Friday, March 17, 2006

ECHO 17/3/06

Are we being led by the US Christian Right, the neo-cons, and by Blair’s assumed Christian devotion, into a second Dark Age? Would seem so. Tyranny, torture, suppression, and misinformation. It’s not an original thought I’m sure, but I read a book this week - Infidels – A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam by Andrew Wheatcroft (Penguin) - that lays out some historical parallels which I believe points to the answer.

Richard Perle and David Frum – figures in the Bush administration, have written a book entitled: An End To Evil: How To Win The War On Terror – they call it ‘a manual for victory’ and it is written in a version of Orwellian Newspeak. In 1984 Orwell wrote a lengthy description of the language used by The Party and handed down to the populus of Airstrip One (Britain). Words were divided into three categories: the A, B and C vocabularies. ‘A’ words corresponded to everyday words necessary for such things as work, eating, cooking, travelling etc. ‘C’ words were primarily scientific and technical. Frum and Perle, Andrew Wheatcroft argues, have written their book mostly in ‘B’ words. Orwell describes that vocabulary as those words ‘deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude’. Perle and Blum’s book is suffused with attacks on countries that opposed the invasion of Iraq and who they therefore believe engage in ‘thoughtcrime’. The book is a paean to Newspeak. To quote: ‘Terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation’s great cause . . . There is no middle way for Americans: it is victory or holocaust.’

Wheatcroft maintains that the use of the word ‘holocaust’ (without its usual capital ‘H’) is clear use of Orwell’s vocabulary ‘B’; the authors being fully aware of the emotive impact of using that word on a modern readership and in this way connoting terrorism with Nazi exterminations. Wheatcroft goes on to ask (I am paraphrasing here): ‘Are America’s alternatives really ‘victory’ or the careful, planned, systematic, efficient and remorseless extermination of an entire culture?’

He highlights the fact that the ‘language, structure, intention and method’ in the neo-conservative’s book reflects that used in the medieval text The Hammer of Witches, more commonly known as the Malleus Malleficarum. This was a tract written in 1486 by two monks and provided canonical and biblical backing for the hunting down and destruction of witches. It is, to quote Wheatcroft again, ‘one of the most malign texts ever produced’. Both the 21st century book and fifteenth century manual use similar methodology. Each one presents the situations and causes of evil; each details how it spreads; each attacks any dissenting voice or anyone that may doubt their view; and finally they both offer ‘operational necessities’ and guidelines to perpetrate a war on evil.

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