The background, briefly

Last week, I became the centre of a massive corporate media storm related to two articles that appeared in this newspaper many years ago. (See related article this page). One article, published over four years ago, revealed some of my conflicted inner thoughts on that incredible morning of 9/11, one of which was to marvel at the beauty of the spectacle of those monumental symbols of commercial and military power crumbling to the ground. That article was called, by me, “My revolting confession,” because I had noticed, as clearly annunciated in the article, that my thoughts seemed to me to be disturbingly aloof to the terrific amount of death contained in those images.

The other article, written some three years ago and entitled, “We share common cause with the Islamists,” wondered what the Islamist terrorists might really be after. In this article, I considered whether there was a bridge of understanding between “us” and “them” if we saw their battle against Western cultural domination of their communities through our own fears regarding Coke machines in our kids’ schools, amongst other cultural fears.

In addition, during the maelstrom of media condemnation that culminated in the cancellation of my candidacy for the Green Party in Vancouver Kingsway, it emerged that commentators in the mainstream press were either long aware of, or quickly made themselves aware of, other prominent threads of thought in my accumulated work in these pages. These threads significantly include a deep suspicion about the motivations behind recent projections of US military power abroad, a skeptical questioning of the official White House version of the events of 9/11, and strongly-worded promptings to policy makers and citizens to prepare for the dawn of a radically different world conditioned by peak oil and climate change and all the social, economic, and political forces these new realities will unleash.

All of these themes came in for broad condemnation in the corporate media.

The nature of 21st C media, revealed

It is instructive then to note the tenor and content of the condemnations in the mainstream media and how these quickly built to a fever pitch across the country. To condemn what now seems to be the defiant act of publicly reflecting on the meaning of 9/11—that is, to strangle any attempt to complicate the seductively simple emotions prescribed for us by our leadership and echoed by our corporate media—my essay was deliberately mischaracterized as a perverted celebration of mass murder. We all know the conflicted and contradictory feelings we each experienced watching 9/11 unfold on our television screens that strange morning. Those paid to think about big events, like media commentators, know their own range of emotional responses on that morning stretched far beyond the limited range of sadness, shock, and fear as prescribed by our leaders. But in the climate of fear and insecurity 9/11 brought in its immediate wake, they know they cannot expose the full range of their emotional responses if they expect to keep their jobs, their status, and their professional associations. And if any didn’t know that, they certainly do now, after seeing what happened to me for doing exactly that.

Anxious to deter the notion that other commentators besides me should be suspected of harbouring similar thoughts—anxious because they do harbour such forbidden thoughts—some found it prudent to be seen on the record taking kicks at me. The situation is analogized by up-and-coming gangsters who must kill an associate to demonstrate their loyalty to the boss.

Regarding my consideration of the question about what the Islamists might really be after, a similar response arose. We are asked by our government leaders to consider the Islamists simply insane, their acts of terror simply mad. But even the most cursory familiarity with the political and economic history of the Middle East leaves one suspicious that the picture includes a few more colours than just madness. One might, for instance, do as I did, and go look at what Osama bin Laden is talking about when he makes repeated references to the Caliphate. Mad or not, he is consistently pointing at something of substance and meaning there, and even if we accept the frame of this battle as being our last stand against Islamist insanity, it surely serves a good purpose to have a look at what he’s pointing at, if for no other reason than to know thy enemy.

But to wonder if the Islamists might have something other than a completely insane cause to pursue is anathema to our leadership now that our leadership is committed deeply in both blood and treasure to defeating those Islamists based on the simple-minded, and short, narrative, that we must do so because they are mad, full stop.

Yet, most commentators in the press, generally being at least amateur historians, know that never in history do you see any side in any battle satisfactorily described as simply “insane.” One doesn’t have to support the Nazi movement to notice that, in its historical context, Germany in the 1930s was headed down a certain path due to certain economic, social and political conditions. Yes, madness was everywhere in Europe then, but madness alone does not begin to explain Continental history from 1933 to 1945.

Simply calling one side “mad” does not sufficiently explain any period of conflict in history—it certainly wouldn’t get a passing grade for any first year university history essay! Insanity also doesn’t sufficiently explain our present period of conflict either, and most media commentators who savaged me for saying this know it is true. It reminds me of the maxim that the most violent homophobes are often the most repressed gays. I was savagely beaten, in a sense, for shedding light on what other commentators prefer to keep in the dark—their self-knowledge, and their own still-secret awareness that this “enemy” is not “insane.” Don’t ask, don’t tell is their credo. It keeps the journalists safe, but it doesn’t make for very good journalism. For example, in the late 1940s, British newspaper columnists risked charges of treason for writing anything thoughtful about the activities and politics of Mahatma Ghandi. Today, if any columnist professes anything other than undying admiration toward who is now the number one hero, Ghandi, he risks being fired. The same process of polar-flipping can be seen in the history of western media attitudes toward Nelson Mandela. To a less obvious degree, media writers who at one time routinely used the most racist terms to describe the Germans and Japanese—once they were identified by our leadership as enemies—by today have completely forgotten the terms “the Hun” and “the Japs,” and we find books in Chapters Bookstores dissecting the mass sickness that led journalists to use that language to describe these people in the first place.

The process becomes self-feeding

The most interesting part of the process I found myself involved with occurred once a feedback loop was screechingly established between microphones and speakers. The more severely I was condemned in the media, the more other media commentators, fearful of being tarred with the same harsh brush, felt compelled to pledge their allegiance to the official line all the more urgently, a pledge best stated by condemning my work even more severely than the last commentator. This of course would lead the next one to ratchet up the condemnation further again.

The process was duplicated on the political side. Elizabeth May was forced to dump me from the Green Party and condemn my essay in harsh terms to make sure no suspicion of straying from the official line would fall on her. In this regard, she felt compelled to confess to the press that, in apparent contrast to me, she remained incapacitated for two weeks after the attacks. The main criticism of Stéphane Dion in his candidate-switching deal with May in the riding of Central Nova was that he was now tainted, by several degrees of separation from me, with suspicion of straying from the official line on Islamism, terrorism, and 9/11. Suspicion of these political leaders, it is most curious to note, was raised, psychologically self-projecting-like, by the same media and among the same commentators who are very concerned to deflect any suspicion of their own wonderings from the official line.

Am I right?

I could be wrong. I certainly can’t ask any commentator these questions. But how else to explain how five-year-old “ravings” by a “lunatic” from the “eccentric” west coast, a “marginalized” “lonely” “leftie” who “never had any political future” and who warrants “no attention whatsoever” nor deserves “any credit,” a “sociopathic prick,” as one prominent reporter called me, should come to preoccupy professional journalists throughout the Canadian media from across the country to a degree that was astonishing for its viciousness. The answer is: Anyone who reads and thinks can’t have avoided similar thoughts on that morning, and they all know that they are, as a result, a potential target for the same treatment I was subjected to. Anyone who reads and thinks knows that the human response to 9/11 was far more complicated and contradictory than mere sadness, shock and fear; they know that the official version of events that day is woefully inaccurate; they know the War on Terrorism is a cover for several post-colonial resource wars; and they know that those people our leaders wage war against are not the enemies of us they are made out to be.

Any return to peace—if peace is what we as Canadians desire—can only begin with these admissions. But observing the treatment I was subjected to for merely taking the first baby-steps toward making such admissions show the media and our political leadership still remain a long way off. Those who are making war, however, were never so paralyzed. Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld were already discussing “opportunities” the attacks presented them the very afternoon of 9/11.