Het Geloof van de Polderpers: Consume or Die!

Niets krijgt de kans zich te ontwikkelen in de consumptiemaatschappij, alles verandert razendsnel en is even wispelturig als de markt zelf. Na een steeds korter bestaan is het product of de dienst alweer gedateerd, waardoor maar zeer weinig de kans krijgt te evolueren. En dat is juist ook de bedoeling in een massamaatschappij, waarin iedere consument gemobiliseerd moet blijven. De massa moet voortdurend bestookt worden met alles dat nieuw en fris lijkt. Op die manier voltrekt zich een niet aflatend bombardement van beelden, waardoor: 

in a mass society people are related not to each other but to some abstract organizing principle, they are often in a state of exhaustion, for this lack of contact is unnatural. So Masscult attempts to provide distraction for the tired businessman — or the tired proletarian,

aldus de Amerikaanse cultuurcriticus Dwight Macdonald. In een gelijkgeschakelde wereld wordt De Telegraaf zowel door de 'bovenbazen' als door de ‘onderkaste’ gelezen, klassieke muziek door Radio 4 plat gedraaid om als ‘muziek voor miljoenen’ vertier te bieden, terwijl op de beeldbuis het collectief dagelijks zijn meningen verneemt via talkshow-hosts. Deze ontwikkeling was onvermijdelijk, aangezien door:

the French Revolution, the masses for the first time made their entrance onto the political stage, and it was not long before they also began to occupy a central position in culture, 

waardoor die ‘cultuur’ redelijk snel ontaarde in totale verpaupering, of zoals Macdonald schreef:

in the United States, the demands of the audience, which has changed from a small body of connaisseurs into a large body of ignoramuses, have become the chief criteria of success.

Het commerciële mens- en wereldbeeld van de mainstream-media staat onafwendbaar op voet van oorlog met ‘de cultuur,’ dat wil zeggen: de hogere cultuur, het domein van creativiteit, vernieuwing en onvoorspelbaarheid. De ‘cultuur’ van de zogeheten ‘vrije pers’ is een herhaling van cliché’s en van de officiële, niet doorleefde, werkelijkheid, die volgens Macdonald:

destroys all values, since value-judgments require discrimination, an ugly word in liberal-democratic American. Masscult is very, very democratic; it refuses to discriminate against or between anything or anybody. All is grist to its mill and all comes out finely ground indeed.

Hij stelt in verband met deze gelijkvormige, plat gewalste realiteit dat:

objections to the giving-to-the-public-what-it-wants line are often attacked as undemocratic and snobbish. Yet it is precisely because I do believe in the potentialities of ordinary people that I criticize Masscult. For the masses are not people, they are not The Man in the Street or the Average Man, they are not even that figment of liberal condescension, ‘The Common Man.’ The masses are, rather, man as non-man, that is man in a special relationship to other men that makes it impossible for him to function as man (one of the human functions being the creation and enjoyment of works of art.)

De massamens is onderworpen aan ‘a uniform discipline whose only precedent was the “slave socialism” of Egypt.’ Deze ontwikkeling liep parallel met het ontwikkelen van het systeem van massaproductie en massaconsumptie. Macdonald:

The tendency of modern industrial society, whether in the USA or the USSR, is to transform the individual into the mass man. For the masses are in historical time what a crowd is in space: a large quantity of people unable to express their human qualities because they are related to each other neither as individuals nor as members of a community. In fact, they are not related to each other at all but only to some impersonal, abstract, crystallizing factor.

Met als resultaat dat:

The mass man is a solitary atom, uniform with the millions of other atoms that go to maken up ‘the lonely crowd,’ as David Riesman well calls our society. A community, on the contrary, is a group of individuals linked to each other by concrete interests.

Een wezenlijk probleem van de massamaatschappij is dat zijn:

morality sinks to the level of the most primitive members — a crowd will commit atrocities that very few of its members would commit as individuals — and its taste to that of the least sensitive and the most ignorant. Yet this collective monstrosity, ‘the masses,’ ‘the public,’ is taken as a human norm by the technicians of Masscult.

Onvermijdelijk is dat het beschavingsniveau in een massamaatschappij daalt. Daarom kon de Democratische ‘populist' Barack Obama met de simplistische en bedrieglijke slogan 'change we can believe in' president worden en de Republikeinse 'populist' Donald Trump het Witte Huis betreden met de even onnozele leuze 'Make America Great Again.' Dit verraadt hoe een oppervlakkige consumptiemaatschappij gemobiliseerd blijft door, in kreten verpakte, sentimenten. Uiteindelijk wijkt het beeld, dat ook opiniemakers als Ian Buruma en Geert Mak gebruiken, niet wezenlijk af van dat van de Reader’s Digest. Het geschetste beeld in hun columns is stupide, even bedreigend als de boodschap die Henry Robinson Luce in 1941 verspreidde, toen deze tijdschriften-magnaat  ‘The American Century’ aankondigde, waarbij, in de woorden van president Woodrow Wilson ‘trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down,’ en ‘Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.’

Ook de rijke Luce was ‘ardent anti-Soviet, he once demanded John Kennedy invade Cuba,’ en ‘would advance his concepts of US dominance of the "American Century" through his periodicals with the ideals shared and guided by members of his social circle, John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and his brother, director of the CIA, Allen Dulles.’  

Belangrijk is te weten dat de Dulles-broers voormalige Wall Street advocaten waren die de buitenlandse belangen van de Amerikaanse financiële- en economische elite behartigden, en dus bij hun aantreden precies wisten wat van hen verlangd werd. En dat was exact hetzelfde dat zelfs de door de ‘progressieven’ zo bewonderde president Franklin Delano Roosevelt wist, te weten:

that America’s productive capacity demanded a large outlet in the export market. ‘If our factories run even 80 percent of capacity,’ he said, ’they will turn out more products than we as a nation can possibly use ourselves,’

zo schreef de befaamde Amerikaanse historicus Richard Hofstadter in The American Political Tradition (1948). Deze vereiste was ook de doorslaggevende reden waarom al in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw in Washington en op Wall Street zich het besef ontwikkelde dat de VS met geweld ook een overzees imperium moest opbouwen om de noodzakelijke greep op markten en grondstoffen te krijgen. In een poging dit streven te verhullen, beweert mainstream-opiniemaker Ian Buruma nog steeds met grote stelligheid dat het Atlantisch Handvest, in 1941 opgesteld door het Verenigd Koninkrijk en de Verenigde Staten, ‘gekenmerkt’ werd door ‘deeply internationalist ideas,’ zoals ‘cooperation between countries, free trade and political freedom for all.’ Veel minder hypocriet was president Theodor Roosevelt geweest toen hij tijdens de eeuwwisseling — terwijl de VS honderdduizenden Filipinos uitmoordden die naar onafhankelijkheid streefden — de gedenkwaardige woorden schreef: ‘speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ Sindsdien kent de buitenlandse politiek van Washington en Wall Street de ‘big stick diplomacy’ waarbij allereerst geldt dat het voor een imperialistische mogendheid ‘onmisbaar’ is ‘to possess serious military capability that would force the adversary to pay close attention’ en ‘never to bluff, to strike only when prepared to strike hard.’  Bijna een eeuw later is dit nog steeds de leidende doctrine van de Amerikaanse politieke en financiële elite, in 1997 nogmaals verwoord door The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), ‘a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States foreign policy,’ met als ‘stated goal’ niets minder dan 'to promote American global leadership,’ nu de Sovjet Unie als tegenmacht was weggevallen. De nauw aan Israel gelieerde organisatie beweerde: 

that ‘American leadership is good both for America and for the world,’ and sought to build support for ‘a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.’ 

Veelzeggend is dat van: 

the twenty-five people who signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz,

die bepalend zouden worden voor de Amerikaanse Midden-Oosten politiek, inclusief de illegale en ook voor de VS desastreuze inval in Irak. In zijn ‘Statement of Principles’ beschreef het PNAC: 

the United States as the ‘world's pre-eminent power,’ and said that the nation faced a challenge to ‘shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests.’ In order to achieve this goal, the statement's signers called for significant increases in defense spending,

om de wereld te dwingen de Amerikaanse belangen te dienen. De:

PNAC's principles were necessary ‘if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.’ 

Washington moest alles op alles zetten om te voorkomen dat een andere grootmacht de Amerikaanse hegemonie zou kunnen bedreigen. Om daar geen enkele twijfel over te laten bestaan publiceerde het PNAC in september 2000: 

‘Rebuilding America's Defenses,’ a report that promotes ‘the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.’ 

Dat de VS de enige ‘superpower’ in de wereld moest worden werd in het rapport nog eens rücksichtlos benadrukt door te stellen dat ‘advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’ De inzet van biologische wapens tegen andere volkeren wordt door deze uiterst invloedrijke Amerikaanse denktank dus niet als ‘terreur’ gezien, maar als een ‘politiek bruikbaar gereedschap,’ en demonstreert tot hoever deze beleidsbepalers bereid zijn te gaan, en dit alles om de macht van de elite in Washington en op Wall Street te beschermen. Het feit dat de VS door de NAVO-leden geaccepteerd wordt als de leider van het militair bondgenootschap laat zien dat ook de Europese elites niet categorisch tegen het plegen van genocidaal geweld zijn, inclusief een nucleaire- en biologische holocaust. In dit opzicht is er geen wezenlijk verschil tussen hen en de nazi-kopstukken.   

De ‘corporate media’ hebben daarbij tot taak allereerst het grote publiek te informeren over wat de officiële versie van de werkelijkheid is, om vervolgens deze politiek voortdurend te legitimeren. En zodoende kan mainstream-opiniemaker Ian Buruma meedelen dat het tot voorbeeld strekkende ‘Amerika,’ zich ‘na 1945’ heeft: 

ingezet om een nieuwe wereldorde te scheppen. De ideologische basis van de zogeheten ‘vrije wereld’ was vrije handel, internationale samenwerking, en in theorie de bevordering van democratie.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/03/14/waarom-le-pen-orban-en-trump-de-pest-aan-soros-hebben-7356626-a1550150 

Vanzelfsprekend realiseert ook Buruma zich dat hij een leugen verspreidt, want dat is de reden waarom hij zich gedwongen voelt te schrijven dat de ‘nieuwe wereldorde’ alleen ‘in theorie de bevordering van democratie’ behelst. In werkelijkheid is de VS juist  meermaals betrokken bij het ten val brengen van democratische regeringen, zoals ondermeer in Perzië in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Kongo in 1961, in Chili in 1973. Precies hetzelfde gaat op voor de rest van wat Ian B. terecht de zogenaamde ‘vrije wereld’ noemt, de ‘vrije handel’ en de ‘internationale samenwerking,’ die door Washington en Wall Street alleen geaccepteerd wordt wanneer deze fenomenen de belangen van de Amerikaanse elites niet doorkruisen. De Amerikaanse voormalige staatssecretaris van Financiën in de regering Reagan, dr. Paul Craig Roberts, schreef in september 2014 naar aanleiding van de publicatie van professor Stephen Kinzer's boek The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013) dat ‘hun demonisering van hervormingsgezinde regeringen’ vaak eindigde ‘in het omver werpen’ van democratisch gekozen regeringen. Wat vandaag de dag officieel ‘regime change’ heet, is een continuïteit van het Amerikaans buitenlands beleid, zoals die al sinds het begin van de twintigste eeuw vorm kreeg. Paul Craig Roberts:

Perhaps if Americans were taught their true history in place of idealistic fairy tales, they would be less gullible and less susceptible to government propaganda.  I have recommended Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the US, Howard Zinn’s  A People’s History of the US,  and now I recommend Stephen Kinzer’s  The Brothers, the story of the long rule of John Foster and Allen Dulles over the State Department and CIA and their demonization of reformist governments that they often succeeded in overthrowing. Kinzer’s history of the Dulles brothers’ plots to overthrow six governments provides insight into how Washington operates today. 

In 1953 the Dulles brothers overthrew Iran’s elected leader, Mossadegh and imposed the Shah, thus poisoning American-Iranian relations through the present day. Americans might yet be led into a costly and pointless war with Iran, because of the Dulles brothers poisoning of relations in 1953.

