Global Policy Forum

By Barrie Zwicker

Notes for Remarks delivered as part of the Interdisciplinary Conference in Toronto on the Evolution of World Order

I've organized my remarks this way: First I'll offer my worldview, condensed, then a conceptual framework regarding the media, then five observations about media coverage and other events relevant to the my title. I'll wrap up by posing two questions and begin to address them.

My worldview, condensed, is:
[a] That the corporation has become the dominant institution of our time
[b] That governments at all levels are increasingly seduced and coerced into serving the corporate agenda
[c] That the corporate agenda is a well-thought-out long-term strategy to achieve world dominance for capitalists, hence the extreme coercion in the case of peoples who show an inclination to choose or accept governments inclined toward socialism, witness Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Libya, Iraq and currently Yugoslavia, to name just a few.
[d] That the international institutions known as the IMF, World Bank and the World Trade Organization are instruments of capitalism and suffused with corporate values, meaning they are undemocratic and anti-environmental as they go about coercing structural inequities within and between societies.

My conceptual framework for the media is standard Chomskian: my major premise is that the mainstream media function as an effective propaganda apparatus for the powers-that-be.

In Yugoslavia, which might be termed a socialist semi-dictatorship, it's easy to see how the media serve the current powers-that-be, the Milosevic regime. For instance, take the report from Belgrade on Thursday evening by the CBC's Elizabeth Palmer. I have reason to trust most of Palmer's reports. She reported the state media there were omitting in their initial reports at least, major embarrassing parts of the so-called peace agreement that Milosevic had accepted.

In Canada, which might be termed an elite-manipulated semi-democracy, the mainstream media either support the status quo or support efforts to make Canadian society even more to the liking of the most powerful elites. For instance, fewer than a half-dozen Canadian daily newspapers have, in my lifetime, editorially supported even the mildly socialistic New Democratic Party federally.

Now my five observations related to the topic at hand:

First, the mainstream - meaning by and large corporate -- media editorially normally support hawkish actions. This has held true in the case of NATO's war on Yugoslavia. Editorially the war has been supported by The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Southam papers, the Toronto Star and the Sun newspapers.

Second, in the case of this war, there has been a noticeable split among hawks - in the military, among economists, pundits and ideologues - as to the validity of the enterprise. In the Toronto Sun columnist Robert McDonald is an example of a traditional hawk who has continued in the well-worn essentially Cold War bomb 'em to hell groove. But Sun columnist Peter Worthington - who never before saw an Allied bombing run he didn't like - has opposed this bombing from day one. Columnist Michael Harris, and Sun editor Lorrie Goldstein have been vociferous in their opposition. In the National Post, rabid rightwinger and traditional hawk David Frum has opposed the war. Widely-interviewed academic Michael Bliss has sharply opposed the war and even NATO. The latest we can add to this list is Brian Mulroney.

Third, this unprecedented opposition from traditional hawks has been matched by unprecedented support for the bombing from traditional doves. For instance Svend Robinson and the federal NDP initially, Ed Broadbent, Elie Weisel, Michael Ignatieff. The list goes on.

Fourth, the rightwing doves have not been ignored or marginalized by the mainstream western media.

Fifth and finally, traditional doves have been ignored or extremely marginalized by the mainstream western media, as usual.

My two questions are:

First: has opposition, expressed through the media and otherwise, to NATO's bombing - namely, stage two of the subjugation of Yugoslavia - had any discernable effect? So far as I can see, the answer is no.

My second question is: Why?

Writer Diana Johnstone notes the term "the international community" - IC for short -- is being increasingly used, sometimes interchangeably with NATO and often excluding the UN. She suggests IC really stands for Imperialist Condominium. The corporate imperialist powers, especially the USA and Germany, are so unchallenged militarily, economically and propagandistically that they can predictably orchestrate general public opinion to support their military-economic strategy. Standard reportorial techniques function as megaphones for the party line. Even publicly-expressed dissenting opinion within the capitalist camp now can be ignored by the highest reaches of the powers-that-be.

The Yugoslav project serves so many of the goals of the IC that it has to proceed, period. It establishes NATO as de facto world enforcer and the IC as de facto world government. The UN is relegated, to be used when useful and ignored when not. The expansion of NATO and the war in particular guarantee at least $35-billion in profits in the next few years for arms manufacturers. Postwar reconstruction will provide further billions of profits for Western construction companies. This will be sold as generous aid to a former adversary, proving the moral superiority of the West. It's the ultimate perfect capitalist-imperialist make-work project: profit from destruction, then profit from reconstruction, all bankrolled by raiding public treasuries, while pursuing world domination, and selling it all through superb propaganda. Hitler's version of the attempt was called nazism.

Hitler - and his backers, let us not forget - propelled their project through calls to nationalism and racism. Today's IC has a new, improved propellant. Human rights.

The Balkan project cements human rights as the new all-purpose justification for selective aggression and subjugation, the made-for-TV hot button the media love that can corner doves into supporting you by the barrel.

Phase one is destabilize. This guarantees the rise of "another Hitler." Phase two demonize. This leads to necessary militarization of the situation. By now you've got your human rights crisis if you're any good at this. A necessary component is a clutch of NGO's, especially human rights NGO's. These are the equivalent of the missionaries of the last century. The missionaries were only there to do good. Of course they would get into trouble. Then their governments, the colonial powers, would have to go in and save them. Except the powers went in to take control of the resources.

There's nothing new under the sun, but the media must proceed on the a-historical assumption that everything is new, unprecedented, that is news. If it's heart-wrenching, heart-warming or titillating to boot, then it's custom-made to deliver ratings, that is, deliver audiences to advertisers so they will continue to air their commercials, which subtly or not-so-subtly promote values ultimately in sync with those embedded in the so-called news, making for a near-seamless manufactured synthetic perceptual environment.

Wars, famines, lopped off penises, dying princesses... it's all money for Murdoch and his merry band of media moguls. They personally like the worldview they manufacture. It's immensely profitable for them and it's the world they want to see. It leaves out inconvenient bits such as the story of their own class and how it operates, which is the second most important and interesting story in the world. The first is gecocide, which is systematically fragmented into near incoherence and marginalized into near political irrelevance in North America.

Thank you.