"Before dying the victim must be degraded, so that the murderer will be less burdened by guilt." Primo Levi, Nazi concentration camp survivor, 1919-1987.

Annals of Propaganda

October 11, 2006

Mopping Up The Traces

A consideration of the long chain of events preceding the DPRK's nuclear test on October 9th suggests that a definite process is at work. The steps in this process might be described roughly as follows:

  Phase Actions of the hegemonic state Reaction of the victim
  1 impoverish the victim curtails civil liberties
  2 criminalize him increases military expenditures
  3 ostracize him partially mobilizes
  4 threaten his existence fully mobilizes
  5 deny your intent knows it's being lied to
  6 the world begs for victim's elimination condemns the world for opportunism
  7 launch attack becomes a wasteland

The DPRK's nuclear test represents the completion of step 4.

The European Parliament is meeting today to consider the DPRK's nuclear test and with certainty we can expect it to focus its condemnation on the DPRK. They may, in passing, be critical of the failure of the original nuclear states to destroy their nuclear weapons as required by their treaty obligations, but it is certain they will not draw the cause and effect relationship between the event they are condemning and US policy.

Their role is to assist in arousing a measurable amount of public opinion as required in step 6 of this orchestrated process.

The careful wording of the NY Times' headline of today, which is solidly in step 5, is especially interesting:

Rice Asserts U.S. Plans No Attack on North Korea

The choice of this weak and awkward wording (why do you have to plan "no attack") rather than the clear and direct alternative:

Rice Asserts U.S. Has No Plans to Attack North Korea

suggests its very opposite, namely

The U.S. Has Plans to Attack North Korea

and this is certainly how it will be understood in North Korea. Furthermore, it suggests the Times' understanding of and complicity in this process.

An overall perspective on the current event might be as follows: If the Cold War was Phase 2 in the rollback of the Bolshevik Revolution, Phase 1 of which was Hitler's 1941 invasion of the USSR, then, 65 years and several trillion dollars later, using the most destructive machinery imaginable, and with the waste of uncounted millions of lives, capitalism is still mopping up the traces of the "non-viable" ideology which motivated that revolution.

It makes you wonder.