Posted by
Cassandra on Monday, December 29, 2008 2:25:19 PM
Yesterday we
heard the BBC's reporter on the ground in Israel, Jeremy Bowen utter
the momentous words: "Gazans have a strong ideology for resistance and
martyrdom."
Let's
analyze this assertion for a bit. Ideology - as in Islamism; resistance
- as in insurgence against 'the occupation'; martyrdom - as in suicide
bombing. Isn't that
the 'narrative' of the Gaza belt and those other places where the scions of peace hold sway?
Increasingly
we hear evidence of Western reporters taking on - what is termed in
their anti-philosophy - a 'false consciousness'. That needs clarification
for those not versed in Critical Theory. With false consciousness Carl
Marx meant the downtrodden thinking and talking in the terms of their
oppressors. With some imagination you might also explain it as living
in another, subjective 'reality'. Here's the Wiki explaining
polylogism somewhat further.
Postmodernists
have taken it one step further and believe quite literally in parallel
existences of different collectives, be they gays, blacks, women,
Muslims, the masses, the Chinese ... whatever the inequal group, it has
its own parallel reality in which the inhabitants talk their own
'narrative'.
The Western press show evidence of having
voluntarily taken up a particular brand of Islamist 'consciousness'.
(Caution: do not try this at home without the proper medical attention:
psychosis or split personality syndrome may ensue. This seems to be
happening frequently to North Africans living in Europe, who failed to
assimilate.)
As if taking on a false consciousness is not
enough, the MSM now rely on locals for their reporting on the ground in Gaza, emphasizing
that "the IDF won't allow them" to go there themselves (as if this were Mugabe's
Zimbabwe). Despite the 2007
bloody Hamas coup
in Gaza - a collectivist hell-hole under a Shiite dictatorship - on the
phone we have human rights activists, business consultants, university
professors, and representatives of civic organizations painting the
reality on the ground in terms of flowery Arabic rhetoric, the
narrative of the mother of all massacres, the holocausts of women and
babies under the age of ten.
During the prolonged US
Presidential campaign we saw the press entirely giving up the pretense
of objectivity. Subsequently the combined SMS mutated into a fully
fledged member of the Obama campaign team. In the reporting of
operation "Cast Lead" we witness them unashamedly taking up the
consciousness and 'narrative' of the party that consistently spouts anti
Western hatred.
As far as can be discerned from the comfort of
the armchair, Western consumers are still paying for the advertisements
that are the lifeblood of cable television? Or are we? Come to think of
it, the overbearing AIG commercials haven't hit the screen now for some
time. Whatever happened to the rallying statements emanating from the
sub-prime bundler that used to be CNN's primary sponsor [sarc off]?
Footage
comes to us increasingly in unfiltered, raw technicolor in the
tradition of the Middle East - yet more evidence of a cultural shift.
Whereas not so long ago a dead body was deemed too realistic for the
after-dinner evening news, today we get the bits and pieces raw for
breakfast, courtesy of Al Jazeera's Western competitors and their
correspondents 'on the ground'.
What's more, a brand new
Postmodern 'rhetorical' technique has hit the media: pundits and commentators who rather specifically and emphatically
self-identify as political moderates, or even claim to be politically
agnostic or independent, then confessing they "really need to speak the
truth", followed by unabashed leftist or pro Islamist narrative. The idea is to convey that even moderates think this (whatever the subject happens to be) is far beyond the pale. A more dishonest lot than the followers of subjectivism is yet to walk the earth.
At this stage it is as yet unsure where the culture war will take us
next. One thing is for sure however: we are looking at a guerrilla of
the mind that is unprecedented in recorded history.