A Volcano in the Mind
Finally, I had smelled the snake oil. It was a foul smell, indeed. I realized, all of a sudden, what it felt like to know, and I don't mean "suspect," that I had been jived, deep and hard, ever since I was born. I knew exactly how Daniel felt that day when "the Man" landed, supposedly, on the moon. As a black man growing up in a racist culture he had to be less naive, less thoroughly propagandized, than I was. Yes, I had been "against the war." But I I thought Kennedy's "best and brightest" had just been incredibly stupid – "incredibly" being the key word. How could these smart guys have been so stupid?
I had no answer to this question, this paradox, and it left me befuddled and benumbed – as I've said, confused – for almost two decades. I never paid much attention to Marxism or theoretical arguments against capitalism and imperialism. I didn't read Chomsky, except what I had to for linguistics. So when the answer finally dawned on me that night in November 1988 – that it wasn't a question of stupidity at all, that those bright boys (and girls) in the government and in the media and in academia were quite simply lying – it hit me like a ton of bricks.
It's hard to find the right metaphor for something that happened entirely within my mind, with no external correlate, no actual event more dramatic (traumatic, actually) than watching a film on television. How could such a banal event have had such a powerful and long-lasting effect? I have no fucking clue. Maybe the time was ripe. And, or, I was. Whatever. It changed me, and it changed my life. Some years later I wrote that I (still) felt "like a volcano, watching itself erupt." I think that says it best. If I knew the formula, I would bottle it and sell it on the internet for nothing, because it would change the world.
The first thing I did, after meeting with Turner and his assistant Sue Turner at an Indian restaurant in London, was to write a review of the film. I sent this to Turner, and to Noam Chomsky and Fletcher Prouty, who appears prominently in the film and was later to become "Mister X" in Oliver Stone's JFK. That was the beginning of a long correspondence with Chomsky and Prouty, my half of which (since I could not legally publish theirs) I recently collected and published, along with the articles they inspired, in Chomsky, Prouty and Me. That's a kind of memoir, showing how my thinking changed over the years, particularly in relation to Chomsky.
I also corresponded intensively with Vincent Salandria and his small circle of friends between 1993 and 2000, and he permitted me to include his letters with mine in Correspondence with Vincent Salandria. The other books, Looking for the Enemy and The Transparent Conspiracy, include essays (and poems in the latter) written between 1993 and 2000, and between 2006 and 2010, respectively. I also wrote letters and gave speeches in German between 1990 and 2006 protesting against the two Bush wars ("Gulf War" and "Iraq War"), which I later published on my website.
That's a lot of words under the bridge, or since I'm mixing metaphors anyway, a lot of lava from the volcano. Everything self-published except for the internet and a couple of articles in small journals and letters to the editor of my local paper. There wasn't much satisfaction to be gained from this written work, but protesting against the Gulf wars in persona was exciting and invigorating. It gave me a chance to make up for what I saw in retrospect as my lack of engagement in opposition to the Vietnam war a quarter of a century earlier. I had given no speeches in those earlier days, and I wouldn't have had much to say. "You fucking idiots!" would have been pretty much the sum total of my "message."
Things were very different now, in the 90s. My heart and my head were fully engaged. I went full throttle against the Bush I-II-CIA forces that had already killed millions in Southeast Asia, President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy (etc., but that was enough), had lied about it all and were on the rampage again, lying their way back onto the killing fields. I enjoyed being part of the local vanguard of opposition to these wars. I was fighting the good fight. Finally. This was different, and better, than the way I had felt in the 60s, and much different and much better than the way I felt on April 15, 1986 when I stood in my living room alone, punching the air in the delusion that "the US had finally done something right."
If there is a Judgment Day, it will not be that pitiful wannabe air-punching "patriot" that will plead his case before the Maker, but the other guy, the one who by the grace of some unseen force was able to take his place. So, Your Honor, herewith the testimony of Marianne Arens of the Word Socialist Website on March 24, 2003:
Frankfurt
A total of 10,000 people gathered in the centre of Frankfurt-Main (Römerberg) to protest the US war and call for an immediate halt to the aggression.
Young people and secondary school students were prominent on the march with placards and T-shirts declaring “War is not the answer!” “Bush to the Hague!” “We are the dead of tomorrow”. Since the start of the bombing of Iraq thousands of elementary school students have taken to the streets of Frankfurt every day and protested in front of the city’s US consulate.
Speakers at the rally warned of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the war and described the conditions in Iraq. A number of speakers, however, supported the German government’s position and failed to point out that the SPD-Green coalition in Berlin had promised cooperation with American war activities based in Germany.
One of the speakers, US university professor Michael Morrissey, won considerable applause when he pointed out that according to polls a third of the American population, i.e., nearly 100 million people, rejected the war:
“This war poses the world with a new barbaric and insane vision: the insanity is called preventive war—war to stop war. This insanity is now the official strategy of the most powerful nation in the world. The politics of the United Nations has failed and in particular the media in America bears a responsibility. When two-thirds of the American people really support this gung-ho president then it is mainly because of the enormous pressure imposed by the American media. I can no longer bear to watch these laughable CNN idiots making the horrors of war into a flashy TV reality show.”
The World Socialist Web Site had set up its own stand at the demonstration and as Michael Morrissey passed by he made the point that he was a daily reader of the site, which he regarded as the best source of information. He indicated that he was aware of the forthcoming conference of the WSWS in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wished it success and hoped it would be publicised worldwide.
