Fake news, like fake material, are contrived to look like the real thing. Those who create them, especially in the age of social media, are fakers engaged in deception. Most of fake news are the stuff from which propaganda is made. A cover for defeat, or unfulfilled promises, or an inducement to feel good especially when the outcome is terrible.
Fakers come from all cultures, and all geographic regions, especially when a dictator is actively seeking a cover-up. This is different from purposeful deception in times of armed conflict, because war strategy invariably looks for fooling the enemy.
In the age of Donald Trump, the issue of fake news has become a special industry. Trump and his supporters, whether in America or elsewhere where xenophobia is ascendant, have made faking a substitute for either truth or experience. Such fakers begin by attacking the credibility of proven truths as lies (fake news) to allow their own lies a space in the public square.
A most recent example about Trump as a faker is when, on March 20, his health care plan was withdrawn from the House of Representative rather than suffer certain defeat. Thus the Obama Care (Affordable Care Act), which Trump has vowed to "repeal and replace, from Day One in the Oval Office" continues to be the law of the land. Faking victory, in spite of that major defeat, Trump described the Democratic leadership "the real losers."
Deeper cover-ups by Trump are his denials of any contacts by him or members of his team with any Russian officials to help him win the Oval Office, his description of the Muslim Ban as "a security shield for America," his igniting hatred of Muslims by saying "they hate us, and want to kill us."
Laughing about these racist claims, the American comedians on the TV series "Saturday Night Live" had a response for Trump. On March 25/26, they said: "If 1.7 billion Muslims want to hurt you, there must be something wrong with you!!"
And how can the world ever forget a historic Iraqi faker called Al-Sahhaf?! Information Minister for Saddam Hussein who in April 2003, he declared in Baghdad: "We are surrounding the Americans, crushing them!!" This is while the American tanks were rumbling in Baghdad at a stone throw distance from Al-Sahhaf, now known as "Baghdad's Bob."
In a similar vein of faking the news was Nasser's justification of the outcome of the Six Days War which lost Arab lands to the Israeli military juggernaut in June 1967. He declared: "We were expecting the enemy to attack from the east, but they came from the west!!" How unbecoming for a military leader to justify that terrible defeat through an obtuse ignorance of what his Arab forebears have always declared: "War is cunning!!" (Al-Harb Khudaa).
Ironically it was Nasser's under appreciated successor, Sadat, who through the adoption of a grand deception plan, was able in October 1973 to regain for Egypt's military both dignity and confidence. But not before historic damage was done elsewhere. Lost, at least for now, is Arab sovereignty over the Golan, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. A huge cost due to mismanagement by Nasser as of April 1967 when he precipitated the removal of the UN peace-keepers from Sinai.
The same disease of faking news has plagued Hamas which is in control of Gaza in competition with Fatah in Ramallah which is no less faker of news than Hamas.
Hamas, the "Islamic Resistance Movement," feigns victory in the midst of disastrous consequences. In its confrontation from 2008 to 2010 with Israel which besieges Gaza, Hamas leaders claim success in the form of tunnelling for safety. One does not expect Hamas to hold Israel, the 4th largest military machine in the world at bay. But how can the total destruction of 14000 Arab dwellings in Gaza be measured by Hamas as a military success?
That pattern of deception by Arab leaders, particularly in Syria, Yemen and the Sudan, cannot be less comical. Bashar, even after the most brutal civil war in world history would have subsided, shall never be expected to rule over a non-divided Syria. And the war against the Houthis shall not end in a Yemen Republic of a united North (tribal) and South (progressive).
In the Sudan, Bashar's rule whose longevity is approaching that of the defunct Mubarak rule in Egypt, is presiding over a country which is preoccupied with this question: "Which province is expected to split away next from Khartoum: Darfour or Kordofan?"
Here the fake news in the Sudan are centered on "the national dialogue" about "the earlier national dialogue," about "the earliest national dialogue." It is the same dreary song and dance about Palestinian national unity by Abbas in "the State of Ramallah," and Mishaal in "the State of Gaza." Fakery can never be guidance toward national cohesion and progress.
So is in the grand case of the Muslim Brotherhood: Faking the news of being a social humanitarian movement while empowering its fake news machine to claim legitimacy in the face of the opposition by 35 million Egyptians in June 2013. That protest movement against turning cosmopolitan Egypt into an Islamic Emirate forced the Brotherhood to shed its humanitarian veil, revealing its true conspiratorial terroristic ethos in the land of the Nile. Legitimacy can never spring from the muzzle of a gun or the explosion of a device by the road side.
It was Kissinger who called for America's exit from Vietnam in the early 1970s. But that was also through "fake news." Stalemated by the Vietcong, and with more than 50,000 American military death count on the battlefield, Kissinger advised: "Why not declare American victory then depart from Vietnam?" It worked, but only in terms of "the departure" part of the Kissingerian equation. Ho Chi Minh knew that he had to deflate the claim of victory through the imposition of his tough terms during the Paris negotiations in the mid 1970s.
Faking news about non-achieved victories is like opium administered largely by failing leaders. It makes the populace feel good for a while. But the hangover lasts much longer causing real damage to the fabric of confidence between the Ruler and the Ruled.
But the prize for the most egregious and dangerous faker in modern history shall go to Donald Trump, the 45th president of the U.S. A book by an American author has hit the shelves in early March 2017. It is about Trump being the least fit president in US history. Its title is "How The Hell Did We Get Here?"
Getting "here" was due largely to decades of "spin." Such as America encouraging Saddam to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980? Then to turn on him in 2003 on the fraudulent claim of possessing "weapons of mass destruction."
Should I stop here?! Perhaps not. The New York Times Magazine of Sunday March 19, 2017 carried a lengthy article on Egypt. With a title of "Generation Jail," I recorded no less than 10 errors of fact (fake news). These included the fallacy that President Adly Mansour (2013-2014) was installed by the military, not through a broad national consensus.
It also included the hoax about the severity of the Egyptian law regulating demonstrations. Really? Just compare that law with the American law. You shall quickly find that the American equivalent is in fact much more restrictive than the Egyptian one. Especially in regard to: "Time," "Place," and "Manner" of holding an approved public demonstration. We all remember what happened to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Forget about the fraudulent testimony of some faculty members at the American University of Cairo (the AUC).
Lies have a very short shelf life. But their after effects could be very lasting. Just remember the horrible fake episodes about "the humane treatment" of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo!! I can build a whole graduate course of study around these two black holes!! An appropriate title for it might be "The Hate and Fake Interdependency."
NOTE: New blog postings will resume on a monthly basis until my new book is ready for the press this Fall. Its title: "War On Jihadism Ideologically: The New Islamic Religious Revolution"
No comments:
Post a Comment