Bin Laden allegedly quotes the following passage from Blum's book, Rogue State: "If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State, which states in its introduction: 'If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all.'"I haven't read (or even skimmed) the Blum book. But according to Madsen -- who knows Blum -- these words do not appear in the introduction.
Nevertheless, the conservatives are using this quote to tie all progressives to Al Qaeda.
Furthermore, Blum had previously (in his book Killing Hope -- which I did once own) decried the CIA's support of Osama Bin Laden's forces in Afghanistan.
I will soon see for myself just what it was that Blum actually did say, and in what context. Even if he did write those words, I personally have no problem with the idea of offering apologies to torture victims. By condoning torture, the Bush administration handed Islamic fundamentalists an enormous propaganda coup.
I do know that for more than a hundred years, reactionaries have received enormous benefits from the production of manufactured quotations and forged documents. Anyone who doubts the point should read up on the numerous fake quotes attributed to Lenin. You've probably seen (and perhaps even believed) a few of them: The "pie crust" misattribution, the "ripe fruit" concoction, "the capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them," the "ten rules for revolutionists," and so forth.
The tactic continues: Fundamentalist Kent Hovind once quoted Thomas Huxley as saying "We've accepted this evolution theory because it gives us sexual freedom" -- a completely spurious quotation. And who can forget 2004's infamous "metrosexual" remark attributed to John Kerry by Fox News?
One can cite dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar examples. I have studied "false quotation syndrome" at great length (I once hoped to write a book on the subject) and can state with confidence that the illness is almost entirely confined to the conservative community.
Conservatives also love to cobble together spurious words which allegedly issued from people they like. At a Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan used a bogus Lincoln quote: "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift." (In light of Reagans' deficits, that was a pretty damn cheeky thing for him to say.) Fundamentalists also routinely quote something called "George Washington's Prayer Journal" which all Washington experts agree is a ludicrous hoax.
Then there is the long history of forged documents: The Zinoviev letter...the many anti-Mason and anti-Catholic hoaxes...the Protocols... "Parapolitics"..."Silent Weapons"...the Clinton "apology" letter...and, of course, the recent Niger "yellowcake" fakes.
All of these bogus materials (with the exception of Iron Mountain, which was intended as satire) stemmed from rightist sources. Do not kid yourself: These works have had a very real political impact over the past century or so, even though they received wide distribution only within the political fringe.
For the reactionaries, reality does not matter. What is real is what they want to be real.
Could the Osama tape be another concoction? The audio technology is certainly there. The motive is there. More importantly, the history of fakery is there -- for all to see.
11 comments:
joe, this is from the wapo article on blum, explaining the quote, and the fact that 'rogue state' has been translated into arabic (that being said, i am still mighty suspicious of the tape):
The author noted "Rogue State" had been published in Arabic in Egypt and Lebanon. And perhaps bin Laden owns the entire Blum canon, because the quote he cited actually is not in "Rogue State," but on the back cover of a collection of Blum essays, "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire." (That book is languishing on Amazon, while two other books titled "Rogue State" have enjoyed a spike in ranking.)
Just a few days before the new bin Laden video appeared, new articles had begun raising the possibility that bin Laden is dead. One of them even cited as evidence that, after all, we hadn't heard from him for over a year (implying that the past videos were actually of bin Laden, which is questionable).
I'm sorry now that I didn't save that article but, frankly, it didn't seem like news at the time!
Old articles on whether bin Laden is alive or dead seem to have been purged from the Drudge archives, though their headlines can still be found.
Your point is well-made. The neoconservative bent for inventing quotations is of a piece with their disbelief that any meaningful reality exists outside of the human will. And in their minds, they are of such strong wills that they are entitled to make the reality the rest of us must live in.
It is a very curious attitude indeed. Did it exist prior to the twentieth century? Did the neocons of today invent it, or merely carry it to the extreme that we now struggle to cope with? This is perhaps the most baffling epistemological problem of our time. I understand that for most of human history, most of what was said was flat-out wrong. But I am not not aware of any prior time when a group or party so cynically believed that reality could be invented by those who dispensed with all scruples. At least the Nazis and Bolsheviks and Maoists truly believed that there was a reality that they were apprehending better than anyone else. They didn't believe they had the power to make it up.
Thanks for your insight. If anyone can add to the observation, I hope they will.
If I understand him correctly, what unirealist eloquently describes is in fact a pathology, which has existed throughout human history.
The substance of the belief is too ludicrous for its proponents to advertise as a defensible political or philosophical movement, but it's always been the driving force of fanatics and mass murderers.
"Reality is a projection of my mind." All of us believe that to some extent -- we probably couldn't survive without it -- but these idiots can't distinguish between an evolutionary survival mechanism and a world where consequences can't be predicted and are not subject to individual will or ideological prejudices.