The Dulles brothers overthrew Guatemala’s popular president Arbenz, because his land reform threatened the interest of the Dulles brothers’ Sullivan & Cromwell law firm’s United Fruit Company client. The brothers launched an amazing disinformation campaign depicting Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was a threat to Western civilization. The brothers enlisted dictators such as Somoza in Nicaragua and Batista in Cuba against Arbenz. The CIA organized air strikes and an invasion force. But nothing could happen until Arbenz’s strong support among the people in Guatemala could be shattered. The brothers arranged this through Cardinal Spellman, who enlisted Archbishop Rossell y Arellano. ‘A pastoral letter was read on April 9, 1954 in all Guatemalan churches.’

A masterpiece of propaganda, the pastoral letter misrepresented Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was the enemy of all Guatemalans. False radio broadcasts produced a fake reality of freedom fighter victories and army defections. Arbenz asked the UN to send fact finders, but Washington prevented that from happening. American journalists, with the exception of James Reston, supported the lies. Washington threatened and bought off Guatemala’s senior military commanders, who forced Arbenz to resign. The CIA’s chosen and well paid ‘liberator,’ Col. Castillo Armas, was installed as Arbenz’s successor.

We recently witnessed a similar operation in Ukraine.

President Eisenhower thanked the CIA for averting ‘a Communist beachhead in our hemisphere,’ and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles gave a national TV and radio address in which he declared that the events in Guatemala ‘expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin.’ This despite the uncontested fact that the only outside power operating in Guatemala was the Dulles brothers.

What had really happened is that a democratic and reformist government was overthrown because it compensated United Fruit Company for the nationalization of the company’s fallow (braak liggend. svh) land at a value listed by the company on its tax returns. America’s leading law firm or perhaps more accurately, America’s foreign policy-maker, Sullivan & Cromwell, had no intention of permitting a democratic government to prevail over the interests of the law firm’s client, especially when senior partners of the firm controlled both overt and covert US foreign policy. The two brothers, whose family members were invested in the United Fruit Company, simply applied the resources of the CIA, State Department, and US media to the protection of their private interests. The extraordinary gullibility (goedgelovigheid. svh) of the American people, the corrupt American media, and the indoctrinated and impotent Congress allowed the Dulles brothers to succeed in overthrowing a democracy.

Keep in mind that this use of the US government in behalf of private interests occurred 60 years ago long before the corrupt Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes. And no doubt in earlier times as well.

The Dulles brothers next intended victim was Ho Chi Minh. Ho, a nationalist leader, asked for America’s help in freeing Vietnam from French colonial rule. But John Foster Dulles, a self-righteous anti-communist, miscast Ho as a Communist Threat who was springing the domino theory on the Western innocents. Nationalism and anti-colonialism, Foster declared, were merely a cloak for communist subversion.

Paul Kattenburg, the State Department desk officer for Vietnam suggested that instead of war, the US should give Ho $500 million in reconstruction aid to rebuild the country from war and French misrule, which would free Ho from dependence on Russian and Chinese support, and, thereby, influence. Ho appealed to Washington several times, but the demonic inflexibility of the Dulles brothers prevented any sensible response. Instead, the hysteria whipped-up over the ‘communist threat’ by the Dulles brothers landed the United States in the long, costly, fiasco known as the Vietnam War. Kattenburg later wrote that it was suicidal for the US ‘to cut out its eyes and ears, to castrate its analytic capacity, to shut itself off from the truth because of blind prejudice.’ Unfortunately for Americans and the world, castrated analytic capacity is Washington’s strongest suit.

The Dulles brothers’ next targets were President Sukarno of Indonesia, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo, and Fidel Castro. The plot against Castro was such a disastrous failure that it cost Allen Dulles his job. President Kennedy lost confidence in the agency and told his brother Bobby that after his reelection he was going to break the CIA into a thousand pieces. When President Kennedy removed Allen Dulles, the CIA understood the threat and struck first.

Warren Nutter, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, later Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, taught his students that for the US government to maintain the people’s trust, which democracy requires, the government’s policies must be affirmations of our principles and be openly communicated to the people. Hidden agendas, such as those of the Dulles brothers and the Clinton, Bush and Obama regimes, must rely on secrecy and manipulation and, thereby, arouse the distrust of the people. If Americans are too brainwashed to notice, many foreign nationals are not.

The US government’s secret agendas have cost Americans and many peoples in the world tremendously. Essentially, the Foster brothers created the Cold War with their secret agendas and anti-communist hysteria. Secret agendas committed Americans to long, costly, and unnecessary wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. Secret CIA and military agendas intending regime change in Cuba were blocked by President John F. Kennedy and resulted in the assassination of a president, who, for all his faults, was likely to have ended the Cold War twenty years before Ronald Reagan seized the opportunity. 

Secret agendas have prevailed for so long that the American people themselves are now corrupted. As the saying goes, ‘a fish rots from the head.’ The rot in Washington now permeates the country.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/09/28/washingtons-secret-agendas-paul-craig-roberts/  

https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/29/washingtons-secret-agendas/ 

De ‘verrotting’ waarover de insider Paul Craig Roberts van nabij getuige is geweest, ‘doordringt’ niet alleen ‘Amerika,’ maar ook zijn vazalstaten in Europa, met voorop Nederland. 

Letwel, Paul Craig Roberts is een insider, die de realpolitik van Washington en Wall Street van nabij meemaakte. Daartegenover staan de Nederlandse outsiders, al dan niet verbonden aan het universitaire wereldje of de zelfbenoemde ‘kwaliteitsmedia.’ Het telkens weer interveniëren in soevereine staten, en het omver werpen van democratische regeringen, wordt door Buruma verhuld achter een waas van propagandistische begrippen als ‘intens beleden internationalistische opvattingen,’ zoals ‘samenwerking tussen landen, vrijhandel en politieke vrijheid voor allen,’ waardoor de ‘landen’ in ‘Oost-Azïe [nooit] zo lang in welvaart en vrede [hebben] geleefd als onder Amerikaanse bescherming na 1945.’ Kennelijk behoort Vietnam niet tot Oost-Azië, en ook niet Laos, Cambodja, en Indonesië. Het zijn voorbeelden van hoe onbetrouwbaar Buruma’s opinie-werk is. De steun die Washington verstrekte aan grootschalige gruweldaden in Indonesië is immers algemeen bekend:

The Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 (Indonesian genocide, Indonesian Communist Purge, Indonesian politicide, or the 1965 Tragedy were large-scale killings and civil unrest that occurred in Indonesia over several months, targeting PKI party members, Communist sympathizers, ethnic Abangan Javanese, ethnic Chinese and alleged leftists, often at the instigation of the armed forces and government. It began as an anti-communist purge following a controversial attempted coup d'état by the 30 September Movement in Indonesia. The most widely published estimates were that 500,000 to more than one million people were killed, with some more recent estimates going as high as two to three million. The purge was a pivotal event in the transition to the ‘New Order’ and the elimination of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as a political force, with impacts on the global Cold War. The upheavals led to the fall of President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's three-decade authoritarian presidency… Despite a consensus at the highest levels of the US and British governments that it would be necessary ‘to liquidate Sukarno,’ as related in a CIA memorandum from 1962, and the existence of extensive contacts between anti-communist army officers and the US military establishment — training of over 1,200 officers, ‘including senior military figures,’ and providing weapons and economic assistance —  the CIA denied active involvement in the killings. Declassified US documents in 2017 revealed that the US government had detailed knowledge of the mass killings from the beginning, and was supportive of the actions of the Indonesian Army. US complicity in the killings, which included providing extensive lists of communist party officials to Indonesian death squads, has previously been established by historians and journalists. A top-secret CIA report from 1968 stated that the massacres ‘rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965–66        

Gezien zijn mentaliteit en zijn wereldbeeld is het niet verwonderlijk dat Ian Buruma in 2003 tot ‘Henry Robinson Luce professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism’ werd benoemd aan de ‘Bard College,’ een door de multimiljardair George Soros zwaar gesponsorde kleine universiteit, waar mijn oude vriend enthousiast de politiek van het neo-koloniale liberalisme doceert. En zo sluit de cirkel zich weer waarin gecorrumpeerde praatjesmakers de wereld in snel tempo naar de afgrond voeren. 

America Has Been at War 93% of the Time