{"id":113633,"date":"2022-04-25T08:18:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T12:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=113633"},"modified":"2022-04-25T09:55:20","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T13:55:20","slug":"the-triumph-of-deceit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=113633","title":{"rendered":"THE TRIUMPH OF DECEIT"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Triumph Of Deceit: How Thinking In Labels \u2014 Mere Words \u2014 (Not In Reality) Has Killed Democracy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That masking is the phenomenon which has caused the publics in all of the U.S.-and-allied nations to think in terms of “us” versus “them” as being inter-ethnic, or inter-‘racial’, or inter-religious, INSTEAD OF as being inter-economic-class: the owners of mega-corporations, versus the employees and customers of mega-corporations \u2014 the super-wealthy versus all of the “ethnicities,” and all of the ‘races’, and all of the “religions.”<\/div>\n
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On\u00a0April 19th<\/strong><\/a>, Glenn Greenwald, who is not only a great lawyer but one of the world’s most brilliant investigative and analytical journalists, headlined\u00a0“The WashPost’s Doxxing of @LibsOfTikTok Reveals Who Corporate Journalists See as Their Targets”<\/strong><\/a>, and he exposed how the billionaires (the controlling owners of those mega-corporations) have used their ownership and control of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media in order to blackball and blacklist, from their liberal media, anyone or anything that would constitute a real threat against their own control over the media, over the government, and over their profit and nonprofit corporations. In short: he exposed that the money-power people won’t allow their control to be effectively challenged or weakened. He explained how fascism, and even nazism (racist<\/em>\u00a0fascism), can be liberal, and not ONLY conservative \u2014 can be leftist, and not ONLY rightist; can be far left, and not ONLY far right. (His presentation there includes also a brief summary of how he had switched from being a lawyer, to his becoming an investigative journalist \u2014 a profession that he describes as, and was attracted to on account of its being aimed at \u2014 “exposing the secrets and crimes and improprieties of the most powerful actors in society.”)<\/p>\n

Greenwald, being the genius that he is, was able there quickly to expose \u2014 rip off the mask of \u2014 nazism, and to reveal it so deeply as to penetrate beyond and beneath the superficial level of the standard ideological labels, so that the public might ultimately become able to be freed from the lies by which the billionaire-class has captured and mentally enslaved the public \u2014 enslaved them into neoconservative-neoliberal beliefs and commitments that benefit ONLY the super-wealthy, such as are those billionaires themselves.<\/p>\n

That masking is the phenomenon which has caused the publics in all of the U.S.-and-allied nations to think in terms of “us” versus “them” as\u00a0being<\/em>\u00a0inter-ethnic, or inter-‘racial’, or inter-religious, INSTEAD OF as being inter-economic-class: the owners of mega-corporations,\u00a0versus<\/em>\u00a0the employees and customers of mega-corporations \u2014 the super-wealthy\u00a0versus all<\/em>\u00a0of the “ethnicities,” and all of the ‘races’, and all of the “religions.” (While the\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0partisan distinctions do play a role, that role is, in reality, vastly less powerful than that of the one distinction which is the same in ALL countries, and which actually controls almost all countries’ governments \u2014 the distinction between the rich versus the poor.)<\/p>\n

Labor unions become crushed in this way (by the public’s having the\u00a0wrong<\/em>\u00a0targets \u2014 targets that\u00a0aren’t<\/em>\u00a0the billionaires). Consumers’ rights to safe products become crushed in this way. All protections of the weak against the strong become crushed in this way. All accountability (obligations that the owners have toward their employees and other agents, and toward their corporations’ customers) become crushed in this way. And “this way”\u00a0can be<\/em>\u00a0liberal, and not ONLY conservative. Fascism and even nazism can be liberal, and not\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0conservative. (The only difference there, is the difference between liberal billionaires versus conservative billionaires, but rule by ANY billionaires is an aristocracy not a democracy. It\u00a0doesn’t<\/em>\u00a0represent the public; it represents the super-rich.)<\/p>\n

A good example of this phenomenon is the French election for that nation’s Presidency, on April 24th, between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron: On April 24th occurred the second and final round of voting for the next French President. Macron beat Le Pen by\u00a058% to 42% \u2014 a 16% lead above Le Pen<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and the reason why that happened was this engineered-by-the-super-rich confusion of ideological labels.<\/p>\n

On the night prior to the April 24th election, Politico’s French\u00a0“Poll of Polls”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0showed very clearly that immediately after the first-round voting on April 10th, Le Pen rose and Macron fell in the voter preferences, so that at the time of the April 20th lone Presidential candidates’ debate between the two top finishers in the first round (Le Pen and Macron), the voters’ preference of Macron over Le Pen was at its lowest point ever, around 6%, but that between the 20th and the 23rd, it had grown back to around 10% \u2014 which it had previously been. This had happened despite the major polling organization\u00a0Elabe having found that<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0whereas only 16% of viewers of the debate said that Le Pen came across as “arrogant,” 50% of its viewers said that Macron came across that way. Yet in that same poll, 59% said Macron won the debate, while only 39% said Le Pen did. So: very clearly, the French public viewed Le Pen’s “non-arrogant” performance in that debate to have attracted them\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0than Macron’s “arrogant” performance in it did. What could explain this? It was purely the labeling thing. Not only did the report of that poll refer to Le Pen as being\u00a0“la candidate d’extr\u00eame droite”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(the candidate of the extreme right), but\u00a0all of France’s ‘news’-media did<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And yet<\/em>, Le Pen, on issue after issue during\u00a0that debate<\/strong><\/a>, was advocating a more progressive, or more social-democratic, a more leftist, position than the moderate conservative (pro-corporate-dictatorship) Macron did, and she stated very clearly what she would do differently than what Macron had done as President, virtually all of which was to Macron’s left \u2014 she was consistently favoring the rights of the poor over the rights of the rich, workers over stockholders, small businesses over the mega-corporations, economic competition over concentrated economic power and monopolies, and consumers over the big corporations.<\/p>\n

While Macron praised the former French Empire, Le Pen did not: she was\u00a0anti<\/em>-imperialistic. Though those were all views that were closer to the polled policy-preferences of French voters than were the positions that Macron espoused and had been practicing as France’s President, her expressed views appealed to the voters\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0than did the more right-wing views that Macron expressed and had done. What seems to have been absolutely decisive is that all of the French media, and all of France’s leading politicians \u2014 prominently including the leading leftist candidate in the first round, the socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had come in third with 22% of the vote in the first round, and who, as Wikipedia accurately summarized,\u00a0“advised his voters not to vote for Le Pen in the second round, but did not endorse Macron”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 even Melenchon and other “leftists” were referring to Le Pen as being “far-right<\/em>.” (In fact, Melenchon’s Party, when they had met to decide on their recommendation to voters,\u00a0“The option of voting for Le Pen was not given to respondents.”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0They said: no Melenchon follower should even\u00a0consider<\/em>\u00a0voting for her.) In other words: Melenchon and other self-declared “leftists” were advising their followers to prefer\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0the (by far)\u00a0more conservative<\/em>\u00a0candidate. Those ‘leftists’ were saying:\u00a0if<\/em>\u00a0you’re going to vote for a candidate in the second round (but please do\u00a0not<\/em>), then vote for Macron. Melenchon and all of the self-alleged “leftist” parties said that Le Pen is “far-right” (and thus ideologically beyond the pale). That label was\u00a0believed<\/em>\u00a0by “leftist” voters.<\/p>\n

Those voters followed the labelings that were being applied by the leading people who had been describing themselves as “leftists.” It’s like, in a sense, a mob mentality, but not against a minority ethnic group; it was instead against an ideological\u00a0label<\/em>, no matter how fraudulently that ideological label was actually being applied. Furthermore, in France, which had been so brutalized by Hitler’s Nazis, no political label is even\u00a0nearly<\/em>\u00a0as toxic to a candidate as is the label “far right.” That label, alone, prevented the Presidential candidate who had the (by far) most progressive platform and political commitments, from defeating France’s incumbent,\u00a0very unpopular<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, moderate conservative President Macron. That is how France’s billionaires won \u2014 yet\u00a0again<\/em>. As their\u00a0Reuters ‘news’ report<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0said, “One notable winner has been the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, who scored 22% in the first round and has already staked a claim to become Macron’s prime minister in an awkward ‘cohabitation’ if his group does well in the June vote.” Another report on the outcome said\u00a0“Leftist voters \u2014 unable to identify with either the centrist president or Ms Le Pen’s fiercely nationalist platform \u2014 were agonising with the choice on Sunday. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Ms Le Pen, casting joyless votes for\u00a0Mr Macron.”<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On the morning of the April 24th vote, the American ZeroHedge financial news site bannered\u00a0“As France Votes For President, Wall Street Warns Le Pen Upset Would Be Bigger Shock Than Brexit”<\/strong><\/a>. France’s ‘leftists’ and ‘news’-media had been campaigning\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0for the same candidate (Macron) that the billionaires had been backing in this contest. Whereas many of those ‘leftists’ might have been doing it because they were sincerely suckered, few if any of the billionaires had been like that \u2014 they\u00a0instead<\/em>\u00a0had been\u00a0financing<\/em>\u00a0that suckering.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0same thing<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0had happened during the 2017 contest, which likewise had been between Le Pen and Macron. (The only difference then was Le Pen’s greater emphasis then on “protecting our borders” against an unlimited influx of Muslims and possibly even jihadist ones into France. In 2022, that was no longer a big issue for her, and the Party that Le Pen had inherited \u2014 which once had\u00a0been<\/em>\u00a0conservative \u2014 became even\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0progressive than it was in 2017.)<\/p>\n

The 2022 result, in other words, was basically history repeating itself. And this is the way that billionaires continue effectively to rule a country, by getting the public to vote for labels instead of for policies. The public fall for it time after time; they don’t turn\u00a0against<\/em>\u00a0the people who were lying to them before. They vote\u00a0for<\/em>\u00a0them\u00a0yet again<\/em>. There is thus no accountability. It’s easy for people to do if they pay more attention to labels than to policies. And no democracy can actually function in that way. And\u00a0none does<\/strong><\/a>. Only an\u00a0aristocracy<\/em>\u00a0can. And it\u00a0does<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/oneworld.press\/?module=articles&action=view&id=2778<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Triumph Of Deceit: How Thinking In Labels \u2014 Mere Words \u2014 (Not In Reality) Has Killed Democracy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}