Right-Wing Denounces Democracy

Original Link: http://www.groundreport.com/Politics/Right-Wing-Denouces-Democracy/2934519

By Dean Walker

Over the past 18 plus days, the world witnessed Egypt’s stunning move toward democracy. We watched as the brutal dictator Hosni Mubarak unleashed camel and horseback riding thugs to bash in the heads and disrupt peaceful protesters. We saw through the lies about foreign interference spread by Mubarak supporters and state owned television. We heard the false claims by Mubarak’s thugs of the looting and violent intentions of the pro-democracy supporters. Most of the world denounced the Mubarak administration and finally, to everyone’s amazement, we witnessed the peaceful overthrowing of a dictator by his own people.

Around the world, people joined in the celebration of this week’s historic events. However, back home in America, the screaming rightwing propaganda machine openly denounced the pro-democracy movement. Rush Limbaugh called the protesters, “leftists, feminists, socialists, communists, and environmentalists.” Limbaugh went on to label the Egyptian peace activists a, “classic rent-a-mob,” spurred on by community organizers.

Glenn Beck of Fox News went a little further by claiming the populist democratic uprising was part of a “The Coming Insurrection.” Beck declared, "When you take the Marxists and you combine them with the radical from Islam, when you combine those forces, which is exactly -- we'll show you this week -- what is happening here, the whole world starts to implode."

But why are so many of the leading spin-doctors in the rightwing alternative universe working so feverously to portray Egypt’s prodemocracy movement in a negative light? Doesn’t the delirious rightwingers on Fox News and talk radio want Americans to believe that they are the true defenders of liberty and the voice of freedom? The answer is simple, the Right lies. The corporatists don’t want Americans to know their real goals. And so, the Right has created an elaborate propaganda machine, with Fox News as its flagship.

Consider, for example, a recent expose’ published by Media Matters on Fox News’ daily barrage of distortions. According to a former long time employee of Rupert Mudock, who remains anonymous due to a non-disclosure agreement, “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up….It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats…They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news…. They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,”

However, it doesn’t take a Fox News insider to tell you the channel acts as rightwing extreme propagandist. The question is, why does the rightwing just make stuff up? How far will they go? What are they attempting to accomplish? And perhaps more importantly, what are they attempting to cover-up?

This week, Chris Hedges writes in his recent article, The Language of Tyranny, at Truthdig, “The tactic of speaking in two languages is as old as empire itself. The ancient Greeks and the Romans did it. So did the Spanish conquistadors, the Ottomans, the French and later the British. Those who inhabit exploited zones on the peripheries of empire see and hear the truth. But the cries of those who are exploited are ignored or demonized. The rage they express does not resonate with those trapped in self-delusion, those who continue to trust in the ultimate goodness of empire…

Those who administer empire—elected officials, corporate managers, generals and the celebrity courtiers who disseminate the propaganda—become very wealthy. They make immense fortunes whether they deliver the nightly news, sit on the boards of corporations, or rise, lavished with corporate endorsements, within the vast industry of spectacle and entertainment. They all pay homage, even in moments defined as criticism, to the essential goodness of corporate power. They shut out all real debate. They ignore flagrant injustices and abuse. They peddle the illusions that keep us passive and amused. But as our society is reconfigured into an oligarchic system, with a permanent and vast underclass, along with a shrinking and unstable middle class, these illusions lose their power.”

Hedges’ highlights the fact that the administrators of empire are the disseminators of propaganda. Fox News has become the nation’s premier defender of the emerging corporate power structure. An oligarchic America designed to replace the principles of our Founding Fathers with the principles of the free market. An extreme Laissez-Faire ideology propped up by layer after layer of lies.

The administrators of empire will not only spread falsehoods, misinformation, willful distortions, and simply make stuff up, the hell spinners of corporate propaganda will personally attack anyone that stands in their way. Along with the Media Matters expose’ on the News Corporation insider, ThinkProgress released emails this week from a law firm representing the Chamber of Commerce that documented a “private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HB Gary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives.”

In a separate set of emails from the law firm, ThinkProgess learned, “the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.”

What Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want you to know is that they are pushing America into a great social experiment. A social experiment based on corporate rule that will make the age of the robber barons look like the good ol’ days. What the Right is covering up is their attempt to transform American into a corporatocracy. In the pursuit of this transformation, the rightwing nutcases are willing to lie, spy, sabotage, and even kill their fellow Americans to achieve their goals. The Right requires a vast underclass of citizens to fulfill their wet dreams. In their delusional minds, anyone that stands in their way simply becomes casualties of war. Even the family members of union members and groups like Change to Win and ThinkProgress.

The reason the leading blowhards of rightwing propaganda denounced the pro-democracy movement in Egypt is clear. A peaceful, populous pro-democracy uprising of the vast underclass has the administrators of empire pissing in their pants. They are absolutely frightened Americans, like the Egyptians, will rise up and demand their democratic rights. They are shaking in the boots over the thought of the liberal progressive movement uniting with the unemployed and disenfranchised. They are horrified by the prospect of a mass movement of Americans taken to the streets and calling for jobs. Real jobs with a living wage. They are scared of Americans demanding real corporate accountability and a fair tax system that restores Reagan era tax rates on the rich. But what petrifies them the most is the thought that Americans would rise up and demand real democracy. A democracy without the influences of corporate lobbyist. A democracy that empowers individuals, not big business. Now that is something that truly frightens the promoters of the corporate power structure.