{"id":73881,"date":"2016-05-23T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73881"},"modified":"2016-05-20T17:12:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T16:12:23","slug":"anatomy-of-a-propaganda-blitz-hitlergate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/anatomy-of-a-propaganda-blitz-hitlergate\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Propaganda Blitz: \u201cHitlergate\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 2 of a 2-Part Series \u2013 Read Part 1 Here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The recent furore surrounding a supposed<\/a> \u2018UK Labour antisemitism crisis\u2019 is a classic propaganda blitz of the kind described in Part 1<\/a><\/u> of this alert.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dramatic New Evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n

17 May 2016 – <\/em>As with so many propaganda blitzes, intense media coverage was triggered by \u2018dramatic new evidence\u2019; namely, the discovery of a graphic<\/a> posted by Naz Shah two years ago, before she became a Labour MP. The graphic shows a map of the United States with Israel superimposed in the middle, suggesting that a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict would be to relocate Israel to the US.<\/p>\n

Shah\u2019s post was highlighted<\/a> by right-wing political blogger Paul Staines who writes as Guido Fawkes:<\/p>\n

Naz Shah\u2026 shared a highly inflammatory graphic arguing in favour of the chilling \u201ctransportation\u201d policy two years ago, adding the words \u201cproblem solved\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jonathan Freedland, comment editor at the Guardian<\/em>, argued<\/a> that leftists view Israel as \u2018a special case, uniquely deserving of hatred\u2019, and that this hatred \u2018lay behind\u2019 Shah\u2019s call \u2018for the \u201ctransportation\u201d [of Israel to America] \u2013 a word with a chilling resonance for Jews\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the Observer<\/em>, Andrew Rawnsley claimed<\/a> that Shah believed \u2018that Israelis should be put on \u201ctransportation\u201d to America, with all the chilling echoes that has for Jews\u2019.<\/p>\n

Guardian<\/em> assistant editor Michael White reported<\/a> that Shah had been suspended from the Labour party \u2018while the context of her antisemitic comments\u2026 are thoroughly investigated\u2019. Clearly then, the jury was in \u2013 the comments were<\/em> \u2018anti-semitic\u2019.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Israel-based former Guardian<\/em> journalist Jonathan Cook, who was given a Martha Gellhorn special award for his work on the Middle East, argued<\/a> that the map \u2018was clearly intended to be humorous rather than anti-semitic. I would make a further point. It is also obvious that the true target of the post is the US, not Jews or even Israel \u2013 making the anti-semitism claim even more ridiculous\u2019.<\/p>\n

Norman Finkelstein, Jewish author of The Holocaust Industry<\/em> and the son of Holocaust survivors, commented<\/a> that he had originally posted the graphic on his website in 2014:<\/p>\n

An email correspondent must have sent it. It was, and still is, funny. Were it not for the current political context, nobody would have noticed Shah\u2019s reposting of it either. Otherwise, you\u2019d have to be humourless. These sorts of jokes are a commonplace in the U.S. So, we have this joke: Why doesn\u2019t Israel become the 51st state? Answer: Because then, it would only have two senators. As crazy as the discourse on Israel is in America, at least we still have a sense of humour. It\u2019s inconceivable that any politician in the U.S. would be crucified for posting such a map.<\/em><\/p>\n

Finkelstein responded powerfully to the idea that Shah\u2019s posting of the image was an endorsement of a \u2018chilling \u201ctransportation\u201d policy\u2019:<\/p>\n

Frankly, I find that obscene. It\u2019s doubtful these Holocaust-mongers have a clue what the deportations were, or of the horrors that attended them. I remember my late mother describing her deportation. She was in the Warsaw Ghetto. The survivors of the Ghetto Uprising, about 30,000 Jews, were deported to Maijdanek concentration camp. They were herded into railroad cars. My mother was sitting in the railroad car next to a woman who had her child. And the woman \u2013 I know it will shock you \u2013 the woman suffocated her infant child to death in front of my mother. She suffocated her child, rather than take her to where they were going. That\u2019s what it meant to be deported. To compare that to someone posting a light-hearted, innocuous cartoon making a little joke about how Israel is in thrall to the U.S., or vice versa\u2026 it\u2019s sick. What are they doing? Don\u2019t they have any respect for the dead? All these desiccated Labour apparatchiks, dragging the Nazi holocaust through the mud for the sake of their petty jostling for power and position. Have they no shame?<\/em><\/p>\n

Emotional Tone And Intensity \u2013 Demonising Dissent<\/strong><\/p>\n

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone, a \u2018long-time ally<\/a>\u2018 of Jeremy Corbyn but not an MP, defended Shah from the accusation of anti-semitism. He said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

This was met with the kind of cross-\u2018spectrum\u2019 moral outrage that is so characteristic of a propaganda blitz. Again, everyone knew \u2013 or did they? \u2013 that Livingstone\u2019s comments were outrageous, monstrous, rabidly anti-semitic.<\/p>\n

John Mann MP confronted<\/a> Livingstone, calling him a \u2018a disgusting racist\u2019, \u2018a fucking disgrace<\/a>\u2018 and \u2018a Nazi apologist\u2019. The lengthy tirade was broadcast widely, with Mann thoughtfully checking to ensure the camera was catching the action. His denunciation was more \u2018dramatic new evidence\u2019 of a scandal, ideal ammunition for a propaganda blitz.<\/p>\n

Few TV viewers will have been aware<\/a> that Mann is \u2018one of Corbyn\u2019s strongest critics\u2019. Last July, after Corbyn had become frontrunner in the leadership election race, Mann called<\/a> for the Labour party to suspend the contest \u2018over fears of an \u201cinfiltration\u201d by hard-left activists\u2019. Mann said:<\/p>\n

It is pretty clear that what is happening amounts to infiltration of the Labour party.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mann\u2019s concern at the time was not anti-semitism but \u2018the Militant Tendency-types coming back in\u2019.<\/p>\n

The website TheyWorkForYou records<\/a> that Mann \u2018Generally voted for use of UK military forces in operations overseas\u2019, \u2018Consistently voted for the [2003] Iraq war\u2019 and \u2018Consistently voted against an investigation into the Iraq war.\u2019 He voted for war on Libya in 2011, and again for war on Iraq in 2014. If any journalist highlighted the ironic location of the moral \u2018high ground\u2019 from which Mann was so volubly preaching at Livingstone, we missed it.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Chronicle<\/em> certainly agreed<\/a> on Livingstone:<\/p>\n

Labour now seems to be a party that attracts antisemites like flies to a cesspit. Barely a week goes by without the identification of a racist party member or allegations of racist behaviour by those involved in the party.<\/em><\/p>\n

Under the title, \u2018Labour\u2019s Sickness\u2019, a Times leader presumably written by Blairite neocon Oliver Kamm denounced the \u2018grotesque analogies\u2019 offered by Livingstone, a \u2018trivial ignoramus\u2019. The leader concluded:<\/p>\n

The tropes of antisemitism are\u2026 a stain on British public life. A great political party is harbouring a sickness and has a moral obligation to purge itself.\u2019 (Leader, \u2018Labour\u2019s Sickness.1<\/a><\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

Under the headline, \u2018Labour\u2019s anti-semites put the party in peril,\u2019 the Daily Mail<\/em> commented<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mr Corbyn gave not the faintest sign of understanding how monstrously and deliberately offensive it was of his long-term ally Ken Livingstone to make the absurd claim that Hitler was a Zionist.<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Littlejohn wrote<\/a> in the Mail under the title, \u2018The fascists at the poisoned heart of Labour\u2019:<\/p>\n

Naz [Shah] by name, Nazi by nature, was revealed to have backed the transportation of Jews in Israel to the United States. Red Ken rallied to her defence by claiming, absurdly, that Hitler was a Zionist.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the Mirror<\/em>, the commentator Fleet Street Fox damned<\/a> \u2018Ken Livingstone\u2019s ridiculous assertion that Hitler and the Jews were on the same side.\u2019<\/p>\n

A Guardian<\/em> leader<\/a> commented that the Labour party \u2018finds itself charged with being contaminated by antisemitism. And with singular crassness, instead of clearing the air on Thursday, Mr Livingstone encouraged the accusation\u2019.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Freedland wrote<\/a> in the paper of Livingstone\u2019s comments:<\/p>\n

His version of history was garbled and insulting, suggesting that the Hitler who had already written Mein Kampf had not yet gone \u201cmad\u201d and was \u201csupporting Zionism\u201d \u2013 as if there is any moral comparison between wishing to inflict mass expulsion on a minority and the desire to build a thriving society where that minority might live.<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, it is hardly in doubt that Livingstone intended to suggest that Hitler had become more<\/em> insane when he committed genocide. This is not the same as arguing that he had previously been sane. Livingstone later commented <\/a>of Hitler:<\/p>\n

He was a monster from start to finish but it\u2019s simply the historical fact. His policy was originally to send all of Germany\u2019s Jews to Israel [sic] and there were private meetings between the Zionist movement and Hitler\u2019s government which were kept confidential, they only became apparent after the war, when they were having a dialogue to do this.<\/em><\/p>\n

The late historian Howard Zinn supported<\/a> the assertion of a Nazi descent into more extreme madness and also the claim that the Nazis initially planned to expel the Jews:<\/p>\n

