We the People versus ‘The Truth’
Dispatches from Deena Stryker
Nothing like it has probably ever been seen before: ‘the people’ to whom, according to democratic theory, ultimate sovereignty belongs, almost never get to rule. In the US, “the system” has long been rigged against voters, via the introduction of money into election campaigns, and the resulting assistance of the mainstream media. In 2016, however, by coming across as ‘just one of us’, a man with plenty of money to run a successful campaign largely by-passed the media by sending out tweets, rallying a sufficient number of voters to become president against the wishes of ‘the system’.
The failure of investigative journalism played a significant role in Trump’s victory, among others enabling the DNC to torpedo the Sanders campaign, sending a significant number of working class voters to Trump. One has to wonder whether the dozen or so anchors and commentators with nationwide audiences have had any feelings of guilt since November 8th, given the extent to which they aided and abetted the Trump campaign, first by their derision, then by their incredulity, before exhibiting the indignation that should have prevailed from the beginning.
Notwithstanding the unwitting role played by the press in his victory, President Trump is right to accuse it of now being his enemy —and hence an enemy of the people who elected him. “It’s not my cabinet members, every one of which exhibits impeccable ‘system’ credentials, who are your enemies, but the mainstream press, which distorts facts.” The danger is that once alerted to the media’s dirty tricks, large swathes of the population could turn their backs on information altogether, remaining in the dark about the world around them, ready to believe literally every word uttered by a president whose mercurial changes of policy affect the entire world.
Since the founding, ‘truth’ has been a pillar of the American ethos, to the dismay of many thinkers. And given the the fourth estate’s long search for ways to twist facts, sooner or later, it was bound to produce a Fake News campaign culminating in a full-page ad in the New York Times that lists all the difficulties involved in finding and disseminating ‘the Truth’.
truth is hard
is hidden
must be pursued
hard to hear
rarely simple
isn’t so obvious
is necessary
can’t be glossed over
has no agenda
can’t be manufactured
doesn’t take sides
isn’t red or blue
is hard to accept
pulls no punches
is powerful
is under attack
is worth defending
requires taking a stand
more important now than ever.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he three claims that stand out from the Times’ enumeration are: the truth is rarely simple, hard to accept, and requires taking a stand. No matter how emphatically proclaimed in bold print, the media’s belief that its mandate is to deliver ‘the truth’ as opposed to ‘facts’, is a major part of its problem. As for ‘taking a stand’, the fact that according to rules laid down in the early twentieth century, the press is barred from doing so, ultimately led to the appearance of an alternative media that defends ideas displeasing to the government and hence ignored by the mainstream press.
In a celebrated but long since forgotten 1937 ruling against a journalist who reported on working class struggles and who accused the Associated Press of firing him because he belonged to the Newspaper Guild, the court laid down an incontrovertible rule:
“The reporter’s job is to report facts, without partisanship, as an objective observer….However, the news can only be reported objectively when those responsible for its publications retain the right to choose which persons are best qualified to do so.”
While appearing to support objectivity, this ruling decreed that none but the owners of press organs could define it. It is they, in fact, who benefit from the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech, not the journalists they employ.
In the nineteen seventies, dismayed by the blatant bias of the American press, the UN’s cultural arm, Unesco, heavily involved in the Third World, campaigned for a new information order. It was not long before the New York Times’ star editorialist, Flora Lewis, described the principles that dominate the American press:
“There is a fundamental conflict over the role of information and the fact that those who gather and distribute it are at the service of the authorities. They are expected to explain the government’s policies in such a way as to garner a maximum of support for sacrifices they may be asked to make.
“In [truly] democratic societies, information is a brake on power: it exposes its misdeeds and follies so that the public may be in a position to judge them. Constitutional guaranties of freedom of speech and of the press are a gentle brake on the freedom and the power of those who govern. The founding fathers did not have unlimited faith in government, even one divided into three branches.
“In the West, journalists do not pretend to decide which news is “right” for public consumption and those which would be harmful. And we do not agree that any government, or any formal or informal body, or any ‘code’ should decide in our place. Objectivity may be an unattainable goal, but it is worth pursuing relentless-ly.”
Almost fifty years later, the failure of American rank and file journalists to even consider the merits of the Press Code drawn up by Third World journalists to help roll back distorted information published about their countries, is what finally led to the worldwide phenomenon known as the alternative press.
