How Fox News Created a Monster
http://www.alternet.org/media/how-fox-news-created-monster
This US Army handout photo obtained June 1, 2014 shows Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, before his capture by the Taliban in Afghanistan
Anyone who read 1984 in high school should know that the target of propaganda can turn on a dime. But we tend to forget this lesson whenever the medias real-life Big Bros crank out their version of Weve always been at war with Eastasia, as theyve being doing of late.
Its worth quickly revisiting Orwell. On the sixth day of Hate Week, he wrote,
when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to piecesat just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.
There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place
. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.
Weve recently gone through a Hate Week or two ourselves. Only months ago, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last POW in Afghanistan, had been valorized by the right. Senators McCain, Ayotte and Inhofe, Sarah Palin and Allen West and right-wing websites wanted Bergdahl freed at all costs, and blamed Obama for leaving him behind.