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Subtle Propaganda vs. Dictatorship
Alex Jones, the great white hope, is politically famous
for his documentaries based on 9/11 conspiratorial views and claims of an ominous fascist police state verging on America.
Totalitarianism or direct repression makes better films than subtle media consolidation and propaganda in an oligarchal republic.
The substantial difference seperating Soviet dictatorship and American "democracy": Soviet citizens knew that the media was
mostly spewing ruling class propaganda while the subtle bias of the U.S. corporate media requires a little analysis. It would
be akin to the comparison of apartheid white supremacy in South Africa to the subtle system of white privilege throughout
the West. There is no Orwellian police state in the U.S. for a very simple reason: it is not a necessity to restrain public
thought and action in an imperial republic. The media already restrains dialogue to a safe medium where ruling class ideals
are taken as unquestionable boundaries, only displaying debate in the Machiavellian terms of efficiency. No conspiracy
required, only the inevitable result of a free-market capitalist press further monopolized and consolidated into corporate
hands; manipulating public policy with lobbying and think tanks on the other side.
Example: Media Treatment of Suharto
vs. Chavez
Iraq is a great example where the opposition does not question the values of the political orthodoxy but
debates the efficiency of the tactics used; often making the "doves" the hard-liners who want American imperial policy "done
right". The far-right dictators and human rights violators that the U.S. government supports get written off as "moderates"
who are starting to "lean towards democracy" while rogue states opposing U.S. imperialism are displayed as dictatorships whether
democratically elected or not. U.S.-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto carried out a CIA-backed coup in 1966, murdering a million people suspected as "communists" in one of the first modern cases of politicide.
In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor with a green light from Washington, decimating 200,000 or a third of the island's population over the
occupation. Hugo Chavez on the other hand has gained the animosity of Washington in his 10 year stay in office; the "socialist"
president of Venezuela has been democratically elected multiple times in internationally monitored elections and referendums. He is working towards an integrated Latin America
for economic development while using Venezuela's vast oil wealth for free access to healthcare and education, not to mention
cheaper grocery stores and development of a cooperative-based economy from the grassroots. Looking at media accounts following
his death, U.S.-backed dictator Suharto is given the mild criticism of "human rights abuses and corruption" when put in the context of his genocidal reign and power grab. Chavez is almost given the same perception
in the U.S. media as a dangerous autocrat guilty of multiple human rights violations, although there are no credible accounts of Chavez committing human rights abuses; much less to the extent
of Suharto's 32-year regime. Almost immediately after the coup, Suharto submitted to a multinational corporate takeover of Indonesia in every sector of the economy while Hugo Chavez has worked towards nationalization, using
oil profits for national development.
It can be seen with this small example, and numerous others, that more subtle
and systematic methods to gather public support for imperial foreign policy exist; making a totalitarian dictatorship costly
and unnecessary.
History of Repression
In almost every war certain constitutional rights are revoked; rather
than a surge towards dictatorship it's a logical extension to the imperialist record of repression. U.S. imperial wars are
not only for the sake of neoliberal hegemony and expanding profits but quelling domestic dissent as well. The new wave of
political repression is seen without precedent by Alex Jones and his posse of middle class angry radicals; furthermore they
believe a widespread catastrophe like 9/11 was orchestrated in order to take away constitutional rights. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Red Scare of the early 20th century are early examples of widespread state repression of free speech and dissident political organization.
McCarythism further indoctrinated American beliefs about communism and led a witchhunt to persecute leftist radicals
throughout the country. COINTELPRO laid the outline for future federal penetration of anti-war and grassroots organizations. None required
a catastrophic event, only the inventive stories and propaganda of the corporate media so people would rally against the enemy.
The "anti-globalists" believe the government has taken some sort of "moral decline" as if new century technology wouldn't
have been tapped back in the 1960s or 70s. Argue all you want about the expansion of government violation of privacy in monitoring
lab tops and cell phones, it's the expanding technology and means of communication that's led to increasing government intervention.
The government can now label any U.S. citizen a terrorist and apprehend them at will with no habeas corpus but only the unfettered
belief in U.S. democracy would make somebody believe that the government truly applied habeas corpus to dissidents in the
past. Apprehension would have almost been god-send as city law enforcement and the FBI shot its way through the upper-echelons of the Black Panther Party. The American Indian Movement occupied the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1973 and was surrounded by an intense siege from 200 FBI agents and federal marshals for 71 days before relenting.
In 1985, the city of Philadelphia dropped a satchel bomb onto a building occupied by MOVE, a black communal group, killing 11 of its members inside. For most
of the 20th century white middle America was virtually unfeeling and willfully ignorant towards the repression that people
of color and dissidents face, even going so far as to swallow the propaganda and justify it in the name of national security.
African-Americans
and the Police State
The oncoming police state is knocking at your door! Don't let the government put restrictions
on handguns, what will you do when the Illuminati tanks are coming down your street! Lock the gates to your neighborhoods
people, the commie negroes are coming! White communities of U.S. suburbia unite!
