[Peace-discuss] If you think the BBC does better...

[C. G. Estabrook]

	January 23, 2008
	The Danse Macabre Of Us-Style Democracy
	By John Pilger

The former president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere once asked, "Why haven't 
we all got a vote in the US election? Surely everyone with a TV set has 
earned that right just for enduring the merciless bombardment every four 
years." Having reported four presidential election campaigns, from the 
Kennedys to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, with their Zeppelins of platitudes, 
robotic followers and rictal wives, I can sympathise. But what 
difference would the vote make? Of the presidential candidates I have 
interviewed, only George C Wallace, governor of Alabama, spoke the 
truth. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats 
and Republicans," he said. And he was shot.

What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that 
presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. 
They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullshit, 
designed to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human 
division and a culture of permanent war.

Travelling with Robert Kennedy in 1968 was eye-opening for me. To 
audiences of the poor, Kennedy would present himself as a saviour. The 
words "change" and "hope" were used relentlessly and cynically. For 
audiences of fearful whites, he would use racist codes, such as "law and 
order". With those opposed to the invasion of Vietnam, he would attack 
"putting American boys in the line of fire", but never say when he would 
withdraw them. That year (after Kennedy was assassinated), Richard Nixon 
used a version of the same, malleable speech to win the presidency. 
Thereafter, it was used successfully by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, 
Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. Carter promised a foreign policy based 
on "human rights" - and practised the very opposite. Reagan's "freedom 
agenda" was a bloodbath in central America. Clinton "solemnly pledged" 
universal health care and tore down the last safety net of the Depression.

Nothing has changed. Barack Obama is a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb 
Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, another bomber, is anti-feminist. John 
McCain's one distinction is that he has personally bombed a country. 
They all believe the US is not subject to the rules of human behaviour, 
because it is "a city upon a hill", regardless that most of humanity 
sees it as a monumental bully which, since 1945, has overthrown 50 
governments, many of them democracies, and bombed 30 nations, destroying 
millions of lives.

If you wonder why this holocaust is not an "issue" in the current 
campaign, you might ask the BBC, which is responsible for reporting the 
campaign to much of the world, or better still Justin Webb, the BBC's 
North America editor. In a Radio 4 series last year, Webb displayed the 
kind of sycophancy that evokes the 1930s appeaser Geoffrey Dawson, then 
editor of the London Times. Condoleezza Rice cannot be too mendacious 
for Webb. According to Rice, the US is "supporting the democratic 
aspirations of all people". For Webb, who believes American patriotism 
"creates a feeling of happiness and solidity", the crimes committed in 
the name of this patriotism, such as support for war and injustice in 
the Middle East for the past 25 years, and in Latin America, are 
irrelevant. Indeed, those who resist such an epic assault on democracy 
are guilty of "anti-Americanism", says Webb, apparently unaware of the 
totalitarian origins of this term of abuse. Journalists in Nazi Berlin 
would damn critics of the Reich as "anti-German".

Moreover, his treacle about the "ideals" and "core values" that make up 
America's sanctified "set of ideas about human conduct" denies us a true 
sense of the destruction of American democracy: the dismantling of the 
Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and separation of powers. Here is Webb on 
the campaign trail: "[This] is not about mass politics. It is a 
celebration of the one-to-one relationship between an individual 
American and his or her putative commander-in-chief." He calls this 
"dizzying". And Webb on Bush: "Let us not forget that while the 
candidates win, lose, win again . . . there is a world to be run and 
President Bush is still running it." The emphasis in the BBC text 
actually links to the White House website.

None of this drivel is journalism. It is anti-journalism, worthy of a 
minor courtier of a great power. Webb is not exceptional. His boss Helen 
Boaden, director of BBC News, sent this reply to a viewer who had 
protested the prevalence of propaganda as the basis of news: "It is 
simply a fact that Bush has tried to export democracy [to Iraq] and that 
this has been troublesome."

And her source for this "fact"? Quotations from Bush and Blair saying it 
is a fact.

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-01/23pilger.cfm