Photo Credit: Google/Halifax International Security Forum
Editor’s note: The Canada Files’ is re-publishing Peter Biesterfeld’s two-part series, ‘One Simplified Truth’ originally released on his Substack, with updated titles and some small adjustments. This is part two.
Written by: Peter Biesterfeld
The Military Industrial Media Complex
“Billed as an international gathering of democracies, the Halifax International Security Forum is clearly an instrument of giant arms and energy monopolies and oligopolies and international finance capital involved in the business of war, the most profitable business of all.” – Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada (MLPC)
In a 2009 press release, Canada’s then national defense minister Peter MacKay announced the launch of a major international security conference to take place in Halifax that November:
“The Halifax International Security Forum (HFX/HISF) will give international leaders a chance to view security issues ‘through a Canadian lens’, while promoting greater international awareness of Atlantic Canada. The Halifax International Security Forum will be organized by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a non- partisan American public policy institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation between North America and Europe. This will be the organization’s first-ever public event in Canada.”
Every November since, the Westin Nova Scotian hotel in Halifax has hosted the invitation-only Canadian forum, headquartered in Washington. HFX is capped at 300 participants and brings together a high ranking international who’s who of ‘thought leaders’, senior political and military decision makers, defense contractors and think tankers who fill the air with the significance of the ‘threat’ to Western democracies and what needs to be done about it.
Over a weekend of symposia, key note presentations and round-table plenary sessions led by invitees from the international press, the Halifax International Security Forum offers journalists a front row seat to international affairs policy-making as positions are shaped and tested under “one simplified truth about hugely complex international matters,” as Jan Oberg observed.
Typically, 30 of the 300 HSF invitees are journalists. Justin Ling, Steven Chase, Robert Fife, Andrew Coyne, Murray Brewster, Paul Wells, Adrienne Arsenault, Evan Solomon, are some of the Canadian mainstream reporters who at one time or another have reaped the benefits of access to high-powered decision makers via HFX invitation. Ling is a fixture at the annual conference having been invited four times.
The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson and Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker noted back in 2018 that the Halifax forum “has emerged as perhaps the most influential annual conference on global security.” They should know, Ibbitson and Bricker are regular invitees who promote and amplify HFX agendas beyond Halifax; Bricker on behalf of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute a Calgary-based think tank with a mission: “
“To identify Canadian global interests and promote more active and effective international involvement through rigorous strategic and policy analysis and to help inform Canadians on the connection between international affairs and a secure prosperous Canada.”
Current HFX president and co-founder Peter Van Praagh was policy advisor to Peter Mackay when the long-time Conservative Nova Scotia politician was foreign affairs minister under then prime minister Stephen Harper.
Paul Wells, senior writer at Maclean’s, Substacker and HFX regular, gives Van Praagh and the forum a breathless endorsement in a 2022 newsletter titled, ‘The progress of our arms – The Halifax International Security Forum in wartime’:
“Peter Van Praagh has built something sturdy and useful in Halifax. Van Praagh is a former policy advisor to Peter MacKay, who was minister of national defence in the Harper Conservative government, and who was so impressed by a visit to a security conference across the ocean that he wanted to build one closer to home. Van Praagh quickly built Halifax into an important stop on the diplomatic circuit, based largely on his success in getting substantial numbers of high-ranking American senators and members of the House of Representatives to commute north every year from Washington for the weekend. I’ve been to Halifax three times before and wrote about it here, here and here.”
From the 2022 edition of the Halifax forum Ling tweeted out daily, substantial threads that amplified what approved media like Politico and the Guardian were reporting from the forum and what key note attendees were saying about the state of global security.
The disinformation oozing out of Ling’s Twitter (X) threads is of the same variety he outlines to journalism audiences and at media round tables on disinformation.
Excerpts from Ling’s uncritical HFX Twitter (X) coverage from Nov 2022 are revealing:
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna is sitting down with journalists now. #HFX2022 On cyber attacks: “On a daily basis, we received more than 1,000” probing attempts on Ukrainian networks. “They have failed.”
Stefanishyna underscores Ukraine’s cooperation with the International Criminal Court, and eyes the creation of a dedicated tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.
“We’re not so much thinking about this war,” Stefanishyna says about a possible peace deal. “These negotiations should lead to an inability for Russia to have a hunger or appetite for the next aggression.” So sacrificing land or security guarantees can’t be part of the deal.
