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One of the great parts in the article on how to manufacture consent for war using celebrities and humanitarian calls: Central to the CIA’s use of Catholicism w
by 1cvmask 5y ago
One of the great parts in the article on how to manufacture consent for war using celebrities and humanitarian calls:
Central to the CIA’s use of Catholicism was a man named Tom Dooley. Though the name is largely obscure today, in 1961 he placed third in Gallup’s “Most Esteemed” man in the world poll. Dooley was a Navy doctor who provided care for South Vietnamese refugees fleeing the chaos after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. His 1956 best seller Deliver Us from Evil, as well as countless articles and media appearances afterward, “justified American intervention in Vietnam and presented Vietnamese Catholics as sympathetic subjects.” He was a central-casting missionary, and the persecuted Vietnamese were precisely the kinds of people Christ charged Catholics to serve. But he was writing CIA-sponsored propaganda to build domestic support for Vietnam, and his stories weren’t “strictly speaking, true.”
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And the Edward Snowden of the CIA of that era Philip Agee:
But the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City in 1968, in which he felt the CIA was complicit, was his Damascene moment. Agee had begun to immerse himself in the leftist Catholic liberation theology movement sweeping Latin America: “I became the servant of the capitalism I rejected. I became one of its secret policemen. The CIA, after all, is nothing more than the secret police of American capitalism.”
Agee didn’t just quit. He moved to Cuba for a time to do “research,” and then, from his residence in the United Kingdom, wrote and published Inside the Company (1975), one of the first books by a former officer to air the CIA’s dirty laundry. But, controversially, he went further: in the book, Agee actually revealed the names of hundreds of active CIA officers and agents. “One way to neutralize the CIA’s support to repression,” he wrote at the time, “is to expose its officers so that their presence in foreign countries becomes untenable.”
- bradrn 5y agoI should note that these are direct quotes from the article. (I didn’t notice at first.)
- drran 5y agoSo, how to manufacture consent for war?
- rbanffy 5y agoYou always justify it with something the people you need to support you deeply believe. For instance, in Brazil, we went through a coup and elected a fascist because most people really believe the previous two governments were corrupt and would implement a communist dictatorship given time. The fact they are not measurably more or less corrupt than their predecessors, that they formed a coalition with Center-right parties in order to govern, and that their platform is timidly social democratic were, and continue to be, largely ignored. To the point that now, after more than 600 thousand avoidable deaths, unprecedented unemployment, countless corruption scandals directly connected to him, and the worst economic crisis since the 90’s, only 58% support his impeachment.
- drran 5y agoBut you have no war yet. If you really want to know how to manufacture consent for war, you should study Goebbels works, or Russian propaganda (Putin likes Goebbels).
- rbanffy 5y agoYou sponsor coups so you don't need a war. Much cheaper, and also saves a lot of face.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago> You always justify it with something the people you need to support you deeply believe. Like the need for Democracy and Freedom!
- rbanffy 5y ago> leftist Catholic It’s really hard to be a Catholic, or a Christian, and not lean left. I do not mean the authoritarian regimes that outlawed religion, but at the core of Christian faith lies the notion of equality, forgiveness and understanding the other, as well as loving everyone, even those who do not reciprocate. I say this as an Atheist, that these ideas are pretty clever for a guy who lived 20 centuries ago.
- bopbeepboop 5y agoI think you’re reading your biases in, by choosing your emphasis. There’s just as many passages talking about proper submission to authority, God anointing rulers to justly order you around, various roles within society, that women shouldn’t hold positions of authority, etc. You lean left, so the verses justifying your own beliefs stand out most to you. This is one of the “common mistakes” in reading religious texts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- netcan 5y agoI don't think left and right are meaningful outside of their political career texts. Catholicism has, at various times in modern history, represented both the far left and far right, or places in between.
- rbanffy 5y agoMany political groups (Catholic Church among them) have used Christianism to ascend and maintain power, bending it to their purposes, but that doesn't make them strict followers of what Jesus taught his disciples.
- beerandt 5y ago>equality, forgiveness and understanding the other, as well as loving everyone, even those who do not reciprocate. But these things only hold personal spiritual/ redemptive value if done voluntarily. Forced charity isn't charitable. Not all ideals that you believe in (religious or not) should be manifested through political and then legal implementations. And if you miss that key aspect... then it just becomes another philosophy where the ends justify the means.