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BBC: The making of the terror myth
15 October 2004 
BBC: The making of the terror myth
I've been looking at this as a couch potato. Safe in his safe European home. Now that there is another view, I can go back to my media studies, and re-read Folk Devils and Moral Panics.
Lest I forget, this is the age of media. Where words, videos, are spread at hyperspeed. As a person who consumes this stuff, who waits for the next outrage, I've yet to understand my motives. Is it soap opera, or the reality outside my front door? If 'we' as a society could answer that, honestly, then perhaps, just maybe, we could focus on the important shit in our lives—the reality outside our door. This is not to say we turn our attention away from the horrors, but we could give them less import, less TV coverage. And this will cool the terrorists ardour for publicity. They simply would not be getting airplay. Their voices wouldn't be heard, not in that way.
But this is why 9/11 happened. Wake up! They shouted. They weren't being heard any other way. Could there be another way for us to listen? Or are we too interested in soap and our navels?
There has to be another way. Lest our politicians react to our fears by more invasions of more countries as knee jerks to our misplaced, lavish fears.
1973 Also posted to: warBlog. At: 11:29:32 AM . .
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This (via The Guardian) sounds like an excellent programme to watch. BBC2 from next
Wednesday.
"Some critics of this situation see our striking susceptibility during the 90s to other anxieties - the millennium bug, MMR, genetically modified food - as a sort of dress rehearsal for the war on terror. The press became accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse might be just around the corner."
I need to re-frame my thinking on the war on terror. Sure, it'll last a generation, I still believe that. But, I've always beielved that this is due to the generations that are growing up, now, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and perhaps Indonesia. Not, the generations growing up in the UK, US and other Western countries. That it was violence, destitution, religious intolerance in Middle Eastern countries that were the causes. Not couch potatoes demanding that their politicians make them safe.
"Some critics of this situation see our striking susceptibility during the 90s to other anxieties - the millennium bug, MMR, genetically modified food - as a sort of dress rehearsal for the war on terror. The press became accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse might be just around the corner."
I need to re-frame my thinking on the war on terror. Sure, it'll last a generation, I still believe that. But, I've always beielved that this is due to the generations that are growing up, now, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and perhaps Indonesia. Not, the generations growing up in the UK, US and other Western countries. That it was violence, destitution, religious intolerance in Middle Eastern countries that were the causes. Not couch potatoes demanding that their politicians make them safe.
I've been looking at this as a couch potato. Safe in his safe European home. Now that there is another view, I can go back to my media studies, and re-read Folk Devils and Moral Panics.
Lest I forget, this is the age of media. Where words, videos, are spread at hyperspeed. As a person who consumes this stuff, who waits for the next outrage, I've yet to understand my motives. Is it soap opera, or the reality outside my front door? If 'we' as a society could answer that, honestly, then perhaps, just maybe, we could focus on the important shit in our lives—the reality outside our door. This is not to say we turn our attention away from the horrors, but we could give them less import, less TV coverage. And this will cool the terrorists ardour for publicity. They simply would not be getting airplay. Their voices wouldn't be heard, not in that way.
But this is why 9/11 happened. Wake up! They shouted. They weren't being heard any other way. Could there be another way for us to listen? Or are we too interested in soap and our navels?
There has to be another way. Lest our politicians react to our fears by more invasions of more countries as knee jerks to our misplaced, lavish fears.
1973 Also posted to: warBlog
. At: 11:29:32 AM . .
Permalink Top Search Google Technorati
Other title(s) for this story: