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David Pakman: Sut Jhally is here, Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation
and UMass professor, my former professor. Thanks for coming down.
Sut Jhally: Sure, my pleasure.
David: You will be doing a re-screening of 2004's "Hijacking Catastrophe" at Smith College
on September 11th at Wright Hall at 2:00 pm. At 4:00 pm, you'll be doing "War Made Easy".
You'll be there to take questions for both?
Jhally: That's right, I will be there, and also Vijay Prashad, who's from Trinity College,
will be there as well to take questions and answer anything that comes up.
David: We've been looking at a lot of different angles now 10 years after 9/11, and way back
even when I had you as a professor, you were already talking about the use of 9/11 to justify,
in many cases incorrectly, military action, domestic spying, PATRIOT Act, etc.
And now that we've had a little bit more time, now that there's 10 years between 9/11 and
where we are today, is that still going on to the same extent? Has it increased? Is it
less of a concern now that Barack Obama, a supposedly progressive candidate, is president?
Has it changed at all?
Jhally: Well, just look where we are. We're still in Iraq and we're still in Afghanistan.
I mean, we are in a permanent war economy. America will always be at war. You know, sometimes
it will be made easier by, you know, events that are going on, but remember that the permanent
war economy demands wars.
In that sense, you know, 9/11 was a gift from Heaven for the military-industrial complex,
because they didn't even have to try to figure out how to increase military budgets. I mean,
they were... if you remember, you know, the neoconservatives were talking about, how do
we get the military budget up? And they thought only something really drastic would, you know,
would do it.
And, you know, two years later, they couldn't have dreamt in their dreams, you know, they
couldn't have dreamt how large the military budget would become and how it's kept increasing
since then.
You asked about, you know, Obama. Obama's, you look at Obama's military budget, it's
actually bigger than the military budget, you know, than in the past. I mean, this is
irrespective of who's in charge. This is irrespective of... Obama is, you know, there's a lot of
hopes for Obama, but you have to remember, you don't become president of the United States
by being a radical. The job of the president of the United States is to manage the empire,
and that is Barack Obama's job.
David: There's a study I vividly remember looking at, I think in 2004, from PIPA which
pointed out how likely people were to support going into Iraq based on three particular
misconceptions. One of those three misconceptions was that 9/11 was connected to Iraq, something
that now we know to be completely untrue, something Colon Powell indicated. He wasn't
completely comfortable in making the case for it, even though he was being pushed to
do it.
That was huge at the time, was it not? It's impossible to go back and say what would have
been in if that connection hadn't been made, but at the time, that was a really big deal
in getting support for going into Iraq.
Jhally: Well, it was what... they had to spend, remember, about a year and a bit to do the
propaganda to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11 when there was no link, right? And that required
a lot of ideological work to do, to such an extent that after that year, you know, the
vast majority of the American population believed that somehow Iraq and Saddam Hussein was connected
with 9/11.
I think the vast majority of the American population still believes that. I think it's
one of the really interesting things about how ideology works is that facts actually
don't really make any difference anymore, even though everyone has now... you know,
even George Bush said it had nothing... Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
David: Many times has been said, yeah.
Jhally: Yeah. But if you did the public opinion polls, that is still the predominant view.
I mean, if you might remember, when I, you know, when you were in my class, that I always
used to quote Confucius, who said, you know, who was once asked by someone, you know, what
would you do if you were ever in charge? What would you do if you were ever to remain in
power? And he said he would, quote, "rectify the language". That is, if you can control
the language, reality doesn't matter.
David: So there's the issue of the Iraq War, but then we saw it with the PATRIOT Act, warrantless
wiretapping, CIA black sites, clearly against international law a lot of what was going
on with extraordinary rendition, just kind of because of the narrative that exists since
9/11, people don't react in the visceral way, with outrage, that maybe they would if that
wasn't the context, right? I mean...
Jhally: Well, 9/11 I think was one context. We also have to remember that there is a...
there was a context already before 9/11 which really ramped up after it which is anti-Arab
ideology and Islamophobia. And that is what 9/11 kind of coalesced, was fear of the Arab
world, fear of anyone who was different.
And that fear was used in such a way, I mean, the film that we did, you know, "Hijacking
Catastrophe", was called "9/11 Fear and the Selling of American Empire". And so that cultivation
of fear was absolutely central to it.
