Personal Observations by Joan Levin

It is not often that a conference offers a chance to experience, first-hand, those very phenomena described by the speakers. But this conference afforded this experience, and it was one of the most valuable events I have attended.

This experience was not only provided by the speakers at the Chicago Media Watch conference on American propaganda on November 2, 2002, at Crown Auditorium of Loyola University. The unplanned reactions of the audience also provided some of the most valuable opportunities to see illustrations of phenomena addressed by the speakers. It would therefore be useful to recount the talks given at this conference, and then describe how many of the principles enumerated therein were actually played out during the course of that day.

The first speaker was Professor Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose presentation was entitled: “Dumbing Down of the American Mind.” From his experience as a classroom teacher, Ayers described the failures of our educational system to impart critical thinking skills to young people. In a democracy, where we are regularly asked to make important choices, Ayers held that today’s young people are not given the tools they need to obtain and evaluate information, make decisions, and communicate these decisions effectively.

It was an interesting and perhaps a significant foreshadowing of what was to come that the first example Professor Ayers offered of the “dumbing down” of his students was that they could not answer a question regarding which country had been most often sanctioned by the United Nations. One of the entities mentioned by the students was not even a country. The “correct” answer was (surprise, surprise) Israel.

Next we heard from Professor Leon Stein of Roosevelt University, Chicago. Stein described the techniques used in Nazi Germany to manipulate public opinion, which ultimately led to the Holocaust. Among the techniques used to intensify existing beliefs using half-truths were:
• Partial truths.
• Truths taken out of context.
• Falsehoods masquerading as truth by dint of appearing in print.
• Eliminating people to eliminate problems.
• Impugning motives before answering arguments.
• Stereotyping, displacement, projection, name calling and sloganeering.
• Blaming internal ills on “foreign” or “other” things or people.
• Shutting off discussion.
• Never admitting wrongness.
• Constant repetition of falsehoods.

Stein illustrated all of these techniques with historical events. And as with Ayers’ examples, many of these principles were also spontaneously played out in the conference itself.

Next came a talk by Jennifer Van Bergen, a law graduate, journalist with the New School for Social Research and associate editor of truthout. She discussed—in the context of international relations—how internal fears or problems induce the need to project problems elsewhere so that the fears could then be attacked by attacking some external factor, such as another country.

The keynote speech was presented by Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine. He described the shift in focus of the Bush administration from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, and the techniques used to bring about this shift in public perception—including pressure on media.

He noted the Manichean duality forced by this administration—you either support the war or you are a traitor—which implicitly leaves no room for fact-gathering, evaluation, analysis, synthesis and expression which are at the core of critical thinking.

This phenomenon of binary thinking— the all-or-nothing approach to linking political issues—was similarly re-enacted later that day at this remarkable conference.
The next speaker, Professor John McMurtry of Guelph University, Ontario, Canada, described two techniques often used to shape and manipulate public opinion: distraction and projection.

He used the events of 9/11, the subsequent “war on terror” and the proposed war with Iraq to illustrate his point that those in power will do anything to distract large numbers of people and then divert public attention to another focus, even as a totally different plan is pursued.

In considering any issue, he urged the audience to ask: “Cui bono?”—To whom does the benefit go? He provided examples from current events—the proposed war with Iraq and the shift of focus from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein as examples—and showed how stories and even comic parodies had been suppressed from mass media in order to keep the focus where those in power wanted it to be.

We were deliberately distracted—and continue to be—so that our focus was displaced to a foreign aggressor in order to build national support for:
• A constitutionally questionable restrictive and repressive legislation that has little to do with stopping “terrorists” and which would not have stopped 9/11.
• The transfer of the power to declare war from the Congress to the President.
• The conduct of a war not truly intended to end a cruel regime in Iraq, but to further destabilize Central Asia in order to realize the dream of securing the natural resources of this region.