Reality is perceived differently by different folks, but the problem begins when one perception is declared superior to others without proof (or facts). All governments divulge information selectively, but when it comes to war, those on the ground know when it is occurring and who is doing the shooting, while the public at large may not be privy to that information. In the growing standoff between the US and Russia, the former accuses the latter of acts of war in Eastern Ukraine which citizens on the ground know have not occurred. In doing so, it also reveals its monumental historical ignorance: Even though a millennium ago, ‘Kievan Rus’ was the original nucleus of what ultimately became known as ‘Russia’, Eastern Ukraine, though inhabited by Russians, was never part of Russia. According to Wikipedia: “ Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, (Ukraine) was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.” [Given the heavy redaction of all materials concerning important political topics on Wikipedia, by the CIA and many other agencies in the US government, as well as private parties, almost all these narratives should be taken with a grain of salt.—editor]
Never mentioned in the West is the fact that this history accounts for the existence of a passionate Ukrainian independence movement — whose members sided with the Axis during both World Wars, hoping to obtain it, and whose descendants form today’s neo-fascist militias, opposed even to having a pro-Russian President in independent Ukraine. https://www.opednews.com/articles/When-Nazi-Hands-Rock-Ameri-by-George-Eliason-American-Hypocrisy_American-Insurgency_Euromaidan_Nationalism-150215-914.html
That refusal has kept Ukraine embroiled in a civil war for three years, but far from involving a Russian ‘invasion’, the situation on the ground is proof that no such thing happened: Had Russia ‘invaded’ Ukraine, a pro-Russian leader would be sitting in Kiev instead of an oligarch beholden to a fascist praetorian guard (Right Sektor and Svoboda). Nor does the picture of Russia as a fearful enemy compute with the fact that it ‘invaded’ only a small part of its neighbor. Russia is supporting with advice, funds and materiel its countrymen living under a government that holds a historic grudge against them. At the same time, however, it has turned down their requests to become part of Russia, after honoring the results of a referendum in Crimea, which, unlike Ukraine, had always been part of Russia except between 1959 and 2014.
Time magazine published a lengthy interview with Dmitri Yarosh, leader of the Right Sektor in February, 2014, which laid out both the history and objectives of the movement, but to my knowledge, that article was the only one of its kind to appear in the US press, and the candid information it contained was not disseminated by other organs — nor referred to in subsequent reporting by Time. Perhaps the editors were taken in by the word ‘independence’, a sacred meme in the US, that justifies any behavior — even burning opponents alive, as happened on May 5th, 2014 in Odessa. Here is how Wikipedia describes the event: “Clashes culminated in a large skirmish outside the Trade Unions House, an Odessa landmark …in the city centre. That building then caught fire in unclear circumstances, resulting in the deaths of forty-two pro-Russian activists who had holed up in it.
The version provided by the Donbass regional authorities and reported by journalists on the ground https://www.opednews.com/articles/Odessa–the-First-Pogrom-by-George-Eliason-Activism-Anti-War_Civil-Disobedience_Class-War_Obama-Warmonger-140507-595.html is that Russian inhabitants were chased from another neighborhood toward the Trade Union House, where they took refuge, only for some two hundred to be burned alive. The use of the term ‘in unclear circumstances’ is an elegant way of eluding facts, as are references to Kiev’s neo-fascists invariably described simply as ‘government militias’. Whether we’re talking about religious or political intolerance, the belief that one possesses ‘the truth’ is incompatible with the peaceful settlement of disputes.
As I write in A Taoist Politics:
“In the nineties, in a flash of insight, the French ethologist, Boris Cyrulnik mused: “‘Truth’ is the dogma that led humans from freedom to external authority and violence. ’My God is better (i.e. more powerful) than yours,’ soon became: ‘My God is the only true God. That is the truth, and in all justice, I must kill you if you refuse to believe it.’
Cyrulnik believed that to be reassured, people need the illusion of an overarching truth. Freud, in his last work, Moses, saw monotheism as the cause of religious intolerance. For Hebrews and Egyptians alike, until they each started to worship a Supreme Other, what had counted most was the fact of their existence, not their differences. With the notion of difference came the desire to exist in certain ways. And those who did not conform were dealt with.”
A way out of this meme is to ‘believe’ not in an all-powerful God or the existence of ‘Truth’, but in the sacredness of all life, including the planet itself. Since the Renaissance, Western culture has glorified knowledge, but Western law and morality have concentrated on the life of only one species: man, allowing him to destroy nature for his own ends. Knowledge can bring us closer to our goals, but as the only creatures to know that we know, we must not mistake either knowledge or religion for truth.
DEENA STRYKER, Senior Contributing Editor
Born in Philadelphia, Stryker spent most of her adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, her latest being
CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez
America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World
A Taoist Politics: The Case For Sacredness
She began her journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome, spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before they made the revolution (‘Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young’). After spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, she wrote the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of the Soviet Union (“Une autre Europe, un autre Monde’). Her memoir, ‘Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel’, tells it all. ‘A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness’, which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and modern science and what this implies for political activism; and ‘America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World” is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from the City on a Hill’.
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