Attacking Our Historical Memory By John Pilger

[Guest guest]

Important insights into why Americans (and to a lesser extent Europeans) are

so ignorant of history and so easily brainwashed. Today's brainwashers have

an easy task, because they merely have to build on lifelong brainwashing

Americans and Europeans learn in school. As the saying goes, the winners write

history. Thus we're destined to continue to repeat this history, over and over

again, and never understand why things keep going so very wrong.

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http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-02/19pilger.cfm

 

ZNet Commentary

Attacking Our Memory February 19, 2005

By John Pilger

 

How does thought control work in societies that call themselves free? Why are

famous journalists so eager, almost as a reflex, to minimise the culpability

of political leaders such as Bush and Blair who share responsibility for the

unprovoked attack on a defenceless people, for laying to waste their land and

for killing at least 100,000 people, most of them civilians, having sought to

justify this epic crime with demonstrable lies? What does BBC reporter describe

the invasion of Iraq as " a vindication for Blair " ?

 

Why have broadcasters never associated the British or American state with

terrorism? Why have such privileged communicators, with unlimited access to the

facts, lined up to describe an unobserved, unverified, illegitimate, cynically

manipulated election, held under a brutal occupation, as " democratic " with the

pristine aim of being " free and fair " ?

 

Do they not read history? Or is the history they know, or choose to know,

subject to such amnesia and omission it produces a world view as seen only

through a one-way moral mirror? There is no suggestion of conspiracy. This

one-way

mirror ensures most of humanity is regarded in terms of its usefulness to " us " ,

its desirability or expendability, its worthiness or unworthiness: for

example, the notion of " good " Kurds in Iraq and " bad " Kurds in Turkey.

 

The unerring assumption is " we " in the dominant west have moral standards

superior to " them " .

 

One of " their " dictators (often a former client of ours, like Saddam Hussein)

kills thousands of people and he is declared a monster, a second Hitler. When

one of our leaders does the same, he is viewed, at worst like Blair, in

Shakespearean terms. Those who kill people with car bombs are " terrorists " ;

those

who kill far more people with cluster bombs are the noble occupants of a

" quagmire " .

 

Historical amnesia can spread quickly. Only ten years after the Vietnam war,

which I reported, an opinion poll in the United States found a third of

Americans could not remember which side their government had supported.

 

This demonstrated the insidious power of the dominant propaganda, that the

war was essentially a conflict of " good " Vietnamese against " bad " Vietnamese, in

which the Americans became " involved " , bringing democracy to the people of

southern Vietnam faced with a " communist threat " .

 

Such a false and dishonest assumption permeated the media coverage, with

honourable exceptions. The truth is the longest war of the 20th century was a

war

waged against Vietnam, north and south, communist and non-communist, by

America.

 

It was an unprovoked invasion of their homeland and their lives, just like

the invasion of Iraq. Amnesia ensures, while the relatively few deaths of the

invaders are constantly acknowledged, the deaths of up to five million

Vietnamese are consigned to oblivion.

 

What are the roots of this? Certainly, " popular culture " , especially

Hollywood movies, can decide what and how little we remember. Selective

education at a

tender age performs the same task. I have been sent a widely used revision

guide for students of modern world history, on Vietnam and the cold war. This is

learned by 14 to 16-year-olds in British schools, sitting for the critical

GCSE exam. It informs their understanding of a pivotal historical period, which

must influence how they make sense of today's news from Iraq and elsewhere.

 

It is shocking. It says under the 1954 Geneva agreement: " Vietnam was

partitioned into communist north and democratic south. " In one sentence, truth

is

dispatched. The final declaration of the Geneva conference divided Vietnam

" temporarily " until free national elections were held on 26 July 1956. There was

little doubt Ho Chi Minh would win and form Vietnam's first democratically

elected government. Certainly, President Eisenhower was in no doubt of this. " I

have never talked with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs, " he wrote,

" who did not agree... 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the

communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader. "

 

Not only did the United States refuse to allow the UN to administer the

agreed elections two years later, but the " democratic " regime in the south was

an

invention. One of the inventors, the CIA official Ralph McGehee, describes in

his masterly book Deadly Deceits how a brutal expatriate mandarin, Ngo Dinh

Diem, was imported from New Jersey to be " president " and a fake government was

put in place. " The CIA " , he wrote, " was ordered to sustain that illusion through

propaganda [placed in the media]. "

 

Phoney elections were arranged, hailed in the west as " free and fair " , with

American officials fabricating " an 83 per cent turnout despite Vietcong

terror " . The guide alludes to none of this, nor that " the terrorists " , whom the

Americans called the Vietcong, were also southern Vietnamese defending their

homeland against the American invasion and whose resistance was popular.

 

For Vietnam, read Iraq.

 

The tone of this tract is from the point of view of " us " . There is no sense a

national liberation movement existed in Vietnam, merely " a communist threat " ,

merely the propaganda " the USA was terrified many other countries might

become communist and help the USSR - they didn't want to be outnumbered " , merely

that President Johnson " was determined to keep South Vietnam communist-free "

(emphasis as in the original).

 

This proceeds quickly to the Tet Offensive in 1968, which " ended in the loss

of thousands of American lives - 14,000 in 1969 - most were young men " . There

is no mention of the millions of Vietnamese lives also lost in the offensive.

And America merely began " a bombing campaign " : there is no mention of the

greatest tonnage of bombs dropped in the history of warfare, of a military

strategy that was deliberately designed to force millions of people to abandon

their

homes, and of chemicals used in a manner that profoundly changed the

environment and the genetic order, leaving a once-bounty ful land all but

ruined.

 

This revision guide reflects the bias and distortions reflect of the official

syllabuses, such as the prestiugous syllabus from Oxford and Cambridge, used

all over the world as a model. Its cold war section refers to Soviet

" expansionism " and the " spread " of communism; there is not a word about the

" spread " of

rapacious America. One of its " key questions " is: " How effectively did the

USA contain the spread of communism? "

 

Good versus evil for untutored minds.

 

" Phew, loads for you to learn here... " say the authors of the revision guide,

" so get it learned right now. " Phew, the British empire did not happen; there

is nothing about the atrocious colonial wars that were models for the

successor power, America, in Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua,

to

name but a few along modern history's imperial trail of blood, of which Iraq is

the latest.

 

And now Iran? The drumbeat has already begun. How many more innocent people

have to die before those who filter the past and the present wake up to their

moral responsibility to protect our memory and the lives of human beings?

 

 

 

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