Critics From The United States

"That is one of the media's most serious responsibilities, to open up the discussion."

"When George W. Bush and his foot soldiers can't build an airtight legal case, suspicion and xenophobia will suffice."

"The lesson had been learned from Vietnam-a lesson in manipulation. In Iraq, there would be no daily television images of the human toll of war. The government and the media would portray a clean war, a war nearly devoid of victims."

"The Bush team has invoked a basic principle of propaganda: Control the images and you control the people."

"imagine if the U.S. media showed uncensored, hellish images of war-even for one week. What impact would that have? I think we would be able to abolish war."

"This is not a media that is serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions. This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government spin and passing it off as journalism."

"We are a compassionate people. But people cannot take action if they don't have accurate information."

"If you are opposed to war, you are not a fringe minority. You are not a silent majority. You are part of a silenced majority. Silenced by the mainstream media."

"Vibrant debate and dissent exist in this country, but you are not reading or hearing about this in the mainstream press."

"In a society where freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution, our media largely acts as a megaphone for those in power. That's why people are so hungry for independent media-and are starting to make their own."

"Why has Democracy Now! grown so quickly? Because of the deafening silence in the mainstream media around the issues-and the people that matter most. People are now confronting the most important issues of the millennium: war and peace, life and death. Yet who is shaping the discourse? Generals, corporate executives, and government officials."

"I began hosting Democracy Now! in 1996, when it was launched as the only daily election show in public broadcasting. Listener response was enormous. Suddenly the daily struggles of ordinary people workers, immigrants, artists, the employed and the unemployed, those with homes and those without, dissidents, soldiers, people of color-were dignified as news. I call it trickle-up journalism. These are the voices that shape movements-movements that make history. These are people who change the world just as much as generals, bankers, and politicians. They are the mainstream, yet they are ignored by the mainstream media."

"It's still much the same. On any given day, you can listen to the news on CNN or National Public Radio, then tune in to a Pacifica station. You would think you were hearing reports from different Planets. We inhabit the same planet, but we see it through different lenses."

"In 1981, the KKK's Grand Wizard claimed that his greatest act "was engineering the bombing of a left-wing radio station," because he understood how dangerous Pacifica was."

"We have a decision to make every hour of every day, and that is whether to represent the sword or the shield. Democracy now."

"We must build a trickle-up media that reflects the true character of this country and its people. A democratic media serving a democratic society."

"Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras, and microphones into our own communities and out to the wider world."

"[On the interview on Election Day 2000 with then-sitting president Bill Clinton, the Clinton administration threatening to ban her from the White House, and Access journalism]: Well, first of all, we hadn't agreed to any ground rules. Clinton called us. Second, we wouldn't have agreed to any. The only ground rule for good reporting I know is that you don't trade your principles for access. We call it the "access of evil.""

"You have not only Fox, but MSNBC and NBC-yes, owned by General Electric, one of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers in the world. MSNBC and NBC, as well as FOX, titling their coverage taking the name of what the Pentagon calls the invasion of Iraq: 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'...They research the most effective propagandistic name to call their operation. But for the [capitalist] media to name their coverage what the Pentagon calls it-everyday seeing 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'-you have to ask: if this were state media, how would it be any different?" There are "immigrants now in detention facilities, they have no rights, not even a lawyer. And we have to be there ad we have to watch and we have to listen. We have to tell their stories until they can tell their own"

"During an Iraqi protest of the US invasion ABC's "Peter Jennings said to Chris Cuomo, "What are they doing out there? What are they saying?" And Cuomo said, “Well, they have these signs that say 'No Blood for Oil,' but when you ask them what that means, they seem very confused. I don't think they know why they're out here." I guess they got caught in a traffic jam. Why not have Peter Jennings, instead of asking someone who clearly doesn't understand why they're out there, invite one of them into the studio, and have a discussion like he does with the generals?"

"I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day, War and peace, life and death. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society."

"In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world."

"The media are using a national treasure--that's what the public airwaves are. And they have a responsibility to bring out the full diversity of opinion or lose their licenses."

"It's like watching a nature documentary about piranha in which all the deadly fish do is write each other love notes: Eventually, we want to see them bare their teeth and shred an ox."

"Good friends in hard times and hard friends in good times."

