SPEAK UP!

Freedom of speech is our right because we claim it and we manifest it, not because it is granted by authorities elected by votes or money or guns.

The only way to maintain our freedom of speech is to exercise it, and rigorously so. We must not censor ourselves under any circumstances. We must not do the work of liberty-hating authoritarians by muzzling ourselves for fear of their reprisals.

This is so glaringly obvious it embarrasses me to write it. And yet I note, in disappointment and desperation, that there is some need to highlight these sentiments.

We can accept no limits on our freedom to speak our minds. None. No one who tells us it is illegal to say these or those words, in this or that order, has any legitimate power of us.

This is not an invitation to be irresponsible. Quite the opposite, actually. Every time someone says something vapid, ill-considered, mean, baseless, racist, off-topic, ignorant, self-aggrandizing, they step over to the side of authoritarians who seek to limit free speech. It serves those in positions of power and oppression to speak when you have nothing to say. Your narcissism knocks us all down a peg.

When you have nothing of value to say, be quiet and listen. When those you are hearing have nothing of value to say, lend your ear to something else.

The charge of sedition has made a comeback of late, the idea that certain words, said together in a certain order, are cause to remove the sayer from society in one way or another. But the only way the charge of sedition could be legitimate is if the power claiming offense to your words is legitimate. It is not.

We must be certain of this, that we can and will say any words, in any order, at any time, for any reason, and we will not accept the charges of sedition, terrorism, incitement made against us. We will not accept fines, jail time, "indefinite detention", torture, and assassination for using words to express ourselves to each other. We will not be made to fear communicating with each other just because the powerful threaten to abuse us for doing so.

The idea that the way we speak will be met with gun violence, chemical weapons, police brutality, torture, show trials and prison sentences proves the very need to continue to speak freely. What other ways do we have to defend ourselves from violent authoritarians? What other ways do we have to proclaim the good world we wish to live in?

We must accept that while we claim the right to say what we will, others will say things we may not like. Unless we wish to use our freedom of speech to sound like a bunch of raving narcissists, we ought to avoid amplifying and encouraging the ugly, baseless things that some few will continue to say. Uplift foolish people with your intelligence, not by pandering to them.

We do not have to dignify with a microphone the sound coming out of every asshole. Say more good, powerful, intelligent, meaningful things and more good, powerful, intelligent, meaningful things will have been said.

There are words that I have said in this brief text that, taken together with my determination to travel freely and, perhaps -- who knows? -- taken together with the people with whom I associate and, perhaps, with the people or organizations their friends associate with, and taken together with the books and articles I read, would be cause for that fucked up, illegitimate state authority that claims the right to bomb the world, to take me into custody, to place me in a windowless jail cell, without charge, without a lawyer or light or heat or clothing, for the rest of my life. It doesn't matter that I've never lifted a hand against another human being, that I've never held a weapon, that I've never encouraged any kind of violence, that I have no record with these illegitimate authorities of any kind of wrongdoing whatsoever. For using these words, they claim the right to haul me away from my community, my work, my loved ones, forever.

Now someone tell me again how getting active in local politics is going to change a damned thing? Speak up!

A Piece On/Of Propaganda

All of this is true, that you are being lied to. Fooled, tricked, misled. You are being deluded, hoodwinked, cheated, defrauded, disenfranchised. You are being conned, duped, influenced, brainwashed. Your arms are twisted. Your hands are tied. Your back is against the wall. You are cornered, trapped, caged, coerced. Patted down, beat up, worked over. Deceived, manipulated. Your thoughts are controlled, your ideas are not your ideas. What you know about the world and how it works is false, dangerously so, fatally so.

As sure as privacy is a thing of the past, you will learn to unremember independent thought. Groupthink is a reality and your thoughts are it. You are a party to mass delusion. There are entities that will not abide ideas that they themselves did not source. You have never had a dangerous thought in your life. Your speech betrays your long conditioning by a despicable cadre of public relations experts.

When you have information you can trust, you can navigate it to form your own opinions and map out a way of being in the world. When you plot a course based on lies and deceptions, your steps are unsure, your movements irrational, your trajectory a farce.

You are bombarded with loaded information at every turn. Your life is utterly mediated. In print. On screen. Across radio waves. In classrooms. On billboards. At the office water cooler. People are even hired to walk around and nonchalantly extol products, films, brands. They are paid to subvert personal taste and desire merely by being overheard. You know the names of 100 poisonous products that you voluntarily put in and on your body each day, but cannot name the songbird singing outside your window, or the tree he is sitting in. And this according to plan.

