Propagandized

Propagandized

Initially, this post was intended to begin with a chosen snippet, written by some poor writer for the Main Stream Media (MSM) who provided a particular example of the mind in thrall to propaganda. After scanning Little Green Footballs today, I realized the examples were far, far too numerous – a positive embarrassment of riches. I am also forced to admit that no one example is egregious enough to compare with the book I’m going to use to make my point.

For an example of  A Propagandized Mind (the link will take you to Amazon’s page), try this book.

Special Tasks

Pavel and Anatoli Sudaplatov with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schechter

1994 – 1995 Little, Brown and Company, Inc. (527 pgs.)

Pavel Sudaplatov refers to himself as an “inconvenient witness” and he is that, though not as he means us to take it. He is an unapologetic monster.

To play absolutely fair, Sudaplatov began his career as a Chekist (a particularly nasty variety of secret policeman, for those of you not steeped in Soviet lore) at twelve years old, following a loved and admired older brother out of the Ukraine and into the Russian civil war. By the time he was fourteen, in 1921-22, Sudaplatov was helping run a safe house where “Ukrainian gangsters” (or Nationalists, take your pick) held negotiations with the Red Army.

Before turning thirty, Sudaplatov undertook to first infiltrate the Ukrainian nationalists in Germany, and then to murder their leader, Konovalets. (Sudaplatov accomplished this with a bomb concealed in a box of chocolates.) He supervised the agents who murdered Trotsky in 1940. These were “special tasks”, and Sudaplatov suffers no crises of conscience for having carried them out. The murders of “Trotskyists” in Spain; the murders of Russian émigrés; the entrapment, kidnapping and murder of former ideological opponents; the infiltration and disruption of external and internal discussion groups; every one of these actions he undertook, ordered and/or supervised without the slightest qualm.

Why?

At one point, Sudaplatov writes (p. 69), “The order to eliminate Trotsky did not surprise us, because for more than ten years the OGPU and NKVD had been engaged in a war with Trotsky and his organization. For us, enemies of the state were personal enemies.”

The real tragedy of these special tasks is this: they were not necessary.

Consult Isaac Deutscher’s hagiographic three-volume biography of Trotsy to clarify this issue. From his unceremonious expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1927 to his murder in 1940, Lev Davidovich lacked influence. His remaining acolytes split as often and acrimoniously as Protestant sects in the 17^th century. They are still at it.

Were there actual Trotskyists in Spain? Refer to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia; some faction was labeled “Trotskyite”, and most of them died, bewildered, at the hands of their allies and fellow communists. To most people, in or out of the communist forces in Spain, the difference was irrelevant, the worst sort of hair-splitting.

Some of the Ukrainians had joined the Nazis and even attended party school. But generally speaking, this was a minority, and there was little left of Ukraine’s nationalists. There was talk about mounting terrorist acts, but very little action. These groups were dying. They had no money, and less support with each passing year. During the Second World War, a few bands of native Ukrainian partisans did take up arms against the Soviets. After the terror famine and the terrible purges of the ‘30’s, this is not too surprising; some did identify themselves as Banderists (Bandera being the nominal head of the Ukrainian national movement in exile). More often, however, this title was imposed by their Soviet oppressors.

As to the émigrés: if ever there existed harmless people, the Russian émigrés of the 20’s and 30’s were they. They hated the Bolsheviks, with cause. They would do the Soviet government a bad turn if they could. But they were not skilled in the arts of conspiracy; they spent most of their time earning a poor living in Western Europe, and talking. They talked a lot. They hatched grandiose schemes, published some newspapers, wrote books, and debated every possible issue endlessly. They did absolutely nothing.

All of this is a matter of record. A casual reading of readily accessible authors (Robert Conquest, Adam Ulam) will make the sheer inanity of many of Sudaplatov’s pre-war “special tasks” crystal clear. Since Sudaplatov lived in the West while infiltrating Konovalet’s organization, he could, had he chosen to open his eyes, have seen it as well. Or, in retrospect, he might have noticed his tasks were irrelevant.

To read his memoirs is to encounter a mind so steeped in Stalinist propaganda that even in the 1990’s, Sudaplatov relates his story with cheerful presumption.  Granted that he missed the worst of the purges, he still fails to acknowledge that he served a monstrous and criminal regime.

So how does this relate to our present era, and our cultural dilemmas?

Consider the current uproar over Guantanamo Bay, and general hyperventilation by people who ought to know better. The press breathlessly emphasizes allegations of Koran abuse (including a pure accident), harsh interrogation techniques (with screams of “torture!” floating everywhere), and never stop to say, Excuse me, this is ridiculous. The writers have been so thoroughly propagandized that they are in danger of fainting dead away at the thought of treatment being meted out to terrorists that wouldn’t have fazed them coming from, in James Lileks’ immortal phrasing, a high school gym teacher.

Sometimes it seems that every story leads with negative information about the United States government or military. Every story emphasizes the actions of the “insurgents”, and excuses or palliates the behavior or words of terrorist sympathizers.

This is not malice, though I sometimes find myself attributing such to the writers and editors of the MSM. This is the product of people who have been propagandized within an inch of their lives.

Reporters and editors have had it drummed into them that, in the past, the press assisted in the “dehumanization” of the foes of the United States. Reporters have been taught that this is the ultimate sin – worse than inaccuracy, worse than serving as a propaganda arm for an enemy that would destroy them without thought. These writers have been so propagandized that like the poor fool Bukharin, they can imagine no life outside of their “party”, and rush to aid those who will – if merciful – put a .22 bullet into the backs of their necks.

Sudaplatov was born in 1907; his memoirs were published in 1994-1995. After almost seventy years, looking back, he sees nothing to be ashamed of.

When our propagandized opinion makers look back, I fear that they will not be ashamed either.

I am very sorry for the monster that was Sudaplatov. I am filled with sorrow and compassion for the prisoners of modern propaganda who write for the MSM. I understand them.

That does not mean I will forgive them.