By permission of 360 Vision and the Network Vision T.V.
WAR OF WORDS - WORDS OF WAR
Commentary by Vision media critic Barrie Zwicker
First aired on 360 Vision, Thursday, 20 March, 2003
"In the beginning" To quote verse one, of the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John: "In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John's Gospel, and this is typical of most scriptures, recognizes words as central, powerful -- sacred. Now there's also the power of images, especially today, WAR IMAGES.
But you can't get away from words, can't get away from today's words of war used in wars of words. Words, sometimes taken directly or indirectly from sacred texts. Words - as they always have been - selected, twisted, omitted to promote war. Language abuse matters, because it's dishonest and it kills people. In an earlier commentary I noted that George Bush enlists the word God to bless his agenda.
Lesser words are also enlisted. Words such as "ENEMY" and "TERRORIST" and "AL-QAEDA". They're like cattle prods that breed fear, in and of themselves. We're besieged by them, amidst terror alerts and talk of use of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, phrases such as "SURGICAL STRIKE", "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" and "FRIENDLY FIRE" are intended to mask realities such as mangled bodies, destroyed lives and pain extending for generations. Later on, I'll suggest what we might do about all this. First we need to grasp that words are building blocks; for understanding or misunderstanding.
For instance, in the beginning is the enemy. Every war requires one. You must set up a "WE - THEY" situation. Everything must be either "OURS" or "THEIRS". Never ours AND theirs. Always the "EITHER - OR" formula. "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists," says George Bush. National leaders are accomplished at creating in these ways ideological training bases that militarize our minds. The enemy must be an evil out group that epitomizes a threat to "OUR VITAL INTERESTS" or "OUR NATIONAL INTERESTS" or "OUR SECURITY INTERESTS" or most impressive of all, "OUR VITAL, NATIONAL, SECURITY INTERESTS."
For most of my life, the evil out group was named "GODLESS COMMUNISM". Suddenly it's "FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM". Consider the evil attributes laid at the door of "fundamentalist Islam": It's supposedly anti-democratic, anti-Western and anti-American, supposedly supports "TERRORISM". It supposedly "HATES" non-Muslim infidels, hates something named "OUR WAY OF LIFE". It's charged with every attribute we were taught was communistic except godlessness. The fact is that adherents of Islam, as with Christianity, represent a vast array of races, cultures, classes, interpretations of basic teachings, dogmas and subsidiary beliefs. Sure some Mullahs deal in the language of hate. But then so do some ministers and rabbis. The Bible, the Qu'ran, and the Torah all have been quoted and misquoted to justify both humane and inhuman behaviour. But today there's no mistaking who's being set up as the arch enemy.
In this anthology Collateral Language, just out, there's a chapter devoted to "fundamentalism", written by an American, Leah Renold. She's a visiting professor of religious studies at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. "During the Cold War," Renold writes, "all citizens of the USSR were dangerous 'commies'. To the Nazis," she continues, "all the Jews, every man, woman and child, were characterized as rubbish, absolute rubbish." "In all cases of such dehumanization of the enemy," she concludes, "the point is to legitimate nothing less than the extinction of another people." Is this exaggeration?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, a leading intellectual and journalist, uses the term "ISLAMOFASCISM" unapologetically. He tars millions with a single word that has embbeded within it the judgment that Islam is fascistic. When you see such a label, you know you're being led down the well worn path to dehumanization.
Also being bandied about, especially by British Prime Minister TONY BLAIR is the word "MORAL". It's appropriated from religious teaching. It suggests a Godly connection. Blair actually said of the looming war on Iraq: "The moral choice in relation to this is a moral choice that has to weigh up the moral consequences." Three times in one sentence?? Blair is grasping for a quasi-religious rationale for his war policy.
The word I choose to end with is the word "prison". I choose to say we need to break out of the prison of words constructed daily for our minds by political leaders -- and uncritically transmitted or amplified by the mainstream media. If we fail to question the words, fail to seek out alternative information, if we buy into emotional abstractions, accept other people's words as our thinking tools, we stay locked up. It's time for a prison riot. We can break out.
................ Barrie Zwicker
