Double Think: Manifested as Torture Propaganda... An Essay...

Doublethink: Manifested as Torture Propaganda​

The information age has given way to a new type of world. Constant streaming messages flow through our environment every day like a laser light show, penetrating through the subconscious, and taking root in our minds. However, too many of these messages are purposely created in order to confuse and manipulate us into following a particular course of action which is not always in our best interest. Since the 9/11 attacks, the dark wizards of propaganda have come busting out of their mausoleum gates telling Americans to relinquish their freedom in favor of security, and demanding support for the United States’ continuing aggressiveness towards the Middle East. Political pundits like Bill O’reilly, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson have adopted a new format for broadcasting; it seems that rather than objective news programming we often get ideological news programming (pun intended.) It seems that in a post-9/11 world the definition of terrorism has gone much farther than simply fanatical Muslim extremists, and now includes gang members, petty drug dealers, and overall common criminals. While these events are profoundly dense and deserve exponentially more attention; this is not the most disturbing developments of the new tougher and more totalitarian America of today.

I find the most nauseating practice to manifest itself has been the systematic desensitization of torture into the realm of acceptance in Western Culture. Through several media portals, our televisions have begun telling us that “torturing people for information is an acceptable thing to do”, because in the end, it can save lives. In the second round of the GOP republican presidential debates of 2007 the opening question asked to the would-be candidates was what their response would be to a gigantic suicide bombing in a metropolitan shopping mall, with 1000s dead, and three of the suicide bombers in captivity, how aggressively they would interrogate those in detention for information on what they say is another larger and imminent attack. This seems to be a textbook example of the doublethink tactic of persuasion; torturing people in the vast majority of cases does not save lives, in fact most of the time it costs lives. For those that don’t know, doublethink or doublespeak is the tactic coined in George Orwell’s 1984 which managed to convince the fictional society to surrender their freedom unto Big Brother. This is the practice of misrepresenting something bad as something good, such as pushing and promoting identity theft propaganda in order to get the people in a frame of mind where they want to accept a national ID card. The reality of the situation could be that the people wanting to implement the national id card cards may care less about protecting US citizen’s identities and be more attracted to finger and retinal print features of the card and also the possibility of attaching RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology onto the card for tracking purposes. The point I am making is that if the Republicans and Democrats marketed their national ID card proposal for the purpose of tracking Americans the same way air traffic controllers track planes on radars, than their proposal would be met with insurmountable resistance. However, if you plant the seed in someone’s mind about getting their identity stolen, they are much more willing to allow you to make your case for national ID cards and may view the more authoritarian feature of the card as secondary to the agenda. In order to get society to support things that benefit few and hurt the many, doublethink was developed. This is the method of persuasion that is used so frequently by politicians and advertisers that once you are streetwise to it, the entire thing actually gets somewhat humorous. It would be hilarious, if it weren’t so serious. Doublethink is like wrapping up spiked time bombs into a pretty package with bows and ribbons on it, it’s usually something bad that blows up as soon as you open it. Amongst a myriad of other Orwellian red flags, I believe allowing torture to take place is one of the most shaking.

One of the first media beacons which appeared as warning of the coming era was the United States Soldier’s mutilation and sexual torment of detainees in the prison camps in Abu Gharib and Gitmo, when pictures of horrors surfaced in early 2005. Although people generally reacted in disgust to the torture, this peeled away the first layer of resistance against it and served to begin normalizing torture in a dangerous and unpredictable “post-9/11 world.” Some of the Iraqi’s in the camp were tortured to death, some had they’re chest lacerated and their organs removed, and others were even sexually humiliated and sodomized with broomsticks. I really hate writing about this sort of stuff, but this is very similar to the behavior we would expect to see from serial killers and sexual predators and it’s all being done in the name of national security. In several pictures from the Macabre scene from the prison camps, soldiers are seen in a joyous poses giving a ‘thumbs up’ to the camera, while her torturing sidekick stabs a metallic blade into the leg of the detained Iraqi. It’s obvious from these pictures and the smile of their face that the soldiers are getting a sadistic pleasure out of inflicting this pain. This sort of torture practices are said to be going on in 32 other camps in Iraq.

