To the Madhouse With Them

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To the Madhouse With Them
URL:http://monkeyfist.com:8080/morgue/politics/dissent/to-the-madhouse
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TO THE MAD HOUSE WITH THEM...

How 'liberals' denounce modern dissidents

By David Edwards

In his study of obedience in modern society, psychologist Stanley
Milgram wrote, "There is always some element of bad form in objecting
to the destructive course of events, or indeed, in making it a topic of
conversation." Milgram noted that even Nazi's most closely associated
with the 'final solution' considered it an act of discourtesy to talk
directly about the killings.  We know, of course, that the Soviet gulags
and insane asylums were subsequently filled with similarly impolite
dissidents motivated by a range of psychopathologies.

We might like to believe that our society is free of such wicked
nonsense, but today 'liberal' commentators regularly deride dissidents
such as Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter and John Pilger for being motivated
by anger, egotism and other psychological disorders. As a result, it is
claimed, they present a simplified version of the world shaped to fit
their delusions, rather than the world as it is.

In the Independent, Steve Crawshaw titled his recent review of Chomsky's
latest book of political analysis: "Furious ideas with no room for
nuance". Crawshaw perceives a strange contradiction in Chomsky's
work: "Chomsky knows so much", he writes, "but seems impervious to any
idea of nuance." Sentences like this have me reaching for my dictionary:
how can someone who "knows so much" be ignorant of "any idea" of subtle
difference in shade or meaning? Anger distorts Chomsky's work, it
seems. Lambasting his criticism of the Nato bombing of Serbia, Crawshaw
writes: "Misguided isn't enough [for Chomsky]; the policy must be plain
evil." Alternatively, as Chomsky himself argues, policy can be guided
by profit, with human suffering an unfortunate and unintended, but
ultimately necessary, consequence.

A May 1999 review of Harold Pinter's political output by Jay Rayner in
the Observer, focused on the distorting influence of rage on Pinter's
thought. The titles and subtitles leave us in no doubt: "Pinter of
Discontent: Hated Pinochet; loathed Thatcher; doesn't like America;
deplores Nato; is disgusted when his play doesn't get a West End
run. Good old Harold - he's always bitching about something." The
enraged Pinter naturally has no time for subtlety or nuance:  "Late
Pinter is all about sound and fury" - as opposed to content, we are
invited to presume.  Rayner quotes Timothy Garton Ash, who says of
Pinter, "He has this terribly imaginative vision of the world and
everything has to fit it.

Compare and contrast all of this with comments made by Jon Snow in
his recent Observer review of Anthony Hayward's book, In the Name
of Justice, documenting John Pilger's filmic output. "Still angry
after all these years", ran the title. Snow writes that Pilger's
work has sharply divided the journalistic world: "Some argue the
ends justify his means, others that the world is a more subtle place
than he allows". Snow does not reveal on which side of the fence
he falls, although in the last sentence he insists a fundamental
problem remains where Pilger's work is concerned: "whether the very
great good that Pilger has achieved justifies the way he has reached
his conclusions".  What can these controversial ways and means be?
Tenacious research, a willingness to challenge officialdom, and often
to travel to dangerous places? Snow doesn't say, suggesting a sinister
element, and also that the "vociferous majority" of journalists would
agree with him. Really? Has he conducted a national survey? His
patronising assertions and their subtext are the stuff of smear familiar
to all dissidents.

Chomsky has discussed the rationale behind this, and the constant
references to the alleged anger and distortions of dissidents:

"Somehow they have to get rid of the stuff. You can't deal with the
arguments, that's plain; for one thing you have to know something, and
most of these people don't know anything. Secondly, you wouldn't be able
to answer the arguments because they're correct. Therefore what you
have to do is somehow dismiss it. So that's one technique, 'It's just
emotional, it's irresponsible, it's angry.'"

That mainstream journalists do indeed have difficulty answering the
arguments became clear to me in an interview with Jon Snow in January. I
put to Snow, and several other leading liberal journalists, some of
the fundamental ideas underpinning the work of Chomsky, Pilger, and
others. I asked Snow, for example, what he thought of the idea that
the US and Britain have a long and dishonourable history of supporting
dictators like Pinochet, Suharto, the Shah of Iran and many others, in
order to protect local resources for Western corporations: "Oh this is
bollocks!" he replied. "Total bollocks! Utter bollocks!" When I asked
him why he thought it was bollocks, he replied: "Because, I'm afraid
there are many, many other factors." The world is "a more subtle place"
argument again - communicated less subtly.

Snow also rejected out of hand Chomsky and Pilger's argument that
advertisers, wealthy owners, parent companies, corporate flak machines
and state power have a dramatic impact in filtering media output. "I'm
aware of the argument," he told me. "I don't believe it's true.  I mean
I don't think that's the motivation. I think they just know that sex
and those sort of things sell a lot better. After all, Channel 4 has no
institutional owner... I just don't travel with +any+ of this crap! What
I travel with is lazy journalism."

So much for a systemic analysis of the media! When I asked him whether
"lazy" journalists perhaps thrived in a media system unwilling to
reveal the depredations of the corporate system of which it is itself a
part, whether there might be a pattern to this "lazy journalism", Snow
replied:

"No, unfortunately there is +not+! You mean, white, middle-class,
middle-aged men, sitting around desks hatching plots which have nothing
to do with the main interests of women and ethnic minorities? Well there
is a bit of that, yes!"

Try though I might to assure him that I was not proposing conspiracy
theories, and that these were not simply weird ideas that I had
cooked up on my own, Snow was firm in his conviction that I was a mad
conspiracy theorist: "I think you're bananas!  You're completely off the
clock!", he said.

And this, one suspects, is finally the real opinion that often lies
behind the more delicate, but no less damning, liberal description of
dissidents as angry, simplistic and lacking in nuance. It remains "bad
form" to criticise the destructive course of events for which Western
governments are often responsible. Better to call the destruction a
'moral crusade', or a 'humanitarian intervention', and to denounce ideas
that challenge this Orwellian status quo as deranged and "bollocks".

POSTSCRIPT

As a kind of experiment, I tried to publish the above article in the
mainstream 'liberal' British press. The results were interesting. Mike
Holland of the Observer told me that unfortunately there wasn't space
that week, and probably wouldn't be the next - better try somewhere
else. So I sent the article to Catherine Pepinster of the Independent on
Sunday, who said:

"It's not something we would run because it's partly an attack on one
of our own journalists [Crawshaw], and it's also too inward looking on
journalism."

It is interesting that disagreement is interpreted as "an attack". The
message is clear and in fact consistently repeated throughout the media:
radical criticism of a newspaper or its journalists will result in
rejection. Media analysts are fully aware of this, of course.  Several
high-profile radical writers have told me privately that they will
not openly criticise the 'liberal' media because it means certain
career-death. As a result, readers are subjected to an entirely false
consensus affirming the view that we have a free, honest, open and
tolerant media. Nobody challenges that view because nobody is allowed
to.

You will have noticed that 'media sections' of newspapers seem designed
to be read solely by industry insiders. I sent my article to Janine
Gibson, editor of the Guardian's media section.  She rejected it, saying
it wasn't "suitable for media Guardian". I sought clarification, asking
whether the problem was one of style or content.  This is what she
e-mailed back to me.

"Both, really, though I hesitate to be so discouraging. Your
essay/thesis style seems to me better suited to a weekend review section
or a weekly magazine such as the Spectator. Similarly the subject, which
is quite subtle, doesn't in my opinion lend itself to a weekly section
which carries topical features about media issues.  Basically, it reads
to me like a piece which should be read on a Sunday afternoon rather
than a busy Monday morning. I hope that makes sense."

As it turns out, crucial issues that have never been discussed in the
mainstream are +not+ better suited to Sunday afternoons, or indeed any
afternoon.

With the support of John Pilger, a regular columnist at the New
Statesman, I sent the piece to Peter Wilby, the New Statesman's
editor. This is what I got back:

"Your piece isn't uninteresting and you are quite right that Chomsky,
Pinter, Pilger et al (in the case of the last, I have frequently
experienced it first-hand) are regularly dismissed as mad, thus freeing
people from any need to engage with their arguments. But will this
really be such a great revelation to New Statesman readers? And why
should we care about what Jon Snow said to you?"

It might be a revelation, given that these arguments have never appeared
anywhere in the mainstream press, and are (presumably) therefore
unknown to the vast majority of people. Alas, the same argument does
not apply when the New Statesman, and any number of other mainstream
media entities, serve up agonisingly interminable coverage of the Monica
Lewinsky Affair, OJ Simpson-type court cases, Cherrie Blair's bouncing
baby, and the saga of New Labour's Millennium Dome. Unless dissident
views are guaranteed 100% fresh, having never been heard even once
before, they cannot be published - or so we are told.

I replied to Wilby, saying that I had sent the article to Chomsky who
had described it, "A very good article, about a topic that strikes
too close to home (hence unpublishable)." Come on, I said, isn't that
ultimately the point?

Wilby responded thus:

"Well, I'd hardly expect Chomsky to be rude to you, given what you've
written. 'There's nothing wrong with what I've written; it's just
censorship. If people won't publish me, it proves my point.' Gosh, I've
heard all that before."

Wilby would have a point, except that there is +always+ something wrong
with dissident work, no matter how good it is. I know when I am reading
truly incisive, honest work that dares to challenge the comfortable
beliefs of society. I can tell when writers are putting truth ahead
of self-interest - it's something you can feel; it's electrifying,
uplifting. But I almost never experience this in the mainstream. I read
tedious, grey, empty, superficial material that seems to deliberately
obscure its meaning to avoid taking a targetable position. I read words
written by people from the same schools, universities, clubs and salary
brackets (they all seem to speak the same way too), saying what I know
powerful interests are happy to hear. How can Wilby be unaware of
this? Is it possible to be that insensitive to the moronic inferno that
is the modern media output?

I got a surreal response from the Independent:

"Thanks very much for thinking of us, unfortunately it isn't right for
reality."

It turns out that 'Reality' is a section of the paper. I felt that the
point hit the mark, though.  My piece really +isn't+ right for the
corporate media's version of reality.

In a final act of desperation, I did something no self-respecting
journalist should do: I submitted my article to the right-wing Spectator
magazine.  The editor's response finally consigned my article to the
media grave, there to join the twisting and turning Orwell:

"I thought your piece was very interesting, but is it not possible that
Snow, Crawshaw et al are simply right?"