Sticking with the tradition, Chavez’s friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also blaming Iran’s turmoil on the CIA. Factual or not, the propagandistic value of this charge is obvious. The CIA conspiracy card never failed to mesmerize the left-leaning Western intellectuals, especially those involved in producing the most powerful propaganda vehicles of all: Hollywood movies.
The latter are an especially easy target. Hollywood stars such as Redford, Stone, Clooney, Penn, Soderbergh, and many others may style themselves as unconventional rebels, but their political creativity is limited strictly to the reshuffling of worn-out propagandistic conventions. No matter how entertaining the patterns in their political kaleidoscope may appear, looking at the world though a mirror tube filled with one and the same set of colored pieces hasn’t yet helped anyone to understand the reality of existence. If you disagree, try and talk politics to a “truther.”
Those who believe that America, not the Soviet Union, was the engine behind the Cold War conflicts are not equipped to understand the current change in world dynamics.
Indeed, if the USSR was not the driving force, then its disappearance shouldn’t bring any change. And yet change is significant — but since it doesn’t fit their template, it is being axiomatically dismissed as the result of American interference.
If in the past they believed that the Soviet menace was fiction, today this logic leads them to believe that Islamic extremism, Iran, and the 9/11 attacks are merely a new fiction designed to replace the old fiction — all, of course, invented by the CIA and the military-industrial complex in order to justify their existence and perpetuate U.S. imperialism — which is the only absolute, transcendental force in the universe.
The Iranian expatriate author Amir Taheri wrote a spectacular analysis of Syriana – a geopolitical blockbuster starring George Clooney, who also produced it. Made in 2005, the film describes an imagined CIA assassination of an enlightened Arab prince, who was also a progressive reformer. He was killed only because his oil contract with China had displeased Texas oil interests that control the U.S. government.
Leaving out the obvious economic absurdity of the premise, Taheri focuses on the arrogance of the self-loathing American filmmakers who “reduce the Arabs to the level of mere objects in their history.”
The elitist Hollywood clichés, Taheri writes, even deny the Arabs “credit for their own terrorist acts as Syriana shows that it is not they but the CIA that decides who kills whom and where. This view denies Arabs not only intellect and free will, it even denies them their history. Pretending to be sympathetic to the ‘Arab victims of American Imperialism,’ the film is, in fact, an example of ethnocentrism gone wild. Its message is: the Arabs are nothing, not even self-motivated terrorists, but mere puppets manipulated by us in the omnipotent U.S.”
J. Michael Waller echoes this verdict in his analysis of the leftist perception of Latin America:
American liberals take such a patronizing, paternalistic attitude toward Latin American countries that they can’t fathom the fact that most poor Latinos are anti-socialist and anti-communist. The campesinos just want to keep what little land they have, and keep the fruits of their labor. They don’t want handouts. Nobody works harder than a Central American peasant. It is part of their character, and no foreign do-gooder or socialist is going to take that away from them.
It borders on racism for liberals to think that Latin American political leaders are incapable of defending their own countries against socialist subversion of constitutional government and rule of law, and that the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress — including former President Zelaya’s own political party — needed CIA support to oust a president who was violating the constitution.
This is the new reality of the post-Cold War world: without the threat of a Soviet-led intervention, free nations no longer require help from the CIA to resist leftist sedition. But reality is beside the point to dogmatic practitioners of the Cold War faith system, whose myths and legends have always supplied them with easy answers quickly identifiable culprits, and required the trashing of the CIA in order to improve their karmas and score points with fellow practitioners.
It doesn’t even matter that in the modern day, in the words of Taheri, the CIA has become “little more than a costly leaking device used by rival groups within the U.S. establishment to lump accusations and counter-accusations at one another.” What matters is the role assigned to the CIA by the old leftist template; no actions by the agency today can change that. For as long as the template exists, the CIA will be automatically perceived as the enemy of “progress” and suffer regular, mandatory beatings by the left — from foreign dictators to Hollywood filmmakers to mainstream media to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the left-leaning members of the U.S. Congress.
One can only imagine the cognitive dissonance in the heads of believers in leftist myths who have campaigned their way into the U.S. government and are now discovering the real world at CIA briefings.
To sum up this series, President Obama’s foreign policies reveal a clichéd vision of the world, consistent with anti-American stereotypes disseminated by the Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, which he may have absorbed in his formative years.
A radical departure from American values, this vision compels him to correct what he perceives as America’s “wrongs” by regressing to Cold War-era mythology and re-imagining the world as it might have been without America.
All the while, he stays in denial of the real changing world that longs to be rebuilt as it might have been without the Soviet Union.
Obama’s approach objectively makes the world a more dangerous place, but it also unintentionally discredits the very leftist assumptions on which it is based — above all, the insinuation that any revolt against collectivist, statist oppression is the result of a U.S.-led conspiracy.
Without this and other Cold War-era dogmas misleading the world, it should now be obvious that the desire to live as free individuals in a democratic society is universal and that people of the world are eager to pursue it, with or without American help.
Excellent analysis!
One can see how the internal cognitive dissonance within the Obama administration would lead to the Holder backed investigation of ‘evil’ CIA interrogation techniques and the lack of any denial by Obama of CIA involvement in the ousting of Zelaya in Honduras.
We’ve known for years that the far left are the most racist element in American society in their disdain for peoples of any color striving for freedom. When confronted with the truth of genocide in South East Asia after the fall of Saigon, more than one leftist told me “I don’t care”, which pretty much summed up their feelings about anything outside of their pet causes.
For years I have been telling people that the lefty anti-war protests were not about war, but about power. Now that one of their own has become the president the truth becomes evident. Funding for the anti-war groups has shriveled to next to nothing, but the battle to subvert American freedoms and liberty is being funded at a rate that boggles the imagination. God help America if they succeed. We are now in somewhat the same position as the campesinos of Central America and the people of Honduras.
Give this administration what it wants and we will end up in the same position as the people of the old Soviet Union, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
The historical aspect was well done, but using a movie script to illustrate a point implies a lack of professionalism. The subject matter is too important to use a movie in the analysis. Most Hollywood productions and character have propaganda motives and messages. A political writer should be above the level of employing a propaganda medium. Being published in blogs for better or worse contributes to the historical record, providing material for future generations. It is sad to think that will think we used cinema as a basis for critical analysis. Better luck next time.
Agree the analysis is superb.
Dumocrats and mouth breathing moviegoers don’t read analyses, and if they did, the education in the U.S. leaves them incapable of following it.
What’s needed here is for the good analysts like you, Oleg, to enlist the help of propagandists like the useful and most destructive idiots Clooney, Baldwin, Redford, etc.
I believe the last I’ve seen was Ayn Rand, long dead.
Latin America’s problems today have very little to do with contemporary ideologies or alleged interference from the outside. Few people understand the deep historical and cultural antecedents that have shaped the region stretching back to the early 16th century. Spain and Portugal established empires in the New World long before the other colonial powers ever got in the game. The combination of royal absolutism and mercantilist economic policies retarded political and economic development in the region from the very beginning.
The changes over the centuries from royal rule by viceroy to creole rule by a new aristocracy, to dictator, and thence to popular revolt leading to a new oligarchic elite are but changes from tweedle-dee to tweedle-dum. C.E. Chapman said it best: “The majority (of officials) were both mediocre and corrupt. It was the last-named type which stamped itself upon the traditions of Spanish America, to become the norm in political life, greatly esteemed, indeed, but not so much for character and achievements as for position in society and opportunities for wealth.” Castro and Chavez are merely the next in a long line of looters.
Did the Soviet Union and the United States compete for influence in Latin America? Well, yes. But the geopolitical game has less to do with current conditions in the region than tradition. Latin America swings on a pendulum, always two steps forward and one step back. It’s likely to remain that way for some time to come.
2. Steve Sampson. Would Leni Riefenstahl’s work in the 1930’s be admissible in a study of Nazi culture?
More lies! Everything is a CIA plot! Even this! This too. Even me. Even you.
Great series, Oleg. Speaking of movies, it’s a pity that the movie Burnt by the Sun is not more popular. Beautiful, beautiful movie.
I wonder whether the world will ever recover from the damage to the free imagination wrought by the Politburo and its KGB. Probably not. What a pity.
“Spain and Portugal established empires…”
Spain’s traditions of anti-intellectualism and anti-capitalism were exported to the new world. The natives were probably discouraged from doing anything serious with their lives. They were presumably just a bunch of dumb Indians who should know their place in the larger scheme of things. I highly recommend reading Rodney Stark’s, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. The idiocy of the well meaning Charles V and his equally dense son Philip II severely damaged Spain’s economy. Thank God that the British colonized much of North America—or we also could also be second-rate nations in the 21st Century.
Remember that these are the same Einsteins who think running around breaking windows causes prosperity.
It’s a lot worse than that. Their ethnocentrism and racism causes them to see non-whites as children, who can’t get by without their help. This is the reason why they have such extravagant expectations of the Israelis and no expectations of the Palestinians. They don’t see Arabs as full-fledged grown up people. They indulge them as children.
