Noam Chomsky wrote a remarkable book titled Manufacturing Consent about the need for propaganda in democratic societies. At the time, many intellectuals questioned his argument based on the unquestioningly and widely accepted norm that propaganda was something that undemocratic societies did in order to control the minds of the people. However, Chomsky provided an unmistakable and intellectually convincing argument, fact really, that since the speech in democratic societies is free and cannot be controlled, there is a need to control the minds of the people. Through propaganda. In undemocratic societies, either people do not have free speech or it doesn’t matter to an unelected government what the people say. Therefore, there is no need to control their minds. Hence, the need for propaganda is much less, if any at all.
America has always employed sheer propaganda in order to achieve many political goals, especially foreign policy ones. Bush lied to his fellow Americans about the presence of WMDs in Iraq in order to justify the invasion of that country. President Kennedy and President Johnson had both lied similarly about the Vietnam war. After the end of the Vietnam war, the American people were exhausted from fighting wars on foreign lands.
Therefore, the Carter administration started baiting the Soviets into invading Afghanistan so as to create a justification for continued build-up of the American muscle based on the rationale that the Soviets were expanding and were becoming a threat to Shah’s Iran, which was a US ally at the time. In reality, the Soviets were no threat to the Iranians, and Zbigniew Brzezinsky told many people behind closed doors that they were merely inflating the Soviet threat for political purposes.
There are countless stories of presidential lies to justify the foreign policy goals because America is a democracy and since free speech can’t be suppressed, they had to lie to the people in order to keep the speech blunted by the method of thought control.
That, however, may be changing. And it is changing pretty fast. A new bill has been passed by the US House of Representatives, which states that any business that is involved in “politically motivated” boycotts of Israel would be barred from getting Pentagon contracts. This is about targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. There are three sad details to this: One, the anti-BDS ban was added to the defence budget at the last minute by the Colorado Representative named Lauren Boebert. Two, this happened on September 10 when the Charlie Kirk shooting happened and all the news and social media was focused on that. Three, Charlie Kirk had also opposed this anti-BDS ban to be added to the Defence budget. Go figure.
While I despised Charlie and what he stood for, the one thing I totally agreed with him on is the noise that he had started making lately, as to why Americans should not be able to criticise Israel. The sad truth is that Israel happens to be a foreign country for the Americans. Yet, the American people and businesses are forced to avoid criticising Israel’s genocide and other human rights violations. Secretary Rubio days ago threatened to revoke passports of those Americans that supported Hamas by the method of criticizing Israel.
America doesn’t seem to be interested in controlling minds. It wants to control speech using coercion and raw methods, which one could only imagine being used in undemocratic societies. The proudest democracy is now home to such sheer tactics. And it is not for a dictator ruling over America but rather for a foreign country, which is quite detrimental to American interests and national security if common sense was quite common. For what it’s worth, I think it is welcome news because Israel knows that it is the loneliest state in the world and its genocidal actions are not supported by anyone. It can no longer convince people with the relentless whines and reminders of the Holocaust. So, it is using the chokehold it has over the American political system to silence the critique. It won’t fly.
