Reinforcing Prejudices: Mark Weisbrot’s subtle meditation at CiF on why America is so vile

The Guardian, as an institution, is viscerally anti-Israel for sure, but that’s only one component of a broader anti-West, anti-imperialist, post colonial ideological package adopted by many of the media group’s editors and writers.

Among the several commentators the Guardian chose to analyze President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was Mark Weisbrot, whose essays frequently grace the pages of CiF.

Commenting on the foreign policy part of Obama’s speech, Weisbrot wrote:

[Obama’s] foreign policy is much worse: “all options on the table” for Iran, which is code for the threat of yet another war. No commitment to get out of Afghanistan. When he talks about how “America is back” with “the enduring power of our moral example”, I see images of US soldiers pissing on corpses, drones slaughtering civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan, massacres like Haditha (with impunity).

“Above all,” [Obama] tells us, “our freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it.” This could hardly be more false. America has lost more freedoms in the last decade, including Obama’s presidency, than any other developed democracy in the world; and nobody fighting these unnecessary wars is defending our freedom.

To put Weisbrot’s latest anti-American analysis in context, here’s some of what he wrote at CiF following Osama Bin Laden’s death:

The United States is occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, bombing Pakistan and Libya, and threatening Iran – all Muslim countries. To a huge part of the Muslim world, it looks like the United States is carrying out a modern-day crusade against them.

This situation, along with the United States’ continued role of supporting the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, pretty much guarantees a steady stream of recruits for any terrorist movement of the kind bin Laden was organising, for the foreseeable future. In that sense, bin Laden was successful.

More of Weisbrot’s musings on America’s immutable sins can be found at the radical site, Znet (where he seems especially adept at taking the side of any political actor which opposes the United States).  However, one especially vitriolic piece written by Weisbrot was actually published at The Huffington Post, where he literally accused the U.S. of committing a “Holocaust” in Iraq, characterizing those who would deny this charge of “Holocaust Denial“, which he specifically likened to the denial of the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews.

As we’ve argued on these pages, CiF editors’ decision to allow Ben White or even Hamas supporters to opine on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, whose rhetoric will necessarily lead to the the preconceived conclusion of the Jewish state’s illegitimacy, only serves to reinforce their readers considerable prejudices.  

Similarly, Weisbrot’s thoughts on the State of the Union speech will inevitably paint the U.S. in worst possible light and, thus, feed the intellectually lazy knee-jerk anti-Americanism of the far left media consumers the Guardian Group aims to please.

As the Guardian’s Michael White wrote, in an unusually candid blog post last March:

Remember, dear reader, that we are also striving much of the time to tell you what you’d rather know rather than challenge your prejudices and make you cross.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

Written By
More from Adam Levick
The Guardian at 190, The “unauthorized” CiF Watch biography. Pt. 2: Seumas Milne defends communism
This post is part of our ongoing (unauthorized) biography of the Guardian...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *