NSmolenskiFan on Nostr: In a previous life, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke fluent Arabic but refused to ...
In a previous life, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke fluent Arabic but refused to be part of the wars in the Middle East, so instead I largely focused on media coverage of those wars in America.
During the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006, I worked at a local radio station. They asked me to vet a “documentary” made by an older American couple about “Islamic extremism” in Palestine and Lebanon. It quickly became apparent to me that the English-language subtitles they used to translate what people in the region were saying were complete garbage. Like, not even faulty translations—just completely made up statements designed to show how “extreme” these people were and how much they “hated” Israel and the West.
I submitted my opinion that the documentary should not air because it was false propaganda. Fortunately, it was not shown (and the couple who produced it was really upset). But I cannot overstate how often the American people have been lied to, via mainstream news sources, about who “hates” us and why. They know that few people, if anyone, will fact-check them, and by then no one will care. The damage will have been done.
It is we Americans who have been radicalized—by our media and our politicians, who conjure or repeat lies from people who do not care about us or about our country.
We Americans have no fight with the people of Middle Eastern nations. There is no reason that America should not be friends with all nations in the region, working together for mutual prosperity. All of this carnage is unnecessary and manufactured. It takes real work—intent, money, planning, political will—to engineer multiple coups, regime changes, and occupations across an entire region over several generations. Literally, if we had just stepped away from the region and left it alone generations ago, things would be orders of magnitude better today. Instead, we have brought about just about the worst-case scenario: genocide and a regional conflagration threatening to escalate into the next World War.
During the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006, I worked at a local radio station. They asked me to vet a “documentary” made by an older American couple about “Islamic extremism” in Palestine and Lebanon. It quickly became apparent to me that the English-language subtitles they used to translate what people in the region were saying were complete garbage. Like, not even faulty translations—just completely made up statements designed to show how “extreme” these people were and how much they “hated” Israel and the West.
I submitted my opinion that the documentary should not air because it was false propaganda. Fortunately, it was not shown (and the couple who produced it was really upset). But I cannot overstate how often the American people have been lied to, via mainstream news sources, about who “hates” us and why. They know that few people, if anyone, will fact-check them, and by then no one will care. The damage will have been done.
It is we Americans who have been radicalized—by our media and our politicians, who conjure or repeat lies from people who do not care about us or about our country.
We Americans have no fight with the people of Middle Eastern nations. There is no reason that America should not be friends with all nations in the region, working together for mutual prosperity. All of this carnage is unnecessary and manufactured. It takes real work—intent, money, planning, political will—to engineer multiple coups, regime changes, and occupations across an entire region over several generations. Literally, if we had just stepped away from the region and left it alone generations ago, things would be orders of magnitude better today. Instead, we have brought about just about the worst-case scenario: genocide and a regional conflagration threatening to escalate into the next World War.