A whisteblower is not a traitor, nor a spy, and above all not someone lacking in patriotism. So why is this young man being persecuted by the forces of the most powerful state on earth?
BY DIANE GEE
As an author, I understand the need to remember my target audience, and make sure that targeted audience is clearly defined when speaking to members outside of it. We all need to do such.
The case of Edward Snowden has highlighted this very well for me. The “Edward Snowden Supporters” group started by Vern Radul on Facebook has members from many countries and all political ilk. It takes checking your ego at the door to administer a group whose members may have views that are quite abhorrent to one’s own. It seems everyone from Communists to Tea Baggers have a dog in this fight, as well should be. Such binary views often cause dissent, which must be managed to not splinter a movement. Snowden is an effective rallying point though, but Freedom is the capital-C Cause.
The passing of the 4th of July Holiday this weekend also brought out the worst in that binary thinking. It also is a rallying cry, with Freedom as the capital-C Cause.
Our job as journalists is to employ all manner of tactics to reach people, true. But I think that Glenn Greenwald would agree… altering facts to make your case is what THEY do, not what we should be doing.
Snowden is the flashpoint, but the US government is a World Problem. It always has been.
[pullquote]Ask anyone in any of the lands we have sought hegemony over… especially countries like Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala and Bolivia —to name a few—about our spying, our plotting, our assassinations. This is not news to them. It is news to white Europe.
[/pullquote]Yes, at some point while working for the NSA, Edward spoke against Wikileaks. He also supported Ron Paul, as many young, white, upper class people do. Yet, at some point he changed his mind and grew to understand that what is wrong with the system, was important enough to risk his life over.
No person can speak without the color of their own experiences altering their views. We are perpetually inundated with visions of exceptionalism in the US: white privilege, America as the greatest country, our “Freedom,” and the greatest sin of all. The Sin of Omission that has white-washed our true History and allows this false sense of pride; that doesn’t just not-mention the atrocities done in our name, but pointedly ignores them as beneath notice in the “grander scheme” of what this Nation really “is.” You see, the people of color who really built this land, whose blood really spilled on our soil are not “germane” to the “Mythos Americana.”
In much the same way, outrage is less about the hijacking of Morales’ plane, than say if Air Force One had been forced down and searched, or that of the Queen of England. The West seems to treat “other” Nations, especially “brown” nations as less worthy of autonomy and respect.
In my reading, I have found people greatly confused about the History and Culture of South American countries… let alone their rich Political History. Many of them don’t know one country from another. USers (and lets face it – we have no right to “own” the name Americans – the whole continent shares that claim) know nothing about “brown countries.” Even the supposedly illustrious WSJ published a piece hoping that, in the aftermath of Egypt’s unrest, a Pinochet would rise to power. Pinochet was the US-friendly dictator that was the butcher of his own people…. killing and torturing anyone who wanted People Power there. But any butcher that wants “free market” (read everything to the rich) economies is forgiven by the white exceptionalist mythos.
Goebbels knew well how to play on pathos, the sweeping emotions of hyper-nationalism and the lie that his audience, by accepting his words, were inherently “better people” than the rest of the humans on the planet. Employing a play to people’s superiority works well. The Imperial US powers play that too… “We aren’t perfect, but we strive to be…” like we are the only real democracy on Earth.
Except we are not, and never were. The First Nations that inhabited these Americas often had Democracies far superior to any penned by our founding fathers. In fact, our Constitution was cribbed off of the Six Nations, called Iroquois Confederacy by the invaders. Theirs was no Representational government by the Elites, no. Theirs was no Republic. It was a direct democracy in which women had equal power to men, where every member of their society, no matter what his standing had a voice.
We strive to be free IN SPITE of our government, not BECAUSE of it. Women and minorities have had to fight for every right, every bit of equality they could get – and we still are not equal citizens. Workers and Unions have had to fight for every safeguard in the workplace, and every right to compensation, and our labor is still abused by those making epic profits off of them.
