Page 170 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

160 Chapter 7

said today concerning the prevailing pro-war orthodoxy in the American mass
media. Anti-war views rarely receive adequate attention in the preoccupation
with "progress" in the Iraq war. Various opponents of government propaganda
have been quieted in the media through the use of intimidation and punishment.
Orwell addressed many aspects of censorship that are still relevant today.
Regarding the conscious choice to self-censor, Orwell states, "the chief danger
to freedom of thought and speech. . . is not the direct interference of the [British]
Ministry of Information or any official body. . . the sinister fact about literary
censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be si-
lenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.'13
Orwell's warning is relevant in other capitalist democracies aside from Britain,
especially when reflecting on the strength of self-censorship in the American
press, as its corporate entities traditionally conform to conventional views sup-
porting the Iraq war, while remaining outside the realm of direct govenunent
influence and control.

A Short Background

George Orwell was the pen name under which Eric Arthur Blair wrote his po-
lemics and political literature. Although he only lived to be forty-six (1903-
1950), Orwell made an invaluable contribution to the understanding of govern-
ment and media propaganda. Orwell understood that imperialism was antitheti-
cal to democratization, which is why he dedicated his life and his literary career
to opposing it. As has commonly been misunderstood about Orwell, his works
did not merely target communist totalitarianism, but also took aim at the very
heart of British imperialism and capitalist expansion and dominance. Books
such as Burmese Days, Animal Farm, and 1984, and essays such as Shooting an
Elephant, Rudyard Kipling, and Why I Write, addressed the dangers of imperial-
ism within the context of Soviet expansionism and European colonial domi-
nance. In his essay on the English pre-fascist Rudyard Kipling, Orwell speaks
with disdain of the economic forces that drive the quest for imperialist domi-
nance, particularly in light of Kipling's "romantic ideas about England and the
empire." Condemning Kipling's coining of the "White Man's Burden," which
rationalized colonial dominance with racist notions of European superiority,
Orwell replied: "It is no use pretending that Kipling's view of life, as a whole,
can be accepted by any civilised person. . . . Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is
morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting."'
Orwell was blunt in his attacks on colonialism, which he considered to be a
rather evil endeavor. As author and lecturer Christopher Hitchens states, Or-
well's "writings on colonialism are an indissoluble part of his lifelong engage-
ment with the subjects of power and cruelty and force, and the crude yet subtle
relationship between the dominator and the dominated.'' In his essay Shooting
an Elephant, Orwell reflected on his experiences as a sub-divisional police offi-
cer in the town of Moulmein during the British occupation of Burma: