The Word
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Originally, I drafted this article with a preface about the story Michael Hastings recently broke on BuzzFeed about an amendment to the latest defense authorization bill that would “legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.” However, as I worked on it this morning, our very own poet laureate and research librarian extraordinaire Elaine Magliaro cut me off at the pass with her own excellent article on the subject. So instead of repeating the points she makes which illustrate why understanding propaganda is important, I will refer you to her post “How about Some Government Propaganda for the People Paid for by the People Being Propagandized?”
Now that the kid gloves have come off regarding the governmental efforts to control your mind by controlling both your information and how you receive it, let’s discuss the nature of propaganda. Now more than ever, it is important to know the basics of how propaganda works. Since words are the basic building block of the English language, we’ll start with asking what is propaganda, look at some general history of the practice, consider the importance of meaning of words, the ideas of connotation and denotation, and the process of selecting “value loaded” words.
What is propaganda? Webster’s defines the word as follows:
propaganda \ˌprä-pə-ˈgan-də, ˌprō-\, n.,
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions (ed. note: Not relevant, but interesting.)
2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
But that’s not exactly what people feel when they hear the word, is it? Why do most people have a negative reaction to the word “propaganda”? After all, by definition, “propaganda” is much like the verb “to persuade” in meaning.
persuade \pər-ˈswād\, v., v.t.,
1: to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action
2: to plead with : urge
Etymologically speaking, the word “propaganda” is fairly new as a political science term. “Propaganda” didn’t come into common use as a political science term until World War I. Even then it was not a pejorative in use like it is today. The word originated (some would say unsurprisingly so) as shorthand referring to the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregatio de Propaganda Fide or the “congregation for propagating the faith”. This committee of cardinals was established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions. The word “propaganda” is the feminine gerund of the Italian verb “propagando” which in turn is derived from the Latin verb prōpāgō, meaning “to propagate”.
propagate \ˈprä-pə-ˌgāt\, v., v.t.,
3a : to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area : extend b : to foster growing knowledge of, familiarity with, or acceptance of (as an idea or belief) : publicize c : to transmit (as sound or light) through a medium
Clearly the largest distinction between persuasion and propaganda is that propaganda is a form of large scale persuasion. Persuasion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Changing someone’s mind is a better tactic than violence. Persuasion is at the heart of society’s pillar and replacement for self-help justice and dispute resolution, the adversarial court system. Persuasion is an alternative to coercion.
So what is propaganda? It’s a tool to change people’s minds. Like any tool, it is capable of beneficial use and horrific misuse. This makes understanding how the tool works critical if you want to recognize (and possibly work to prevent) its misuse.
If that is the case the word originally had no pejorative use, then why do most people have an automatic negative reaction to the word “propaganda”? This brings us to the ideas of connotation and denotation. Plainly put, denotation is a direct specific meaning; the literal meaning of a word and nothing more. Connotation is a “something” suggested by a word or thing; an implied meaning. I suggest the negative connotation for the word “propaganda” comes from both the negative denotation built in to the word itself (part of the definition is “for the purpose of helping or injuring” and injury carries the negative notion of harm to self and/or others) and the recent historical use of propaganda to dastardly ends culminating to create an implied negative meaning beyond the definition. The denotation of a word is not the direct province of the propagandist. They have to know what the words actually mean, but that is of limited value to them. The edge of the propagandist’s knife so to speak lies in the connotation of words. More on that topic as we move along. In the 20th Century, we have seen what truly evil injury propaganda is capable of inflicting on a society. To know how we got to today, it is important to have a bit of historical perspective.
Historically, the idea of propaganda has been around as long as there have been society and governments. For example, in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Ramses II claimed a great victory over the Hittites in the Battles of Kadesh (possibly the largest chariot battle in history). The two most common forms of Egyptian records of the battles are known as “The Poem” and “The Bulletin”. Both are found carved into multiple sites in Egypt, all built or expanded upon by Ramses II – one of the greatest builders of ancient Egypt. “The Bulletin” is found on seven different temples or monuments and eight total sites have “The Poem”. When you add numerous other references on papyrus and in tangentially related carvings, this makes the Battles of Kadesh one of the best recorded battles of antiquity. The tale told is of an overwhelming victory for Ramses II and Egypt.
There’s only one problem with that depiction.
It is most certainly a lie at worst and an exaggeration at best.
Hittite records, although not as numerous, all tell the tale of a Hittite victory. Archaeological evidence is inconclusive. One of the two parties is lying and possibly both. Most modern historians have come to the conclusion that the battle likely ended in a draw. Given that, why did Ramses II carve his non-existent victory into stone? Propaganda is the answer. Ramses II wanted the reputation as a strong military leader even if the reality wasn’t so glorious. So he fluffed the details and spread the word that “Ramses II Kicks Ass!” Unless you were at the Battles of Kadesh, who were you to argue with a Living God? Then realizing that his chances for immediate military exploits were practically nil, Ramses II did what any respectable Pharaoh would do and a secondary exercise in propaganda: he returned to the building spree he started as a young man. Some would say the greatest building spree in the history of the ancient Egypt. Just like the Romans after him, Ramses knew that impressive buildings were a kind of psychological warfare – non-verbal propaganda geared at projecting the power of the throne to the masses, but more on this at a later date. The focus here is language and the basics of propaganda.
In the beginning, there was the word. Those with the word were limited. If they could not speak directly, they were limited by how many manual physical copies they could get out to the masses and how many of the masses could read. Then came the printing press in the 15th Century. When Guttenberg invented it, one of the early adopters of the technology was the Holy Roman Empire. By the end of the Renaissance, book making was industrialized to the point that printer/binders could produce between three and four thousand pages per day: a hundred fold increase in production compared to the most prolific of scribes. Books and written material went from rare treasures to common items. As knowledge became democratized, the use of printed propaganda grew in unison: public notices, political flyers and proto-newspapers became cheap and abundant.
The 20th Century was in some ways a Golden Age for deploying propaganda. Unlike any previous age, the 20th Century was the age of mass communications. Industrial mass printing of newspapers, radio, television, telephones and the Internet radically changed the way humans communicate. The word became King and the picture became Queen. Even illiteracy wasn’t the barrier it had posed to the ancient world as the spoken word supplemented the written and the truism that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a truism for a reason. Even physical handicap was less of a barrier to getting the message out as those blind to the printed word and picture and deaf to the spoken word now had the channel of communication created by the 19th Century invention of Braille. As propaganda is large scale persuasion, mass media provided a natural accelerant. What had previously been a candle of propaganda became a bonfire necessarily becoming a political science term in common usage. The 20th Century saw probably the most devastating use of propaganda to date on any population. Propaganda was instrumental to both the Nazi war effort and their social engineering that allowed them to industrially murder six million Jews, Roma, homosexuals and handicapped. Propaganda was key to the crimes of the Khemer Rouge. Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Castro’s rise to power in Cuba. The wrongful, misguided and likely illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. These are a few of many examples where propaganda has been used to either garner public support for ethically wrong actions by government or obfuscate the truth to aid the guilty from being brought to justice. This point will be addressed further in a later column, but it goes a long way to explaining how a word of neutral value became a word of negative value due to recent history.
We are still left with the word. As far as the word “propaganda” proper, we know what it means. We know where it comes from. We know the goal of propaganda in general. That leaves us with word choice and the idea of “value loaded” word and how it relates to propaganda. What are words loaded with? They are loaded with implication. This is why connotation is the edge of the propagandist’s knife. Word choice is critical. As I noted earlier, the denotation of a word is not the direct province of the propagandist. The edge of the propagandist’s knife so to speak lies in the connotation of words. However, knowing the proper denotation of words – i.e. having a large vocabulary – puts one at a tactical advantage against the propagandist. If one knows the actual meaning of words, it becomes more difficult for the propagandist to use connotation against you.
For example, consider the use of media outlets like NPR that made a public and conscious decision to refrain from reporting on “torture” – a word with extremely negative denotation and connotation – and instead choosing to use the euphemistic language “enhanced interrogation”. Everyone with a conscience thinks torture is a bad thing and torturers are ethically abhorrent people. It’s not only a Federal crime, cruel and unusual punishment is specifically barred by the 8th Amendment of the Constitution. The word choice here is designed to clearly shift public attitudes from “those guys need to be prosecuted as criminals” to “maybe they aren’t so bad after all”. NPR (aided by the Bush Administration no doubt) chose words with a neutral/positive value load compared to the word “torture”. Connotation plays to your emotional response over your rational response. When the word choice becomes more subtle, the damage of connotations can be even more insidious. Compare:
- war – limited police action
- conquest – liberation
- famine – widespread hunger
- pestilence – outbreak
- death – casualties
Be aware and suspicious of word choice, certainly. Especially when dealing with adjectives as they have by their nature a great capacity to carry connotation. However, it is equally important to consider the speaker. When evaluating something you suspect is propaganda, ask these questions:
- Who is the speaker?
- What does the speaker want from me?
- What advantage does the speaker gain from my agreement or lose from my disagreement? And vice-versa?
- Does the speaker represent other interests that may not be obvious?
- Why is the speaker giving this message now?
What is your first line of defense against propaganda?
Be aware of the meaning and choice of words. To that end, work to strengthen your vocabulary. Buy a “Word A Day” calender or download an app for your phone, use a website or download a tickler program for your computer.
Always question the message and the messenger as well as any who may have sent the messenger. Practice reading with emotional detachment and a critical eye to not only what is said, but how it is said and by whom.
Keep in mind that propaganda is a tool. It is inherently neutral. The good or evil is found in the intent of the speaker and their desired actions and/or reactions on your part.
What is your first line of defense against propaganda? You are. And that is my unhidden message to you: Wake up. Civilization calls. The world is what we make it.
The next article in this series will address methodology, strategy and tactics in deploying propaganda.
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
The Propaganda Series;
Propaganda 105: How to Spot a Liar
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Streisand Effect and the Political Question
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence
Propaganda 104: Magica Verba Est Scientia Et Ars Es
Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same
Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty”
Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Child’s Play
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)
Related articles of interest;
Bron,
Ethics are the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with duty and obligation, the principles of conduct governing an individual and/or a group; a guiding philosophy which defines how to live on a daily basis. That Aesop’s fables are simplistic is a reflection of that they were created for the unlearned and for children, but they are still at the core talking about ethics.
Here’s a story that might be of interest:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/adolf-hitler-campbell-custody-battle-nazi-names-new-jersey_n_1561046.html?ref=crime&icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl7|sec3_lnk1%26pLid%3D166018
I have a bit of experience with DYFS; they’re not mental giants for the most part. I can’t see how taking an infant away from mom a few days old could be justified, but (a) abuse cases are secret so we don’t know about the abuse; and (b) mom ran away from dad in fear so we don’t know much about that, either.
Aesop’s fables are not really ethics, some are but for the most part they are just examples of how to live on a daily basis. Idiomatic expressions if you will. There are some with a moral/ethical teaching but most seem to come under the Norman Vincent Peale genre.
For example:
Appearances are deceptive
A willful beast must go his own way
A man is known by the company he keeps
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
I heard that Hitler was VERY GOOD to his dog!
Once I met a wealthy woman in South Africa during Apartheid (widow of an oil refiner) who had Black servants (lots!) and she told me in a huff that if one of her servants didn’t take good enough care of her dogs, she would kill them (the servants). She criticized me for speaking up to her about her appalling racism, saying, “YOU don’t understand because you’re American; I have no use for a black skin.” I said to her, “You have LOTS of use for a black skin, just no respect for the person inside it!”
“Hell even Hitler probably treated his dog OK so I am not sure how Aesop would help him.”
Aesop’s fables were parables with primarily positive ethical lessons, Bron.
If anyone needs help with ethics, it’s Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.
Malisha:
I think Aesop was mostly talking about everyday stuff, the others were talking about radical new ways of thinking about the nature of government and the individual rights of man.
Hell even Hitler probably treated his dog OK so I am not sure how Aesop would help him.
Talkingbacktocspan needs a cranial injection of the philosophy of liberty. And a rectal injection of foot.
Lemony Snicket’s A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS.
Let’s all make a reading list.
I think he should read some Strindberg to learn how to argue better. Quantity does not equal quality.
Bron, good, but why shouldn’t he also read Aesop?
talkingbacktocspan:
go read some Aristotle and some John Locke and throw in some Thomas Jefferson.
Don’t worry about starvation — give them the cherries you pick!
Malisha wrote: “(2) Propaganda is not just the promulgation of one or another bundle of impressions or pack of lies; it also includes suppression of information, marginalizing or neutralizing people who have information that is not “desirable” from getting out and reaching the public, and refusing to investigate things that are done to prevent real evaluation of the propaganda presented.”
Two examples that come to mind are the illegal blockade of Germany that caused the deaths of 800,000 German civilians in World War I; and also the intentional destruction of 150 German cities and German civilians.
True, many people are aware of the firebombing of Dresden, and most Westerners are keenly aware of the German blitzkrieg — air war against British cities. But it’s a good bet that very few westerners, not even Germans, are aware that the United States Air Force in collaboration with a prominent chemical company built mock-ups of German and Japanese workers housing, even furnishing them in exact detail, then practiced destroying them to guage the most efficient means of creating a fire storm that would not only destroy the targeted housing but also use the destroyed structures as weapons to spread fire — and terror. An estimated 600,000 German civilians were incinerated in this manner.
Berlin and Munich-trained architect Erich Mendelsohn volunteered to assist the US Air Force in building “German Village” — the mock-up housing — at Dugway in the Utah desert. (see John Dower, “Cultures of War”) Mendelsohn later designed the Weizmann Institute for his friend Chaim Weizmann, and is responsible for what is called the “International style” that dominates architecture in Israel.
Malisha, continued: “Every time you have a situation where some monstrous organized criminal activity is finally exposed, you have information coming out showing that someone tried to point the problem out ten, twenty times before; that their warnings went unheeded, that nothing was done, that they lost their jobs, that they were officially designated as lunatics, that their information was devalued, that they were disempowered. Time after time…”
Indeed. In the introductory material to his book, “The Transfer Agreement,” Edwin Black reports that he learned of the collaboration between zionists and the Nazi Government only in 1978. When he told his parents of his intention to write a book on the topic, they threatened to disown him. After a year’s work, he convinced them that the story was an important one to tell.
In numerous standard histories of the first world war and the inter-war period, the word “zionism” does not appear in the TOC or in the Index; it is not considered as significant to the 30 years of war (and follow-on ‘cold war’) that crippled Europe and several generations of Europeans. Yet Edwin Black writes in “Transfer Agreement” that “zionist Jews were present at Versailles treaty negotiations” — in spite of the fact, as Gene has pointed out several times, that Jews did not have a state at the time. But not only was world Jewry represented at Versailles, Black writes that “zionist Jewry triumphed at Versailles: the acquired a homeland for Jews in Palestine, and they gained assurance of protection of Jewish rights in European states.”
Students of history should be aware of these facts. A blog/article that seeks to educate its readers does well to provide this information to its readers.
If you do not know history, you are doomed to repeat it.
US and AIPAC/Israel lobby influenced actions toward Palestinians and Iranians suggest that these lessons have NOT been fully made known or absorbed.
When Germans were “starved into submission,” the neurobiological deficits that marked survivors of the famine produced a phenomenon in which fear of future starvation was so overwhelming that young childred stored food rather than eat it: “the fear of hunger was greater than the hunger pains.”
When policies are carried out against the Iranian people, as well as the people of Gaza, that uses hunger as a weapon — to “starve them into submission” — policy makers should look back to the outcome of the starvation of German civilians, and rethink their strategy.
The way a story is put out into public view always has an effect on how future stories are put out. Propaganda has “greased skids” if prior stories that would help people think it out and challenge the dominant take on “the truth” have themselves been “wondrously changed.”
Take the Hitler thing. In 1931, Hitler’s half-niece (weird expression, but probably used to indicate that she wasn’t all that close in the bloodline) Geli was killed, either by her own hand (as the police at the time ruled) or by someone else’s (only Uncle Adolf’s comes to mind).
If the story had gotten out that Geli died under peculiar circumstances, in such a way that indicated a probable finding of “foul play,” and that there was neither inquest nor autopsy, and that her body was rushed away to be buried in Austria, and that her uncle’s gun was the weapon that killed her, and that the bullet that killed her entered her chest from a point higher than her own hand would have been, firing it, well, Hitler might not have looked as good to a lot of Germans by the time he ascended to power. And if there had been a proper investigation of what DID happen the night Geli died, there might have been a murder arrest and Hitler might not have been ABLE to ascend to power in 1933. That’s just a very strange and very extreme example of how the control of “small stories” can influence the production of big ones.
My reason for mentioning this on this thread are two: (1) Cherry-picking is not just the choice of which stories or which “facts” to use to bolster a fallacious point; it also involves an awful lot of “leaving out some stories altogether” to make the particular cherries that are picked look juicier. and (2) Propaganda is not just the promulgation of one or another bundle of impressions or pack of lies; it also includes suppression of information, marginalizing or neutralizing people who have information that is not “desirable” from getting out and reaching the public, and refusing to investigate things that are done to prevent real evaluation of the propaganda presented.
Every time you have a situation where some monstrous organized criminal activity is finally exposed, you have information coming out showing that someone tried to point the problem out ten, twenty times before; that their warnings went unheeded, that nothing was done, that they lost their jobs, that they were officially designated as lunatics, that their information was devalued, that they were disempowered. Time after time…
leejcaroll,
I saw that late last night and found it extremely troubling. Your bringing it to the attention of this thread is most appropriate though. It is a blatant use of propaganda by the Obama administration to attempt to justify their policies.
*************
Mike S.,
Excellent posts and observations as always.
I do hope you’re having an excellent time on your vacation.
talkingbacktocspan,
I do read what is said with detachment. That’s why I came to the conclusion you have a piss poor education. In that respect, you point out something important about autodidactics in comparison to Malisha. She has a well developed, factually informed education. You have a distorted and incomplete education that caters to your confirmation biases. This illustrates that even the autodidactic can have a fool for a teacher.
First, let’s address the issue of cherry picking. Do you even know what that is? Cherry picking is the fallacy of incomplete evidence. It is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position such as your ignoring the evidence that the Holocaust really happened and was not provoked by an act of war by some non-existent Jewish state. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention and it permeates many logical fallacies such as false dichotomy, anecdotal evidence, the fallacies of composition and division, the fallacy of the undistributed middle and many others, but the most common example of cherry picking is the one which you display in abundance: the confirmation bias. “Below is a list of sources and people I have referenced and quoted from in this (tedious) conversation:” Well, the conversation is tedious and largely because of you and your cherry picking and irrational hatred, however, providing a list of your “sources” is just more argument by verbosity. Sure, it’ll easily impress the rubes, but anyone with half a brain isn’t going to fall for it. They will realize that you’ve taken your sources either out of context and/or selectively to play to your forgone conclusion – your confirmation bias – that Jews are somehow the root of all evil.
As to extrapolating your issues with your parents?
“Based upon your incorrect reading of the words written, you somehow made the judgment that I had not ‘taken responsibility for his own life.’
Where do you get that idea? It is not present in the words that I wrote.”
That you do not take responsibility for your life in writ large over the volume of cherry picked nonsense you spout in justification for your hatred of Jews. You clearly need someone to blame things on and the volume of material (which is a form of argumentum verbosium, btw, another logical fallacy) suggests that this need is deeply personal. Combined with what you said about your parents, it is clear that you do not want to blame them for your lack of formal education (and likely other deficiencies in your life) so you blame the war. The war that you previously, concurrently and contemporaneously blame on the Jews. See how my observation works? It’s an analysis of the causal chain in your line of reasoning (such as it is). You saying I’m incorrect in my observation does not make it so simply because you disagree. You are I already stated that your problems are manifest to the rankest of amateur psychologists. That you may not see your problem isn’t uncommon. Mental illness often comes with a side of agnosia – you may not even see your problem and you may not recognize it. That you retreat behind you anonymity to imply that you might be some sort of materially successful person (as if that alone makes you sane or accepting of the responsibility of your own life – it doesn’t) only further indicates your feelings of inadequacy.
Which come from what again?
“You wrote that I ‘blame Jews’ for this disability. What I wrote is that my parents suffered because they were caught up “in a war that did not have to be fought.” Numerous people were responsible for joining that war; prominent among those people were Jewish activists. That is all that you can rationally conclude from the words that I wrote.
Thus, the second sentence in your statement is totally without merit; it relies on information you supplied from your own projection, and not from anything actually written by me.”
What you wrote is that war that did not have to be fought was the root of you not having a formal education and therefor access to publication in peer reviewed journals. Thanks for displaying your ability to cherry pick even your own statements though. It only bolsters the conclusions reached by my observations. Actually what I said was spot on. It relies upon logic and observation as detailed above.
As for my projection? That “I know you are but what am I” tactic (which is a form of projection in itself) won’t work in this instance. In fact, even in its most subtle form doesn’t work once pointed out. In order for me to be projecting on you, I would myself have to feel bad about my parents and my education or lack there of. There is a problem with that. I have a first rate education, my parents while not perfect never did substantive wrong by me and I fully accept responsibility for the things in my life I may not like. I also don’t run around blaming a single group of people for the ills of the world let alone the ills in my world. Sure, there are groups and individuals I dislike intensely – like politicians – and some I even hate – like Nazis – but these emotional states are not related to my life. They are related to ethics. My ethical yardstick by which I measure the universe is not me. That’s what Objectivists do and anyone here who is a regular reader will confirm that I may be many things but an Objectivist is most certainly not one of them. The ethical yardstick I use to measure the universe is a collection of tools gathered across the span of my education both formal and informal. If it has to be summarized, the term humanist pragmatic weak rule utilitarian probably comes as close as any encapsulation. In short, you have no evidence of projection and my operational principles (and personal history) are so radically different from the dynamic you display as to make your assertion of projection laughable on its face.
Just like your entire position on history and the role of Jews in WWI and WWII.
I suggest why you find this so tedious is that you have not had a single buyer of what you are selling. While I find you tedious in the extreme, I find this exchange anything but tedious. You are providing an excellent negative example from which to teach.
Now that this has been pointed out, I’ll sit back to see if you’re stupid enough to try to manufacture consent behind you wall of anonymity or by enlisting others to come in and defend the nonsense you spout. Manufacturing consent is after all one of the favored tactics of propaganda trolls. We’ve seen that tactic from you Stormfront types before around here. I’m surprised you haven’t resorted to it already. Then again, maybe not surprised. You aren’t very bright and you appear to be less than mentally cogent. Like most Nazis.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/29/drone-attacks-innocent-civilians_n_1554380.html
U.S. Drone Policy: Standing Near Terrorists Makes You A Terrorist
Mike S, these propagandist stretches of great magnitude have been elevated to an art form, and they are now part of the aggressors’ tool-kit in my opinion. Just as you have a common scene in the battered women’s world, where a man who has been served with a restraining order immediately applies for a restraining order against the woman who sought protection from him (claiming, as did George Zimmerman, that he was acting in self defense when the woman attacked him), you have nearly every international aggressor claiming self defense for every incursion. It is not new and it is not limited to the Middle East. The actions of the Israeli government are, of course, exceedingly complex, their leaders’ motivations sometimes even more so, and it is even hard to distinguish figure from ground at times, and I don’t study it so I know very little about it, but the cry of “genocide, genocide” hurled against Israel or Jews in general (folks like tbtcs blur the edges) is not just a stretch, but a useful propagandist slander.
