Manufacturing consent: a major media sport in US and India

Noam Chomsky wrote years ago about how the American media is adept at “manufacturing consent” — that is, getting a rather ill-informed public to dance to its tunes. This is true both in the US, and alas, in India. Chomsky suggested that the military-industrial complex extended to the media. It is quite true that the average American couch-potato is easily led by the nose. A putative American ally is put in the dog-house, and lo!, within a matter of hours, the entire public believes that he is the greatest sinner in history. This happened to Manuel Noriega of Panama and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Noriega had been a favourite of American administrations for years “as our man in the region”. But when he was no longer in favour, his fall was quick, and he is still in jail. Saddam Hussein, similarly, was “our man in the Persian Gulf region”. During the long Iran-Iraq war, there was consistent US support for Hussein, and that surely helped him hold off the larger Iranian forces. As far as the US was concerned, post-Shah Iran was the ultimate enemy, and so they were content to bleed it by using Iraq. [caption id=“attachment_101001” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Indian media colludes with the UPA government in its demonisation of Modi and its hagiography of the Nehru dynasty. Reuters”] [/caption] Therefore, they winked at all sorts of things Hussein did, for instance poison-gassing dissidents. The idea was, yes, “he’s a sonofab****h, but he’s our sonofab****h”, as was pithily explained by the CIA once upon a time. But all this turned around in an instant when Hussein fell out of favour. I don’t need to elaborate on what befell him, and his country, later. Suffice to say it wasn’t pretty. This manufacturing of consent happened to Pakistan last week: oceans of ink were spilled on breast-beating about that country in the wake of Admiral Mike Mullen’s pithy statements about how the ISI was hand-in-glove with the Haqqani network and others attacking US interests. Some might say it is not a moment too soon. The ISI and assorted other malefic forces have been running rampant in Pakistan and India for some time, creating mayhem. They have been feeling their oats lately, as they could quite justifiably claim that they defeated one superpower, the Soviets, in Afghanistan; they are on the verge of defeating another, the Americans. This fits into the ISI’s triumphalist philosophy that they have a manifest destiny to create a neo-Mughal Empire, a fundamentalist emirate with its capital in Islamabad, and including Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh as its vassal states. They are quite serious about it, and have been doing whatever is possible to advance their interests. India’s hapless leaders have no answer to this clearly expressed strategic intent, other than the dossier-bombing that they have been indulging in ever since 26/11 happened three years ago. But I digress. The interesting thing is how systematically Pakistan was calumnied in a few short days. Not that Pakistan is not doing anything different from what it has been doing for at least 10 years, and possibly the last 64 years of its short existence. The ISI threat remains grave, as commented on by American defence specialist Max Boot online in Commentary magazine, wherein he quotes Hamid Gul, the father-figure of the ISI, at length. Gul’s objectives and perspectives are direct, frightening, and deeply believed. As Boot observes: “That, I fear, is the authentic voice of ISI speaking: rabidly anti-American, anti-Indian, anti-democratic, conspiratorial, and Islamist.” Continued on the next page Yet, there had been no consistent anti-Pakistani rhetoric in the media, and the newspaper of record, The New York Times, which faithfully represents American establishment perspectives, has championed Pakistani interests as long as I can remember, despite the proliferation antics of AQ Khan and his friends the Chinese. And the whole brouhaha ended with the Americans blinking first. Just as they have always done with Pakistan: for instance, in Kunduz, where the ISI airlifted a thousand of their brigadiers and colonels (in baggy pants and beards), who were the so-called Taliban officer corps; after Khost, where the CIA station chief and several agents were massacred by a suicide-bomber; after every anti-American act that the ISI has brazenly performed. [caption id=“attachment_101003” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Indian media colludes with the UPA government in its demonisation of Modi and its hagiography of the Nehru dynasty. Reuters. “] [/caption] It is a wonder to look at, the hold the ISI has over the CIA, despite the fact that only about 35 percent of Nato material is now transiting through Pakistan. They have found other transit routes through Central Asia. The manufacturing of consent in India is an even greater wonder to behold. I will only consider two cases, those of Rajbala and of the alleged culpability of Narendra Modi in Gujarat’s riots in 2002. Rajbala was a 51-year old Gurgaon housewife beaten to death in a brutal crackdown and baton-charge by police on a non-violent, in fact sleeping, group of yoga followers of Swami Ramdev on the night of 4 June. She suffered severe spinal injuries and was paralysed; after 114 agonising days, she died on 9 September. The media was notably unsympathetic to Rajbala; the fact that this was comparable to Jallianwallah Bagh was completely ignored by them. In that iconic 1919 incident, a fascist imperialist state waged war on peaceful protesters in a walled garden in the Punjab: 1,650 bullets, 1,579 casualties. This was the signal event that convinced Indians that the British state was purely evil; from that point onwards there was no stopping the Independence movement. Similarly, Rajbala, an unarmed, non-violent woman was brutalised by a fascist state; what was her crime? Nothing more than that she went to a yoga camp. Why isn’t the state being pilloried about this? Why aren’t heads rolling, including those of the Delhi police, the Chief Minister, and the Central home minister? Or is it that Rajbala, as a woman, had no human rights? Surely that cannot be. The media is vigilant about women’s rights. I remember how concerned they were about Ishrat Jehan, a 19-year-old woman shot dead in the company of two Pakistanis and a jihadist Indian named Javed (formerly Pranesh Pillai) in a car that had a sizable armory in it. Pakistan’s Laskhar-e-Toiba denounced the incident through its mouthpiece Ghazwa Times, complaining that “the veil of Ishrat Jehan, a woman activist of LeT, was removed by Indian police…” ( Lashkar owns up Ishrat _, The_ Times of India, June 14, 2004.) The media latched on to Ishrat Jehan despite the fact that the LeT called her one of their mujahideen or warriors_._ They alleged that it was a staged encounter; in fact this was part of a cottage industry that keeps manufacturing victims in Gujarat to demonise Narendra Modi. There was Qutbuddin Ansari, whose photograph with folded hands was presented as the archetypal victim image of the riots. Interestingly, he, who fled Gujarat, returned shortly thereafter. Then there are the various characters who keep popping up like jack-in-the-boxes. The Fiction-Writers Posing As Journalists. The Activist Accused By Witnesses Of Tutoring Them To File False Affidavits. The Angry Dancer. The Police Officer 1.0. The Police Officer 2.0. That Police Officer 1.0, who was once the media’s favourite, has trashed Police Officer 2.0, its current favourite, does not seem to bother the media at all. That the riots started on 28 February and the army was in place only on 1 March is made much of: that is, it is alleged that the Gujarat government did nothing for four long days. Unfortunately, the media has forgotten that February only has 28 days, so in fact the army was deployed within one day. This level of disinformation and mala fides is standard for the media. An even-handed account of the matter by French author Nicole Elfi ( Godhra: the true story ) has been ignored. The Indian media colludes with the UPA government in its demonisation of Modi and its hagiography of the Nehru dynasty. Thus consent has been successfully manufactured to order: Modi is loathed and the Nehru dynasty is lauded by large segments of the Indian public. The Indian media should be proud of its achievements, just as much as the US media can boast of its power to mesmerise its under informed citizenry. Rajeev Srinivasan is a management consultant and columnist.