Not only did waging war against Hitler fail to save the Jews, it may be that the war itself brought on the Final Solution of genocide. This is not to remove the responsibility from Hitler and the Nazis, but there is much evidence that Germany\u2019s anti-Semitic actions, cruel as they were, would not have turned to mass murder were it not for the psychic distortions of war, acting on already distorted minds. Hitler\u2019s early aim was forced emigration, not extermination, but the frenzy of it created an atmosphere in which the policy turned to genocide. This is the view of Princeton historian Arno Mayer, in his book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken, and it is supported by the chronology \u2013 that not until Germany was at war was the Final Solution adopted.<\/em><\/p>\n

[Raul] Hilberg, in his classic work on the Holocaust, says, \u201cFrom 1938 to 1940, Hitler made extraordinary and unusual attempts to bring about a vast emigration scheme\u2026 The Jews were not killed before the emigration policy was literally exhausted.\u201d The Nazis found that the Western powers were not anxious to cooperate in emigration and that no one wanted the Jews.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yad Vashem, Israel\u2019s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust, also discusses<\/a> \u2018The Transfer Agreement\u2019.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cook wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Livingstone\u2019s mistake was both to express himself slackly in the heat of the moment and to refer to a history that was supposed to have been disappeared down the memory hole. But what he is saying is, in essence, true.<\/em><\/p>\n

Finkelstein commented<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Nazis considered many \u201cresettlement\u201d schemes \u2013 the Jews wouldn\u2019t have physically survived most of them in the long run \u2013 before they embarked on an outright exterminatory process. Livingstone is more or less accurate about this \u2013 or, as accurate as might be expected from a politician speaking off the cuff.<\/em><\/p>\n

Manufacturing Consensus<\/strong><\/p>\n

As so often, the propaganda coup de grace<\/em> was supplied by a Guardian<\/em> leftist; this time, Owen Jones, who tweeted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

John McDonnell [Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer] was right to swiftly force Naz Shah\u2019s resignation \u2013 but now the party has to suspend her.<\/em><\/p>\n

One day later, Jones issued<\/a> a further decree:<\/p>\n

Ken Livingstone has to be suspended from the Labour Party. Preferably before I pass out from punching myself in the face.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada<\/em>, commented<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t always agree with Ken Livingstone but he\u2019s been an anti-racist fighter & took on Thatcher before @OwenJones84 was born. Sad to watch.<\/em><\/p>\n

Abunimah added:<\/p>\n

To watch @OwenJones84 throw Ken Livingstone under the bus to appease a bunch of hard-right racists is a truly pitiful sight.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 tragicomic McCarthyist stance in all but ordering the suspension of Shah and Livingstone for supposed anti-semitism strongly reminds us of the way the Guardian<\/em>\u2018s George Monbiot supported<\/a> a nugatory smear of progressives promoted by his notoriously non-credible<\/a> interlocutor, Oliver Kamm. Monbiot wrote that Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger and Media Lens were part of a \u2018malign intellectual subculture\u2019 that sought \u2018to excuse savagery by denying the facts\u2019 of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. Monbiot even wrote an article<\/a> titled, \u2018Media Cleanse\u2019. As recently as March 25, Monbiot tweeted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Still waiting for Hume, Herman, Pilger, Media Lens etc to acknowl[edge] their terrible mistakes on Srebrenica.<\/em><\/p>\n

Timing and Strange Coincidences<\/strong><\/p>\n

George Eaton, fiercely anti-Corbyn political editor of the hard-right \u2018centre-left\u2019 New Statesman<\/em>, tried and failed to coin the term \u2018Hitlergate\u2019 to describe the scandal that had engulfed Livingstone (the Nexis media database finds no other mentions of the term). Eaton cited<\/a> an anonymous MP arguing \u2018it firmly pins responsibility for next week\u2019s [local election] results on the hard-left antics\u2019. This at least gave a good idea of the motivation behind the propaganda blitz.<\/p>\n

Norman Finkelstein was again far beyond the corporate \u2018mainstream\u2019 in asking<\/a> some obvious questions:<\/p>\n

The question you have to ask yourself is, why? Why has this issue been resurrected with a vengeance, so soon after its previous outing was disposed of as a farce?\u2026 The only plausible answer is, it\u2019s political. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the factual situation; instead, a few suspect cases of antisemitism \u2013 some real, some contrived \u2013 are being exploited for an ulterior political motive. As one senior Labour MP said the other day, it\u2019s transparently a smear campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n