If you hate someone, and you want to justify making them the target of your wrath, and you want to protect those who injure them, it is relatively easy (depending upon the malleability of your audience and their own “secondary gains”) to criminalize absolutely everything they do. I am reminded of how fast the dead Trayvon Martin went from being “an unarmed teen-ager carrying iced tea and skittles” to “a thug junkie thief bus-driver-assaulter murderous punk delivering MMA punches to an innocent neighborhood watch captain” who was memorialized in hoodie-clad images of himself being sold on-line for people to use for target practice. That took less than two months in a large, diverse democracy allegedly devoted to equality and the rule of law.
Another point I would like to make is addressed to the blog in general. There are many valid arguments to be made about wrongs Israel has committed. I fact I’ve made some myself and it is hardly a secret that I dislike the current government of Israel. However, for those who would compare Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Shoah all I would say is for shame. The are many examples of genocide in world history. One can look to present day Africa, slavery in America, Armenia, the treatment of Native Americans alone to see examples replete with genocide. Has Israel done ill to Arabs via this ongoing conflict and were people murdered wrongly, absolutely. Does their treatment of the Arab population equate to what we understand to be genocide? I believe it doesn’t, without at the same time justifying Israeli actions. One would have to be a fool not to understand that for political reasons introduction of the word “Genocide” into the discussions of the conflict is merely an attempt to hoist Israeli’s on their own petard and consequently devalue any claim to persecution that Jews have. The problem is that to compare this conflict to the mass murder of millions of Jews, Native Americans, Africans and Armenians is a propagandist’s stretch of great magnitude.
Wow, Mike S, thanks for the thoughtful and eloquent comment.
It helped me identify something. A while back someone challenged me for having used psychological labels on tbtcs rather than debating him politely. I engaged in my usual subvocalized conversation with myself:
“Why aren’t you debating him as you do with others?”
And, like a Jew, I answered a question with a question:
“Why on earth should I debate him?”
And then I realized the answer to that! I shouldn’t! In fact, he uses a well worn propaganda/bully technique I call:
“Admit I’m right or prove I’m right by being a liar.”
Right back to “Ramses II: Conqueror or Fibber?” If you are pushing a particular piece of propaganda and you have power over lots of people, go ahead, be a fibber, it won’t count against you. If you’re pushing a particular piece of propaganda and you have no power, go ahead, be a fibber, who cares?
So, fortunately, although Hitler was in the category of “you have power,” from 1933 forward, tbtcs has no power, and if I was guilty of psychologically labelling him rather than honestly debating him on any of his pseudo-ideas, I hereby absolve myself.
When I thought back to his original premise, that the Jews declared war on Germany with a boycott and thereby caused all the troubles of the world, I thought, “krav maga.”
The question might be asked that why I, especially as a Jew, am not bothering to refute tbtcs on a point by point basis? The answer is simple: Much “sturm” and no “drang”. In the alternative: “There is no there, there”. Had he/she put together a coherent argument that held together logically and historically, then there might be some purpose in refuting it. How though, does one refute an
argument woven together by both false assumptions and biased opinions denoted as facts? The only way would be on a point by point basis that would consume more space than this bloviator has already consumed. If one is ignorant and bigoted enough to buy what he is saying, then logical refutation would gain little. As far as to why I’m not bothering to cast nasty aspersions upon him/her the answer is simply that he/she appears to be a bitter person who blames their failures in life upon others, rather then accept personal responsibility. In his/her failure to make a coherent/logical argument the aspersions cast themselves.