The Alex Jones far-right "libertarian"
movement is quickly organizing under a middle class fear that a police state will soon be entering down the nicely paved roads
and shapely cut grass lawns of white America. The "beloved values and rights" that the American people have cherished for
centuries have never applied to a good proportion of the people in this country, people of color mostly. The constitution
has never applied to blacks and Latinos so its revokation means absolutely nothing and neither does an oncoming police state
when blacks have lived under occupation since their forced arrival to this nation. From the gangs of hired slave-catchers
and overseers of chattel slavery to the KKK and police-backed organizations kidnapping, torturing, and lynching "troublemakers"
to keep blacks servile after "formal emancipation". A police force that's been militarized for most of the 20th century has
kept people of color trapped in concentration camp-like ghettos where they are routinely harassed, shot, beat, and unjustly
arrested. Even if a police state was coming to white suburbia, it could ever be equivalent to that of the black ghetto in
the U.S. where one lives with a criminalized identity and social position. Bar codes and all sorts of technology that is "fear-mongered"
by Alex Jones to show that we are "becoming enslaved" are nothing new to a black population disproportionately locked into jails where they slave for corporations for pennies and are addressed by a number for dehumanization.
Alex
Jones, Libertarianism, and Fascism
Alex Jones is at the forefront of a movement of white angry middle-class radicals
who fear they are being drained from the elite above them and the "underclass parasites" below them. They borrow the term "libertarian" to describe their "free-market values" but in reality their ideology and movement shares
many tenants with fascism. Not only the belief in a 9/11 conspiracy but a conspiratorial view of global events is standard
ideology. From above, they believe their is a conspiracy for global dictatorship run by Communists or Zionist Jews. From below,
they believe they are subsidizing an underclass of welfare parasites who relax on the back of their labor. Immigrants are
viewed as a threat to American society and the white way of life; not to mention a conspiracy of the elites to thwart American
sovereignty for their global dictatorship. Libertarianism would seem to be the anti-statist right-wing to the totalitarian
fascism as libertarian socialism is the anti-statist left-wing to the party dictatorship of Leninism. On the contrary, under
libertarianism the state is preserved for protecting private property and enforcing the "sanctity of contract". The owners
of private property would obviously need representatives to handle political action against unions and labor demands in this
"enforcer state". The corporatist state under libertarianism would mirror the economic policy of fascism as much as the movement
itself reflects the social policy.
The John Birch Society, Western Goals Foundation, Alex Jones, and Right-Wing Conspiracism
The
John Birch Society was headed by Congressman Larry McDonald in the 70s and early 80s. In 1979, he helped found the Western Goals Foundation with leaders of the Anti-Communist League and other reactionary organizations. This was a private domestic
intelligence agency that assisted COINTELPRO and CHAOS in its spying on progressive dissidents. After McDonalds death, it took part in the Iran-Contra Scandal by assisting Oliver North in providing arms to the CIA-backed Contra terrorists in Nicaragua. Likewise
it provided propaganda in support of Roberto D'Aubuisson, a Salvadoran leader of the fascist ARENA party that waged a war
against its people in the 1980s resulting in 80,000 civilians dead. The Anti-Communist League also became the largest private supplier of arms to right-wing terrorist groups throughout the world,
including Afghan jihadists and South African terrorist organizations. In other words the John Birch Society was one of the
key private organizations in assisting U.S. imperialism and domestic repression throughout the latter years of the
Cold War. They are part of a large far-right network that has assisted the CIA in interventions throughout the Third World.
An expose of the John Birch Societyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
Finally, The John Birch Society is against a unified world government and has an illegal
immigration reduction view on immigration reform.
"According to Welch," writes the progressive watchdog group Political
Research Associates about the Birchers, "both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial
cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government
would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order managed by a 'one-world socialist
government.'
One of the first public activities of the JBS was a "Get US Out!" (of membership in the UN) campaign,
which claimed in 1959 that the "Real nature of [the] UN is to build a One World Government (New World Order)."
The
Birchers' ad-hoc special issues committees have been effective in creating awareness about issues which they believe to be
affecting the American way of life. Much of the Society's early views, according to Political Research Associates, "reflects
an ultra-conservative business nationalist critique of business internationalists networked through groups such as the Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR)." Birchers elaborated on an earlier Illuminati/Freemason conspiracy theory, imagining "an unbroken
ideologically driven conspiracy linking the Illuminati, the French Revolution, the rise of Marxism and Communism, the Council
on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations"[5]. Unlike most advocates of the Illuminati-Freemason conspiracy theory, however,
the Birch Society strenuously denies harboring any anti-Semitic or anti-masonic ideas, and indeed claims many Jews among its
membership. At one point a key leader in the JBS, Revilo P. Oliver, resigned after a dispute over his veering off into antisemitic
conspiracy theories in public.
By the time of Welch's death in 1985, the Birch Society's membership and influence had
dramatically declined because partly of the ending of the Cold War, but the UN's role in the Gulf War and President George
H. W. Bush's call for a 'New World Order' appeared to many JBS members to validate their claims about a "One World Government"
conspiracy. (See, for example, The New American February 26, pp. 22–23). Growing right-wing populism in the United States
helped The John Birch Society position itself for a comeback, and by 1995 its membership had grown somewhat to more than 55,000
though that number is unofficial as the Society does not disclose its membership statistics.
While Alex and Ron Paul are not members of the John Birch Society, they are at the "vanguard" of its movement
and both share its ideology in almost every aspect from libertarianism to xenophobic anti-immigration. Ron is associated with
them and Alex has long said that his father was a member of John Birch and he has a softspot for the organization.
-The Wiseman
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