Pink Floyd, Propaganda and Censorship
How the Minds of Ordinary People are fed into the Capitalist Propaganda Machine
As Jeffrey Sachs was so rudely interrupted at the Athens Democracy Forum, I was reminded of this imagery from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Mr. Sachs simply said out loud, what everyone in the room already knew, that “The most violent country in the world, since 1950, has been the United States.“ The eruption of cheers, surely in defense of Mr. Sachs, belies the unfortunate reality that exists here in the U.S. Namely, that the anti-war faction has recently been turned on its head over Ukraine.
Most Americans have undoubtedly been completely brainwashed on this topic by the overwhelming level of propaganda directed against them on behalf of the military industrial complex. What else could explain the mundane acceptance of the theory that Russians sabotaged their own pipeline, instead of simply turning it off? The boldness of this narrative was surpassed only by its endless repetition on every news channel, which was finally and utterly dismissed by the downtrodden faces of “retired military officers” desperately trying to maintain their composure as they sputtered the lie on camera.
Of course, 50 years of cold war propaganda — with only a tepid respite during the War on Terror, compounded by six years of “Russian election interference” has made soggy most of the brains here. For weary Americans, working the longest and hardest in the “developed world” clouds the judgement considerably. When inadequate healthcare is piled on top, well, no wonder most Americans can only believe what the TV throws at them every night. At least many of them can now substitute legalized marijuana for mental health care.
The EU, however, is reacting quite differently. In almost every country beset with quintupled energy costs, impressive rallies have broken out. We cannot see them on American TV, because that wouldn’t fit the narrative. People might begin to think that maybe a proxy war in Ukraine was not a good thing. As Mr. Sachs’ interlocutor exclaimed, he was there “to facilitate a conversation and to stop speeches.”
For his part, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters has already seen this coming. In his recent “This is Not a Drill” tour, at the start of his biggest single “Another Brick in the Wall” — just when he begins singing “We don’t need no education … We don’t need no thought control,” the 79! year old Waters thunders out with 20 foot tall scrolling letters above the stage: “CONTROL THE NARRATIVE,” and trailing in blood red: “RULE THE WORLD.”
