The Big Media assault on Chavez is a great look at how Big Media systematically lies and broadcasts political propaganda.
Hey! Didja hear the one about Hugo Chavez wanting to be a dictator for life?
Or the one about how food is disappearing from the store shelves for the poor?
Or the one that said his "referendum" was a total power grab?
We all heard them - but if you actually believed these things - Congratulations! You've been PW3N3D ! Totally!
The recent propaganda offensive against Hugo Chavez has suckered many, many Americans, including many who - really - should have known better.
Got them hook, line, and sinker.
How and why after the jump.
Since Team Bush's take over of America, Journalistic careers have been being made and broken. Some of these careers will gain some luster from their excellent reporting about the massive propaganda war being waged against Hugo Chavez.
Several internet-based reporters/journalists have documented a very different version of events and differing analysis of Hugo Chavez in the midst of a an all-out propaganda offensive by Big Media.
David Lindorff, Tariq Ali, George Manibot, Frederick Cedarholm, Greg Palast, and James Petras have all written about the massive, orchestrated propaganda blitz that we witnessed just prior to the recent "referendum Vote".
The best place to begin, I think, is with the Coup of 2002. Chavez forced Big Oil to start paying more taxes: used to keeping nearly 84% of their oil profits, Chavez took 14% more from them. they were now only able to keep a paltry 70% and, of course, this was unacceptable.
He was kidnapped and flown out of the country. The US State Department rushed down to Caracas to celebrate only to discover that Chavez anticipated such a thing and hid loyal commandos in the Presidential palace. The party was over and Chavez returned to power inside of 48 hours. (I love this story.)
Since then he has been the focus of Team Bush and Big Oil attempts to remove him and slime him in the western media. And in the last 3 weeks or so we have seen a massive effort invested in this sliming.
In 2005, evil Republican Preacher Man Pat Robertson openly called for Chavez to be assassinated. All emphasis is mine.
From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:
ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.
You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.
And I don't think any oil shipments will stop.
But this man is a terrific danger and the United ...
This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen.
We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced.
And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly.
We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.
Greg Palast has done quite a bit of excellent video reporting. Here's the teaser to his full Assassination of Hugo Chavez: it's suitable glimpse into the absolutely wild goings-on in regards to the US Government and Big Oil's focus on eliminating him.
YouTube has the whole documentary available and I would call it mandatory viewing if you are to gain any real context and background on what is actually going on. [Part I | Part II | Part III]
David Lindorff was writing about the propaganda war aimed at Chavez back in 2006 well before the current escalation. And check out who shows up to provide "informative feedback" for Americans about the dastardly Chavez - John Negroponte (Mr. South American Death Squads)!
In an April 4 page one article that reeks of Cold War rhetoric, Timesman Juan Forero warns that with Venezuela's oil revenues rising 32 percent last year, Venezuela's foreign aid spending "now surpasses the nearly $2 billion Washington allocates annually to pay for development programs and the drug war in western South America." (The drug war is foreign aid?)
Quoting only Chavez critics - both political opponents within Venezuela, and U.S. government and right-wing think tank members in the U.S. - Forero paints an ominous picture of a budding threat to U.S. influence in the Americas.
The most appalling quote comes from John Negroponte, the overall director of intelligence services in the U.S., and a man with a long history of meddling in the affairs of, and indeed subverting the governments of nations in Latin America. Mr. Chavez is "spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and economic life of other countries in Latin America and elsewhere, this despite the very real economic development and social needs of his own country," Negroponte is quoted as telling Forero.
Hmmm.... the same exact goddamned thing can be said about Team Bush. In spades. Iraq and Afghanistan are two glaring examples of Team Bush being exponentially worse in reality to any lie they have made up about Chavez to date. America is being bankrupted by these "wars" while tens of millions of people have no access to healthcare or are going hungry.
Now lets hear from George Manibot who tells us, fittingly, that Venezuela is not Florida
No one should have been surprised by Chavez’s immediate concession: Venezuela is a constitutional democracy, and its government has stuck to the democratic rules of the game since he was first elected in 1998. Despite the non-renewal of the broadcast license for a major TV station in May - one that wouldn’t have gotten a license in any democratic country - Venezuela still has the most oppositional media in the hemisphere.
But the U.S. media has managed to convey the impression to most Americans that Venezuela is some sort of dictatorship or near-dictatorship.
Some of this disinformation takes place through mere repetition and association (e.g. "communist Cuba" appearing in thousands of news reports) — just as 70 percent of Americans were convinced, prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacres of September 11. In that case, the major media didn’t even believe the message, but somehow it got across and provided justification for the war.
In the case of Venezuela, the media is more pro-active, with lots of grossly exaggerated editorials and op-eds, news articles that sometimes read like editorials, and a general lack of balance in sources and subject matter.
Mr. Manibot provides us with a succinct expression of bottom line of this propaganda offensive:
Venezuela must be seen as undemocratic, and Chavez as the aggressor against the United States, in order to justify the Bush Administration’s objective of regime change. As in the run-up to the Iraq war, most of the major media are advancing the Administration’s goals, regardless of the intentions of individual journalists.