We’re hearing from Andriy Yermak, a senior advisor to President Zelensky. He’s joining from Kyiv. “Moscow always sees dark and frost as its allies,” Yermak says. “Russia is a terrorist state.”
“Attacks on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure are going to continue,” Yermak says. “Ukriane desperately needs effective missile defence systems: and quick.” Before the winter, he says.
Yesterday, in a statement, Zelensky said Putin is seeking a short term truce in order to regroup for a second advance in the spring. Has Putin made any direct offers? “We are not interested in any negotiations, any talks, that are not public and not official,” Yermak says.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is delivering remarks now. He’s making the case for continued commitment to Ukraine: Both for world security, but also as a humanitarian imperative.
Austin is spending a bit of time talking about China’s “increasingly provocative” actions around Taiwan, including intercepting NATO aircraft in international airspace over the South and East China Seas.
“We are drawing on the lessons of Ukriane to further bolster the self-defence capabilities of our Indo-Pacific partners,” Austin says
Austin predicts we could see Putin engage in “profoundly irresponsible nuclear sabre rattling” this winter.
Ling’s comprehensive #HFX2022 Twitter reportage covers a lot of approved but false narratives, from ‘Putin’s war crimes’ to China’s ‘increasingly provocative actions towards Taiwan.’
For background info Ling attaches links to MSM coverage including his own. With nearly 130,000 Twitter followers at the time, that’s a lot of amplification of disinformation, and who knows how many retweets infected the social media landscape as a result. A solid day’s work for the Canadian clown prince of disinformation.
Former CBC and CTV current affairs host Evan Solomon now with GZERO Media was also a prolific tweeter from #HFX2022 where he moderated Plenary 4: The Disinformation Nations: Kidnapping Our Citizens, Corrupting Our Officials, Stealing Our Stuff.
In a series of tweets Solomon posted streeters, short interviews, from the forum with generals, politicians and thought leaders around this headline: Authoritarian states are increasingly using disinformation to sow disorder & discontent by eroding a very powerful human emotion: hope.
The journalism in the independent press and alternative media is generally not jingoistic and does not cheer the military industrial complex into war.
Independent Canadian journalist, author and activist Yves Engler dedicated a page to the Halifax conference on his foreign policy blog. Writes Engler in a 2022 piece headlined, NDP in bed with neocons over China:
Sponsored by NATO, DND (dept. of National Defense) and military companies, the HSF is based in Washington. It was set up by a neocon (Van Praagh) who advised the Harper government and was strongly promoted by arch militarist John McCain.
The piece is about the blowback from Conservatives when the Liberal government pressured Halifax forum organizers not to give its John McCain Prize for Leadership in Public Service to Taiwan’s then president Tsai Ing-wen. The favoured candidate had rejected unification with China under “one country, two systems” as proposed by Chinese head of state Xi Jinping.
“The award is part of HSF’s growing anti-China posture,” writes Engler. “In November they released a handbook titled ‘China vs. Democracy: The Greatest Game’ that painted Beijing as a threatening force bent on global domination. On Wednesday NDP MPs backed a Conservative motion in the House of Commons, which passed unanimously, supporting giving an award to Tsai and maintaining HSF’s funding.”
The Halifax security forum receives $3 million a year from Canada’s Department of National Defence.
Reader-funded indie news outlet, The Maple, also reports more critically than MSM-Canada on what goes on at the Halifax Forum (‘HISF’). In a Nov. 2022 analysis piece titled, Peace a Distant Prospect at The Halifax International Security Forum independent Edmonton-based journalist Jeremy Appel connects the dots between NATO messaging and Canadian journalists operating as embedded MSM mouthpieces for the military industrial complex.
Edited excerpts from Appel’s HFX 2022 reportage reveal how small the distance is between power structures and Canada’s fourth estate:
In his brief pre-recorded remarks, which were introduced by CBC News chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, President Zelensky lambasted Russia’s calls for a truce, which he called a “respite to regain strength” before continuing its invasion.
“Immoral compromises will lead to new blood,” he said, calling for the “complete demolition of Russian aggression.” Until then, any talk of peace is meaningless, Zelensky argued.
The weekend’s first panel, dubbed “And So, Where is the Security?” was moderated by Munk School of Global Affairs Prof. Janice Stein, whom Van Praagh praised as a “Canadian icon.” Stein sits on the HFX board of directors.
The plenary included (Defence) Minister Anand, Estonian President Alar Karis, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and World Uyghur Congress president Dolkun Isa.
Stein kicked off the discussion by asking Karis what he, as the leader of a nation close to Ukraine, would tell Zelensky if he was in attendance.
Karis called the war in Ukraine a “litmus test” for whether democratic countries are willing to “fight for our democratic principles,” and whether authoritarian states will be able to get away with invading their neighbours.
“This war is about a lot more than whether Ukraine is able to maintain [its] territorial integrity,” she suggested in agreement with Karis. It’s about defending the “international world order,” Shaheen added.
Many HFX ‘thought leaders’ and academics like Janice Stein are go-to establishment talking heads on mainstream current affairs programs where they provide wide-ranging expertise and analysis on military matters, foreign interference, disinformation warfare and threats to international order and security.
Establishment journalists including CBC correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, and GZERO Media publisher Solomon, have been enrolled as forum moderators of working groups including plenary and off-the-record sessions. “Canada’s quiet tech triumphs” was an in-camera session moderated by Arsenault at the 2023 forum.
Is it any surprise then that when mainstream journalists are not only marinated in approved establishment narratives at security gatherings like HFX, but are taking part in crafting them, that the resulting journalism has a distinctive pro-war bias that favours the establishment and its power structures, including the military and the security state?
For anti-imperialists, peace and anti-NATO groups, and the annual HFX opposers protesting in front of the Halifax Westin every November, for them the Halifax Security Forum is the Halifax War Conference.
The mainstream coverage of 2018 conference protests in the Halifax edition of the Toronto Star was refreshingly anti-war and gave voice to peace activists and HFX opponents. I’m including reporter Taryn Grant’s entire report (1 min. read) as we may never see one like it again published by a Canadian mainstream news outlet:
HALIFAX—A few dozen people rallied against an international political forum in Halifax Saturday, calling it a conference of warmongers.
Protesters held signs and banners bearing anti-war slogans, facing them toward the downtown Westin Nova Scotian Hotel where the Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) was underway.
This is the tenth time that Halifax has hosted the NATO-sponsored forum, which this year attracted about 300 delegates including Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, eight American senators and top military brass from 70 countries.
“If you just look at the past 10 years, you can see that the security they talk about for 10 years has only brought worse problems, more death, more destruction, more war,” said Kevin Corkill, one of the protesters.
Corkill said if any of the forum delegates were to venture over to the protest in Edward Cornwallis Park, he would tell them “warmongers are not welcome in Canada.”
“Canada should be a factor and a zone for peace,” he added.
Corkill and several others decried the forum over a megaphone to a mostly calm crowd. A few occasional boos and cries of “shame” let out whenever HISF, military action or NATO were mentioned.
When HISF kicked off on Friday, Sajjan spoke about the importance of defensive efforts, pointing to Russian aggression as a top security concern. He told reporters that the recent centennial of the end of First World War was a reminder of western democracies’ fragility.
Isaac Saney, a Dalhousie history professor, argued that the forum itself was a democratic threat.
“What this represents here is the antithesis of democracy, the antithesis of people participating in shaping the direction of society,” he said in an interview.
“We say not in our name. We want genuine peace, we want peace with justice.”
“Canada should have an anti-war government. Halifax Harbour should not have war ships, they should be banned, and Halifax should be declared a zone of peace,” he added.
Protester Alan Bezanson said he and an ad hoc committee called No Harbour for War have been rallying against HISF since it started in 2009, always gathering in Edward Cornwallis Park, across the street from the forum.
In the past, protesters have thrown a sheet over the statue of Edward Cornwallis — Halifax’s controversial founder who put a bounty on Mi’kmaw scalps — but the statue was taken down last winter.
Bezanson called it a “significant victory” when addressing the crowd of protesters this year, who stood around the empty platform where the statue used to stand.
Recent King’s College journalism grad at the time, Grant is now reporting for CBC Halifax. Considering how against the run of MSM coverage Grant’s 2018 ‘warmonger’ story was, I emailed her to ask how the piece came about and how she managed to give it such a pro-peace bias, in favour of the protesters.
She emailed back:
‘I’ll be frank – I was an early-career reporter and it was an easy story to do on a Saturday. Reading it now, I’m a bit embarrassed that I didn’t include a comment (or at least indicate that I’d made an attempt to get a comment) from the security forum organizers.’
The late Robert Fisk would have lamented Grant’s j-school mea culpa.