The funny thing is, the way this event has been spun from bad press into torture propaganda. It’s already come out in many papers that Alberto Gonzales, and the Bush White House specifically ordered the torture, but when this was exposed they simply chastised some of the low-level military personal involved, and completely side stepped any blow to themselves. The press remained subservient and did not create a controversy out of who ordered the torture. After this, the story was spun again into, “the soldiers torturing the Iraqi’s for information” which seemed to justify it for a lot of people and they ceased being mad about it. This is because politicians have realized that pictures of doom and gloom are incredibly effective for implementing unpopular policy and putting otherwise impossible agendas into effect. Quite frankly, instead of promising to make a better world, they know promise to protect us from nightmares. We are constantly being training to think that every suspicious-looking person could be carrying a nuclear device in his shoe, or that every Muslim person is a suicide bomber. Of course anyone could be anyone of those things, but it is simply impossible to search every single person you think might be carrying a bomb. There is a line which can be crossed where the threat of the state eliminating freedoms to keep us safe becomes much more oppressive than the forces they claim to be saving us from. Many people think it’s worthwhile to torture people if it would save their own lives. Once again this is the pure essence of doublethink, reading between the lines of this argument the message becomes “Allow us to fully torture prisoners of war, or they will rain down bombs on you and your family.” How can anyone say no to this? It is an argument that appeals to the emotions and not the intellectual process, however I’m sure many people would find it convincing. What is seldom mentioned in the corporate press is that torturing people most often leads to one type of information, very unreliable information. It’s simply human nature that if a person is being tortured by physical pain they will often given the interrogator whatever information they think they want to hear in order to appease him and end the torture. Who is to determine that the person being tortured even has the information the interrogator is looking for? Pentagon documents admit that some of the 1000s of Iraqi’s swept up by US forces and interrogated as supposed “Al-Qaeda suspects” were completely innocent and “picked up by mistake.” Although the Pentagon quietly admitted their flaw in their own report, the mainstream television press where 90% of the country gets its information, never reported on this. And they certainly did not report on the fact that many of them were tortured and of most of them were merely agriculturalists and goat herders. Perhaps it is not such a mystery why US troops cannot maintain any real stability in Iraq, and the occupied nation remains a sinking quagmire.

It is strange that Neoconservatives are attempting to justify the use of torture through information gathering. At its core this is a basic ultimatum that forces the general public to select between being supportive to torture practices or live with the significantly increased risk personal harm. These types of ultimatums which attempt to force the public into choosing between aggressive foreign policy or authoritarian rule and death, have become prevalent in the political games of recent. In 2003 when the Bush Whitehouse was all over national television they told the American people to support the march to war or “risk seeing the smoking gun as a mushroom cloud in New York City.” On other occasions various talking heads have told us “there is a chance some of your civil liberties may slip, while we guarantee the security of this country.” These ultimatums of either accepting extreme government control or risking the threat of sudden death have been used so frequently lately, I think an entirely new term should be developed specifically for this form of doublethink.

Even though George Orwell wrote the story 1984 in the 1940s, I am quite sure he saw how Adolph Hitler and others used the same persuasion tactics on their own people. Hitler firebombed and burned one of his own government’s buildings, known as the Reichstag, in 1939. After the synthetic crisis he took advantage of the fear it manifested in the public and was able to convince the people of Germany to grant him emergency powers and merge the president’s position, which he already held, with the chancellor’s position. This is how dictators get in power in free societies. Not only did this increase his hold on Germany, but since he blamed the attack on Poland, he received a convenient pretext to invade there as well. This is more doublethink at work, Hitler trying to convince people that making him a dictator would keep them safe or that invading Poland was in Germany’s best national security interests. Most of the time invading a neighboring country is one of the riskiest things a nation can do in maintaining state security. This is ridiculously similar to Bush’s philosophy of “fight the terrorists on their own soil, and get them before they get us.” One of the first rules of war is, whenever you want to start a war yourself, stage an attack on yourself to blame it on the enemy in your crosshairs, that way you get a pretext to attack them, and you yourself do not look like the aggressor. This is a fairly simple concept, but the average citizen usually only has a fraction of the story so despots have often easily been able to utilize this Orwellian persuasion or I dare might even say, mind control on them. Although most American textbooks portray Hitler as one of the most monstrously evil fiends ever to walk the world of politics, Neoconservatives are using remarkably similar tactics on their own people, amongst other parallels.

