"an Orwellian world of fabricated reality"

[pynchonoid]

<http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,970749,00.html>


Comment

Fight the Matrix 

Distorted intelligence on Iraq is part of an Orwellian
world of fabricated reality

Timothy Garton Ash 
Thursday June 5, 2003
The Guardian

Perhaps we live in the Matrix after all. Wherever we
turn, we find a politics of manufactured reality that
recalls the world of that cult film. How can we, the
citizens, unplug ourselves and fight it? Take three of
the main media stories of the last week. It turns out
that we went to war with Saddam Hussein on the basis
of Anglo-American intelligence reports that were, at
best, politically misrepresented, or, at worst,
falsified. The world leaders' summit in Evian produces
stage-managed photo-opportunity smiles between
President Bush and Chancellor Schröder that reflect
the precise opposite of the truth about their
relations. The British rightwing press paints a
picture of a steamroller European federal superstate
that stands to the reality of what is happening in the
constitutional convention in Brussels as a Salvador
Dali sculpture does to a plain metal saucepan. 
This systematic attempt to fool most of the people
most of the time is the work of some of the most
intelligent, best-informed and highly paid men and
women in western societies: spin-doctors, PR
consultants, hacks and spooks. Like the Inner Party
member, O'Brien, in George Orwell's 1984, they know
better. They have seen the photograph, tape or
transcript that shows the public claim is wrong, but
then, like O'Brien, they have dropped it down the
memory hole: " 'Ashes,' he said, 'Not even
identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never
existed.' " 

In Orwell's centenary year, the "war against
terrorism" takes us to an Orwellian world in a quite
unexpected way. We are told that Oceania (America,
Britain and Australia) must go to war against Iraq,
or, as it might be, Orwell's Eastasia or Eurasia, on
the basis of reports from secret intelligence sources.
One of the strongest passages in Tony Blair's powerful
speech to the House of Commons justifying the war was
his rhetorical reiteration "I know ... I know ...",
followed by claims about dictatorships being "a short
time away from having a serviceable nuclear weapon"
that the ordinary citizen has no way of checking. 

I do not believe that the British secret services, or
their coordinators and interpreters in the joint
intelligence committee, knowingly passed false
intelligence to the prime minister. Their job was to
warn, which, especially in the case of the real threat
of dictators or terrorists trying to obtain weapons of
mass destruction, means warning of worst-case
scenarios even on the basis of a single source. 

How well they did that job a special inquiry must now
investigate. Nor do I believe that Tony Blair said
things he himself thought to be untrue. I can not say
the same about the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
and Office of Strategic Influence; nor about the spin
doctors who produced the second Downing Street
dossier; nor about some of the hacks who peddled this
dope. 

The broader point is that 21st-century democratic
politics operates in a media world of virtual reality,
in which appearance is more important than reality.
The genre of modern politics is neither fact nor
fiction, but faction. It's a 24/7 dramadocumentary.
This is the world not of Newspeak but of Newscorp.
It's shaped not by a single totalitarian bureaucracy,
but by an intimate, habitual interplay between
politicians, spin doctors, PR consultants and
journalists working for media corporations, whether in
London, Berlin, Paris or Washington. Visit
www.newscorp.com the website of Rupert Murdoch's News
Corporation, and you'll find there its mission
statement: "Just as our assets span the world, our
vision spans art and humor, audacity and compassion,
information and innovation. Every day, hundreds of
millions of people are entertained and enlightened by
the authors and actors, printers and producers,
reporters and directors who fulfill [sic] our
mission." Enlightened, indeed. 

Thus the original nugget of intelligence, itself often
just a guess or hint, passes from a lonely secretary
in a Baghdad office to the Pentagon, the CIA or MI6,
where it is aggregated and talked up a little (no
intelligence service wants it said that it did not
warn), to the spin doctors at the White House or No
10, where it is hyped up a lot, and thence, via
background briefings that add more hype, to the
sensationalist, often factitious front page of the Sun
or the New York Post. By the time it reaches the end
of the food chain, the original nugget is
unrecognisable. Fact has become faction. 

What can we do against this real-life Matrix? Find the
facts, and report them. "Facts are subversive," said
the great American journalist IF Stone. A friend and I
have long had a fantasy of starting a newspaper
called, simply, The Facts. Not The Truth: that is so
difficult to find, and so much a matter of
interpretation. Just the facts. For those of us who
believe this, the American quality press remains a
beacon in the darkness. That is why the revelations of
reporters inventing stories on the New York Times -
for my money, still the best newspaper in the world -
have been so shocking. 

Anyone who heard the BBC's John Humphrys on
yesterday's Today programme facing up to the wildly
spinning chairman of the Labour party, John Reid, on
the subject of the intelligence reports, knows that
the BBC generally stands up for the facts too. Against
Newspeak and Newscorp, we still have Newsnight. Across
the world, there are quality papers - including, one
hopes, the Guardian and its much-visited website - and
individual journalists that hold out. 

Yet the trend, in journalism as in politics, and
probably now in the political use of intelligence, is
away from the facts and towards a neo-Orwellian world
of manufactured reality. This is something slightly
different from (though close to) straight lies. 

At the Evian summit, for example, Chancellor Schröder
came out on to the terrace of the hotel as Bush and
Chirac were chatting awkwardly. Schröder was talking
on his mobile phone. Schröder thrust the mobile phone
into Chirac's hand, indicating this was an important
call; Chirac stepped aside to take it. Bush was left
with no alternative but to be seen chatting amicably
with Schröder, whose forced guffaw could be heard many
metres away. Schröder had his "Germany and the US kiss
and make up" photo for the next day's German papers.
Later it emerged that the caller with a message of
world political urgency for Chirac was ... Schröder's
wife Doris. Entirely stage-managed. Meanwhile,
according to those in a position to know, the truth
behind the picture is that Bush will never forgive
Schröder for what he sees as his flagrant breach of a
private promise over Iraq. 

"Two million jobs in peril", trumpeted the Sun on
Tuesday May 27. "EU to hijack our economy." This
"news" story began: "Two million jobs will be lost if
Tony Blair signs the new EU treaty, it was feared last
night." On an inside page it emerged that this 2
million figure was just a guess of one Eurosceptic
economist, Patrick Minford. Welcome to another corner
of the Matrix. 

And so it goes on. The best place to start combating
neo-Orwellianism is at the end of the food chain, in
the media. So if you want to fight the Matrix, become
a journalist. Find the facts and report them. Like
Orwell. 

timothy.garton.ash at guardian.co.uk 
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 



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