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Blog PostsFrank Miller: apologist for Capitalism and Imperialism
By Michael McGehee at Nov 15, 2011 |
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| Frank Miller |
As a fan of Frank Miller's Sin City and Dark Knight comics, it was a punch in the gut to read his recent diatribe against the Occupy movents. I am referring to his blog piece "ANARCHY."
In Herman's and Chomsky's The Washington connection and Third World Fascism (one of my all-time favorite Chomsky books) they explain their findings on how the media and apologists skew reality by saying that
we find a gravitation to the most inflated estimates of repression and violence, a stripping away of the crucial historical context, a high moral tone, and non-correctibility of falsification and error.Frank Miller's recent rant exhibits all of this in his verbal assault on Occupy.
Gravitation to inflated accusations: “'Occupy' is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob . . .”
Lack of historical context: There is nothing about Wall Street corruption, growing income inequality, etc.
A high moral tone: The entire piece is about moralizing against those who dare speak out against political and economic corruption. And following with the above lack of historical context, is the typical "stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves."
And of course Miller throws in the “We're at war!” line, and regurgitates the mythical threat of "al-Qaeda and Islamicism." He even says Occupy protesters should "enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape."
The reality is that our imperial and class wars have been a tremendous drain on our society and people all over the country are reacting. Miller is simply out of touch with the working class and our struggles.
With high unemployment, a growing wealth gap, our government having the money to wage wars all over the planet and bail out banks while telling us they don't have enough money for schools, libraries, pensions, health care and Social Security, many of us are realizing something must be done. And with a "liberal" political party representing the capital-intensive industries of the nation (i.e. Wall Street), and the same party having its mayors evict and sick the police on protesters, Americans are growing more aware that voting is not the solution.
This Global War on Terrorism, which is supposedly fighting the evil "al-Qaeda and Islamicism" is a myth only the intentionally ignorant continue to accept hook, line and sinker.
Al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before we invaded and began occupying the country, and even then the gist of attacks against us were by a national resistance movement.
And similarly in Afghanistan, it has long been the Taliban we are fighting.
But in both countries we have backed "Islamicism," via either the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan or the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, now the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (a dominant political party brought to prominence by Uncle Sam).
And let's not forget that the U.S. recently helped Islamic jihadists overthrow a popular government in Libya.
Furthermore, the U.S. has long allied with Islamic countries like Suharto of Indonesia, or the royal family in Saudi Arabia. The idea that we are fighting terrorists and Islamicism is a joke to anyone with even a general grasp of modern history.
A recent article published in the Washington Post by a former Bush official explained why the U.S. should not leave the country at the end of the year: “Finally, and most compelling, there is the role that Iraq may play in averting a major global energy crisis in the coming years . . .”: oil.
For Miller, crying "we're at war" is supposed to trump legitimate self-criticism. If we can point to threats, real or imagined, then we can somehow ignore the growing mountain of skeletons in our closet. This is nothing but apologetic propaganda in service of the Empire, and the class war it wages on its own citizens. for more of my blogs please visit http://truth_addict.blogspot.com/
