--- On Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:24:23 -0800 (PST) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Mark Weisbrot writes,
>
> >I haven't seen anything like this on the front page of the NYT for at
least
> >20 years. I think the end of the cold war is finally opening some space
in
> >the media for some truth on these matters. It is very limited, of course,
> >but it appears to be a qualitative change.
>
> I'm not convinced. The U.S. media have before been willing to air *past*
> errors and mistakes (sic) of U.S. foreign policy, but only long after the
> struggles in question had been resolved and the revelations could be
> quickly consigned to the dustbin of history. This seems to be more of the
> same. Look what happened when the SJ Mercury broke the story on Contra
drug
> running. All the mainstream media rallied around the flag quicker than you
> could say "communist propaganda."
You're right about the pattern of admitting horrible crimes of the US
government, in passing, after they are long past. But this article was a
little different. First, the US intervention in Yeltsin's election is not
exactly ancient history. Second, the *theme* of this article was that it is
hypocritical for the US to make such a big deal about Chinese interference
in the our election, given the history of US foreign policy. Third, it was
placed on the front page, when normally such criticism would get only token
representation on the op-ed pages, at best.
It is by these criteria that I cannot think of anything similar in the last
20 years of NYT reporting. Can anyone else think of anything? (I am
thinking of Seymour Hersh's reporting, in 1975, on the CIA's role in Chile
as perhaps comparable-- but even this was breaking news from the Church
committee hearings, etc.).
The only reason I brought it up is that some of our friends on the left have
a tendency to overlook the small but significant little clearings in the
ideological fog that have begun since the end of the Cold War. While it is
most important to emphasize, in light of the prevailing consensus, that the
Cold War was first and foremost an excuse for everything evil that the US
government wanted to do in the world, it is also true that intellectuals and
other servants of the Cold War order actually *believed* to a large extent
that they were helping to save the world from Communism. The loss of this
element of the liberal intelligensia's belief system renders it vulnerable
to change.
It is easy to overlook these openings in light of the fact that the present
period is also in which not only capitalism itself reigns unchallenged as
perhaps never before in its history, but even worse, the worship of markets
and the weakening of social democratic reform efforts are also at historic
record-breaking levels. It thus appears that we have merely gone from the
frying pan into the fire.
But that's only half the story. The other half is that they have lost a huge
part of the ideological glue that held it all together. The foreign
"enemy-of-the-month" (Iraq, Iran, Libya, etc.), welfare recipients,
immigrants, or other domestic scapegoats are very poor substitutes. The
little changes in reporting by the corporate media are just one
manifestation of this phenomenon.
How's that for "optimism of the will?"
Let the ruling class tremble,
Mark Weisbrot
-------------------------------------
Name: Mark Weisbrot
E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Preamble Center for Public Policy
1737 21st Street NW
Washington DC 20009
(202) 265-3263 (offc)
(202) 333-6141 (home)
fax: (202)265-3647
