Marxist Response to September 11 - Article Example

The article “The Dialectics of Terrorism: A Marxist Response to September 11”, by Peter McLaren, contains many significant ideas about how the UnitedStates has digressed since the horrible terrorists attacks on 2001. One such manner that the government has slipped is through the Patriot Act, which takes away from the privacy of the individual. Another such manner is through the censorship of media, as much of the media is controlled by corporate interests, making the truth very difficult to come by in the mainstream media. Overall, this article effectively interprets the state of the United States from a Marxist perspective. A significant aspect of this article is when it discussed the Patriot Act. On the surface, this policy is used to protect the population of the United States by preventing future terrorist attacks before they can be carried out. In reality, however, it is a serious invasion of privacy that makes each and every American susceptible to having their phone conversations listened to, their mail read, and their lives completely interfered with and is described as “the remorseless widening of powers by hard-liners, revanchists, and hawks over the average citizen“ (McLaren, 2002, P. 172). A policy that this can be compared to is how the Nazi Party treated people of Jewish descent in the time preceding and during World War Two. At this time, Jewish people were forced to wear markings that symbolized their heritage. They were then discriminated against by nearly everyone, making their lives nearly impossible to live. While the American policy is not as flagrant as the German one was, it is similar in its discrimination of visible minorities. Arab people have been singled out as terrorists and, therefore, they are not susceptible to having the policies that are laid out in the Patriot Act being applied to them. This means that Arab Americans are more likely to have their privacy invaded than Americans of other descent, making it very difficult for them to function as they normally would. For example, “a Jordanian foreign exchange student, who confessed to once having had thoughts of being a terrorist martyr, but subsequently renounced those ideas, was summarily ordered deported within five days by a U.S. immigration judge in Dallas. The student, three months shy of earning a master’s degree in software engineering at a Texas university, was under investigation by the FBI for undisclosed reasons” (Cornehls, 2003). This is an example of someone who had changed his ways, but was deported anyway. One has to wonder if he would have been under surveillance if he had not been Arab. In addition, one has to wonder if the government would have pardoned him if he had not been Arab. Former segregationists are currently serving as Senators in the United States, but a man who has publicly denounced his past and was close gaining a Master’s degree, which should be proof that he does not wish to be a terrorist, was immediately deported, which sounds very problematic. In the future, steps must be taken in order to ensure that the United States does not become more like Germany was previously, or even like the United States was during the Cold War. It is unfair to racially profile individuals, especially when dealing with something that is as serious as terrorism. Being accused of having terrorist ties can ruin a person’s life, as he or she will not be able to find a job, a place to live, or even friends, as people will fear being associate with a possible terrorist. This is problematic because as an innocent individual could be arrested on suspicion of involvement with terrorism, simply because a law enforcement agent believes that he or she saw a reason to do so. If this person is not guilty, he or she will still have these same problems associated with them, which can potentially ruins peoples’ lives. This is a particularly major problem for Arab Americans, as they are under constant scrutiny for their actions, as the present stereotypes say that they are more likely to be involved in terrorist activities. They are also now currently more likely to have their privacy invaded, which leaves them feeling helpless, as there is nothing that they can do to get their privacy back, aside from leaving the country. The U.S. Patriot Act must be amended in order to further protect those of Arab descent, as the current provisions are not enough. Act One says that ethnicity should not be a factor in this process, but it is clear that it does matter, which means that the United States government must step in and help out Arab and Muslim Americans so that they do not become blackballed like the Jewish people in Germany. McLaren argues that “We now have the so-called Patriot Act, which sets the stage for propaganda trials once reserved for military dictatorships who were our cold war adversaries“ (McLaren, 2003, P. 117). Another aspect in this article is the idea of media censorship. We are in a constant state of censorship because those who are in control of the media do not wish for us to know everything that is going on. This is because, according to Noam Chomsky, the media is an indoctrination of the elites. The elites in society are very often heavily involved in politics and they help the public’s decision making process by making the information known to the reader. If the owner of a newspaper has a particular political view, however, he or she will not allow information that is harmful to his or her cause reach the public because “after all, the mainstream media are part of the corporate sector that dominates the economy and social life”(Chomsky, 2006, P. 152). This sort of censorship is very common in the media, as the publisher has the right to print what he or she wishes the public to see. Secondly, the media can be used to eliminate the rest of the population from the decision making process. Since the media has control over how the campaigns and elections are covered, it has control over how the public perceives it as well. This is because, “the facts are available, of course, but they are rarely discussed in the mainstream media. To unscroll these facts in public would be to participate in a ritual that challenges the very sanctity of our media-manufactured patriotism” (McLaren, 2003, P. 116). The media can either make the public aware of what is happening, or neglect to do so if a certain political