 

Torture propaganda is not limited to the news, it has even seeped its way into network television programming. On the show “Threat Matrix” which is in Britain and the United State they recently aired episodes in which the main character tortures the supposed antagonist in order to receive the information from him about a missile hitting a building. The supposed ‘hero’ of the show poisons the prisoner, uses high frequency sirens which are designed to make people insane on him, beats him, deprives him of sleep and eventually places his eight-year-old daughter on top of the building that’s supposedly waiting to be struck by the terrorist missile. I was not aware that this is now typical human behavior, to sacrifice young children who are innocent, so their parents will give you information? Batman, Superman, or Captain Prichard or any of the heroes I grew up watching on television would never behave like that. Thinking into the mind of the protagonists, if you already know the building that the missile is targeting, would you not simply evacuate the building to prevent the loss of life or is one little girl on the roof worth sacrificing in lieu of the property damage?



This show, “Threat Matrix”, is teaching the population that there is nothing that the state will not do to you (or your children) if they’re suspicious you have information they want. How can we say no to this torture? If we mathematically weigh the ethical essence of this argument in a utilitarian question in lives, than torturing one person to save the lives of thousands appears to be a morally sound thing to do. Of course the assumption that is built into this argument is that torturing one person is going to save lives, which is far from proven, and this argument also does not account for the retaliation on the United States for committing acts of torture. If we believe what the talking heads are telling us it is very difficult to say ‘no’ to this. Doublethink once again rears its ugly head in presenting torture as safety.



Propaganda not only fills up much of the 24 hour news stations but it has oozed its way into the entertainment media we consume. It would seem that Neoconservatives or whoever else is interested in promoting torture into the realm of acceptance is funding the promotion of the ‘good guys’ torturing the ‘bad guys’ themes to be woven into these shows. This is obviously an attempt to control the psychological reaction the mind’s of people. While many Americans are not aware of product placement, or advertisements for products integrated into the actual show, even less are aware of propaganda placement. Although most adults are less impressionable than children when it comes to issues such as torture, those without a solid belief system could be persuaded through shows like this that torturing individuals for information is okay when the ends justify the means. This show also seems to imply that torturing people can not only be virtuous, it is extremely effective. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In addition to “Threat Matrix” a similar message of the good guys torturing the bad has been seen in shows like “24” and “Alias”.



In addition to this less direct torture propaganda and doublethink thrown at us; a propaganda war is being waged in to raise support for torture in Iraq as well. Amazingly enough there is a supposed reality show based off of torturing and interrogating suspected insurgents picked up in Iraq. This show is called “Terror in the Grip of Justice.” This is so incredibly disturbing it’s reminiscent of the futuristic science fiction movies like “The Running Man” where contestants are playing a game for their life. Heaven forbid America’s impeccable terrorism screening system could ever allow for innocent men to wind up getting tortured and humiliated for the entertainment of their fellow Iraqi’s. This is reminiscent of criminals getting ripped apart in the coliseum during the times of the Roman Empire, when the audience cheered at the gruesome bloodbath. It’s even more disturbing that this show is the receiving an overall positive reaction in Iraq. Even though many viewers admit the show appears to be theatrically staged at times, “Terror in the Grip of Justice” has become the most watched TV show on Al-Iraqiya an extraordinarily unpopular station set up by America.