Labeled a journalistic provocateur in his day, the legendary war correspondent, and owner of a Carleton University honorary degree, Fisk said he didn’t believe in objective journalism and according to one diarist, called it ‘a specious idea that, as practiced by American reporters, produces dull and predictable writing weighed down by obfuscating comments from official government sources.’
Fisk on journalism was very quotable. His nuggets remain relevant in a war-torn world that’s been given bloody consent by an out of touch fourth estate in Canada and the rest of the NATO and Five Eyes security press.
Fisk: “Journalism is about truth. It’s about holding power to account, and giving voice to those who have none.”
Fisk found the notion that ‘unbiased reporting mustn’t take a moral position’ was nonsense. Journalists insisted Fisk, “should, at the very least, challenge narratives of power, which were usually distortions of truth.”
Dedicated watcher of HFX (HISF) and other military-industrial shopping malls like it, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada (MLPC) reports back to the community of uninvited and shares via its newsletter a list of who makes up the roster of media representatives from the industrial-military-media complex:
HFX Media Partners
There are three U.S. publications/media organizations which are involved in main projects of the U.S. ruling circles to unite the vying factions, especially the huge military bureaucracy and moving more deeply into Canadian ruling circles, while also keeping the people dispersed and disempowered. The HISF describes them collectively as “thought leaders,” an elitist concept that denies the movement for enlightenment. Like the other HISF partners and sponsors, the basis for the partnership is not immediately clear.
– Foreign Affairs Magazine: “Since its founding in 1922, Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs. It is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas.”
Council on Foreign Relations is a leading council that brings various ruling factions together to work out relations. It has been previously described as a veritable shadow government that plans the general strategies of the global imperialist system, acting above any government. The CFR backed the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden and champions the chorus against China. The editor of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Rose, formerly of the U.S. State Dept., is participating in the 2020 HISF conference.
– POLITICO: This is a specialized U.S. political news journal, which recently moved into Canada with a subscription-based edition and a free weekly newsletter Crossroads. This company says it “strives to be the dominant source for politics and policy in power centers across every continent where access to reliable information, non-partisan journalism and real-time tools creates, informs and engages a global citizenry.” John Harris, Politico Editor-in-Chief, is a member of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS) board of trustees, original organizer of the HISF in 2009 and 2010 which followed on security conferences the GMFUS had staged in European countries targeted for U.S. influence operations, such as in Kiev, Ukraine; Riga, Latvia; Bucharest, Romania; and Istanbul, Turkey. It is hosting live streaming of the HISF conference to its readers.
– Foreign Policy Magazine: Although not listed on the HISF’s “Partners and Sponsors” page, it is listed on the “About” page as a media partner. It is U.S. news publication which focuses on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy. It was founded in 1970 during the turmoil of the Vietnam War by the imperialist ideologue Samuel P. Huntington of the “clash of civilizations” theory and Warren Demian Manshel.
When foreign policy issues are ventilated inside security fora such as the HFX, CANSEC, the Best Defence Conference, the Global Security Forum et al, what the establishment press publishes contains more than a hint of the sinophobic, russophobic and ultimately uneducated Cold War II ‘reportage’ that corporate news outlets like CBC, CTV, Global News, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and National Post are passing off as journalism.
The Halifax International Security Forum whose stated mission is “to strengthen strategic cooperation among the world’s democracies” also includes as its sponsors and partners an army of defense contractors including the following:
– CADSI (The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries) is the national industry voice of more than 900 Canadian defence and security companies.
– Anduril – A US military technology company: ‘The company’s products enable security awareness, multi-domain launch capability and survey, inspection and Intelligence solutions across land, sea and air.’
– MDA – Canadian space technology company headquartered in Brampton, Ontario. The Department of National Defence is currently developing a new generation of Canadian military ships, and MDA is designing the Electronic Warfare system.
– CAE – Formerly Canadian Aviation Electronics, CAE is a high technology company providing ‘training and operational support solutions to global defense and security customers.’
– Pansophico works exclusively with democracies. We are dedicated to enhancing national and international security by building the military readiness of allied democracies. Pansophico sources and provides access to military and security hardware, technology, and advanced training.
– NATO: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is listed under its own heading that reads “With Support From.” Its entry on the HISF website reads:
“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s fundamental purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of its members through political and military means. NATO brings together 28 member countries from Europe and North America, consulting and cooperating in the fields of security and defence. In this respect, NATO provides a unique transatlantic link for political and security cooperation.”
