The Mass Media Is The Enemy of Working Class People

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

7-11-22

 

A few quick notes on the video.

 

John Pilger has been around a long time and, like any human being, has weaknesses and can makes mistakes. But in my experience over the decades, he has produced some great documentaries and news reports. He has risked his life in doing this and has always attempted to stand against the stream which is very difficult for anyone in or even on the fringes of the mass media.

 

His comments here about the lack of skepticism and even the ability to be skeptical of the western reader, and as he says, “particularly in the United States” is true but I would like to expand on it a little.

 

To be skeptical one must have some notion that to challenge the acceptable narrative of events, one must have or see some alternative route. But it is my view that in the US, it’s beyond the ability to be skeptical. The dominant view among amongst most workers, and huge sections of the middle class, is that there is nothing that one can do. Where can we turn? What social force offers a way forward? The two parties of capitalism, Republicans and Democrats, are completely discredited and the era of their domination of US political life is over.  We see it each election time as more and more people opt out of electoral politics, some 100 million in the 2016 election cycle. In the recent protests against the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate the half century old right of a woman to abortion both Democratic and Republican parties were booed.

 

The heads of organized labor are completely wedded to the so-called free market and capitalism and in a deathly marriage with the Democratic Party to that end still pushing on their members a political party they abandoned long ago; they are an obstacle to our advancment. US foreign policy is rarely if ever questioned by this moribund clique and usually endorsed by it. The potential power of 14 million workers in organized labor is suppressed at every turn. Nothing terrifies these “labor lieutenants of capital” more than this power of their own members and at the recent conference of the AFL-CIO (the national body of organized labor in the US) in June, the leaders of a rising new movement among the unorganized and low paid workers at workplaces like Amazon, Starbucks and in hi tech, were denied attendance despite the issue of organizing new members being a major topic of discussion. This movement too will be suppressed if it can with the help of the liberal and soft left elements within the workers movement.

 

With the immense power of the US mass media-----basically an arm of the US state department after all we are in the belly of the capitalist beast here------ the US population is the first victim of US imperial power. What happens on the global stage and the role of US imperialism in shaping it is spoon fed to us with the help of Hollywood. As Pilger points out, the jingoism and stand with Ukraine propaganda is nauseating to say the least, to the point that the deaths of young Russians who had no say in this conflict, is greeted with glee and cheering in the western media. What worker with any class consciousness would support this? It is our class that die on both sides and we should make that clear.

 

The point Pilger makes about history is so true. How can we understand the world around us without understanding the history that brought us here? Of course, working class history, the history of the oppressed, is never taught as the victor writes the history books. We do not learn US history from below and the ruling class will never teach it from our perspective.  Consequently, when the US government decides to send a few billion here or a few billion there along with billions more in weaponry and arms, there is hardly a murmur despite the anger and hatred that so many US workers have toward the state and the politicians. Having no sense of how to change this situation better the devil we know than the devil we don’t is the reasoning. 

 

And in the absence of politics and weakening of class consciousness, personal character flaws and claims of human nature being inherently selfish and greedy is substituted, psychoanalysis rather than materialism and class politics. And the most pervasive of all, religion and mysticism, relying on prophecies and 5000-year-old tracts to explain events. The return to the middle ages.

 

It is this backwardness expect a Hollywood blockbuster on Ukraine with maybe Matt Damon or Brad Pitt playing Zelinsky saving the free world from darkness.

 

These conditions are at the heart of the social crisis and the violence we see in the US as a response to the unraveling of late stage capitalism. A turning inward against each other.

 

However, we cannot despair. I have not abandoned the view that the working class will rise to the occasion and take on the task that history has set for us. Already in the US we are seeing the beginning of a movement of the working class on the industrial plane, taking on the Robber Barons of today. We have seen in Sri Lanka that when the working class moves en masse it can occupy government structures and force the removal of political enemies.

Sri Lankans Take a dip in President's Pool

 

I just left the UK and workers there are fighting back in the post pandemic economy, rail workers, health care workers, teachers, lawyers and workers in academia.

 

Out of new struggles new leaders will arise as our revolutionary history is re-learned and the understanding that we can change our economic system from one that produces for profit to one that produces for social need. We will learn of history from our point of view and the great 1917 Russian Revolution, the first workers’ revolution that overthrew capitalism and introduced a genuinely democratic socialist alternative, how it arose and why it degenerated will be understood and great lessons learned. The first attempt of Orville and Wilbur Wright to fly last a short distance, it failed. But they didn’t stop there---fortunately. Social Science is similar, we cannot move forward if we don’t learn from our mistakes and we can’t learn from our mistakes if we rely on history brought to us by our class enemies.

 

Perhaps the first great lesson we must learn is that workers are international. We must be internationalists and see that workers’ struggles no matter where they occur, are our struggles. Biden is vising Saudia Arabia, meeting with the Japanese and the Australian capitalists in order to strengthen western Imperial power and undermine their Chinese and Russia competitors. Building a genuinely independent workers’ international organization to combat global capitalism is crucial. limiting our efforts to fighting global capitalism within the borders of a nations state is a recipe for defeat.

 

It is a daunting task there is no denying it. But we have the power, we can change society, global society if we act as one, as one class with our own distinct interests and vision for the future. History gives us no choice, we either fight or we cease to exist as a species. We don’t hold our grandchildren in our arms for that.