"So long as the Russian Soul, chaotic and full of longing, animated by a strong will yet of weak resolve, exists within the sphere of influence of a Western organism that is conscious of its World-Mission, there will remain in Russia a powerful urge towards reunion with the West. The European Revolution of 1933 found an echo in Russia, and when the European armies entered Bolshevist territory in 1941. They were hailed everyplace there as “liberators.” Marshal Vlasov could have raised armies of millions and affiliated them with the European military forces, but, unfortunately, the European Command did not make use of such aid until it was too late. The possibility indeed exists that a second monstrous upheaval — with a pro-Western Cultural aim — will overthrow the Bolshevist regime. This possibility might be realized either through a renewed Western invasion or through the appearance of a new Peter the Great. It is a further Imponderable. Today Europe must reckon with Russia as part of the Outer Revolt against its World-Mission."

"The Russian Soul is too virile ever to be strangled by something alien. Hence the Jewish entity, despite the dominant position to which it had attained with the Revolution of 1917, was incapable of maintaining its unconditional rule. The expulsion of Trotsky in 1928 marks the downward turning point for Jewry in Russia."

"In Russia, Marxism is treated as a religion, for the prime characteristic of the Russian soul is its religiosity. Whatever this soul takes seriously, be it even the absurd end-product of Western materialism — Pavlovian reflexology, scientific psychology, — it deals with in a religious way, that is, in a way transcending action. Nowhere in Russian life is there anything that in any way corresponds to the Marxist schema."

"The American People is matriarchal, isolationist, and interested only in economic matters."

"An army means, first, morale; second, an officer-corps; third, a high command; and, fourth, the human material of the troops."

"American life is essentially oriented to economics, and every aspect of Life is simply referred for its justification thereto."

"Americans are primarily economics-oriented. The Masculine Principle is to realize higher ideas through art, warfare, Politics. Nothing could be further from the American ideal than that. The Feminine Principle is to nourish and preserve life — that is the American ideal. Americans therefore do not delight in an "empire" that continually lays claim to their wealth and constantly demands a reduction in their standard-of-living. In its traditional isolation, America needed no armies, garrisons, subventions to foreign countries, and Great Wars. The superficial polarization of America has brought the American People economic injuries, and thus confirmed it in its isolation."

"Every man of significance in our times is History-oriented, for one cannot profoundly understand our times, their Inner Imperative and Mission, unless one ponders deeply the meaning of Leibnitz' aphorism: Le présent est chargé du passé et gros de l’avenir. In his inner life, Western man now cannot take sides in the bygone struggles between Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, Olivares and the Cortes, Richelieu and the Fronde, Stuarts and Parliament, Bourbons and Habsburgs, Church and State, England and Spain, Italy and Austria. Today the loftier European identifies himself with both sides in these titanic struggles, with the totality of our precious Western History, for that History is his own spiritual biography written before him in large letters. He, too, had his Gothic, Reformation, Enlightenment, and rationalist-revolutionary phase — his youthful religiosity and crusades, his Democratic-Liberal-Communist phase; and now, in his fullest maturity, he has entered, spiritually and materially, the Age of Absolute Politics, in which the struggle is planetary and its motive Cultural. That means not 19th century petty-states and nations, but that only the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium can take part in it."

"Spiritually, the entire Western Civilization — particularly from 1750 onwards — was Anglicised. The thought- and action-systems of 19th century were English: Marxism arose on the basis of English capitalist economics; Darwinism reflects the English individualistic-competitive world-outlook; Materialism, Legalism, Capitalism, Social-Ethics — all are of English provenance, and they were the foundations of the 19th century."

"In this century the idea of vertical race is dead. We can now view race only in horizontal terms — the race one feels in oneself is everything, the anatomic-geographic group to which one belongs means nothing. In this stage of our Cultural development, the principle of individuality reasserts itself, as it asserted itself in the earliest days of the Gothic. During the dark age of Materialism, it was believed that heredity and environment were everything; with the decline of Materialism the human Soul regains its former dignity. Everyone must now openly admit that the engrafting of the outworn nonsense of the vertical race notion onto the glorious European Resurgence of Authority brought about by the European Revolution of 1933 was an enormous tragedy — all the more so since the coupling of these two ideas was in no way necessary or even logical. In the Classical Culture, any man who was ethically equal to the Inner Imperative of Roman spirituality could rightly say: "Civis Romanus sum." In this, our Western Culture is somewhat akin to the Classical. Our touchstone of comradeship and belonging is spiritual-ethical not the old one of birth-place, cephalic-index, eye-color. In the 20th century, the century of elective affinities, materialistic tests are pure stupidity."

