I would urge a far greater detachment, on our government’s part, from their domestic affairs. I would like to see our government gradually withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights. Let me stress: I am speaking of governments, not private parties. If others in our country want to advocate democracy or human rights (whatever those terms mean), that’s perfectly all right. But I don’t think any such questions should enter into our diplomatic relations with other countries. If others want to advocate changes in their conditions, fine — no objection. But not the State Department or the White House. They have more important things to do.
Least of all should they allow such matters to affect our relations with China. The Chinese, to my opinion, are the French of Asia. The two peoples are similar in a number of respects. They are both proud people. Both are conscious of being the bearers of a great cultural tradition. They don’t really, in either case, like foreigners; or at least they don’t particularly appreciate the presence of foreigners in their midst. They like to be left alone. Our policy, in any case, should in my opinion be to treat them with the most exquisite courtesy and respect on the official level, but not expect too much of them. I see no reason, in particular, for all these ups and downs in our perceived relations with China. What do we expect of the Chinese? They are not going to love us, no matter what we do. They are not going to become like us. And it really is in ill grace for us to be talking down to them and saying, by implication, that ‘you ought to learn to govern yourselves as we do.’ For goodness’ sake, can’t we get away from that sort of nonsense? Let people be what they are, and treat them accordingly.
Hierop reageerde zijn interviewer, Richard Ullman, hoogleraar Internationale Betrekkingen aan de Princeton Universiteit:
Of course, American administrations often feel compelled to take rhetorical stands because of congressional opinion.’
Kennan: Well, we pay the price for it. That’s all I can say. I think that the executive branch of government has been just as bad, if not worse, than the Congress in this respect. But this whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious, and undesirable. If you think that our life here at home has meritorious aspects worthy of emulation by peoples elsewhere, the best way to recommend them is, as John Quincy Adams maintained, not by preaching at others but by the force of example. I could not agree more….
Ullman: The United States is these days the world’s only superpower. How long will this last?
Kennan: If you measure it only by military statistics alone, it could last, I suppose, for a long time. We have by the tail (in een precaire situatie verkeren. svh) after all, in the form of our Pentagon, a vast bureaucratic monster that we don’t know even how to cut down, not to mention to bring fully under control. But purely military power, even in its greatest dimensions of superiority, can produce only short-term successes. Serving in Berlin at the height of Hitler’s military successes, in 1941, I tried to persuade friends in our government that even if Hitler should succeed in achieving military domination over all of Europe, he would not be able to turn this into any sort of complete and long-lasting political preeminence and I gave reasons for this conclusion. And we were talking, then, only about Europe. Applied to the world scene, this is, of course, even more true. I can say without hesitation that this planet is never going to be ruled from any single political centre, whatever its military power.
Ullman: It isn’t only our military power that makes us number one. For better or worse, our cultural impact is equally profound. The world flocks to American popular culture.
Kennan: This, alas, appears to be true. We export to anyone who can buy it or steal it the cheapest, silliest, and most disreputable manifestations of our ‘culture.’ No wonder that these effusions become the laughingstock of intelligent and sensitive people the world over. But so long as we find it proper to let millions of our living rooms be filled with this trash every evening, and this largely to the edification of the schoolchildren, I can see that we would cut a poor figure trying to deny it to others beyond our borders. Nor would we be successful. In a computer age, it is available, anyway, for whoever wants to push the button and receive it. And so we must expect, I suppose, to appear to many abroad, despite our military superiority, as the world’s intellectual and spiritual dunce, until we can change the image of ourselves we purvey to others,’
aldus George Kennan, één van de meest gerespecteerde westerse geopolitieke denkers, in een interview, gepubliceerd op 12 augustus 1999 door The New York Review of Books.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1999/08/12/the-us-and-the-world-an-interview-with-george-kenn/
A different formulation of national policy might note that while international relationships are never simple, and power is an essential ingredient in them, justice as well as peace usually profits from a realistic acceptance of multiple (if unequal) national power centers, and of the inevitability of conflicting interests and values. The search for consensual American global hegemony, as for the ‘defeat’ of terrorism and ‘victory’ over evil, is a naive simulacrum (schijnvertoning. svh) of the serious armed utopianisms that were the curse of the twentieth century. One might even consider, as Kennan dared to do in 1951, as the cold war intensified, that national quality and success is ultimately determined by a nation’s ‘spiritual distinction’ — not a measure often cited in foreign policy discussions.