James Petras writes more about the large cooperative effort that came together to use Big Media to create an entirely false presentation of what's happening in Venezuela in the Aftermath
1) numerous agencies of the US government (CIA, AID, NED and the Embassy's political officers), their subcontracted 'assets' (NGO's, student recruitment and indoctrinations programs, newspaper editors and mass media advertisers), the US multi-nationals and the Chamber of Commerce (paying for anti-referendum ads, propaganda and street action);
2) the major Venezuelan business associations FEDECAMARAS, Chambers of Commerce and wholesale/retailers who poured millions of dollars into the campaign, encouraged capital flight and promoted hoarding, black market activity to bring about shortages of basic food-stuffs in popular retail markets;
3) over 90 per cent of the private mass media engaged in a non-stop virulent propaganda campaign made up of the most blatant lies--including stories that the government would seize children from their families and confine them to state-controlled schools (the US mass media repeated the most scandalous lies--without any exceptions);
4) The entire Catholic hierarchy from the Cardinals to the local parish priests used their bully pulpits and homilies to propagandize against the constitutional reforms--more important, several bishops turned over their churches as organizing centers to violent far right-wing resulting, in one case, in the killing of a pro-Chavez oil worker who defied their street barricades.
*****
This disparate coalition headed by the Venezuelan elite and the US government relied basically on pounding the same general message: The re-election amendment, the power to temporarily suspend certain constitutional provisions in times of national emergency (like the military coup and lockouts of 2002 to 2003), the executive nomination of regional administrators and the transition to democratic socialism were part of a plot to impost 'Cuban communism'.
Again, Big Media happily lied, lied, lied, aided, and abetted a massive, systematic disinformation campaign designed specifically to make Americans believe a false reality. This is, however, their exact job.
The Washington Post pitched in, of course. The paper that helped bring down a strong-arm tyrant like Richard Nixon is hauling water for Team Bushand diligently repeating the falsehoods reported above.
Tariq Ali asks, in Venezuela After the Referendum,
What is to be done now? The President is in office till 2013 and whatever else Chavez may be the description of 'lame-duck' will never fit him. He is a fighter and he will be thinking of how to strengthen the process. If properly handled the defeat could be a blessing in disguise. It has, after all, punctured the arguments of the Western pundits who were claiming for the last eight years that democracy in Venezuela was dead and authoritarianism had won.
Anyone who saw Chavez' speech accepting defeat last night (as I did here in Guadalajara with Mexican friends) will not be in any doubt regarding his commitment to a democratically embedded social process. That much is clear. One of the weaknesses of the movement in Venezuela has been the over-dependence on one person. It is dangerous for the person (one bullet can be enough) and it is unhealthy for the Bolivarian process. There will be a great deal of soul-searching taking place in Caracas, but the key now is an open debate analysing the causes of the setback and a move towards a collective leadership to decide on the next candidate. It's a long time ahead but the discussions should start now. Deepening popular participation and encouraging social inclusion (as envisaged in the defeated constitutional changes) should be done anyway.
So there ya have it: if you bought into the hype of Chavez trying to be a "tyrant" or a "dictator" you got PW3ND!
I have seen a number of people put in writing their "convictions" about how terrible Chavez is, and at best all they have are the same Big Media propaganda reports discussed here. All suckered.
The snowjob Big Media has done on Chavez should be the subject of more than a few blog articles like this.
I do temper this view with the idea that a lot of the folks that I think should not have been so easily suckered don't really want to believe that Big Media lies to them as pervasively and systematically as it does.
I have my suspicions this is a large part of these same people's resistance to discussing cannabis reforms - they don't want to realize they have bought into lies and propaganda their whole life and they don't want to have to adjust to a reality wherein their newspaper and precious TV are worthless when it comes to getting a true picture of reality.
And the truth does appear to boil down to the idea that you really cannot trust Bug Media to tell you the truth and, conversely, you can more than reasonably anticipate them lying systematically to you. It's their job.
People can learn from this and really should re-think their "beliefs" in Big Media and really, abandon them.
Oh... and those who currently do want proper news reporting will have to visit the internet and learn to navigate it and uses searches. Your newspaper and your TV are not going to make accessing real information easy for you - their job is to lie.
Big Media is completely untrustworthy when it comes to issues relevant to the "little person".
The internet and phenomenon of blogging has already changed the relative "balance of power" such that blogging itself is the target of Big Media smearing as they see the writing on the wall. The internet and blogging allow the little normal everyday person to seek out more and more information quickly which is the death of the propaganda stream.
I do admire Chavez, if for no other reason than he tells George Bush to go fuck himself. He may not be an angel, but, for the thousandth time, he doesn't need to be. It can be easily reported that he is undeniably a "democracy wonk" aside from his other issues.
Look at all the things you know Bush is doing to destroy democracy in America and compare that with whatever inequities Chavez MIGHT be inflicting on his people, in between providing them better educational and healthcare opportunities than we have here
I do NOT believe Hugo Chavez is an enemy of democracy or a threat of any form to me.
George Bush IS. Clearly.
Keep your eye on the ball and don't be deceived.
Again, it's just wrong when the Banana Republic in in America and Democracy flourishes in Venezuela.
Now, spit out that fish bait.