Give them power, and you have disaster on a world-wide scale. If Bush hasn't yet perpetrated attrocities on a Stalinist or Maoist scale, it's only because our system has restrained him (so far).
again, the quote in question is actually NOT a misquote, but simply from a different blum publication (see my earlier comment).
but that hardly exonerates the conservatives of all the myriad more blatant misquotations.
and yes, this is not only rampant throughout history, but psychologically human, as has been pointed out.
along those lines, and consistent with joe's hypothesis that it is the conservatives who are far more guilty of false quote attributions, consider this:
within each of us is an important balance between reality as it comes to us, in all its novel and unique chaos, and the reality we have constructed in order to maintain something like stability. call it homeostasis of the mind. the more an individual chooses to 'conserve' that homeostasis (status quo, if you will) in the face of conflicting input from the novel chaos of reality 'out there', the more the homeostatic internal reality must be stretched and distorted away from the incoming data. the agenda increasingly becomes a matter of 'conserving' the internal reality, often at all costs, over and above adjusting to the dissonate reality 'out there' as it is encountered. and all costs means just that: this is a very broad definition of pathology, both neurosis and psychosis.
piaget had an elegantly simple observation that fits here, observing that children had to develop the capacity to deal with both creating and fielding reality. very young children, each seeing her or himself as the center of their little universe, are always inclined to interpret incoming data in terms of their egocentricity. e.g., 'the moon followed me home!' (one of my favorites; so delightful!) this is referred to as assimilation; incoming info is assimilated into the stable mental system because it is so young and fragile it cannot withstand much onslaught of dissonance. but at some point, the healthy individual learns to adjust that mental system to 'accommodate' all that dissonant info pouring in. this is learning, this is growth, this is maturity.
so, joe, your observations have a correlate in the developmental literature. moreover, they resonate with oodles of history showing that it's the conservatives among us who prefer to maintain the status quo, no matter what, failing to adapt to the dissonant reality they encounter.
such attributions of false quotes i have no doubt extend to the mouth of jesus. when the canon was being determined in the early centuries of christianity, not only did the powers that be cull all manner of literature and thoughts that might have disrupted their crowd control agenda, but they surely put words in the mouth of jesus that he would have never considered speaking. the entire book of john comes to mind.
anyway, this is far afield. but interesting that there is yet more evidence in reality, through history and personal psychology, to support your thesis! i say don't abandon your book!
sofla said...
No Clinton 'apology' letter was forged as I recall. If it was the explanatory letter to Col. Holmes of the Arkansas National Guard, that letter existed in fact. What was 'forged' in a way was to whom Clinton was referring in his phrase in that letter, 'loving their country, but loathing the military' (in the context of the prosecution of the Vietnam War).
The right lied and claimed this was Clinton talking about himself in the first person as admitting that HE 'loathed' the military, whereas it was clearly enough a reference to third parties already identified earlier in the letter, and voiced in that third person as well.
I should have made myself more clear. I am not referring to any letter Clinton wrote concerning military service.
In 1992-93, a handwritten letter surfaced in which Governor Clinton alleged apologized to a lover. If I recall correctly, he supposedly became angry and pushed her down the stairs of the governor's mansion. Something like that. I suppose I should look for the damn thing -- I used to possess a hard copy version.
At any rate, this was later exposed as a forgery concocted by an enemy. I forget which one, but his name is known. Even the anti-Clinton forces admitted as much.
Maybe soeone can help me here with the deatils? I'm going on memory...
Bin Laden has been dead since late 2001. His continued existence is simply a hoax. He had nothing to do with 9/11. 9/11 was actually done by those who benefitted from it: the US government and Israel. All the evidence regarding 9/11 that doesn't come straight from the trusty Bush administration points right there.
Wayne Madsen steals stories from sites like whatreallyhappened.com - sites he *won't link to* - and then adds extra little details that he simply makes up. I guess he's trying to generate publicity for his book, but whatever his deal is he's not a reliable source of information by any means. (He is amusing to read though - I like his frequent claims that Bush is trying to kill him and is bugging his phone.)
I hope I've cleared things up a little regarding bin Laden and Madsen.
lll, I agree with your decidedly professional analysis. I do still think that we are seeing a new phenomenon, a kind of cynical denial that objective reality exists, or at least that objective reality is protean, and malleable in the face of faith and will. I'd really like to see historical precedents for this view, if there are any.
Both you and anonymous put your fingers on the significant point about dissonant consequences. I think the public is finally waking up to the fact that even though W. is 'the kind of guy you want to have a beer with', and the Rep's speak all the right codewords, voters are beginning to realize that losing a city, a war, and a Constitution are undesirable consequences, and maybe their homeostasis needs to be adjusted.
I also believe it's too late. The worst consequences haven't been seen yet.
ooh, unirealist, you nail the talking point:
losing a city, a war, and the constitution!
send it to howie, pronto!!
as for the question of previous historical evidence of manipulation of reality? i know this seems unprecedented now, but think about how hitler and his crew must have just marveled at the ease with which they could make it be just what they said it should be. same with torguemada and caligula and the khans. power does that.
hell, for that matter, such heady power must have visited those who established any canons, such as the torah and the gospels. in fact, if you review genesis 34 - 35:12, you'll note the fascinating spin on jacob's sons' murder of all the males in one city, then being forced to flee and (i can never resist a sardonic chuckle here) CHANGE HIS NAME!! cue not only god's directive, but his reward for such heinous behavior! for my money, pulling off that whitewash (more like mega-bleach!) rivals what we're witnessing here, especially given that the spin won and the facts get lost, though they're right there in print!
no, though i am so utterly sympathetic to your sense that surely it could never have been worse, i have to say that this is just the same old human penchant for denial. of course, perhaps writ proportionally large for the scale of the whole wide world of booty at stake!
thanks, lll, your erudition always amazes me. have to do some reading now. hope the bible is easier than cassirer.
as for the nazi reference, the neocons should wish they were half as competent. torquemada was also quite effective, i think, and most definitely the khans. weren't a lot of dissonant consequences, at least in the short run, for those strutters on the world stage.
but, i need to think on this more.
(imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.)
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