Chris Hedges: Recognizing the Language of Tyranny

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Recognizing the Language of Tyranny

Posted on Feb 6, 2011
By Chris Hedges


Empires communicate in two languages. One language is expressed in imperatives. It is the language of command and force. This militarized language disdains human life and celebrates hypermasculinity. It demands. It makes no attempt to justify the flagrant theft of natural resources and wealth or the use of indiscriminate violence. When families are gunned down at a checkpoint in Iraq they are referred to as having been “lit up.” So it goes. The other language of empire is softer. It employs the vocabulary of ideals and lofty goals and insists that the power of empire is noble and benevolent. The language of beneficence is used to speak to those outside the centers of death and pillage, those who have not yet been totally broken, those who still must be seduced to hand over power to predators. The road traveled to total disempowerment, however, ends at the same place. It is the language used to get there that is different.

This language of blind obedience and retribution is used by authority in our inner cities, from Detroit to Oakland, as well as our prison systems. It is a language Iraqis and Afghans know intimately. But to the members of our dwindling middle class—as well as those in the working class who have yet to confront our new political and economic configuration—the powerful use phrases like the consent of the governed and democracy that help lull us into complacency. The longer we believe in the fiction that we are included in the corporate power structure, the more easily corporations pillage the country without the threat of rebellion. Those who know the truth are crushed. Those who do not are lied to. Those who consume and perpetuate the lies—including the liberal institutions of the press, the church, education, culture, labor and the Democratic Party—abet our disempowerment. No system of total control, including corporate control, exhibits its extreme forms at the beginning. These forms expand as they fail to encounter resistance.

The tactic of speaking in two languages is as old as empire itself. The ancient Greeks and the Romans did it. So did the Spanish conquistadors, the Ottomans, the French and later the British. Those who inhabit exploited zones on the peripheries of empire see and hear the truth. But the cries of those who are exploited are ignored or demonized. The rage they express does not resonate with those trapped in self-delusion, those who continue to trust in the ultimate goodness of empire. This is the truth articulated in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India.” These writers understood that empire is about violence and theft. And the longer the theft continues, the more brutal empire becomes. The tyranny empire imposes on others it finally imposes on itself. The predatory forces unleashed by empire consume the host. Look around you.

The narratives we hear are those fabricated for us by the state, Hollywood and the press. These narratives are taught in our schools, preached in our pulpits and celebrated in war documentaries such as “Restrepo.” These narratives humanize and ennoble the enforcers of empire. The government, the military, the police and our intelligence agents are lionized. These control groups, we are assured, are the guardians of our virtues and our protectors. They produce our heroes. And those who challenge this narrative—who denounce the lies—become the enemy. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/recognizing_the_language_of_tyranny_20110206/

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[lunatica]

2. The iron grip in the velvet glove

"once self-delusion no longer works it is the iron fist that speaks. The solitary and courageous voices that rise up from these internal and external colonies of devastation are silenced or discredited by the courtiers who serve corporate power. And even those who do hear these voices of dissent often cannot handle the truth. They prefer the Potemkin facade. They recoil at the “negativity.” Reality, especially when you grasp what corporations are doing in the name of profit to the planet’s ecosystem, is terrifying.

All tyrannies come endowed with their own peculiarities. This makes it hard to say one form of totalitarianism is like another. There are always enough differences to make us unsure that history is repeating itself. The corporate state does not have a Politburo. It does not dress its Homeland Security agents in jackboots. There is no raving dictator. American democracy—like the garishly painted train station at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka—looks real even as the levers of power are in the hands of corporations. But there is one aspect the corporate state shares with despotic regimes and the collapsed empires that have plagued human history. It too communicates in two distinct languages, that is until it does not have to, at which point it will be too late."

[marmar]

3. Great graphs.

nt

[EFerrari]

4. Kick

[mmonk]

5. Excellent read.

[lonestarnot]

6. Bookmarking for later. Thanks!

[Iterate]

7. Hedges has really been on a roll lately

and this piece nails it in as concise a form as has seldom been written.

Another quote:

"All centralized power, once restraints and regulations are abolished, once it is no longer accountable to citizens, knows no limit to internal and external plunder. The corporate state, which has emasculated our government, is creating a new form of feudalism, a world of masters and serfs. It speaks to those who remain in a state of self-delusion in the comforting and familiar language of liberty, freedom, prosperity and electoral democracy. It speaks to the poor and the oppressed in the language of naked coercion. But, here too, all will end up in the same place."

Without addressing it directly, he offers an explanation for the so-called mixed messages coming out if Cairo and Washington, a confusion that seems to consume a good share of the media dialog. Most often the messages are discussed as if they have a certain, tangible reality, as if Cameron's statement "We need change and reform and transition to get greater stability." is meaningful while a bullet to the head of an unarmed, non-threatening student is merely incidental.

And perhaps the shock felt recently by some American journalists is also better understood: they had simply crossed the line from the innocuous speech of "press freedoms" designed for the middle class to the more brutal message saved for the poor and oppressed.

[snagglepuss]

10. I agree that he absolutely nails what is happening in this piece. nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Hedges comes thru again. Powerful.

K&R

[Gregorian]

9. The man with his feet on the ground.

A man who hadn't lost track of what it's all about. Skin and bones, muscle and blood.

[Karmadillo]

11. K&R

nt

[BOG PERSON]

12. how about the tyranny of language

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[leftstreet]

13. K&R