Marxist Leninist newsletter writers don’t hold back their contention: “In practice, the HISF is fully embroiled in NATO’s agenda and provides a venue for it to promote its aggressive aims.”
Establishment columnists like Terry Glavin are more reverential and better schooled in approved narratives. In a December 2021 National Post article titled, China’s disinformation campaign against Canada’s election is undeniable, Gavin dutifully promotes the work of HFX ‘thought leaders’:
“We’ve gone well past the point where merely taking note of Beijing’s lies and belligerence will suffice. At the Halifax Security Forum two weeks ago, conference organizers released a 93-page strategy offering a reappraisal of the democratic world’s approach to China, based on consultations with 250 international diplomatic and security experts. It’s a refreshing document, written in plain language, about what democracies are facing, and how democracies need to start uniting against the threats Beijing poses.”
Establishment ‘journalism’ as practiced by Justin Ling and jingoistic MSM-Canada colleagues like Glavin does not give voice to foreign state actors Russia, China, Iran and Syria to help news audiences better understand their positions, their concerns, initiatives and undertakings.
There has never been a keynote speech, plenary or symposium at the Halifax International Security Forum that promotes diplomatic strategies for peace negotiations with the West’s so-called ‘adversaries’.
Whatever it takes
HSF 2023 plenary sessions point to a singular preoccupation of NATO and its allies: to prolong the Ukraine-Russia war to ‘the last Ukrainian’, as coined by Keith Kellogg, former national security advisor to then US VP Mike Pence:
Make the World Safe Again: Victory in Ukraine
Victory in Ukraine = Message to the CRINKs (China/Russia/Iran/North Korea)
Victory in Ukraine = Example for Israel
Victory in Ukraine = Indo-Pacific Possibilities
Victory in Ukraine = Feeding the World
Victory in Ukraine = Allies’ Access to Innovation
Victory in Ukraine = Climate Cooperation
For as Long as it Takes: Victory in Ukraine.
Conference host Van Praagh’s welcome speech and introduction of freshly minted Canadian defence minister Bill Blair piles on enough Cold War II talking points to feed several MSM news cycles.
“This Violent New Era of global conflict that we are experiencing can be directly linked to Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin’s aggression gave bad actors and rogue regimes permission to challenge the rules-based international order and our Democratic Values. The simple truth is that when Putin fails in Ukraine solving all Global issues will become easier. Our goal this weekend is to show that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea who we’re calling the CRINKS, showing them that our resolve cannot be shaken when democracies work together there’s no challenge that cannot be met with strong voices like Minister Blair. I’m confident that the Halifax International Security forum will achieve that goal.”
Blair echoes Van Praagh and lays out what Canadians can expect from its military on his watch in the near future.
“When everything we stand for is challenged, as it has been by Vladimir Putin, we must stand with the Ukrainian people. Meanwhile in other parts of the world such as the Indo Pacific countries like China are openly challenging the rules-based international order. As a Pacific country ourselves, Canada is increasing our military presence in the region. We need to be there and we will be there and around the world. State and non-state actors are spreading disinformation meant to divide and cause chaos. There have been advances in technology like artificial intelligence which creates in some circumstances new opportunities but also new threats and new battlefields.”
At the end of Blair’s key note speech Ling is at the front of the line for the Q & A. His first question is out of the playbook, “What will it take for Ukraine to prevail?”
Blair’s response was a shopping list of ‘whatever it takes’ to prolong NATO’s proxy war with Russia. The defence minister’s overarching theme was that there is opportunity in escalation for innovators and defense contractors.
Canadian Press reporter Mike MacDonald, next in line after Ling, asks Blair about that:
“I wanted to ask you about the defense policy update Minister Blair. You’ve been quoted as saying that you’ve described this policy as a national industrial policy what did you mean by that?”
Blair scans the packed room, many of the attendees are defense contractors:
“What I was trying to be clear about, is it’s more than just a defense policy update. It’s an important update for our our military defense industry in this country. It’s also an important update on our policy with respect to foreign policy, because I believe absolutely defense policy and foreign policy are are intertwined.”
Also intertwined with Canada’s global affairs policies are approved establishment news media and their foot soldiers.
Disinformation warriors like ‘investigative’ reporter Justin Ling and his colleagues in the corporate press continue to manufacture consent for Canada’s bloody contribution to a US-led NATO proxy war that’s killing off an entire generation of Ukrainians.
