Blurring the Border between Reality and Perception (3)

This is the third and last instalment in a series of posts on the effects of Postmodernism (Pomo, or cultural Marxism, or Subjectivism, or relativism) on journalism and the MSM. If you've read the preceding two instalments you might want to skip this introduction and jump to "Continued from Part 2" four paras down.

To remind ourselves of the heart of the trouble: it's the basic fallacy of the industry's pet philosophy that objective reality does not exist. The danger of this deliberate mistake is, that the line between reality and perception becomes blurred, causing any amount of confusion.

One consequence is, that fact - which is based on objective reality - is also rejected as a result, which is a bit of a problem if you're dealing with facts on a daily basis, as is the case in journalism. So what we see reported by the media aren't so much cool, detached facts, as much as the reporter's personal version of reality.

Another, moral consequence of the rejection of reality is, that good and bad, right and wrong, truth and lie, are denied in the same way; or to put it in another way: everybody is 'right' from his or her own particular point of view, and anything 'bad' is called 'bad', only because it doesn't fit into our present, defective idea of society.

The spectacle of pretended journalistic objectivity has run for a long time, until quite recently - at last, pretence was dropped altogether. But the objective realists are now starting to fight back. Lists are appearing with facts, detailing when, why and how the facts were manipulated to conform with somebody's particular 'narrative', attempts at disinformation, censoring, fraud, spin and counter-spin, fibs and lies, fabrication, selective emphasizing, manipulation and censoring, the whole dishonest spectrum.

~ Continued from Part 2 ~

I recently reported, and made some work of, an example of the typical modern activist in the person of a young Belgian convert to Islam. Eva Vergaelen is academically trained in higher crypto Marxism and obtained a degree in Neo Imperialism (or, How to Ruin the Third World and Retain a Clean Conscience) at Antwerp University. She expresses an interest in Identity and Gender Politics. In short, she is a glorified activist posing as a journalist, producing work on Islamization and Multiculturalism that is stripped of anything even remotely approaching balanced objectivity.


In the recent showdown in Brussels involving the institutionalised forces of Subjectivism as represented by Socialist mayor Freddy Thielemans on the one hand, and the Paneuropean organization "Stop the Islamization of Europe" on the other, she joined forces with the radical Hizbollah affectionate, Dyab Abu Jahjah of the Arab European League, in producing a thoroughly toxic article that was filled to the brim with lies and revisionism. It was briefly published on the site of The Brunei Times, but has since been removed. The sole purpose of such invective can only be the poisoning of the atmosphere against the West within the Dar-al-Islam. One wonders just how many Eva Vergaelens roam the tortured land.

Rummaging further through my archive yielded:

- Douglas Hanson's article "The Real Lesson of the Beauchamp Affair" (there may be another such an affair in the making). The Hanson article not just lists that recent scandal, but also throws another light on the Abu Graib scandal, which he terms a "high quality disinformation operation" that played off Iraqi and Arab historical ethnic, racial and cultural biases, indicating that this was run by seasoned professionals in journalism and their government 'sources';

- Tito's bunkers in Iraq, containing the illusive WMD;

- The NIE report;

- The Hamari atrocities, as covered by independent journalist Michael Yon, and ignored by the MSM;

- The Haditha Massacre is another case in point: read the whole article on Accuracy in Media "Haditha Massacre: Media and Terrorist Hoax", which prompted NewsMax to a spot of impromptu fund-raising to cover the legal expenses of the accused;

- Or the reporting on the Beslan massacre. On the same link you will find how normal, professional journalism has become so rare, that it is covered in laurels!

Inconvenient facts are preferably spun into favourable public perceptions, or they are reduced to 'somebody's personal opinion'; alternatively they are suppressed altogether (voluntary or otherwise), or - case need - dealt with through the courts.

These days we have Leftist inspired hatred laws at the expense of free speech and freedom of conscience. These laws are little else but legal back up for political correctness, in other words, the Left's soft social pressure to conform with their morality and political agenda, which they share with their partner in the Unholy Alliance, institutionalized Islam. Read "Stop Forum Shopping Terrorism" by Flanders Fields for a very important case. Said Rachel Ehrenfeld was recently the guest of Pamela Geller's at BlogTalkRadio. The broadcast is available here.

Consider this from Doug Giles' recent article on Townhall: we are "bamboozled into believing that Islam is a peaceful, Little House on the Prairie religion being temporarily hijacked by jihadist renegades".

The combined, cultural egalitarianism of the Unholy Alliance may have prompted a commentary in Examiner by John R. Thomson "Whose Genocide Will it Be": "America is berated for heinous crimes, minimizing whatever may have been done by the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and, currently, Sudanese President and Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir".

Let me stress at this point that all these totalitarian dictatorships are based on the rejection of reality fallacy (see Chart I: the Straight Red Line), sharing the same Counter-Enlightenment heritage as originated by Rousseau.

Giles again: "Simultaneously, the accusations are calculated to inflame the credulous Arab/Muslim street, in order to justify murderous Muslim terrorism, to recruit gullible suicide bombers and to attract covert support from Saudi Arabia, once a stalwart U.S. ally." Hm, the 'inflame' part reminds me of Eva and The Brunei Times ...

"This propaganda campaign seeks to distract the world’s attention from the real murderers, the true ethnic and religious cleansers. For the truth is, the perpetrators to an overwhelming degree are the Muslims themselves." To make the sinister list:

- Indonesia 500-600.000 - Bangladesh 1.4-2 million - Somalia 600.000 - Sudan 5-6 million and counting - Afghanistan's Soviet invasion 1.5 million, "the American invasion in 2001 created perhaps 10,000 fatalities" - the Iran/Iraq war 1.5 million on the side of Iraq, and 450-970.000 Iranians - in Iraq, Saddam's war on his own people, another 1 million deaths - Syrian fratricide in Syria 20.000, and in Lebanon 130.000 - The article further mentions Chad, Jordan, Mauretania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen and Zanzibar.

The apocalyptic figures are only rivalled by the hecatombs piled up by the heirs of Marx on the same altars of egalitarian collectivism! This, of course, is no coincidence. Both vistas enjoy an inherent justification to violence, and an end-justifies-the-means mentality.

I have no doubt whatsoever that any Pomo activist with an agenda would gladly counter those figures with the perversity of the Iraq Body Count (go ahead: check it!) - and "the Christian counterpart of the Iraqi fratricide", the Irish Troubles (4,000 fatalities), just so that things are put into perspective!

It's only appropriate to wrap this post up with Randall Hoven's "It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp" in American Thinker, a brave effort in almost comprehensively listing all the "lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias" in the recent history of damaged journalism.

Hoven's figures break down as follows: of the total count of 62 cases in the United States alone, 7 are in relation to Iraq, and 4 to the Middle East. Case number 28 makes clear that the Leftist press has been at it since The New York Times' Walter Duranty hailed the accomplishments of Stalin era Soviet Union. I conclude with Randall Hoven that:

"If it is 'too good to be true', or just too politically correct to be true, take it with a grain of salt - several grains, apparently, if from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, CNN or Reuters ... If this is the visible part of the iceberg, just how big is the iceberg?"

To which I can add a query of my own: I'm just so curious what the figures for Europe would be!

In the meantime there's an update in which Hoven effortlessly lists another 21 cases, of which 4 relate to the combustible Islam, Middle East, AQ triangle.