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Readers Dissect The Guardian over US Venezuela Sanctions

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Umberto Eco describes the resistance to the new totalitarianism of colluding media and cleptocratic elites, as a “semiological guerrilla warfare“. As in most colonial wars, the abused and exploited millions have almost no chances against an enemy, which is vastly superior in terms of technology, war chests and, remember, willingness to step over any laws and ethical norms to achieve its goals and silence its critics.

Eco suggests that a thinking person has to resist such an occupation in smart, tactical way, prioritize survival, rather than strategic victory.

And in this fight one definition of survival is to not let words change their meaning. To remember what is evil and what is good. Discern hypocrisy and manipulation. Even if one cannot react openly to these, knowing what truth is, is already effective resistance.

If we cannot control the message in terms of its production, coding, distribution channels, we can always control it at the decoding stage, Eco says. Therefore we have the power and the responsibility to do so.

One cannot deny one great effect of the Guardian’s war on truth. Readers today know more. And better. As in the former communist countries during the Cold War, they are quickly becoming experts at reading ‘between the lines’, identifying and developing immunity against propaganda.

So, I’ll let them speak. Here are their takes on the latest Guardian “advertnews”, pushing Washington’s scaremongering in relation to Venezuela.

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Filed under: featured, Media Criticism, On Guardian
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Theodorakis
Theodorakis
Mar 13, 2015 6:40 AM

Great comment, Niki, thank you!
If you feel like writing something of your experience with the Guardian or any other censorship, we’ll be glad to publish it.

Niki
Niki
Mar 12, 2015 11:20 PM

Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties

by BERTOLT BRECHT
(1898-1956)

“Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons. These are formidable problems for writers living under Fascism, but they exist also for those writers who have fled or been exiled; they exist even for writers working in countries where civil liberty prevails.”

Vaska
Vaska
Mar 12, 2015 1:31 AM

Reblogged this on vaskaxtumir and commented:
Umberto Eco and some Guardian readers part ways from post-modernists and remind that truth exists — and matters.

SFS
SFS
Mar 10, 2015 10:05 PM

This is genuinely hope-inducing stuff, seeing so much actual Truth squeeze through the gates.

lassy
lassy
Mar 10, 2015 3:11 PM