Is it okay? Are you comfortable with it?

*

Into the struggle to scale down America's rampant militarism strides the propaganda of the Pentagon. Into the struggle to heal the hurts of industrial civilization stride million dollar corporate greenwash campaigns. Into the struggle to know our selves, our desires, our needs, step unscrupulous public relations firms.

We are meant to feel like inadequate, unattractive outsiders unless we buy the right future junk. We are meant to feel contempt for science, for facts, for recognizing the consequences of our actions: all is right in the world the white font on a bright green background happily declares. We are meant to believe that security and peace come through the prosecution of endless war and the long, righteous arms of American imperialism.

This is really happening. Is it a conspiracy? How do we negotiate our daily lives when such juggernauts of influence bear down on us so consistently, so forcefully, without reproach of conscience?

*

Propaganda, from the Latin word that means "to propagate", didn't always carry a negative connotation. Propaganda is the targeting of receivers' emotions for the purpose of disseminating ideas and promoting specified actions. It differs from rational discourse in that it appeals to feelings and not reason. It is selective information, yes, but it doesn't have to be bad, or dishonest. Just like not all violence is evil--think of a lioness killing an antelope to feed her pride--not all influence is wrong. Bertolt Brecht, a playwright of conscience who lived in times of aggression and deceit not unlike our own, was a type of propagandist in his extraordinary work. So was George Orwell. So was Emma Goldman. Heroes, all, and we can name our contemporary analogues.

Now, however, power structures of incalculable evil stretch over the entire planet and out into space. We live at a time when interconnected sociopathic oligarchies actively and explicitly threaten the existence of our species, and that of many others. And yet these contemptible few constitute such a small part of the population that their authority can be toppled by an informed movement of dedicated individuals. (Witness the fact that a mere ten percent of the population of Egypt ousted the dictator Hosni Mubarak last month.) In order to maintain the global authoritarian order of industrial civilization, it is necessary for the majority to believe that all is well. Join the imperial army to bring about peace. Pay the companies that make you feel inadequate, that poison you, to make you feel better. The only kind of environmentalism that will be tolerated must be ineffectual. (The kind of environmental activism that actually works is deemed "eco-terrorism", and you're not a terrorist, are you? Are you?)

We are beaten down, prodded, invaded, demeaned, pushed around, infected with and waterboarded by propaganda aimed at breaking our will to challenge it. Is it a conspiracy? Is it okay? Is this really happening?

To echo Noam Chomsky, whose Manufacturing Consent (written with Edward S. Herman) is an essential text in the comprehension of contemporary media propaganda, consciousness raising is the first step in lifting oneself out of oppression. The biggest challenge to overcoming propaganda may be the failure of its targets to recognize themselves as such. The propaganda of the Pentagon, of profit-driven greenwashers, of the PR firms, is the brittle, easily overcome ammunition of a cowardly, paranoid, hate-driven authoritarian minority. Recognize it for what it is and the tide begins to turn.

I am a propagandist. Proudly. I am not fair. I am not balanced. I am not neutral. Because all this is really happening. Enlist.

*

[Written for The Ithaca Post to publicize an event sponsored by the Park School of Independent Media at Ithaca College that featured investigative writer John Stauber and civil rights advocate Lisa Graves speaking on PR and the Pentagon. Stauber and Graves are the founder and current director of the Center for Media and Democracy based in Madison, Wisconsin.]

Real quick:

The incident in which a mentally disturbed man shot and killed thirty-something people at Virginia Technical University earlier this week is certainly not the "worst" shooting massacre in US history.

Any "news" source which reports the incident as such is contributing to a conspiracy of disinformation. You are being lied to. The facts as reported are false.

The dubious pride of place for most innocent victims of a shooting rampage (in North America) should undoubtedly go to any number of planned mass murders of indigenous people or Americans of African descent.

What you consumed as news was not news. It was entertainment. It was not entertainment. It was whatever it takes to shift product between commercial breaks. It was not that. It was propoganda.

Period.

We are not the consumers of the media, we are the product.
---Kevin Danaher, 10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF & World Bank


Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
---Derrick Jensen, Endgame

It is not the television that is lying to you. Who is lying to you?