Radha Vij writes:

"The Colonization of Perception:
Government Seduction Blocks Visions of Truth"

Radha Vij

Over two hundred and fifty thousand voices sung over fifty different protest songs in discordant harmony at the RNC in New York City, opposing what some have termed the Bush Dictatorship. Torn t-shirts, designer handbags, good will bargains, high heel stilettos, jeweled necks, and college hemp-wear paraded from Midtown to Union Square defying conventional “convention behavior.” Though there were umbrella concepts tying together the rally — the end to the war, a women’s right to chose, gay rights, the failing economy, etc. — the protesters were just as diverse in their political opinions as they were in their background and fashion style — testament to the fact that the true beauty of New York City is its insuppressible diversity.The press was quick to make the analogy between this protest and Vietnam War protests, as both Vietnam and Cold War era politics have become routine analogies to the current Iraq war. Yet, as we all know, the legacy of dissent extends beyond still recent memories (historically speaking) of Vietnam.

There is nothing new about protest and resistance. From the insurgents of the French Revolution, to Peasants in Porfirian Mexico who cut off a single handlebar on their bicycles to show their resistance to modernity, to Appalachian protest songwriter Hazel Dickens who sang about labor rights for US coal miners — there is nothing new about the messes that governments all over the world create and the subsequent responses of those who rise to resist hegemony. If we look at protests throughout history- the issues that keep re-surfacing center on imperialist ideologies, which dominate mainstream politics.

Empire and Resistance

Recent scholarship deems the USA the “new” Empire — one that has set dangerous precedents for pre-emptive action and asserting military supremacy by entering Iraq. Yet, within the red white and blue gates of our national playground, USA as Empire is a highly disputed and even doubted association. Why? One reason might be because Big Bully Bush’s watching.

Censorship is a historically normal turn of events during wars, especially wars of an insecure empire, to acquire more. Censorship comes from censor, which comes from the Latin, censere, to give as one’s opinions, but can be traced back to its Sanskrit roots, samsati, he who praises. (http://www.nutters.org/docs/spam-censorship)Early

Roman censors were those magistrates who assessed the moral conduct of society by taking a census. Censors started out as officials who assessed morality and behavior and then presented a social standard that later translated into law. The practice of censorship began by censors asking for opinions in order to standardize social conduct.

Today’s censorship asks no questions. In fact, the genius of modern-day censorship lies in its invisibility and its omni-presence. Most citizens of contemporary US society are the living censored and will stay the living censored as long as society thinks it is free. As long as the guise of US freedom continues to suffocate people into complacency with life and with the government, censorship will flourish.

French urbanist and political theorist, Paul Virilio, argues that the first and most primal act of war by the State is always against its own citizens. Virilio calls this process endocolonization. Canadian cultural theorists Arthur and Marlouis Kroker, define endocolonization as “the control of domestic population by any means possible — law, regulation, policing, propaganda, ideological conditioning.” With the advent of globalized systems of mass media, colonizing perception becomes both an important political tool and a significant byproduct of an endocolonized society.
(From Life in the Wires, www.ctheory.net)

Censorship, in its modern context, is essentially the colonization of perception. From the use of embedded journalists, to Rumsfeld’s ban of digital cameras, camcorders and cellular camera phones in the military, to the attachment of cameras on Predator missiles used to find information in the first Gulf War, to the recent debacle of information regarding Iraqi WMD; we as a society are fed information and imagery that alters our perception of this war on a daily basis. In his hard-hitting article entitled, Unmanned: Embedded Reporters, Predator Drones and Armed Perception, author Jordan Crandall writes, “One wonders, as always, what the real artillery is in this war — images or bullets. Perhaps soldiers should be allowed to carry cameras, or the camera and gun should simply collapse into one another.”
(From Life in the Wires, www.ctheory.net)

If each bullet snapped a photo that was televised throughout the mass media — I wonder how long the war would last? Unfortunately, those who do show such “controversial” images are scorned for their Anti-patriotic views. Moore’s film Fahrensheit 911 speaks to such a degree of censorship present in US society — one that manipulates alternative political views into seeds of anti-American hatred. Picture this newspaper heading: ‘Movie Becomes Scandalous Portrayal of Truth. Those Who Love Film Deemed Contra-King. Filmmaker Condemned All The Way to the Bank.’ It sounds like a modern Shakespearean nightmare with allegiances pledged to Kings-gone-wrong and death scenes that take too long to come.