The ultimate criticism to be made of the position Brzezinski shares with many other foreign policy experts is that it ignores or denies the importance of what historically has been the principal force in international relations — the competitive assertion of national interests, founded on divergent values and ambitions among nations, assuredly including democratic ones.
His argument presumes that such differences will find resolution in some version of an end of history, achieved through convergence with the United States. Brzezinski and those who share his views would seem to believe in what has been called the Whig interpretation of history: that history’s purpose has been to lead up to us. The pursuit of national interest by other states produces the ‘global chaos’ against which he warns. Condoleezza Rice made the identical argument, as in a speech last year to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, saying that policies based on balance of power are the road to war.
This position rejects both the classical Western view of history, which is not progressive, and the realist school of political philosophy dominant in past Western political thought, which traditionally has taken a disabused view of human nature and political possibility. The progressive view is a manifestation of hope, or of faith. It amounts to an ideology, teleological in nature. It denies the proposition that hegemony produces hubris, inviting the attention of Nemesis, ending in destitution.
The notion that the United States has an exemplary national mission has always been central to American political thought and rhetoric. In Woodrow Wilson’s view (and that of many in the US today) this mission was divine in origin. Wilson (a president respected by today’s notably secular neoconservatives) held that the hand of God ‘has led us in this way,’ and that we are the mortal instruments of His will — a view that has repeatedly found an echo in the discourse of George W. Bush. This sense of mission lies behind the American claim to an exceptional role in international society.
Brzezinski argues that the practical consequence today of America’s:
‘global security role and its extraordinary global ubiquity (alomtegenwoordigheid. svh) [is to give the United States] the right to seek more security than other countries. It needs forces with a decisive worldwide deployment capability. It must enhance its intelligence (rather than waste resources on a huge homeland security bureaucracy) so that threats to America can be forestalled. It must maintain a comprehensive technological edge over all potential rivals… But it should also define its security in ways that help mobilize the self-interest of others. That comprehensive task can be pursued more effectively if the world understands that the trajectory of America’s grand strategy is toward a global community of shared interest.’
This belief that the United States has a unique historical mission — whether or not divinely commissioned — is not open to logical refutation. But an American policy that rests on a self-indulgent fiction must be expected to come to a bad end.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/04/08/the-american-mission/
Kortom, ‘de ultieme kritiek op het standpunt dat Brzezinski deelt met veel andere deskundigen van de buitenlandse politiek is dat zij het belang negeert van wat historisch gezien de voornaamste drijfveer is in internationale betrekkingen,’ namelijk ‘het concurrerende standpunt van nationale belangen, gebaseerd op afwijkende waarden en ambities van volkeren, inclusief zeker die van democratische naties.’ Niets is immmers minder democratisch dan de hegemonie, in dit geval die van de VS, waarbij een zeer kleine elite in Washington en op Wall Street met geweld haar wil oplegt aan bijna 8 miljard aardbewoners. Zo mogelijk nog absurder is dat nu het hele westers establishment handelt alsof het Amerikaans oorlogszuchtig neoliberalisme het absolute hoogtepunt is van de hele menselijke geschiedenis, waarmee ‘het einde van de geschiedenis’ zou zijn ingeluid. Intellectuele insiders als George Kennan en William Pfaff mogen deze claim dan wel ridiculiseren, maar voor outsiders van het allooi Geert Mak en Europese mainstream-politici als Ursula von der Leyen zien de VS als het imperium dat ‘een begin van orde bracht in de mondiale politiek en economie,’ en daardoor het recht had om na 1945 ‘decennialang als ordewaker en politieagent’ van de hele wereld te fungeren. Zo rechtvaardigen zij de lange reeks Amerikaanse oorlogsmisdaden, van Korea tot en met Syrië. Volgens serieuze berekeningen blijkt de VS betrokken te zijn geweest bij:
19 wars since World War II, but we will list the death toll from three of the bloodiest conflicts: The Korean War, The Vietnam War and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The total death toll of people killed by American troops in all these wars put together is over 12 million.
Each of these three conflicts have something in common: they were wars fought in the name of making the world ‘safe for democracy.’
A particular horror was the largest use of chemical weapons against civilians since World War II, the massive use of Agent Orange against Indochina where it continues to poison people today. It may take Vietnam and Laos thousands of years to recover. In the case of Iraq, American spy satellites helped Saddam Hussein use poison gas against the troops of Iran… we need to take a hard look at the horrors that were unleashed. Was it really necessary to invade places like Vietnam and Iraq and kill millions in these wars?
https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/Imperialism/usmurder.html
de publieke opinie geen 'ik.' Twijfel en geloof zijn haar beide wezensvreemd. Ze is extravert. Zelfkritiek is in haar ogen ziekelijke zelfkwellerij. Ze doet aan zelfrechtvaardiging. Om haar eigen voortreffelijkheid aan te tonen zoekt ze een tegenstander die ze met modder kan bekogelen. Kritiek is voor haar etikettering, nooit discussie. Een idee is voor haar een dogma of een ketterij… Kamerleden, actievoerders, journalisten, al die doe-mensen hebben van het denken alleen maar last en vroeg of laat zullen ze proberen om het te beknotten.
De scherpzinnige Kellendonk vreesde de waan van de dag, en benadrukte dat het 'realisme een weerspiegeling van de werkelijkheid [veinst] te zijn,' maar dat ‘stiekem het afbeelden precies andersom [gaat]: aan de werkelijkheid wordt door het realisme een beeld opgedrongen.' Dit is des te gevaarlijker omdat, volgens Kellendonk, het valse 'realisme,' in de journalistiek 'oppermachtig heerst.’ Immers, het virtuele realisme ‘geeft zich zonder voorbehoud uit voor naakte werkelijkheid,’ waarbij 'niets zo levend [is], of deze geestdodende vervreemdingsmachine weet het onverwijld op maat te snijden.’ Zoals gebruikelijk werden de waarschuwingen van Kellendonk, zelfs door degenen die hem zo bewonderden, domweg genegeerd. Dit blijkt ondermeer uit de houding van Bas Heijne, een groot bewonderaar van Kellendonk nadat hij een nachtje bij de auteur had mogen slapen: 'Bij mij geen dédain voor de waan van de dag. Ophef en hypes, de even heftige als vluchtige ontzetting die wekelijks door de media jaagt, ik heb het altijd prachtig gevonden.' Vandaar dat hij nu vooraan staat bij het demoniseren van Rusland. Welke andere drijfveer kan deze prototypische mainstream-columnist, hebben gehad dan 'zo dicht' mogelijk tegen 'zijn publiek' aan te kruipen? Bij zijn afscheid als stukjesschrijver van NRC Handelsblad portretteerde hij zichzelf als een ‘stand-upper’ van de journalistiek, die 'zo dicht bij zijn publiek' stond dat er tussen hem en de mainstream geen verschil meer te ontdekken was. Wist de populist Bas Heijne niet beter? Jawel, want dezelfde opiniemaker schreef ‘Politiek en commercie zien de mens niet meer als een individu, maar als een verzameling statistieken, een geheel van mega-data, en ze weten je steeds beter te sturen.’
