Propaganda Like it is 49 B.C.

I spent this three day weekend relaxing at home and catching up on my TV series like House M.D. and Burn Notice (They are very addicting). Halfway between those two shows, I caught a very interesting movie on HBO, it's called House of Saddam. It is a four part HBO and BBC production about the life of Saddam Hussein and his close circle of family and friends since he took over in 1979. The movie covered the history chronologically but was focused on Saddam's inner circle. Some excerpts of the movie showed real life shots of television announcements and news coverage done by Iraqi TV during the Saddam administration and it clearly pointed out how propaganda was the norm for such advertisements.

Even though it was not, Iraqi TV was claiming victory in the Iraq-Iran war, First Gulf War and Second Gulf War up until Saddam's regime was taken down in 2003. At first I was amazed that some people actually believed that propaganda, they had to, otherwise there is no reason to show it. But soon after I realized that propaganda is not new or unique to this century, Caesar used to pay certain people in Rome to go spread good rumors about him, to make him out to be a hero when he was battling the Senate.

Right about the time I was concluding in my head that this happens only in primitive cultures and third world countries, I realized this: American Broadcasting is the biggest propaganda machine that I have ever heard of. The American propaganda machine started back during the second world war, when TV used to air little advertisement pushing towards unity and struggle against the Nazis. Also during the cold war, this machine led us to believe that Communism is just about the end of humanity and we must prevail because we are the good guys. And as recently as this decade, after 9/11 even the NY Times united behind Bush against the "Axis of Evil" when the real culprit was nothing but a bunch of crazy loons that had a grudge against a country. Even the Iraq war (as unpopular as it was from day one, it was pretty damn popular).

It seems like the public does not just accept or even like propaganda, they need it. Our latest example is this Gaza invasion that resulted in almost 1,000 dead Palestinian (most of which are civilians according to the UN) and almost 20 dead Israelis. If you are surprised by those figures at all, then you are not alone because they were grossly under reported by American media. The whole war was under reported. According to current president (Bush, notice today is the last day) there is nothing to sort out because of Hamas, even though the entire world is screaming War Crimes by Israel. It is moments like these that we as people have to remember, when those civilians' friends and family members build up this anger and grow up to hate us and we wonder WHY?