He added:<\/p>\n

You can see this overlap between the Labour Right and pro-Israel groups personified in individuals like Jonathan Freedland, a Blairite hack who also regularly plays the antisemitism card. He\u2019s combined these two hobbies to attack Corbyn.<\/em><\/p>\n

Israeli historian Ilan Papp\u00e9 noted<\/a> how the young electorate supporting Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in the US have a \u2018desire for cleaner, more moral politics that dare to challenge the neoliberal set up of economy and politics in the West\u2019. The result being that \u2018Members of the political elites and establishment, in very senior positons, voice clear, unashamed support for Palestine.<\/p>\n

This is the background for the current vicious attack on the Labour Party and Corbyn. Whatever the Zionists in Britain point to, as an expression of anti-Semitism, which in the main are legitimate criticism of Israel, have been said before in the last 50 years. The pro-Zionist lobby in Britain, under direct guidance from Israel, picks them up because the clear anti-Zionist stance of BDS has reached the upper echelons. They are genuinely terrified by this development. Well done the BDS movement!<\/em><\/p>\n

Jonathan Cook summed<\/a> it up:<\/p>\n

Corbyn and his supporters want to revive Labour as a party of social justice\u2026 This is nothing more than a class war to pave the way for a return of the Blairites to lead Labour.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chomsky has discussed<\/a> the long-standing efforts to associate anti-semitism with anti-Zionism for political ends. In 1973, leading Israeli diplomat Abba Eban said that \u2018one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all\u2019. Critics of Israel were to be branded \u2018anti-semites\u2019, while Jewish critics like Chomsky were guilty of \u2018self-hatred\u2019.<\/p>\n

Asa Winstanley, investigative journalist at the Electronic Intifada<\/em>, puts<\/a> the supposed \u2018crisis of antisemitism\u2019 in context:<\/p>\n

A 2015 survey by Pew<\/a> found that seven percent of the UK public held \u201cunfavorable\u201d views of Jews. By contrast, about a fifth held negative views of Muslims and almost two-fifths viewed Roma people unfavorably.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no evidence to suggest that such views are any more prevalent in the Labour Party \u2013 and the tiny number of anti-Semitism complaints suggests they may well be less so in a movement many of whose activists have been in the frontline of anti-racist struggles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Conclusion: \u2018Emotionally Potent Oversimplifications\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that completely false, or highly questionable, claims are repeatedly being affirmed by an instant, outraged \u2018consensus\u2019 across the media \u2018spectrum\u2019 is powerful evidence for the existence of a propaganda system undermining democracy.<\/p>\n

Journalists may plead ignorance, but elites have openly advocated<\/a> the \u2018manufacture of consent\u2019 in exactly this way for decades. In 1932, highly influential US foreign policy adviser Reinhold Niebuhr wrote<\/a> of the need for \u2019emotionally potent oversimplifications\u2019 and \u2018necessary illusion\u2019 to overcome the threat to elite control posed by \u2018the stupidity of the average man\u2019.<\/p>\n

Vested interests are well aware that public opinion can be manipulated by \u2019emotionally potent\u2019 declarations of certainty, on the one hand, and by nurturing doubt on the other. Indeed, the flip side of the propaganda coin promoting false certainty was described by Phil Lesley, author of a handbook on corporate public relations:<\/p>\n

People generally do not favour action on a non-alarming situation when arguments seem to be balanced on both sides and there is a clear doubt. The weight of impressions on the public must be balanced so people will have doubts and lack motivation to take action. Accordingly, means are needed to get balancing information into the stream from sources that the public will find credible\u2026 Nurturing public doubts by demonstrating that this is not a clear-cut situation in support of the opponents usually is all that is necessary.2<\/a><\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

The logic is crude but effective. When elites want to prevent action, for example, in response to climate change, they work hard<\/a> to encourage public doubts. When they want to attack Iraq, Libya or Syria, or Julian Assange, or Jeremy Corbyn \u2013 when it is vital that the situation be presented as clear cut \u2013 \u2018balancing infomation\u2019 must be ridiculed, damned and dismissed. These are the tasks of a propaganda blitz.<\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Times<\/em>, April 28, 2016<\/li>\n
  2. Lesly, \u2018Coping with Opposition Groups\u2019, Public Relations Review 18, 1992, p.331.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    ______________________________________<\/p>\n

    Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The second Media Lens book, <\/em>Newspeak: In the 21st Century<\/a> by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    Elites have openly advocated the \u2018manufacture of consent\u2019 for decades. In 1932, highly influential US foreign policy adviser Reinhold Niebuhr wrote of the need for \u2019emotionally potent oversimplifications\u2019 and \u2018necessary illusion\u2019 to overcome the threat to elite control posed by \u2018the stupidity of the average man\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73881","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=73881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}