The irony of the situation exists in the title of the film: Fahrenheit 911. In all of my conversations with people about the film, I am never surprised at the lack of people who make the obvious connection between Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 (i.e. at the lack of people who read). Bradbury’s seminal novel about a fictional society where censorship has been institutionalized to the point of no return speaks to traditional Orwellian and Machiavellian concepts of power and domination. In Bradbury’s book, society is inundated by media sound bytes and loses its want to read. Firemen are trained by the government to burn all books, which are considered illegal commodities in the novel’s society, at 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

It does not take an English major to dissect the symbolism involved in joining these two titles. In Bradbury’s society, books are information-tickets to knowledge and power, tickets that unleash individual mind-power that the government cannot regulate as easily. In our own society, the government fire starters have waged a war on information, images and access to unfettered ideologies and the temperature at which information burns here is 911 degrees.

That Moore’s film was allowed to play in theatres, as a self-financed venture is an undeniable testament to a quality of freedom allowed in this country. However, what happened after the movie was released was an undeniable testament to the socio-political agenda of the neo-conservatives of this country. By calling Fahrenheit 911 “unpatriotic” and “full of lies,” the neo-cons fulfilled an agenda that reached far beyond discrediting Moore’s specific political views. Their agenda was to re-enforce a precedent that the only truths considered legitimate to the neo-cons in power are the truths that stem from their own opinions. The result of this, however, is that larger discussions of war become lost in reductive dichotomous celebrity battles between Murdoch and Moore, i.e. good vs. evil.

So now some time-old questions: Are you being seduced by your government’s self-serving agenda? Is your vision colonized? How are you holding your government accountable? Throughout the history of war, propaganda has served as a way to divide societies. Now is no different. The only difference in modern times is that the divisions made via systems of media, systems contrived from the partnership of corporation and State, have a global affect. The colonization of perception, our endocolonization extends outward affecting not just the USA but also the globe. The State apparatus of the USA has affected the global definition of Empire as far as the media waves can reach. Just recently, Vladmir Putin has declared himself a modern-day Czar using the war on terror as his justification.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/international/e urope/15russia.html)

And still, the globalized world is not all bleak. Voices of global dissent prove that systems of mass media do not speak for all. As these systems become more powerful and hegemonic, counter-resistance becomes more forthright and creative. Amidst all of the Vietnam analogies — one prominent difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that the power of resistance has become tenfold with advent of media as a political tool and a cultural power. The way in which resistance has been developing within a global paradigm of culture — i.e. the inertia that resistance can amass throughout contemporary societies around the world — exists in a manner like it has never been before. An example of this is the global protest of February 15, 2003 — when over 600 cities from around the globe protested the Iraqi war. (World Messenger)

The process of self-realization is an immensely concentrated struggle in this fad-driven society, where emphasis exists on the immediate, the domestic and the material. However it is up to each and every individual to de-colonize his/her perception and to attain his/her own personal understanding of the world. When society relies only upon the CNNs, CBSs, NBCs, ABCs and Foxs of the world to constitute political views — what becomes of the lost minds of our time; where do they go? What happens to the creative potential of each individual?

Are we being seduced by our government into war? Recession? Maintaining a colonized perception? In New York, and in cities all around the world, the answer — for many — is no. Last month New Yorkers threw the Government out of its bed and told its Republican lackeys to find another dumb slut to sweet talk. Protestors from around the country gathered their respective creative energies to say something collective: “We’re not putting out for you, so you might as well leave.” Though a calculable affect of the RNC protest on this year’s elections will probably prove slight at best, the protest served to create an environment of de-colonized perception within a nationally censored society and in the process-changed the way the US is commonly seen in the global community. These two outcomes prove invaluable additions to history, especially given the current Anti-US political climate.

In an op-ed piece for www.ElectonicIraq.net, Palestinian political analyst Omar Barghouti writes,

“If the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the decisive beginning of the end of the East-West opposition, the illegal, immoral and criminal war on Iraq, waged by the new Rome of our time, might well announce the baptism of a new world community opposed to empire, any empire, and based on the precepts of evolving international law, human rights and the common principles of universal morality that are emerging. (“The Rise of Global Resistance,” www.ElectonicIraq.net)

This new world community is the hope for our future sight. Within this new world community exists the courage and passion to decolonize perceptions, remember voices of past lessons wrought and creatively resist against the horror of what future decisions have in store. When perception is de-colonized, one realizes that the analogies to Cold War era politics and Vietnam are not made in vain. We are re-living an era in the USA — an era that, for some, has never ceased to exist. It is a time of great socio-political divides compounded by a heightened sense of censorship advanced by the State under the pretense of national security.

The reality of the situation is that our generation will probably never know all of the US-inflicted terror that has been waged on Iraq. We only know what we, as citizens of the USA, are doing here and now to resist an unjust war waged by right wing fanatics. We will probably not know the horrors of this war on terror until our children take college classes on the subject (and even then, what they learn will be dependent upon who is teaching them). I only wonder what those classes will be called.

[For further information on the war of images and how technology and imagery combine in contemporary society, check out Life in the Wires: A C Theory Reader (Editors Arthur and Marilouise Kroker), available at www.ctheory.net. This article first appeared on www.PoliticalStorm.com.]