On Propaganda and Islamophobia
Abukar Arman |
On Propaganda and Islamophobia
October 20, 2007 -- The daunting reality facing people of conscience is the seemingly impossible task of controlling propaganda in a free society, and how the protected freedom of the perpetrators increases the vulnerability of their potential victims.
In the past few years, while many good things happened to Muslims in America, dark clouds continue to gather over them as a result of relentless propaganda by certain special interest groups. All one has to do is randomly listen to talk radio on the AM dial and hear the overtly expressed hate that hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions in America internalize every day and night. And this, needless to say, makes the backlash of any terrorist attack in the US soil a nightmare scenario for all Muslims.
'But, these are words,' the proponents of status quo argue. 'It is not that they are throwing Molotov cocktail bombs in their homes' they insist in order to minimize the power of words.
Perhaps the most powerful skill possessed by human beings (though not all) is the ability to assemble letters and turn them into words, then cultivate these words into dynamic ideas that shape perceptions, condition attitudes, and change minds. And, like all other skills, this too can be used positively or negatively.
Throughout history, words inspired actions that freed generations from the iron fists of despotism. By the same token, words demonized human beings by labeling their thoughts wicked and their lives contemptible, thus justifying policies of repression and oppression against them.
"We constantly speak of human beings in ways which implicitly deny their humanity - in words which reduce them to being mere representatives of a class, mere symbolic representations of some principle. Bourgeois, Bolshevik, Fascist, Communist...," said Aldous Huxley in a 1936 speech delivered at the Albert Hall, London. "Not one of these words describes the concrete reality of the men and women to whom it is applied... Most people would hesitate to torture or kill human beings like themselves. But when that human being is spoken of as though he were not a human being, but as the representative of some wicked principle, we lose our scruples," Huxley added.
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