The Machine
by Eduardo Galeano
Rebelion.org
April 27, 2002
[Translated by Francisco González]
Sigmund Freud had learned it from Jean-Martin Charcot: ideas can be implanted by hypnosis in the
human mind.
More than a century has gone by since then, and the technology of manipulation has made great strides.
This is a colossal machine, the size of the planet, that orders us to repeat the messages it puts inside our heads. Its a word-abusing machine.
The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, had been elected, and reelected, by an overwhelming majority, in a much more transparent election than the one that put George W. Bush in power in the United States
The machine propelled the coup that tried to overthrow Chavez–not because of his messianic style,
or his tendency toward logorrhea, but because of the reforms he proposed and the heresies he committed. Chavez touched the untouchables. And the untouchables–the owners of the media and almost everything else–were outraged. With complete freedom they denounced the crushing of freedom.
Inside and outside his own country, the machine turned Chavez into a tyrant, a delirious autocrat and an enemy of democracy. Against him was the citizenry. Behind him were the mobs, which did not meet in rooms but in lairs.
The media campaign was decisive in the avalanche that lead to the coup, programmed from abroad against this ferocious dictatorship that did not have a single political prisoner. Then the Presidency was occupied by a businessman for whom nobody voted, and whose first democratic measure was to dissolve the Parliament. The stock market went up the following day, but a popular uprising returned
Chavez to his legitimate post. As Venezuelan writer Luis Britto Garcia put it, the media-engineered coup was able to generate only a virtual power, and it didnt last. Venezuelan television–a bastion of information freedom–did not get wind of the upsetting news.
Meanwhile, another voted-by-none figure who also took power by coup detat is displaying his successful
new look: General Pervez Musharraf, military dictator of Pakistan, has been transfigured by the magical kiss of the mass media. Musharraf says–and repeats–that the notion that his people could vote does not even enter his head, but he himself has given a vote of obedience to the so called “international community”, and that is the only vote that really matters in the end, at the time of reckoning.
He has come a long way indeed: only yesterday, Musharraf was the best friend of his neighbors, the Taliban. Today hes become the liberal brave leader of the modernization of Pakistan.”
And in the meantime, the slaughter of Palestinians continues. The worlds manufacturers of public
opinion call it a hunting down of terrorists. Palestinian is a synonym of “terrorist”, but this word is never used to refer to the Israeli army. The territories seized by continuous military invasions are called “disputed
territories.” And Palestinians–who are Semitic–turn out to be anti-Semitic.
For more than a century they have been condemned to atone for the sins
of European anti-Semitism, and to pay with their land and their blood for
a Holocaust they did not perpetrate.
There is a Gutlessness Competition
at the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, which always aims
South, never North.
The commission specializes
in charging against Cuba, and this year Uruguay had the honor to lead the
pack. Nobody said: “I do it so that they buy what I sell”, or: “I do it
so they lend me what I need”, or: “I do it so they loosen the rope thats
tightening around my neck”. The art of good governing allows its practitioners
not to think what they say, but it forbids them from saying what they think.
And the media took advantage of the occasion to confirm, once again, that
the blockaded island is one of the baddies.
In the dictionary of the
machine, the bribes that politicians receive are called contributions,
and their betrayals are called pragmatism. The word security refers
not to notions of safety and protection, but to investments; and it is
in the stock exchange that these securities undergo all kinds of crises.
Where we see “the international community demands,” we should read: the
financial dictatorship imposes.
“International community”
is also the pseudonym that shelters the great powers in their military
campaigns of extermination, also called pacifying missions. The pacified
are the dead. The third war against Iraq is already in the works. As in
the two previous ones, the bombers will be called allied forces while
the bombed will be fanatic mobs serving the Butcher of Baghdad. And the
attackers will leave behind a trail of civilian corpses which will be called
collateral damages.
In order to explain this
next war, President Bush does not say: Big oil and big weapons need it
badly, and my government is a pipeline and an arsenal. Nor does he explain
his multibillion project for the militarization of space with words like:
We are going to annex the sky the way we annexed Texas. No, the explanation
is that the free world that must defend itself against the threat of terrorism,
both here on Earth and beyond, even though terrorism has demonstrated it
prefers kitchen knives to missiles, and despite the fact that the United
States is opposed–along with Iraq–to the International Criminal Court
that has been recently established to punish crimes against humanity.
In general, the words uttered
by power are not meant to express its actions, but to disguise them. More
than a century ago, at the glorious battle of Omdurman, in Sudan, where
Winston Churchill was both reporter and soldier, 48 Britons sacrificed
their lives. In addition, 27,000 savages died. The British were pushing
their colonial expansion by fire and the sword, and they justified it by
saying: We are civilizing Africa through commerce. They were not saying:
“We are commercializing Africa through civilization.” And nobody was asking
Africans their opinion on the matter.
But we are fortunate enough to live in the information age, and the giants of mass communications love
objectivity. They even allow for the point of view of the enemy to be expressed as well. During the Vietnam war, for example, the point of view of the enemy was 3% of the coverage given by ABC, CBS and NBC.
The Pentagon acknowledges that propaganda is part of the military budget, and the White House has
hired Charlotte Beers, a publicity expert who had pushed certain brands of rice and dog food in the local markets. She is now in charge of pushing the crusade against terrorism into the world market. Were selling a product, quipped Colin Powell.
Brazilian writer Millor Fernandes confirms that in order not to see reality, the ostrich sinks its head
in the television set.
The machine dictates orders, the machine stones you.
On September 11, the loudspeakers of the second twin tower in New York were also giving stunning orders, when the tower started to creak. As people ran down the stairs, the loudspeakers were ordering everyone to return to their workstations.
Those who survived, disobeyed.
Arthur Magazine 