"Propaganda always wins," said Leni Riefenstahl, "if you allow it."

 IN our Modern world Propaganda is winning .  And it is being allowed to win. 

Leni Riefenstahl's "submissive void" is both submissive and  voiceless. Or it now uses its new digital voice to satiate its all subsuming Self. The selfish , singular Self that refuses to see beyond its own material self interests even as it  descends into the depths of a  new Digital slavery.  

The New Propaganda Is Liberal -- The New Slavery Is Digital
By John PilgerWhat is modern propaganda?  For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and  asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerized Germans; her Triumph of the Will  cast Hitler's spell.

She told me that the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above," but on the "submissive void" of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? "Everyone," she said.

Today, we prefer to believe that there is no submissive void. "Choice" is ubiquitous. Phones are "platforms" that launch every half-thought. There is Google from outer space if you need it. Caressed like rosary beads, the precious devices are borne heads-down, relentlessly monitored and prioritized.

Their dominant theme is the self. Me. My needs. Riefenstahl's submissive void is today's digital slavery. Edward Said described this wired state in Culture and Imperialism  as taking imperialism where navies could never reach. It is the  ultimate means of social control because it is voluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom.

Hollywood has returned to its cold war role, led by liberals. Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo  is the first feature film so integrated into the propaganda system that its subliminal warning of Iran's "threat" is offered as Obama is preparing, yet again, to attack Iran.

That Affleck's "true story" of good-guys-vs- bad-Muslims is as much a fabrication as Obama's justification for his war plans is lost in PR-managed plaudits. As the independent critic Andrew O'Hehir points out, Argo is "a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology." That is, it debases the art of film-making to reflect an image of the power it serves.

The true story is that, for 34 years, the US foreign policy elite have seethed with revenge for the loss of the shah of Iran, their beloved tyrant, and his CIA-designed state of torture. When Iranian students occupied the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, they found a trove of incriminating documents, which revealed that an Israeli spy network was operating inside the US, stealing top scientific and military secrets. Today, the duplicitous Zionist ally -- not Iran -- is the one and only nuclear threat in the Middle East.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein, famed for his Watergate reporting, disclosed that more than 400 journalists and executives of mostly liberal US media organizations had worked for the CIA in the past 25 years. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time, and the big TV broadcasters. These days, such a formal nefarious workforce is quite unnecessary.

In 2010, the New York Times made no secret of its collusion with the White House in censoring the WikiLeaks war logs. The CIA has an "entertainment industry liaison office" that helps producers and directors remake its image from that of a lawless gang that assassinates, overthrows governments and runs drugs. As Obama's CIA commits multiple murder by drone, Affleck lauds the "clandestine service ... that is making sacrifices on behalf of Americans every day ...  I want to thank them very much." 

The 2010 Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty , a torture-apology, was all but licensed by the Pentagon.  The US market share of cinema box-office takings in Britain often reaches 80 percent, and the small UK share is mainly for US co-productions.

Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a tiny fraction of those we are allowed to see. In my own film-making career, I have never known a time when dissenting voices in the visual arts are so few and silent. For all the hand-wringing induced by the Leveson inquiry, the "Murdoch mold" remains intact. Phone-hacking was always a  distraction, a misdemeanor compared to the media-wide drumbeat for criminal wars.

According to Gallup, 99 percent of Americans believe Iran is a threat to them, just as the majority believed Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. "Propaganda always wins," said Leni Riefenstahl, "if you allow it."

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-new-propaganda-is-liberal-the-new-slavery-is-digital