Heijne gaf zelf een schitterend voorbeeld van hetgeen hij publiekelijk afwees. In zijn NRC-column van 17 februari 2017 beweerde hij dat ‘er ontelbare Russische pogingen [zijn] gedaan om in te breken in ministeries. We gaan 15 maart de stemmen weer handmatig tellen, uit angst voor Russische manipulatie. Nooit hoor je onze patriotten daar eens over.’ Hoe wist de woordvoerder van het polder-establishment zo zeker dat sprake was van ‘ontelbare Russische pogingen’? Wel, dat had Heijne uit oncontroleerbare beweringen van inlichtingendiensten, die doorgaans politiek gemotiveerd zijn. Zolang er geen harde, controleerbare bewijzen zijn, blijven daarom Heijne’s stellige opinies niets anders dan propaganda voor een verpolitiekte, virtuele werkelijkheid.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/02/17/nuttige-idioten-6748119-a1546624
The U.S. government’s and news media’s demonization of Putin (who’s no saint) should not be allowed to overshadow the fact that America’s rulers have needlessly provoked the Russians, the coup in Kiev being just the latest example. In 1998, the architect of the postwar containment policy, George Kennan, warned that humiliating Russia by expanding NATO 'is a tragic mistake.’ Must we learn this the hard way?
Hoewel ook talloze andere westerse deskundigen waarschuwden voor het feit dat ‘Obama Plays with Fire in Ukraine,’ bleven de politici en massamedia van de NAVO-lidstaten als bezetenen Rusland provoceren, kennelijk in de overtuiging dat een oorlog tussen de NAVO en Azië het machtsverlies van de VS zal stoppen, en ‘de naoorlogse orde’ zal herstellen, inclusief de talloze misdadige oorlogen die de VS al die tijd voerde. In het kader de bescherming van de westerse belangen, zei Geert Mak in een EO-radioprogramma op 6 november 2012 dat ‘Het beter [is] voor Nederland en de internationale gemeenschap dat Obama de verkiezingen wint,’ terwijl nu juist de politiek van de regering Obama/Biden erop gericht was om ‘Rusland uiteen te laten vallen,’ zoals Henry Kissinger besefte. Mak’s bewering was een schoolvoorbeeld van hetgeen de socioloog Jacques Ellul als volgt formuleerde:
in our time, the conviction of democracy and its claim to inform people collide with the fact that propaganda follows an entirely different mechanism, performs a function entirely different from that of information, and that nowadays facts do not assume reality in the people’s eyes unless they are established by propaganda. Propaganda, in fact, creates truth in the sense that it creates in men subject to propaganda all the signs and indications of true believers.
For modern man, propaganda is really creating truth. This means that truth is powerless without propaganda. And in view of the challenge the democracies face, it is of supreme importance that they abandon their confidence in truth as such and assimilate themselves to the methods of propaganda. Unless they do so, considering the present tendencies of civilization, the democratic nations will lose the war conducted in this area,
met als resultaat dat NATO Secretaris-Generaal Jens Stoltenberg tijdens de jaarlijkse bijeenkomst van het World Economic Forum in Davos, op woensdag 18 January 2023, in een plenaire zitting over het ‘Herstellen van Veiligheid en Vrede’ moeiteloos kon stellen dat ‘Weapons are the way to peace,’ een Orwelliaanse bewering die keer op keer door de geschiedenis wordt weerlegd, maar desondanks één van de belangrijkste mythen van de macht blijft. ‘Oorlog is Vrede.’ Ellul: ‘Such positions are so superficial and so remote from the actual situation that they do not need to be discussed. Besides, they usually come from journalists or commentators, and not from men who have seriously studied the problem of propaganda and its effects. Even the majority of the latter, however, retain the conviction that one can set up a propaganda system that expresses the democratic character and does not alter the working of democracy,’ hetgeen een waanidee is. Bovendien is de ‘trend everywhere in the direction of a very few, very powerful companies controlling all the propaganda media. Are they still private?’ Maar ‘what happens when a powerful private propaganda organization denies facts and falsifies information’ door bijvoorbeeld middels een ‘conspiracy of silence’ de werkelijkheid te verzwijgen, wat doorgaans gebeurt zodra propaganda niet meteen het gewenste resultaat oplevert. Dus blijft de vraag: ‘Who can tell where truth lies? On whom can the citizens rely to judge the debate,’ als er überhaupt al sprake is van een ‘debat.’ Opvallend op dit moment is dat in het geval van de Oekraïne-oorlog er geen enkele sprake meer is van een publiek ‘debat’ via de ‘free press.’ Ellul:
‘In the nineteenth century, the problem of opinion formation through the expression of thought was essentially a problem of contacts between the State and the individual, and a problem of acquisition of freedom. But today, thanks to the mass media, the individual finds himself outside the battle… the debate is between the State and powerful groups… Freedom to express ideas is no longer at stake in this debate… What we have is mastery and domination by the State or by some powerful groups over the whole of the technical media of opinion formation… the individual has no access to them… he is no longer a participant in this battle for the free expression of ideas: he is the stake. What matters for him is which voice he will be permitted to hear and which words will have the power to obsess him.’
It is in the light of this perfect analysis that one must ask oneself what freedom of expression still means in a democracy.
Welke gedachten-vrijheid bezit de doorsnee burger die avond na avond dezelfde pratende hoofden ziet, met dezelfde beperkte ideeën en dezelfde ééndimensionale opinies? Welke vrijheid bezit de radio-luisteraar die elk uur verneemt wat Het Nieuws is dat door een klein gezelschap wordt geselecteerd? Welke vrijheid bezit een krantenlezer die dag in dag uit verneemt wat de mainstream-journalist belangrijk vindt? De vrijheid van die modale burger wordt voortdurend beperkt door de zelfcensuur van de mainstream-media, zonder dat hij/zij dit überhaupt weet. Dit maakt propaganda zo effectief aangezien het uiteindelijke doel van alle propaganda is ‘provoking action without prior thought,’ zoals Ellul aantoont. Daardoor eindigt ‘all propaganda as a means by which the prevailing power manipulate the masses,’ waarbij opmerkelijk is dat de propagandist zelf onvermijdelijk in zijn propaganda gaat geloven. ‘We must not retain the illusion that propaganda is merely a neutral instrument that one can use without being affected. It is comparable to radium, and what happens to the radiologists is well known.’ Eén van de gruwelijkste effecten van propaganda is dat ‘the bare fact (the truth) can accomplish nothing,’ want ‘Facts are not believed,’ omdat ‘people believe their own government over a foreign government. The latter’s facts are not believed.’ Dit zien we nu weer zo duidelijk gedemonstreerd in de uiterst beperkte wijze waarop de westerse politici en pers over het Oekraïne-conflict berichten, de zwart/wit tegenstelling, het demoniseren van ‘de vijand,’ het ontkennen dat ook de tegenstander gelijk kan hebben. Ellul stelt dat in dit soort gevallen:
democracy takes a path that needs watching. First of all, it begins to play a game that drives man from the conscious and rational into the arms of irrational and ‘obscure forces’; but we already know that in this game the believer is not the master, and that forces thus unleashed are rarely brought under control again. To put it differently: mythical democratic propaganda in no way prepares its listeners for democracy, but strengthens their totalitarian tendencies, providing at best a different direction for those tendencies. We will have to come back to this. But above all we must ask ourselves what myth the democracies should use. From experience we have seen that the democracies have used the myths of Peace, of Freedom, of Justice, and so on.
In dit opzicht is ‘propaganda to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state,’ zoals Noam Chomsky eens opmerkte. Ellul wees in dit verband op het feit dat:
Propaganda, whatever its content, tends to create a particular psychology and a determined behaviour. Superficially there can be differences, but they are illusory. To say, for example, that Fascist propaganda, whose subject was the State, and Nazi propaganda, whose subject was the race, were different from each other because of their difference in content, is to become a victim of unreal and academic distinctions. But ‘the democratic idea’ when promulgated (afgekondigd. svh) by means that lead to non-democratic behavior only hardens the totalitarian man in his mold… the objects of propaganda tend to become totalitarian because propaganda itself is totalitarian… Thus, such propaganda can be effective as a weapon of war, but we must realize when using it that we simultaneously destroy the possibility of building true democracy.