McMurtry reminded us that we know, among other things, that the U.S. had earlier given the Taliban the means to attack—although then to be used in another context—that ultimately helped them to carry out the 9/11 attack.

He said the FBI and other agencies had plenty of evidence that there would be an attack involving airplanes crashing into buildings, but investigation and analysis of this evidence was prohibited by order from the highest levels. The U. S. military knew for at least two hours that there were hijacked planes aloft, he added.

He also said the anthrax scare that shut down much of Washington, D. C. and Congressional offices originated from a domestic, government-related laboratory.

McMurtry concluded, “The more the dots of the documented details are connected across time and place, the more the lines of their connection reveal a deep structure of values, choice, and consequence that crosses national borders as the universalizing logic of a civilization’s moral corruption.”

The last two talks of this conference permitted all present to see and even be swept up in exactly the kinds of things that our academic and editorial speakers had just described.

The first of these two talks was given by Professor Sut Jhally of University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He chose events in the Middle East, particularly in Israel, as the focus for his talk entitled, “The American Mind, Occupied Territory.”

Jhally opened his remarks with a statement to the leadership of the conference expressing displeasure that anyone might speak after him to express a differing point of view. He reiterated this view at the close of his formal speech.

He then described the public relations efforts made by the State of Israel and the institutions supporting it.

He spoke of the “invisible occupation” and observed that the press did not use the word “occupation” in referring to Judea, Samaria, Gaza, etc. He noted a distortion of the language which he had observed such as calling settlements “neighborhoods,” and what he believed to be biased coverage of suicide bomber stories that failed to explain what created the suicide bombers.

How something is described is important, he stated, speaking of linguistic semiotics and the conflation of the terms “Israel” and “war on terror.”

He also stated that journalists who reported with an anti-Israel bias put their jobs at risk.
Jhally’s talk was punctuated by audience applause. He closed his talk with a call to the left to eschew anti-Semitism, noting that many “progressive Jews” shared his views about Israel.

By this time, the conference had run overtime and was behind schedule.

The next speaker on the program was Richard Baehr, former Education Director of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) of Illinois. His talk was entitled: “Exceptionalism: The Attack on Israel’s Right to Exist.”

Before the conference chairman Liane Casten could introduce Baehr, however, there was a roar from the audience. It was clear that many took issue with the very presence of this speaker, without even hearing what he had to say.

But the noise was quickly drowned by the cry of Chris Geovannis of Indy Media. Geovannis was indeed scheduled to appear in a panel discussion following the program speakers, but now she strode down the center aisle, with an accusing index finger aimed at Casten as she proclaimed her outrage that Baehr would be allowed to speak. She further demanded the platform on the grounds that it was now the scheduled time for her panel to take place.

While Baehr awaited his turn to speak, words such as “fascist” and “oppression” tumbled from Geovannis’ mouth, now amplified by a microphone held in one hand, while her other hand punctuated the air in the direction of the speakers’ platform.

Baehr proceeded with his lecture, but it was interrupted by more shrieks from Geovannis. Indeed, she was not alone in her sentiment. Several others shouted for a while and some even left the hall, including Jhally. After about a quarter of the audience had left—perhaps to shield themselves from any ideas but those generated by “progressively approved” sources—Baehr spoke without further incident.

Acknowledging that many in the room disagreed with him, Baehr briefly noted the many areas where he and Jhally agreed and where they differed. Most of his talk was about:
• The extensive public relations efforts carried out by the Arab states.
• The diverse and effective efforts to promote Arab state interests in many institutions, especially universities.
• The distortions of the history of the region given in the press.
• The stories probably not read in the paper, giving lie to notions of media bias in favor of Israel.

Baehr offered a view from a different perspective from that of Jhally, and in this, provided a balance. It also illustrated many of the points raised by other speakers during the day.
Implicit in much of Baehr’s talk—although he did not use the same terms specifically—were many of the issues noted by our speakers earlier in the day. Baehr noted the lack of democracy and free press, religious liberty, decent treatment for women, and the failure of economic development to benefit all people, not just the rulers. He also noted other aspects of life in many Middle East countries and how threatening therefore the presence of a country like Israel can be.

