Sten Gazette

Small-minded, ignorant, and lazy people find it convenient to label others. Those who would manipulate public opinion know this very well and the assignment of labels is in chapter one of the propagandist’s playbook. Labels make it easy for you to ignore people whose opinions you don’t like, and protect you from having to think about what they are saying.

At best, labels can be a form of shorthand, so for example we can talk about the Administration as if it were a single entity that is pushing a particular barrow, even though we know that it isn’t everybody in the actual Administration (the President and Vice President, members of the Cabinet, White House staff, and all appointees in the Executive Branch). Similarly, we can say Bush this and Bush that, because he is the preeminent symbol of the Administration, even when we know that the words coming out of his mouth were written by someone else.

At worst, labels can be dangerously divisive and manipulative, as when we start classifying and labeling people according to their race, creed, national origin, sexual preferences, or politics. As Southpark’s Mr. Mackey would say, “these labels are bad, ‘mkay?”

So we were somewhat bemused by a recent comment from a reader (the second comment on “Are you now or have you ever…” 3/13/05). First, he says he’s in general agreement with our opinions, and he backs that up with a description of himself as “Extreme Middle/Independent,” which makes sense. But he says that others describe us here at SG as being “super liberal.” Hard to say which is more significant, the fact that Sten Gazette has been labeled, or that this reader recognizes the need for a political label that is neither left nor right, and there isn’t one!

The political spectrum in the U.S. runs from Conservative to Liberal (or is it the other way around?) and we have convenient labels for those who occupy the extremes at either end: Right-wing, Neo-con, fascist Fundamentalists on the right versus Left-wing, liberal, Loony-Left socialists on the right.

At the present time, though, there is no middle, extreme or otherwise. The best a free-thinker can hope for is neutrality, which is not the same thing at all.

Picture a balance scale, like the classic “Scales of Justice” in the traditional courtroom display. Put a bunch of weights in the pan on the right side and look what happens…. The pan on the right, with the weights, goes all the way down and the empty pan on the left goes all the way up– the scale is out of balance. How do we fix it? How do we restore the balance?

Get all the weights you can find and stack them up in the middle, half-way between the left pan and right pan. What happens to the balance? Nothing! There is no balance until the same amount of weight is in each pan, at the opposite extremes of the beam!

Like it or not, the Republican National Committee has done an excellent job of clustering all of their voters at the end of the beam. Although their stranglehold shows signs of weakening lately, in the run-up to the 2004 election they succeeded in wiping out or neutralizing all the “moderates” and anyone else who wasn’t solidly in their camp. There is a lot more variability on the “left” side of the scale, and the distribution of weight along the beam was not quite enough to effect a balance, or to swing the scales the other way.

If we can be forgiven for extending the analogy a bit beyond the breaking point, from the perspective of those on the right wing, or in the pan on the right, anything that is in the middle, or neutral, appears to be a long way off to the left gets a left-wing “label.” Put it another way, anyone who is truly neutral on any given issue can be called “super liberal” (or worse) by those on the right.

You can see this effect in any number of current “issues.” The right is conducting a witch-hunt to “get” Ward Churchill (the controversial CU ethnic studies professor). Anyone who defends Churchill’s right to express his opinions is accused of endorsing and supporting those opinions and is therefore “anti-American.” It’s another of the classic propaganda techniques– using labels to demonize your political enemies.

Or another one that’s close to our heart– criticizing Bush’s proposal to rape Social Security is simply exposure of lies and deliberate misinformation. The quest for truth is logically neutral, but insofar as it results in any criticism of the Administration or its agenda, it is politically “loony-left” and anti-American.

At the risk of labeling ourselves, Sten Gazette’s mission could be stated concisely as a quest for “truth and justice.” The obvious targets for the moment are abuse of power, whether by the government, churches, or corporations (to the extent that you can separate them these days!) and the methods they use to exercise that power. It’s true that we use some propaganda techniques ourselves, including labelling, ridicule, and exaggeration, but our purposes are purely rhetorical and intended to make the reader think about issues in ways that are discouraged by the proponents of one “side” or the other. Think of it as fighting fire with fire.

If that makes us “super liberal,” then so be it. That label is as good as any if we simply must have one. Besides, it’s mutable. If we have a regime change in 2008, and if the new regime engages in blatant propaganda in support of its “liberal agenda,” Sten Gazette will become “super conservative” overnight.

–SG

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2005 at 10:13 am and is filed under Issues, Journalism, Propaganda, Politics, Favorites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.