I have said that such propaganda was for external use, that the myth was directed to the outside. But it is not certain that one can impose such a limitation. When a government builds up the democratic image in this fashion, it cannot isolate the external and internal domains from each other. Therefore the people of the country making such propaganda must also become convinced of the excellence of this image. They must not merely know it, but also follow it.
Met andere woorden: ook de propagandisten zelf gaan in hun eigen propaganda geloven, en kennen net als de bevolking geen onderscheid meer in wat waar is en wat niet. Met als gevolg dat:
the myth created for external use becomes known at home and has repercussions there; even if one does not try to influence people by making propaganda abroad, they will react indirectly. Therefore, the repercussions on a democratic population of the myth developed by its government for external use must be analyzed; these repercussions will lead primarily to the establishment of unanimity.
This is a primary and very simple consequence. A myth (an image evoking belief) can stand no dilution, no half-measures, no contradictions. One believes it or does not. The democratic myth must display this same form, incisive and coherent; it is of the same nature as other myths. In order for the myth to be effective abroad, it must not be contradicted at home. No other voice must arise at home that would reach the foreign propaganda target and destroy the myth.
Dat er ‘thuis geen andere stem hoorbaar mag zijn’ die de eigen ‘mythe vernietigt,’ blijkt wel uit het feit dat opmerkingen die enige ratio verschaft aan de Russische reactie op het almaar uitbreiden van NAVO-bases richting de Russische grenzen, onmiddellijk wordt afgedaan als argumenten van ‘Poetin Trollen.’ Als de westerse media het afgelopen jaar iets hebben aangetoond dan is het wel dat zij volledig beheerst worden door NAVO-propaganda. Geen enkel tegengeluid wordt geduld, de vredesbeweging is onzichtbaar geworden, alleen bellicose opiniemakers worden gehoord, het systeem functioneert totalitair, en geenszins democratisch. ‘Big Brother is Watching You,’ dat wil zeggen: de totalitair functionerende technocratie, die de parlementaire democratie stapsgewijs heeft teniet gedaan, is oppermachtig. In Nederland is de beginselloze D’66-secte het duidelijkste voorbeeld van deze ontwikkeling. Wat ruim een halve eeuw geleden begon als een poging om de samenleving democratischer te maken, is geëindigd in een totalitair opererende partij. Een jaar voordat deze politieke partij werd opgericht concludeerde Jacques Ellul in zijn magistrale boek Propaganda. The Formation Of Men’s Attitudes dat als gevolg van de overal aanwezige propaganda:
there can no longer be any respect for the minority opposition to the State — an opposition that, lacking the means of propaganda — or at least any means that can compete with those of the State — can no longer make its voice heard.
The minority is heard even less because the effects of the myth, inflated by propaganda, are always the same and always antidemocratic. Anyone who participates in such a socio-political body and is imbued (doordrenkt. svh) with the truth of the myth, necessarily becomes sectarian. Repeated so many times, being driven in so many different forms into the propagandee’s (gehersenspoelde. svh) subconscious, this truth, transmitted by propaganda, becomes for every participant an absolute truth, which cannot be discussed without lies and distortion. Democratic peoples are not exempt from what is vaguely called ‘psychoses.’ But such propaganda, if it is effective, predisposes people to — or even causes — these psychoses.
The enthusiasm and exaltation of a people who cling to a myth necessarily lead to intransigence and sectarianism. The myth of democracy arose, for example, during the period of the Convention (rond 1776, toen de Amerikaanse Grondwet ontstond. svh); there we had forms of massive democracy, with great ceremonies and efforts at unanimity. But was that still democracy? Are there not also changes in the mores of the United States when everything is called un-American that is not strict conformism? This term, un-American, so imprecise for the French, is in the United States precise to the extent that it is a result of the belief in the myth. To provoke such belief and launch a people on the road to such exaltation, without which propaganda cannot exist, really means to give a people feelings and reflexes incompatible with life in a democracy.
Volgende keer meer.
NAVO secretaris-generaal en D'66 minister van Defensie druk bezig met het overtuigen van het World Economic Forum dat ‘Weapons are the way to peace.’
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten