{"id":58456,"date":"2015-05-25T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=58456"},"modified":"2015-06-01T12:06:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T11:06:56","slug":"gchqs-rainbow-lights-exploiting-social-issues-for-militarism-and-imperialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/05\/gchqs-rainbow-lights-exploiting-social-issues-for-militarism-and-imperialism\/","title":{"rendered":"GCHQ\u2019s Rainbow Lights: Exploiting Social Issues for Militarism and Imperialism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"GCHQ\/Public<\/a>

GCHQ\/Public Affairs Office<\/p><\/div>\n

18 May 2015 – <\/em>Over the weekend, the British surveillance agency GCHQ \u2014 the most extremist\u00a0and invasive<\/a> in the West \u2014 bathed\u00a0its futuristic headquarters<\/a> with rainbow-colored lights \u201cas a symbol of the intelligence agency\u2019s commitment to diversity\u201d and to express\u00a0solidarity with \u201cInternational Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.\u201d GCHQ\u2019s public affairs office proudly distributed the above photograph to media outlets. Referring to Alan Turing, the closeted-and-oppressed\u00a0gay\u00a0World War II British code-breaker just memorialized\u00a0by an Oscar-nominated\u00a0feature\u00a0film<\/a>, Prime Minister David Cameron\u2019s office celebrated<\/a> GCHQ\u2019s inspirational lights:<\/p>\n

\"GCHQ\/Public<\/a>

GCHQ\/Public Affairs Office<\/p><\/div>\n

This is so very moving. Gay Brits\u00a0are now just as free as everyone else to spy on people, covertly disseminate state propaganda, and destroy online privacy. Whatever your views on all this nasty surveillance business\u00a0might be,\u00a0how can you not feel good about\u00a0GCHQ when it drapes itself in the colors of LGBT equality?<\/p>\n

This is all a stark illustration of what has become a deeply cynical but highly effective tactic. Support for institutions of militarism and policies of imperialism\u00a0is now manufactured by parading\u00a0them under the\u00a0emotionally manipulative banners\u00a0of progressive social causes.<\/p>\n

\"cia-300x184<\/a> The CIA loves this strategy. It now issues press releases hailing<\/a> LGBT Pride Month and its \u201cAgency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers and Allies (ANGLE),\u201d which \u201cheralded the start of Pride Month by unveiling a photography exhibit at CIA Headquarters showcasing LGBT officers, allied employees, and their families.\u201d Last month,\u00a0the spy agency\u00a0actually set up a recruiting\u00a0tent<\/a> at the Miami Beach Gay Pride Parade. Also last month, it summoned Maureen Dowd to Langley to interview female agents \u2014 ones whom\u00a0the NYT<\/em>\u00a0columnist hailed as a \u201cperky 69-year-old blond\u201d and a mid-30s \u201cchic analyst\u201d \u2014 to\u00a0produce a glowing portrait<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cthe C.I.A. sisterhood.\u201d What Good Progressive could possibly view such such a pro-gay and feminist institution with disdain?<\/p>\n

Neocons have long adeptly exploited this tactic and are among its pioneers. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, Americans were inundated with stories about\u00a0the Taliban\u2019s oppression of women: as though feminism was part of the cause of that war. To help justify the invasion of that country, the Bush\u00a0State Department suddenly discovered<\/a> its profound concern for the plight of \u201cAfghan women and girls.\u201d Some American feminist groups dutifully took up the cause<\/a> as U.S. bombs were falling and U.S. soldiers were invading that country, as though it were some sort of\u00a0War for Feminism and the Liberation of Afghan Women.<\/p>\n

\"taliban-540x285<\/a><\/p>\n

What Good Progressive could oppose a war like that? The fact that the U.S. not only refrained from invading, but lavishly supported,\u00a0all sorts of regimes<\/a>\u00a0that were\u00a0at least as repressive to women as the Taliban went unmentioned. That might suggest that liberation\u00a0of women was\u00a0merely a propagandistic pretext for that war rather than an actual desired outcome \u2014 just as Saddam Hussein\u2019s \u201cgassing of his own people\u201d and other human rights abuses (committed when he was a close U.S. ally)\u00a0had exactly zero to do with that<\/em> war other than providing a feel-good means for liberals to support it.<\/p>\n

These days, animosity toward leading U.S. adversaries \u2014 Vladimir Putin and Iranian mullahs \u2014 is bolstered\u00a0through a sustained focus on their maltreatment of their LGBT citizens. The most war-craving neocons<\/a> endlessly focus on the plight of gay Iranians<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 as though that\u2019s what motivates their hostility, as though neocons care about any of that<\/a> in the slightest<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 while completely ignoring brutal LGBT suppression<\/a> by regimes<\/a>\u00a0that are highly deferential to the U.S. and Israel. All of this, though blatantly manipulative, is also a remarkably effective tactic: Obama-aligned gay groups in the U.S. such as Human Rights Campaign regularly<\/a> churn out<\/a>\u00a0anti-Russia screeds,<\/a>\u00a0and do the same<\/a> for Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like any effective propaganda, all of this is grounded in some semblance of truth. The Taliban really are grotesquely oppressive to women; Saddam really was a severe human rights violator; Iran really does punish and sometimes even executes<\/a>\u00a0its gay citizens, while Putin has cultivated an anti-gay climate for domestic political benefits.<\/p>\n

But none of that has the even the remotest connection to U.S. foreign policy or to the reasons these countries are deemed American adversaries. Just as is true for the Taliban\u2019s treatment of women, the\u00a0regimes the U.S. loves<\/a> and supports the most<\/a> are at least as oppressive<\/a> to LGBT individuals<\/a>\u00a0as Iran is (or, when compared to Russia\u2019s actual record on gays<\/a>, far more oppressive). The U.S. government doesn\u2019t mind in the slightest if a government is oppressive to its gay or female citizens: quite the contrary, as a look at its closest allies proves. It just exploits those social issues as a means of propagandizing the public into hating the regimes that\u00a0oppose its dictates, and well-intentioned people then dutifully march into line (just as some Iraq War supporters, and Libya War supporters, genuinely got convinced that invading and bombing those countries would somehow improve \u201chuman rights\u201d \u2014 as though that were the goal or the likely outcome).<\/p>\n

As a general matter, this tactic for Washington is far from new. The U.S. media has long hyped human rights and civil liberties abuses when perpetrated by governments disliked at the moment by the U.S. government, while ignoring far worse ones committed by subservient regimes. That\u2019s\u00a0why<\/a> \u201cPussy Riot\u201d has become a household name among Americans, and why the U.S. media developed an acute interest in the press freedom record of Ecuador as soon as it granted asylum to Julian Assange, but\u00a0there is almost no interest in hearing about the systematic abuses of the Gulf tyrannies\u00a0most commonly hailed by the U.S. media as \u201cOur Friends and Partners in the Region.\u201d This is human rights concerns as a cynical propaganda tactic, not anything remotely approaching an actual belief.<\/p>\n

But the exploitation of these specific progressive social issues \u2014 especially women\u2019s and LGBT rights \u2014 is a relatively new modification of this long-standing tactic. It has found expression in the \u201cpink washing\u201d of Israeli aggression: all Good Progressives are supposed to side<\/a> with Israel because they provide better treatment to LGBT citizens than Palestinians do. Anti-Muslim fanatics use this same tactic constantly (literally every day, I\u2019m told I should never oppose\u00a0persecution and imperialistic aggression\u00a0against Muslims because of \u201ctheir\u201d anti-gay fanaticism: why are you defending \u201cthem\u201d since \u201cthey\u201d would throw you off a roof<\/em>, etc.). Similarly, the (genuinely exciting) milestone\u00a0of the first African-American president was\u00a0effectively used to obscure what the CIA itself in 2008 regarded<\/a> as Obama\u2019s\u00a0irreplaceable value in\u00a0protecting status quo militarism, while the milestone of the first female president will be used to\u00a0obscure Hillary Clinton\u2019s similar role.<\/p>\n

Figuratively dressing up American wars in the pretty packaging of progressive social causes, or literally decorating pernicious spy agencies with the colors of the LGBT cause, should leave no doubt about what this tactic is. Militarism and aggression don\u2019t become any more palatable because the institutions that perpetrate them let women and gays participate in those abuses, nor do American wars become less criminal or destructive because their targets share the same primitive social issue stances\u00a0as America\u2019s closest allies.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever your views on all this nasty surveillance business might be, how can you not feel good about GCHQ when it drapes itself in the colors of LGBT equality? This is all a stark illustration of what has become a deeply cynical but highly effective tactic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance","category-sexualities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}