No Ministry Of Truth

"When people are terrified, they elect monsters to protect them." I heard this quote recently and thought it striking an relevant to our times, with right wing demagogues like Trump rising to power all over the western hemisphere. Unfortunately I forgot where I heard it, so I can't pay proper respect to its originator, for which I'm sorry...

_{source: Wikipedia}

The quote is true though; the politics and accompanying propaganda of fear is the foundation of Trump's rise to power. The fear mongering was aimed at the socialists and communists for decades. But when the Berlin Wall fell down, western imperialism was in need of a new "public enemy no. 1" for the people to unite against in order to get their continued support for strategic military actions and economical sanctions against foreign countries. The war against terrorism is the same as the war against communism in the sense that they're both designed to stir up fear against a common enemy. A non specific enemy to be more precise, because the enemy isn't a country or a person but an ideology. Think about that and ask yourself how these wars are any different than the Crusades or a Jihad; we're fighting against people's convictions and beliefs here, something that should come across as preposterous on first sight because you can't kill an idea. The surge of Bernie Sanders after decades of intense neoliberal propaganda should be proof enough for that.

The war on terrorism, which has taken on the form of a war against Islam and a war against Muslims, is just the next endless unwinnable war in order to further the empire. For such an endless war to be viable and become reality, the war has to be embedded in the collective mind first, which is where the endless and ruthless propaganda enters the stage. In George Orwell's book 1984 the propaganda was taken care of by "The Ministry Of Truth", which is where the protagonist works. This ministry regulated all public communications, and went as far as changing history, erasing events and persons from newspaper articles and history books so that they never even existed. A strong and important component of the propaganda was an ever present war against an ever present enemy. An enemy that was far away, yet posed an immediate threat at the same time. The Ministry Of Truth made sure the people was always informed about how their benevolent government protected them against that far away boogeyman.

Our mainstream media are the real world equivalent of the Ministry Of Truth; for decades they've been able to manage public discourse from their ivory towers. Our corporations are the real world equivalent of the government in Orwell's book; they own the government. When the propaganda machine has convinced the people that everything is a market - there's even a "marketplace of ideas" - you lull them into complacency and have them silently accept the reality that that votes, elections and politicians can be bought like any other commodity. Again we can point to a current real world example of this by pointing out Bloomberg's surge in the polls, which is a result only from him pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into ad-campaigns on national TV and social media platforms. He's never been on the debate-stage, yet he's surpassed the likes of Yang, Booker, Klobuchard and Buttigieg in many polls, when democracy IS debate (and money is not speech, or it shouldn't be). And debate is not a marketplace, for when it's treated like that "clicks" and "likes" become the arbiters of truth, which make large tech companies their own ministry of truth again...

Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of democracy, it's the cure against the mental illness spread from those high above ivory towers. With the internet there's a short window of opportunity for the voice of the people to be heard again, the only voice that speaks the peoples' truth, even when it's ugly and deformed by the decades of the Ministry Of Truth poisoning the collective mindset. I don't know how long we'll have this freedom, as corporate forces are already limiting online speech deemed too far removed from "the norm", and this is happening on all sides of the political spectrum. We don't want the corporate elite telling us what's acceptable, nor the government as long as it's owned by this corporate elite. Only when the government is the result of a true democratic process, when it is an extension of the voice of the people, can it act and speak truthfully. Therefore there can be no ministry of truth, not in the government, not as corporate power, not in the form of "bestsellers" in a for profit marketplace of ideas. With that I invite you to watch this video about Elizabeth Warren's scary pledge to fight against "disinformation" should she (have any chance at all to) become the next POTUS.

_{Elizabeth Warren Wants Criminal Penalties For 'Disinformation'}

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