And to some... you know, you may remember, actually, in "Hijacking", you know, we quote...
I always get them mixed up, I think it's Goering, he said you make a population scared, you
can do whatever you want to them.
David: Corporate media has struggled a little bit I think with how to handle this issue
of torture. And recently, I don't-- it was definitely Wolf Blitzer on CNN, there was
a way that he referred to waterboarding and other... I think the term was "so-called enhanced
interrogation techniques". And it's unbelievable, because if he were to say, "which some consider
torture," or, "which many consider torture," or, "which by international law are considered
torture," he would be accused, Wolf Blitzer would be accused of being part of that so-called
"liberal media". So...
Jhally: Just by referring to... yeah.
David: Just by referring to it, right. So it's almost like we can't even get... number
one, what is the... what is the unbiased way to refer to those techniques? I don't actually
know the answer, but there's this fear in the corporate media of even appearing to be
somewhat open to the fact that maybe it is torture. I think they don't really know how
to go with it, or how to handle that.
Jhally: Well, and because the moment you mention the word "torture", then, you know, it conjures
forward all kinds of things.
David: It changes...
Jhally: So you just can't... you just can't mention it.
David: Right.
Jhally: You have to call it something else. But I think they could use it now. I think
especially... I think especially young people wouldn't bat an eyelid about it. I mean, you
know, they've grown up on... in an atmosphere of fear. They've grown up with video games,
they've grown up with movies that, you know, have this as kind of common-sensical stuff.
And so torture, I mean, it's one of the things I'm, I mean, as you said, why aren't people
outraged at this? Why aren't people outraged at what is being done in the name of, you
know, American values and American security? Which is the last thing that's going to make
America secure, is doing these kinds of things.
David: Is it a hard argument to counter when neoconservatives will say even though there
are legitimate concerns about what has been done by the government since 9/11, we haven't
had another attack like it, and therefore it must somehow be working, even if at face
value, you can say well, it may be that there wasn't a similar attack attempted since then,
we don't know. Some say there have, some say there haven't. Is that a hard argument to
counter when you're making... when you're making a critique?
Jhally: Well, I mean, it depends what you mean by, you know, the attacks. There's been
lots of attacks in Iraq. I mean, that became, then, the focus of anti-American activity,
and that's where people all over the world went. And if you think there haven't been
attacks on Americans since...
David: All over the world.
Jhally: All over the world since 9/11, then you're living in another world.
David: Sure.
Jhally: And we then, I mean, to the extent that we haven't had an attack here, although
there've been domestic attacks, there've been other attacks by right-wingers.
David: Which interestingly enough are completely absent from, for example, New York Congressman
Peter King's hearings about American Muslims, no mention of the 20-plus executed right-wing
terror attacks, which are always portrayed in the media as lone wolf, unconnected from
any kind of political discourse in the country.
Jhally: Well, I mean, the Norway attack was I think the perfect example of that, right?
David: Yeah.
Jhally: When it first happened, I mean, "The New York Times" immediately linked it, they
said to some Jihadist group because some, you know, vague person on the internet said
it was connected to it. I mean, that was the headline on, you know, online. And then they
called it terrorism.
And the moment they found out, actually, that no, it wasn't actually a Muslim group, it
wasn't a radical Muslim group, it was actually a homegrown Norwegian, you know, Norwegian
right-winger, "terrorism" stopped being used, and it became, as you said, you know, about
this, you know, lone wolf.
David: He's crazy.
Jhally: He's crazy, yeah, and therefore...
David: Right.
Jhally: So it's to the extent that terrorism now actually is a meaningless word if terrorism
can only be applied to Muslims and to Arabs and any other kind of political violence is
called something else.
David: Similar to saying that we are in a global war on terror has also... we've in
a sense been desensitized to that. It's just a constant. It's what it always is. The United
States is always in a global war against terror, is it not?
Jhally: It is. And we have to remember, that is good for certain interests within the United
States. It's really good for the military-industrial complex.
And I just want to... I want to keep stressing that. This is... and that's not even... it
doesn't even require a conspiracy. This is an institutional, you know, construction within
the United States in terms of how the economy functions, in terms of how the military functions,
that there are so many interests now in this that it has to keep going, and that it just
needs excuses.
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