So not only can’t they conceive of Arabs as responsible, they also can’t conceive of them as desiring a modern democracy. And I believe that if you got an ounce or two of ethanol into one, they’d tell you that straight up.
They also look at the white working class the same way, but with a twist: while they are sure that these poor slobs need their enlightened help, they aren’t in any way indulgent. With “brown” people, they’re like indulgent parents. With poor whites, they’re more like abusive parents.
In the end, you can’t ever understand political ideology without understanding individual psychology. This narcissism-driven messiah complex is what motivates all “progressives”. Empires such as the USSR come and go, but narcissism is forever. That’s why we still have these pricks, and always will.
The current administration seems determined to try and destroy the United States from within.
Between:
- the attack on our own information gathering organizations
- attacks on the grass roots revolution known as the Tea parties
- attacks on those voicing their fear and concerns about the government takeover of Healthcare
- the attacks on the free press known as The Fairness Doctrine
- The entitlement of the White House to shut down the internet if it feels it needs to to protect the country (too vague)
- Runaway debt
- Socialistic takeover of ever increasing portions of our economy from auto industry, banks, green industry initiatives, increased government jobs, and soon to be Healthcare.
- Open borders policies in order to increase minority proportions of our country.
- rationing of Healthcare (as a means of limiting the elderly?)
- Lack of support and recognition of our traditional allies in favor of dictators and despots.
- Policies that promote continued increases in unemployment and the unemployable.
- and what appears to be, in my opinion, a complete disregard of the Constitution in favor of remaking this country into some as yet undefined vision.
With soon to come tax reform, already increasing taxes, the promised reduction of my income by 30-40% (I’m a specialist) and the controls on my practice that would be imposed by the Healthcare Reform Bill, I will have no choice but to retire and either pick up a new profession, stay retired, or leave this country in favor of some other portion of the world.
Either way the costs of running the government continue to increase and the tax base continues to decrease.
The need for an information gathering community is decreasing. This administration and congress is doing far more damage than any terrorist or enemty country could safely do to it. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if those countries and organizations aren’t specifically thwarting anyone from interfering with this government. The last thing they’d want to do is re-unite this country to a common cause.
Calvin Ball – excellent analysis, right on target.
“One of its state-of-the-art operations occurred in the early 1950s when President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to overthrow the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala…. Today the CIA operates more tightly than ever under strict laws and bureaucratic guidelines, and the oversight committees in Congress are informed of every significant covert operation.”
Ah, for the good old days, when we and our congressmen could all be “good Germans” and not know what was being done in our name.
Calvin Ball – very well said indeed.
Thank you all for your insightful comments.
Sampson, What is with you? Are you a Moby?
You were on a neo-neocon post the other day with the exact same nonsense, the same puerile attempt to discredit the author all the while posing as a “reasonable conservative”, and in both cases you made no real positive contribution to the discussion.
You are stating to stink to the high heavens. Another astrotufer?
What is really shameful is this arrogant “evaluation” of writers here. “Better luck next time” indeed. You are just a cipher, get off you high horse and get over yourself. You contribute nothing but shameful passive-aggressive undermining. You are on no position to evaluate anyone–you have not established that level of credibility. Mind your manners, they are rather foul. Leave if you cannot.
Back up your opinions with rational argument and fact or leave.
4 ~Paules, 8 David Thompson Here’s more fuel for you.
Eight centuries enslaved to the Caliphate have left Hispanics with a less than Renaissance mind set. During only five centuries of ‘Christendom’ they just tapered off the Caliphate, transitioning by centuries of Inquisition tapered into centuries of Dictatorships.
Eight centuries of Arab ownership of the Iberians embued them with a culture and a language infused with Arab passivity toward concepts of responsibility and accountability. Example:
English: I broke the glass.
French: J’ai caissez le verre.
Spanish: El vaso se cayó y se rompió. (The glass fell and broke itself).
While French and Italian form the responsible, accountable sentence as do other Indo-Euopean languages, Spanish holds over the Arabic passive “not me!” form.
When an infant learns its mother tongue from its mother, what gets programmed into its little behavioral microchips.
Latin America’s problems are and have always been Latin American. North America, CIA or not, has only inflicted them with science, technology and products, including loans, that they couldn’t come up with themselves.
Add also that no matter how heavy a hand the CIA had in Latin American politics, the USSR did still worse. And if the Soviet Union breaks a rule of international politics first, surely America cannot remain bound by it – otherwise it puts itself at a disadvantage.