Noam Chomsky warned about it. Manufacturing consent.
How does it happen? How do elites convince an electorate to participate in their own destruction? How do they get ordinary citizens to allow themselves to be enslaved by a regime whose authority is built on lies, plunder, rape and genocide? How do they get working people to welcome, to encourage, to worship a fleecing of everything they have, their health, their wealth, their homes, even their humanity? How do they do it?
It's actually very simple.
According to Professor Chomsky, an "analysis of major media" reveals at its most basic function a "propaganda model" for establishing absolute social control. Two factors are involved. First, all dissenting voices are "excluded, marginalized, [or] eliminated." Second, all the news that's fit to publish is "determined, selected, shaped [and] controlled" in "service to the interests of elite groups." These groups decide what information will be circulated and how it will be circulated, and then it's repeated endlessly by the media outlets they own. The threat of Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction is a perfect example. It was a complete fabrication. Yet people still believe it, thirteen years later.
A more recent example of elites deceiving the governed can be seen in the state-sponsored sturm und drang surrounding Queen Elizabeth II's funeral. Wonders above! The solemnity! The pageantry! Like the Oscars or the Olympics, it was the performance of a lifetime. Whether queuing with the crowd or watching the telly, one could be forgiven for thinking the endless parade of wealth and splendor was not of this world, but more a child's vision of a fairytale. Of course, in reality, the working people of England have been ravaged by privatization and neoliberalism, leaving millions either "living in poverty" or completely "destitute." But you wouldn't know it from the coverage.
Let us count the ways.
Elizabeth was crowned at 26 and reigned for 70 years (1952-2022), the longest in British history. Her marriage was fairytale, attended by dignitaries from around the world; her wedding gown took 350 seamstresses a week to create. Her ascension, like her nuptials, a romancing of history, was captured in a single sentence: "she climbed a tree a princess and came down a Queen." Elizabeth liked nutmeg and lemon in scrambled eggs. She loved pets, chocolate cake and Emma, her favorite horse, though she didn't like anyone in the family eating "potatoes," no doubt a nod to the Irish. She died "peacefully" at Balmoral, Scotland, and was officially mourned for ten days. Her entire family took part, including her favorite son, Andrew, and her great-grandchildren, George and Charlotte, 9 and 7 respectively, both dressed up like wax figurines. It's been reported Princess Anne was with her mother right up to the end, telling reporters she was there "to join [the Queen] on her final journey." Elizabeth was laid to rest in a vault at Westminster Abbey. Such was the power of her influence that she not only planned her own funeral, the cost of which she cleverly billed to taxpayers, she exercised "authoritarian control" over coverage of the funeral after she died, with her family micromanaging every five minutes of footage.
For ten days viewers were inundated with aristocratic fantasies intended to convince them that the Queen and, by extension, her entire family are a special class of people chosen by God to rule and thus worthy of their homage, not to mention their fealty. The funeral as spectacle, with English elites entering London as Wotan and his cohorts entered Valhalla. Cue the Wagner. Elizabeth II wasn't a slithering viper who ran a monstrously evil corporation and who has shed her final skin. She's the Queen, the matronly figurehead who sat at the head of the British "Commonwealth" and about whom nothing untoward can be said.
Talk about manufacturing consent!
Elizabeth II's entire fortune can be traced to the slave trade (here & here), which her family monopolized in the 17th Century, first, through the "Company of Royal Adventurers Trading" and later through the "Royal African Company." From Ireland to Barbados to India, everywhere one looks is the same: British elites maintained control over their colonies through savagery and brute force, policies the gov't could not have implemented without the Crown's approval ("Royal Prerogative"). As it turns out, the tree Elizabeth descended happened to be rooted in Kenya, which at the time was demanding its independence from British colonial rule. The gov't's response? A brutal military crackdown (1952-1960) that saw 6 million bombs dropped, thousands of innocents murdered and an estimated 1.5 million Kikuyu rounded up into concentration camps, where some were "castrated with pliers." (Kenya is Elizabeth's Iraq, complete with her very own Abu Ghraib.) Forty years later she demonstrated the same calloused indifference when she visited Jallianwala Bagh, India, scene of the "Amritsa Massacre," blithely dismissing the entire episode as, ahem, "difficult." Two thousand dead and injured. No apology necessary.
Descendants of the people who received this Royal treatment have, quite naturally, refused to consent to the Crown's manufactured distortions, saying the monarchy "should die," "racism is as British as tea," "we will not mourn" the Queen and the like. Who can blame them? Margaret Kimberley has written eloquently about the Crown's central role in British atrocities throughout the African diaspora and encourages readers to think through ("decolonize") elite misinformation. Not an easy task. Shortly after the Mau Mau Rebellion, Elizabeth banned "coloured immigrants or foreigners" from serving in any official capacity in her household. They could work only as "servants." The Queen? Sweet, kindly Elizabeth? Think Trump in a skirt.
Speaking of skirts, one of the ways elites manipulate the electorate here in the US can be found in the oft-repeated refrain, "No one is above the law." It's the heart and soul of the democratic experiment. Americans are not separated into rigid social classes like those that dominated Europe throughout the Middle Ages, in which one group is elevated above all others simply because of a family name. Not here. Not in America. In America, whether you're an hourly worker, a Congressional representative or a corporate CEO, we're all equal in the eyes of the law. The principle is sacrosanct, obedience a duty. "No one is above the law."
The line is recited so often it's become part of the environment, something natural, like breathing. The echo is constant, over and over, by everyone everywhere. Who says this? Lawrence O'Donnell says it. Mrs Greenspan says it. Lawrence Tribe and Merrick Garland say it. Letitia James says it. Members of the House and Senate say it, including Liz Cheney, Jerry Nadler, Ted Cruz, Adam Kinzinger, Elizabeth Warren, Lindsey Graham, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ted Lieu and Nancy Pelosi. So do Barack Obama, Mike Pence and Hillary Clinton. Even the Supremes say it. "No one is above the law."
Except, there's a problem, isn't there?
If no one is above the law, if, legally speaking, we're all treated the same regardless of our station, how to explain George Bush's invasion of Iraq? Or Dick Cheney's corruption, or Condoleezza Rice's lies? What about CIA spying on Congress, or the IG's analysis of the Mueller report, or the origin of the Steele dossier? What about Gina Haspel's torture program, Barack Obama's secret kill list or Hillary Clinton's destruction of democracy in Honduras? Remind me. How, exactly, does the law apply to Brett Kavanaugh, Ginny Thomas, Ron Johnson, Amy "Offred" Barrett, Bill Barr, Clarence Thomas, Bill Clinton, Andrew Cuomo or Victoria Nuland?
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