ORWELL@TRIUMFRG.BITNET (02/12/90)
The recent "bitter criticisms" (by, e.g. Tim Johnson, who is in good
company -- an opinion column by A.M. Rosenthal, the former chief
editor of the N.Y. Times expressed very similar sentiments) of the
Bush Administration's policies regarding PRC student visas provide
nice examples of "safe criticism" -- the kind of thing which
people point to as an example of how the mainstream media is
invariably a "vigorous critic" of government policies.
But what does this criticism consist of? --- it is criticism of Bush
because he is not being sufficiently vigorous in **denouncing another
government** and thereby is not "upholding the honor of the U.S."
Note that the atrocities to be denounced are ones for which the U.S.
has no responsibility and bears no blame whatsoever, occurring in a
country over which the U.S. has extremely limited influence.
[Note, in this context, the absurd McCarthyite claim in the 50's that
certain U.S. Foreign Service professionals had "lost China" because they
were intelligent enough to realize that the Communists would win over
Chiang Kai-Shek.] This is what makes them suitable grounds for safe
criticism.
The atrocities for which the Reagan-Bush Administrations **do bear
direct responsibility** --- namely, the contras in Nicaragua and the
government in El Salvador, are of course simply not suitable for
the same criticism.
Could we remember that the reason we admired Andrei Sakharov was
because his criticism focussed on the actions of **his own
government**, (though he did write about the dual character of the
arms race) which he as a Soviet citizen felt some responsibility for?
He would hardly have garnered the same admiration in the West if
he confined himself to condemning U.S. actions in Vietnam.
Yet when Noam Chomsky takes on the same role in the U.S. he is scorned
because he concentrates on the violence perpetrated by his own state
(over which he at least hopes to have some influence) rather than the
Soviet bloc. [Chomsky, by the way, has always stressed that democratic
states are far more restricted in their use of overt physical violence
to suppress dissidence, which is why their propaganda mechanisms are
much more sophisticated -- "Propaganda is to thought control in
democracies what violence is for totalitarian states."]
I remember reading some comment by a Soviet dissident, who said that
when he or other dissidents made some (presumably mild) criticisms of
Russian society in the late 50's (after the Khrushchev (sp?) thaw ),
one response of the commissars would be, "But what about the lynchings
of negroes in the American South?"
Ron Balden