"The nationality of an army is that of its political leadership, not of its common soldiers or its officer corps."

"A nation shows that it is dying when it ceases to believe in its Mission and its superiority."

"Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods."

"Today Pravda says "Zionism is a tool of American imperialism". Tomorrow it will say: "American imperialism is the tool of Zionism"."

"What matters in politics above all, is not what one says, but what one does."

"The crude power structures of Washington and Moscow have no Past, and therefore no Future. They are without Tradition, without a World-Mission, without a Nation-Idea, without a Destiny, without organic unity, without a State, and without Imperial possibilities. Both of these formless things are mere pale caricatures of the one, true, World-Mission, which inheres in Europe alone. This Mission does not arise from human will, but is a direct emanation of God."

"The soul of Europe cannot be occupied, ruled, or dominated by Culture-aliens. Only a materialist could think that the possession of the tangible appurtenances of power guarantees the eternal continuance of power. If that had been so, a few castes and States would have always ruled the world, from its beginning. But, in the ultimate test, power is the reflection of inner qualities, and these qualities are not possessed by any of the outer enemies of Europe. Their transitory empires are built on sand, because underlying them there is no superpersonal soul, no World-Mission, no World-Idea, no Destiny. Even in our short lives we have seen empires come and go, and the temporary power-agglomerations of Moscow and Washington will go the same way."

"Before the First World War, Russia had figured as a Western State. Its ruling strata, its ruling outlook, were Western. The tension which existed between the Western elements of Russia and the Asiatic will-to-destruction underneath was however strained to the breaking point by the First World War, and the Asiatic elements, in conjunction with and assisted by the Culture-State-Nation-Race People-Society of the Jew all over the world, gained the upper hand and re-oriented Russia against Europe. From then onward, and also today, 1950, Russia figures as one of the leaders of the coloured revolt against the European race. But European possibilities still exist within Russia, because in certain strata of the population adherence to the great organism of the Western Culture is an instinct, an Idea, and no material force can ever wipe it out, even though it may be temporarily repressed and driven under."

"History is the continuous reinterpretation of the Past. History is thus continually "true," because, in each Age, the ruling historical outlook and values are the expression of the proper soul. The alternatives for History are not true or false, but effective or ineffective. Truth in the religio-philosophical mathematical sense, meaning timelessly, eternally valid, dissociated from the conditions of Life, does not pertain to History. History that is true is History that is effective in the minds of significant men."

"Anti-Semitism is precisely analogous in Culture pathology to the formation of anti-bodies in the bloodstream in human pathology. In both cases, the organism is resisting the alien life. Both are inevitable, organically necessary, expressions of Destiny. In fulfilling the proper, Destiny combats the alien. It cannot be said too often that hatred and malice, tolerance and goodwill, have nothing whatever to do with this fundamental process. A Culture is an organism, an organism of a different class from man, just as man is an organism of a different class from animals. But the fundamental regularities of organic life are present in all organisms, of whatever class, plant, animal, man, Culture. This hierarchy of organisms is obviously part of the divine plan, and it cannot be changed by a process of propaganda, no matter how continuous, "tolerance," no matter how self-renouncing, or self-deception, no matter how complete."

"Alliance does not mean love, any more than war means hate."

"Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men."

"The question of who strikes first in a war is on the same level as who strikes first in a boxing contest."

"We have been born into a certain Culture, at a certain phase of its organic development, we have certain gifts. These condition the earthly task which we must perform. The metaphysical task is beyond any conditioning, for it would have been the same in any age anywhere. The earthly task is merely the form of the higher task, its organic vehicle."

"Between Capitalism and Socialism there is no relationship of true and false. Both are instincts, and have the same historical rank, but one of them belongs to the Past, and one to the Future. Capitalism is a product of Rationalism and Materialism, and was the ruling force of the 19th century. Socialism is the form of an age of political Imperialism, of Authority, of historical philosophy, of superpersonal political imperative."