ideology is deemed to be unacceptable to the publisher. The media is so highly filtered because of who the elites who run the media hire as journalist. This system has been in place for a number of years, so those at the top of these media conglomerates will only hire people who they believe will report was is meant to be reported. As “it has become dangerous to think, to ask too many questions, or to look beyond the face value of whatever commentary is served up to us by our politicians, our military, and our so-called intelligence agencies, summarized daily in the infantilizing screeds of daily media columnists who have disingenuously become their Beverly Hills lap dogs. Not only has dialectical thought been lamentably undervalued and shamefully underpracticed by these media commentators, but political propaganda in the name of Western truth has been accorded supercelestial status“ (McLaren, 2002, P. 173). What is meant to be reported, according to these elites, is the news that will not rile anyone up and will keep the status quo. The less the general population knows, the better, since the status quo is what has made these elites rich and powerful. When a journalist writes an assignment, he or she will often have to internalise the values of the story to meet up with the values that their employer wishes them to have. This is a form of censorship because the true story is not told. This happens quite frequently, as even though the journalists are not told what to write, they know that there are certain things within the code that they cannot write about. This is particularly true when it comes to foreign policy, as this is a particularly touchy subject for journalists and publishers. Hiring in this industry is based on the writer’s willingness to conform to this system. In book What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky says that “the major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers - that is, other businesses. The product is audiences. For the elite media that set the basic agenda to which others adapt, the product is, furthermore, relatively privileged audiences”(Chomsky, 2000, P. 93). Although McLaren some very good points in his texts, he fails for point out what is happening on a global scale, as the censorship of media is not only an American problem. With so many cultures all over the world, it is easy to see why there could be problems regarding the globalisation of media, since different cultures will interpret events differently. For example, the ongoing War in Iraq will be covered differently by various news outlets in different countries, depending on those countries’ cultural beliefs. In Muslim culture, an individual would be labelled as a hero for committing a martyr attack, while North American Christian culture would label such an event in a negative manner. Since it is a culture issue, there really is no right or wrong, as everything is based on interpretation. The problem with the globalisation of media is that one of the cultures would have to sacrifice hearing the events in the manner that it would be accustomed to hearing it in. If Muslim countries no longer had local news coverage, and were only exposed to only American media coverage of events, they would not be getting the same culturally relevant information that they do now. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union relied heavily on the media in order to influence its people, which is also very symbolic of the country’s culture. In South Africa, the media is also a very important tool for keeping the people, especially white people, informed and the country would change greatly if a globalise media was formed. There are so many different cultures around and each one of them has its own unique and distinct ideas and, therefore, it is very important that each of them is provided with a voice to reach its own people. If media is ever completely globalise, we could see cultures beginning to fade from existence because they will no longer have their own voices in the world. If this was to happen, we could see American culture dominate the world even more than it already does, so it is essential that cultural identities be included in any discussions of the globalisation media in the present day world. It has been said that “the phenomenon of homogenisation in world media systems was first emphasized as a scholarly issue in the cultural imperialism literature of the 1960s and 1970s. Cultural imperialism theory was obviously a theory of external influence”(Hallin and Mancini). Overall this article is effective because it explores an important, yet often ignored, ideology in America today. Since the Cold War, Marxism has been pushed under the rug because the corporate interests of the United States government fear the problems that it could eventually bring. This article mentions significant problems with domestic policy in the United States that are making the country less tolerable to live in. While McLaren does miss out on some points, he is quick to criticize the government for many things that it has done, which is rare in today’s suddenly censored world. This work by McLaren is overall effective and is a significant contribution to the sociology of knowledge because it questions popular knowledge and digs deeper into the knowledge of the American psyche. Sources Cornehls, Jim (July/August 2003), ‘The USA Patriot Act: The Assault on Civil Liberties‘. ZMagazine. 16(7/8), Viewed 11 June 2007. http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Aug2003/cornehls0803.html Chomsky, N. (2006), Imperial Ambitions: Coversations with Noam Chomsky on the Post 9/11 World, New York: Penguin. Chomsky, N. (2000), What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Tucson: Odonian Press. Hallin, Daniel C. and Mancini, Paolo. ‘Americanisation, Globalisation and Secularization: Understanding the Convergence of Media Systems and Political Communication in the U.S. and Western Europe‘, viewed 8 December 2007. http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/f_hallin_homogenization.htm McLaren, Peter (2002), The dilectics of terrorism: a Marxist response to September 11, Cultural Studies ?Critical Methodologies, 2(2): 169-190. McLaren, Peter (2003), The dialectics of terrorism: a Marxist response to September 11 (Part two: unveiling the past, evading the present)". Cultural Studies ?Critical Methodologies, 3(1): 103-132. Read More