To be sure, there are still those brainwashed into believing that slavery is freedom, and only white-history counts.
But we must not, should never, repeat the lies that have tricked them into embracing their shackles, while stomping on the people who have always been kept down on the socio-economic scale.
Ask any Native American. Ask any Black American. They have been spied upon, and extra-judicially killed for resisting the Police State for 200 years. They have had no privacy. They have had no right to assemble. They have been demonized not only in the Press-media, but by the entertainment media since the very day we colonized this land.
Ask anyone in any of the lands we have sought hegemony over… especially countries like Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala and Bolivia —to name a few—about our spying, our plotting, our assassinations. This is not news to them. It is news to white Europe.
Edward Snowden opened the can of worms. He finally tore off the veil that made us (us being me as a white-american) that its not some “them” that are the enemy, a them that has been easily dismissed in the discourse of American Mythos that are the enemy – it is us. Every single one of us that is not in the Elite Class.
The question remains… will white people wake up to REALITY and see that we are one people, and learn the lessons from our brothers and sisters of color – that NO ONE should be kept down, treated like irrelevant chattel, be spied upon and put down like cur dogs. Or? Will they fight for only enough rights to make them once again comfortable and put on blinders to the atrocities done to those who don’t “look like them.”
Hopefully, Snowden, PRISM, and Greenwald will be a rallying cry.
Hopefully, no more blood will have to spill in the name of real freedom.
Hopefully, this unity will stand for every human, regardless of race or ethnicity or gender.
Hopefully, the peoples of the US will listen and learn from the denizens of the world who are trying to explain to us that our government has always treated them this way, and that it is NEVER right no matter who it is done to.
Hopefully, people will realize the greatest threat to our security (and that of the world) are the actions of our Rogue Government, not the truth tellers.
And hopefully? The Myth of the US will die a permanent death, replaced by a wise and introspective look at our grievous errors and commitment to never repeat them.
That, my friends is the fight we need to be fighting.
All war is Class War, and the People, as ONE People need to unite to win.
Frequent contributor DIANE GEE is editor in chief of the blog wildwildleft.com, and founder of Facebook’s Links for the Wildly Left. Listen to Diane on her weekly radio program The Wild Wild Left, on blogradio.
One is reminded of the Salem witch trials. But then the US judiciary is a constitutionally political appointed system, so one can expect the most extraordinary aberrations like the Supreme Court installing a president in 2000, a hardly challenged action and unheard of almost anywhere else in the world. Not that this would disturb the US supremacy mythos one iota which as very acutely described by Bernstein and Hellman in their Broadway musical “Candide” is of an unassailable self satisfactory blindness.
Indeed, Peter. Or more recently, Pat Robertson’s proclamation that “white people built this country” or McCarthyism. We are weaned on happy Pilgrim Stories, not genocide… on Columbus who never stepped foot in North America, but enslaved the slaughtered the people of Hispaniola. We are told racism is over, because a few entertainers rise to riches in a system where they don’t own the labels or the franchises, or the networks. When I worked for Atlas Copco US, my European counterparts laughed at me, and said, “You are such wage slaves there,” while I was placiing the order for their month… Read more »
The likes of Ms Gee should consider a path to local and then state activism in popular politics. The country is ready for real leadership instead of the farce we get today. The above does not mean that she should join the Democrat party, the grave of all progressive movements, but inspire others to form a local chapter of Occupy with a strategy that includes a clear and forthright program inside and outside electoral politics. The lessons of Egypt, amongst others, tell us clearly that the people must be organized and led by a party that reflects their demands but… Read more »
I agree with both of the above comments. US Materialism has however divided citizens to such an extent by making them competitors on every level that solidarity has become an alien word. Before any organizing can be done within small cadres of Occupy, this needs to be challenged. Islam is a social religion, i.e. it promotes solidarity amongst it adherents, unlike the Protestant ethic which teaches individualism with calamitous results as visible in the US. It is not that people are uncaring or even unaware of what is coming down day by day, but individualism has become the need to… Read more »