The world has entered into a phase of many theaters of war. Mankind is being conditioned overtime in incremental phases to believe a certain way. There is a scientific basis to the fact that amount of people can condition the attitudes and opinions of the population over long periods of time. If you would have told people 10 years ago that they should give up their rights for security, than they would have likely laughed at you, but the paradigm shift has occurred since then. I think it is good that we are discussing George Orwell, because he was very ahead of his time, and reading his book while looking at today’s society can be a very sobering thing to do. In a scene early on in the book, the setting is a movie theater, and the scene shows a man swimming in the ocean away from a helicopter. One of the other people in the helicopter is manning the steel-mounted machine gun, and he opens fire on the helpless man swimming away. As the bullets explode from the chambers and rip through the helpless man’s flesh, the crowd screams in excitement and ecstasy, they love seeing the brutality and thirst for more. IT is clear that this scene was used by Orwell to show where the mindset of the people in this society. Although it still does seem a bit crazy, not as much so when you consider there are reality shows which revolve around torture. Orwell was very aware that people could be conditioned to believe certain ways overtime. Moreover Orwell knew that the latter generations of people would be just as susceptible to doublethink as the ones before them. Six years ago before 911, we would have never guessed that America, the supposed brightest beacon for freedom around the world, would be debating whether or not to torture people. Who knows, in five years we might be debating whether or not torturing young children is ethically sound. It’s obvious someone is funding and pushing torture propaganda into our information spectrum, but what could the motives of these people be? It’s been admitted that large percentages of those tortured in Iraq were completely innocent, and although we heard the promotion of supposed “enhanced interrogation tactics” we have yet to hear of any large scale terrorist attacks foil due to information gained through torture. I’m convinced that information extraction abilities are not the central goal of the ones pushing for torture. However, I will say this: torturing Iraqi’s and then releasing them would be a very good way to continue the instability in Iraq, which then allows the supposed War on Terror to be continued. In reality defense contractors make much more money if troops occupy Iraq for 10 years rather than five.



These types of events often work in steppingstone patterns, meaning although the government wants to convince you to support torturing foreign prisoners for information, this could easily expand to US citizens suspected of a very broadly defined terrorism activities. According to the definition of terrorism just disagreeing with the government on certain aspects can be considered terrorism. This is a scary reality that all of us have to face, and just knowing the way propaganda and doublethink works can really makes someone wake up to it. Hopefully this knowledge will spread to others and the rising specter of torture will be contained.






Sources:

Watson, Paul Joseph. “British Spy Drama: The Good Guys Torture.” Prison Planet. 2004. April 18th 2005. <http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/061204goodguystorture.htm>
Singh, Gajendra. “Gen Taguba Unveils Abu Ghraib, US Gulag – “The abused are only Iraqis!” Bolojii.com. 2007. 2007. http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0221.htm
Hornberger, G Jacob. “How Hitler Became a Dictator.” Lew Rockwell. September 1st 2006. June 2007. http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger100.html
Davies, Simon. “Reckless ID card plan will destroy nation’s freedom.” London Telegraph. September 2001. July 29th 2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/29/wfor229.xml
Castro, Maria. “NY Gang member faces trial as terrorist.” Mydd. December 2004. July 29th 2007. http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/12/30/23170/828
Philip, Catherine. “Terror Confessions on TV grip Baghdad.” Times Online. March 2005. July 29th 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article423264.ece
O’Hagan, Maureen. “Marijuana smuggling case first local use of Patriot Act Provision.” July 2004. July 29th 2007. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001992821_smuggling29m.html
“US: Did President Bush Order Torture?” 2006. July 29th 2007 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/21/usint9925.htm
“Gonzales torture memo controversy builds.” January 2005. July 29th 2007. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-03-gonzales-hearing_x.htm
“Antiterro laws snaring common criminals.” September 2004. July 29th 2007. http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/15/Worldandnation/Antiterror_laws_

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Good essay. Hopefully, pieces like this will be included in the history books of the future and not edited out of existence like 1984.

If you want a concrete example of how ineffective torture is as a weapon against terror, check out the British police force's bungled attempts at quelling the IRA in the 1970's. Their systematic torture of suspects resulted in many false convictions and increased the IRA's recruiting base considerably, leading to another 25 years of terrorist activities.

Spread the news, educate, avoid mainstream media, question everything.

 

very nicely written piece. I liked that it stuck to the relative track at hand and didn't go off the conspiracy deep end, just presents the facts with commentary and the reader is left to mull it around.

I don't like how often these pieces are written as propaganda in the reverse direction (which even though I may agree with the message I don't agree with the method of delivery).

 

Thanks guys. I agree with you as well. In essays you are basically free to editorialize and do not have to stick to low IQed language, which is why I love writing essays. I'm actually putting this in my portfolio, so again thank you for the comments and feedback.

 

I'd like to comment at length, but I'm late for the Five Minute Hate. By the way, who are we at war with this week: Asia or Russia?