Frau Arens mistakenly promoted me to professor (I was a mere lecturer), but it is true that I greatly respect the work of WSWS and still look to them for if not always "the best source of information" at least one of the best and often the best. I don't think they like me anymore, though, because I have been critical occasionally. (They have banned me from commenting on the website.) Most naughtily, I exposed the founder, "David North," as David W. Green, the owner of a $25-million printing business in Michigan called Grand River Printing and Imaging (acquired by American Litho, Inc. in 2013). I wasn't the first to do this, but it is still a well-kept secret. I think the secrecy detracts from their credibility and is unnecessary, since after all, many leftist revolutionaries have come from wealthy families: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kropotkin, Castro.
As long as I am tooting my own horn I will mention a few things that I think I got right but as far as I know have gone largely unnoticed. First of all, the notion of transparent conspiracy. This sounds like a self-contradiction, an oxymoron: how can a conspiracy, which is by definition secret, be "transparent"?
In my second letter to Prouty (Dec. 30, 1989) I wrote:
Something that has struck me while reading G/L [Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, High Treason, Conservatory Press, 1989] and your letters -- if the conspiracy is this big, why didn't they do a better job of it? They surely could have done it any number of ways (a pin-prick, a drop in cup of coffee, etc.) and left no traces and no questions…. The point is, I wonder if the "carelessness" is deliberate? Do they want us to suspect the worst, and at the same time, want us to know that they can get away with it? What could be a better, and more intimidating, demonstration of absolute power and control?
When I later started corresponding with Vince Salandria (from 1993), I discovered that he had had the same idea much earlier (in 1971) and had given it a name: "transparent conspiracy." The idea is in fact oxymoronic, but it is meant to be so. It is a conspiracy, a secret plan, that is intended to be seen as such, to be seen through.
Later I applied the same idea and term to 9/11, which to me is even more transparent than the JFK assassination. The government made so many transparently (obvious) self-incriminating "mistakes" both in perpetrating the crime and in pretending to investigate it, as abundantly revealed and documented in the work of David Ray Griffin and others, that the only logical conclusion is that they were intentional.
Why would they be intentional? So that people, at least a large number of people, would see through the subterfuge and see what was really happening. And why would this be desirable? So that they would be "shocked and awed" into feeling so helpless that resistance would seem futile. I dubbed this MITOP, Making It Transparent On Purpose, in contrast to the other acronyms that had been suggested in the "9/11 truth" literature, i.e. LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) and MIHOP (Made It Happen On Purpose). I collected my essays on this theme in The Transparent Conspiracy.
This theory, I'm afraid, has been confirmed in the years since 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report, despite its myriad and glaring "omissions and distortions," as Griffin subtitled one of his many books on the subject and as many others have pointed out, remains the official "truth" about 9/11, just as the Warren Report remains the official narrative about the JFK assassination. The strategy has worked, undeniably. Regardless of the fact, as shown by polls, that a large portion of the population, maybe even the majority, do not believe what the official reports say, there have been no changes at all in the government that would reflect an admission of government guilt or even the slightest complicity in these crimes. No heads have rolled, not even at the lowest operational levels where scapegoats are usually found. But is this surprising? Can we realistically expect them to admit their own guilt? Why should they? Because it's the "right thing to do"? If they had any sense of right and wrong they wouldn't be guilty in the first place, and even the slightest admission of guilt could be the start of an avalanche – a revolution. What government in the history of the world has overthrown itself?
The decade-long persecution of Julian Assange is another case of transparent conspiracy. In fact it is much more transparent than the JFK assassination or 9/11 since the guise of legitimacy is so paper-thin that only the most naive or brainwashed individuals do not see through it. The so-called "case" against Assange is so faulty that any honest court, any honest judge and jury, would have thrown it out years ago. Everyone knows this; it has been said over and over again by many highly respected people, not only lawyers. Yet the show goes on, for that is exactly what it is: a show trial. The UK and the US are obviously working together, with their allies silently complicit, to thwart any reasonable application of the "rule of law" as it has been developed and understood in all of these supposedly "democratic" states.
The purpose of this transparent conspiracy is often pointed out. It is, again, to "shock and awe" the population into such a state of fear and trepidation that they do not dare to rise up and prevent this judicial travesty from becoming the new "law of the land." Mainstream journalists and the editors of all the major newspapers know full well that they are equally guilty under the law if Assange is convicted, because they published what he gave to them. But they are willing to sacrifice him in order to escape themselves – or so they hope – the current siege. This is cowardice of the worst sort. They know that Assange's conviction will set a precedent that will make any honest reporting of crimes committed by the state a crime against the state, depending entirely on the whim of the state and turning the very notion of "democracy" on its head.
Where are the headlines opposing this obvious conspiratorial assault on press freedom, on the First Amendment and the US Constitution, on the principles of free speech and democracy and human rights? Where are the massive demonstrations? Why are the US and UK allies, like Germany and France, and most of all Australia, Assange's home country, not recalling their ambassadors in protest? The US legal case against Assange is such an obvious travesty that no one except the government prosecutors and a few rabid fascists, who would declare Mein Kampf to be the word of God instead of Hitler if it served their interests, dare to defend it.
So why the silence? It is only too clear, as Noam Chomsky said yesterday (Dec. 17): cowardice. Cowards! You miserable fucking cowards!
I have ranted myself out for the day. The Assange issue overpowers everything. I can only scream.