (georganiseerd door de CIA. svh), to the north of Honduras, and the illegal Contra sabotage operations (met financiële steun van de Ronald Reagan-regering. svh) against Nicaragua, the country's southern neighbor, in the 1980s. Meanwhile, in Honduras itself, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
Elected in 2005, Zelaya wanted to make a difference. With the apparent breeze of change blowing throughout the region, Zelaya decreed a 60% minimum wage increase amid howls of protest from private business associations. Criticizing the so-called war on drugs as a pretext for foreign intervention, Zelaya proposed instead a fresh approach to the drug problem with a focus on educating addicts and curbing demand. And he thought that Soto Cano should be transformed into an international civilian airport. In 2007, Zelaya made the first official trip by a Honduran President to Cuba in 46 years and discussed policy matters with Raul Castro. Worst of all, he joined ALBA, the Alternative! Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America (subsequently renamed the ‘Alianza’), founded in 2004 by Cuba and Venezuela, inspired by Hugo Chavez. This rapprochement promised Honduras real economic benefits.
In 2008, Washington sent as its Ambassador to Tegucigalpa the man who had been director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council during the failed U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002, Hugo Llorens. Born in Cuba in 1954, at the age of seven Llorens had been one of over fourteen thousand unaccompanied children shipped from the revolutionary island to the United States in Operation Peter Pan to be saved from ‘communist indoctrination.’
In May 2009, the Democratic Civil Union of Honduras was formed by ‘civil society’ organizations, many of them receiving ‘democracy promotion’ grants from the U.S.-financed National Endowment for Democracy (NED), with the objective of getting rid of Zelaya. Their campaign focused on Zelaya's proposal for a referendum to voters during the upcoming November elections on whether or not to convene a convention in 2010 to revise the Constitution, ostensibly to make it more democratic via proportional representation with recall mechanism and greater rights for ethnic minorities.
Belangrijk te weten is dat kritiek op de National Endowment of Democracy
includes a lack of openness and public accountability in its stewardship of millions of dollars a year in taxpayer funds in the year 1985. Libertarian congressman Ron Paul also argued against NED funding in 2005 stating that NED has ‘very little to do with democracy. It is an organization that uses US tax money to actually subvert democracy, by showering funding on favored political parties or movements overseas. It underwrites color-coded “people’s revolutions” overseas that look more like pages out of Lenin’s writings on stealing power than genuine indigenous democratic movements.’
The libertarian think tank Cato Institute criticized money spent in France in the 1980s saying that:
‘French democracy in the 1980s did not appear to be so fragile that it required financial assistance from American taxpayers to sustain itself. The government of François Mitterrand was duly elected within a democratic system nearly as old as America's. The AFL-CIO, however, determined that France's socialist government was permitting a dangerous rise of communist influence. According to the late Irving Brown, Paris-based director of international relations for the AFL-CIO at the time of the incident: “France…is threatened by the Communist apparatus… It is a clear and present danger if the present is thought of as 10 years from now.” That mentality has resulted in AFL-CIO support for highly controversial causes. One of the French groups that received funding, the National Inter-University Union, was widely viewed as a cauldron of rightist extremism and xenophobia and rumored also to have ties to terrorists.’
Kritische Amerikaanse intellectuelen waarschuwden dan ook dat onder Hillary Clinton als president de macht van het militair-industrieel complex zou blijven toenemen. De lezers van de alles behalve radicale Huffington Post konden op 19 april 2016 onder de kop ‘Hillary Clinton Is the Corporate Greed Candidate,’ vernemen dat:
This goes way beyond her $200,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs: Hillary Clinton is the corporate-financed candidate (‘the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president’). And new allegations of Hillary’s unethical joint fundraising with the Democratic National Committee is further evidence that the establishment is betting big on the former Secretary of State.
Dezelfde Huffington Post berichtte op 28 september 2016 dat
Conservative Newspaper Editorial Boards Line Up Behind Hillary Clinton
Vanwege het feit dat mevrouw Clinton’s verkiezingscampagne door de grote concerns en banken werd gefinancierd en gezien haar politieke verleden, was het uitgesloten dat zij zou breken met de oorlogszuchtige buitenlandse politiek van de VS. Zij zou, net als in het geval van Honduras, terreur blijven steunen. De journaliste Diana Johnstone schreef over de militaire staatsgreep waarbij de democratisch gekozen president van Honduras werd verjaagd:
The officer in charge of the military coup, General Romeo Vasquez, was a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which has trained a long line of Latin American putschists and torturers. (http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/what-is-the-soawhinsec en http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.nl/search?q=school+of+the+americas svh) The Honduran military let it be known that they were ‘obligated’ to remove President Zelaya from power because of the ‘threat’ he posed with his leftist ideology and alignment with Venezuela and Cuba.
Under the post-Zelaya regime, Honduras rapidly withdrew from ALBA.
As she tells it, Hillary was unprepared and unaware when she received word of the crisis from Tom Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. ‘He told me what we knew, which still wasn’t much.’ This was odd because it emerged that Shannon and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelley had been in Honduras the week before, meeting with the very same civilian and military groups who later carried out the coup. They claimed subsequently that they had been there to ‘urge against’ it. Hillary could also count on expert analysis from the notorious former U.S. ambassador to Honduras during the Iran-Contra affair, John Negroponte, whom she had reportedly hired as a special consultant.
Wat voor soort politica Hillary Clinton is, blijkt uit ondermeer dit laatste feit. John Negroponte was de Amerikaanse ambassadeur in de jaren tachtig toen in Honduras op grote schaal werd gemarteld en gemoord door de terroristen van ‘Intelligence Battalion 3–16,’ de officiële naam van 'a Honduran army unit responsible for carrying out political assassinations and torture of suspected political opponents of the government during the 1980s. Battalion members received training and support from the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA. svh) both in Honduras and at US military bases.' Tenminste negentien
Battalion 3–16 members were graduates of the School of the Americas. The Battalion 3–16 was also trained by Pinochet's Chile… The reorganization of the unit under the name ‘Intelligence Battalion 3–16’ is attributed to General Gustavo Álvarez Martínez.
Bekend is dat
Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, at that time a Colonel, studied at the Argentine Military College, graduating in 1961. By the end of 1981 (i.e. during the Dirty War in Argentina during which up to 30,000 people were disappeared by Argentine security forces and death squads) more than 150 Argentine officers were in Honduras. This training operation took the code-name of Operation Charly and used training bases in Lepaterique and Quilalí. The Central Intelligence Agency took over from the Argentinians after the Falklands War, although Argentine officers remained active in Honduras until 1984–1986.
The Argentine Navy's ESMA also sent instructors to Honduras, including Roberto Alfieri González who served in the National Guard of El Salvador as well as in Guatemala and Honduras.
Links with the United States
The CIA had a strong role in establishing, training, equipping and financing Battalion 3–16. The US Ambassador to Honduras at the time, John Negroponte, met frequently with General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez. In summarizing declassified US documents showing telegrams (cables) sent and received by Negroponte during his period as US Ambassador to Honduras, the National Security Archive states that ‘reporting on human rights atrocities’ committed by Battalion 3–16 is ‘conspicuously absent from the cable traffic’ and that ‘Negroponte's cables reflect no protest, or even discussion of these issues during his many meetings with General Alvarez, his deputies and Honduran President Robert Suazo. Nor do the released cables contain any reporting to Washington on the human rights abuses that were taking place.’
Sterker nog, in een telegram van 13 oktober 1983 dat de door Hillary Clinton ingehuurde John Negroponte als ambassadeur schreef, rapporteerde hij
on what he sees as the Honduran top military commander's ‘commitment to constitutional government’ and appears to laud his dedication to democracy. General Gustavo Alvarez, to whom the Honduran human rights ombudsman and other investigators have assigned responsibility for the death squad activity of the Honduran secret police Battalion 316 in the early 1980s, was Negroponte's key contact in the Honduran military on the contra war and for covert and overt U.S. use of Honduran military facilities. Five months after Negroponte wrote this cable, Alvarez was ousted as commander-in-chief because of his ‘authoritarian tendencies’ and exiled to a diplomatic posting in South America.
Met andere woorden: de politiek van martelen en moorden, oftewel politiek terrorisme, zou onder mevrouw Clinton met evenveel, zo niet nog meer inzet worden voortgezet. Maar over het Amerikaans terrorisme zult u geen analyse aantreffen in het werk van Ian Buruma. Integendeel. Hij voorspelde juni 2017 in de NRC dat ‘we’ met het oog op de naderende ‘einde’ van wat hij de ‘Pax Americana’ noemde ‘ons [zullen] moeten voorbereiden op een tijd waarin we met weemoed terugkijken op het betrekkelijk goedaardige imperialisme uit Washington.’
Daarom opnieuw de terzake kundige journaliste Johnstone:
Negroponte had recently been to Tegucigalpa to urge Zelaya not to change the status of the main U.S. Air Force base at Soto Cano. Now it was Hillary's turn to employ ‘smart’ power by never calling a coup d'état a coup d'état. Instead, what had happened was a ‘crisis’ or the ‘forced exile’ of the President which inspired the United States to call on ‘all parties’ to resolve their differences ‘without violence.’
In ‘Hard Choices,’ Hillary implicitly endorse the golpistas’ (de coupplegers. svh) pretext… The State Department went on to praise the Honduran military, which had hardly used ‘peaceful dialogue’ to depose their President, for having acted as ‘the securer of public order during this proces.’
Geen woord hierover in Buruma’s columns over de voortreffelijkheid van het neoliberale Washington en Wall Street, waar ‘we,’ volgens hem, straks zo naar zullen terugverlangen. De Amerikaanse terreur is voor de collaborerende ‘vrije pers’ een taboe-onderwerp. Meer hierover later.
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