All that to say, here’s hoping that when investigative journalists like Ling, independent, alternative, mainstream or otherwise, are invited to hold up a mirror to the journalism community and lecture us about what is disinformation, the least we will do is challenge the veracity of their claims and the facts of their dishonest reporting.
Denouement
In journalism school we were taught to end a news story, longer current affairs pieces and even interviews with a view to what’s next and what’s ahead for the people in the story Something for audiences to be on the look-out for.
Not being the owner of a crystal ball, I’m still willing to make the reckless prediction that what’s ahead for global affairs journalism in Canadian corporate news media, as we currently despise it and mistrust it, is irrelevance. The clown prince practitioners of false narratives will become peripheral, pushed to the margins.
The accumulated weight of disinformation, lies and propaganda under which MSM-Canada’s foreign affairs journalism currently creaks and groans, is not sustainable. Something has to give.
If the future of journalism in Canada is not independence, then we can kiss our freedoms goodbye.
But as a journalism community we don’t have to remain as sluggish as we were about Assange.
We can take action.
The media criticism and journalism analysis coming from Canadian independents is a start – the Maple, the Breach, the Canada Files, Dimitri Lascaris, Yves Engler, CJPME et al – they are already doing vital work holding Canada’s Fourth Estate to account when it comes to dishonest political coverage and foreign affairs reporting.
Add to that the scrutiny from global progressive news media outing mainstream journalism for its pro-war and other establishment biases, and maybe there’s hope for democracy-informing journalism which Canadians deserve.
When we amplify verified, fact-based independent reporting, truth will inevitably prevail – and embedded stenographers like Ling will be left standing, as naked as the emperor wearing only one simplified truth.
Addendum
In 2013 Chris Hedges gave a journalism talk in the same University of Western Ontario lecture hall where Justin Ling unpacked his state-sponsored propaganda eleven years later to a FIMS audience.
Imagine a Canadian journalism school today inviting an award-winning American war correspondent who is also an activist, who supports the Occupy movement, and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and Palestine, and have him unleash subversive ideas wrapped in metaphors about truth, power, morality in journalism and the value of the alternative press.
Please permit this American illustration to make a point about the state of our own journalism in Canada.
By way of conclusion, here are some excerpts from Hedges’ 2013 talk at FIMS titled, the State of Journalism, a timely time capsule analysis, available in its entirety on YouTube.
Hedges begins by dissecting the establishment media’s ineffectiveness in bringing about change:
I think what’s most important is we begin to understand how power is configured. Because if we are entranced by the mirage of the formal systems of power, the political theater, we end up doing what Bill McKibben did with 350.org – where you get 40,000 people on a Sunday walking around the White House and not stepping off the sidewalk.
It’s not going to stop the XL pipeline.
The only thing that’s going to stop XL pipeline is a blockade. And Mckibben would have been far better taking 50 people down to sit in front of the pipeline than 40,000 people standing around the White House chanting.
I think that is a failure to understand where our power lies. We can’t effectively fight back until we make an astute critique of power. Which means that the very liberal institutions are essentially our enemy in the sense that they divert energy back into a dead political system. So, I think that it’s incumbent upon us.
And frankly, the only way that’s going to happen is for you to shut down your electronic hallucinations.
Turn off Facebook, don’t put anything in your ears, throw out your TV.
You have to read.
And that’s what frightens me, that as we sever ourselves from a print-based culture we lose the capacity to deconstruct the culture around us.
(journalism of today) It’s all about how you feel and how you’re made to feel … but that’s the society we are slipping towards. You’re not as far gone as we are (in the US). But you know, every time I come up, I see indications that you’re headed in that direction.
It was the radical movements that pressured the liberals, the formal mechanisms of power to respond. I mean, the liberal class was never designed to be the political left. So, you destroy your radical movements and then in the name of any ‘communism’ you hollow out your liberal institutions, and your state ossifies.
But yes, the liberal class designed it (power structure), because they set the parameters of debate. I mean for instance, you could critique the war in Vietnam, or you could critique the war in Iraq but you couldn’t question the virtue of the leadership.
You couldn’t question the system of capitalism itself. Once you cross those lines you instantly become a pariah and that’s why the class or the group that hates Noam Chomsky the most is not the right wing, it’s the liberal class because Chomsky exposes their complicity with the systems of power.
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Peter Biesterfeld is a freelance writer, independent documentary maker and educator based in Toronto. He writes and makes films about social justice and mediawatch issues. He has written for NOW magazine, Common Ground, The Dominion and Videomaker.
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