Point after point made by Professor Stein in his description of the propaganda techniques used in Nazi Germany were illustrated in Baehr’s talk. The parallels were unavoidable.
I was impressed that both Jhally and Baehr kept their talks centered on matters relating to media, public opinion, and propaganda—the subject of this conference. Neither of their speeches was primarily polemic for their respective positions on the underlying facts.
It is therefore hard for me to figure out what the objectors to Baehr’s participation in the conference meant when they shouted that he was not speaking to the subject of the conference. After all, they had just finished applauding Jhally for doing exactly the same thing that Baehr was about to do: using the treatment of a controversial topic to illustrate a talk about media coverage.

It occurred to me that what we saw here was a brief but telling indication of trouble on the left. A more specific word for this trouble? Fascism, pure and simple. The rule of the mob over reason. The apotheosis of that very “group mind” we were warned about, the mind that says: don’t disturb me with your deviant facts or reasoning. It was the ascendance of Manichean duality to its apogee.

Why ought we be concerned about media in a democracy? Because the very essence of democracy is the free flow of information to minds that have been given the tools with which to evaluate it. Stop that flow, or remove those tools, and there goes democracy!

We might well ask the question “Cui bono?” of some of those who call themselves progressives, but behave like fascists. Who benefits from listening to a speaker on one side of an issue while shouting down a speaker on the other side of the issue? Who benefits from marching in lockstep on every issue? Who benefits by making one of the world’s many trouble spots their cause celebre and turning it into a sacred cow beyond all debate? Who benefits from totalitarianism?

Who benefits? I don’t know. But I have seen too many of these power trips in my life; shunning, banning, black-listing, punishing people in one way or another for holding unpopular points of view. It raises a question that must be faced by any political movement: Why must unpopular views be forcibly censored?

This behavior seems to be the hallmark of so-called “teach-ins” (better called “indoctrinate-ins”) characterized by rude, noisy and even violent censorship. This seems to be particularly prevalent among students who are presumably devoting huge chunks of their lives and wealth to acquire the very skills of evaluating, analyzing, synthesizing and disseminating knowledge. How are these hard-gained skills to be applied when a noisy rabble shouts down reasoned speech?

I asked myself: Have these people already been so “dumbed down” (to borrow Professor Ayers’ term) by our educational system that they have no capacity to evaluate other points of view and engage in rational discourse and debate?

It is easy to excuse this seeming info-paranoia by saying that since all the money and power are on the “other side” (whatever that other side happens to be at the time), we cannot afford to open certain topics to debate; it’s better just to “talk among ourselves” like a self-referential cult than to take on hard questions in a free forum of ideas, and better to silence and shun than to allow any heretics in our midst.

I sat silently during what I considered to be Jhally’s inaccuracies and distortions* because I believed he had valuable things to say on a number of topics, and because, as an invited speaker to a conference by a group for which I have enormous respect, I believed his talk deserved my attention, even if not my complete agreement.

In fact, I learned much from his talk this time, as I did the last time he spoke for Chicago Media Watch two years ago. I trust that I can put the wheat to good use while winnowing the chaff. I would similarly assume that those who stayed to listen to Baehr’s excellent media-centered presentation can do the same—even if they disagreed with many of his statements.

To summarize, this was an excellent conference on media and propaganda, another event of which Chicago Media Watch can be justly proud. The speakers were first-rate, their talks highly informative, and the conference had the unplanned benefit of allowing participants to observe and participate in some of the very occurences discussed by the speakers. I had an opportunity to both listen to the “classroom lecture” about a potentially lethal phenomenon—propaganda—and then actually watch it develop before my very eyes. Who could ask for more?