Prosecutor’s Offices Specializing in Communication-Related Crimes

Editorial note: Orinoco Tribune does not generally publish pieces older than two weeks. However, an exception is being made in this case as the current article remains as relevant today as when it was first published.

By Fernando Buen Abad – Aug 9, 2018

Anyone who decides to use—whether individually or corporately—one or more communication tools to lie, slander, expose, or criminalize individuals or organizations (engaging in a long list of attacks devised by psychological warfare laboratories) commits a crime that, to this day, largely enjoys absolute impunity. It amounts to the media-driven death of individuals and organizations, sanctioned by the mafias that have seized control of the economy, political power, and the means of communication and cultural production. The MacBride Report has been denouncing this since 1980. There is no system (in actual existence) capable of swiftly and consensually administering justice to protect victims or, where appropriate, providing adequate and relevant reparation for damages. What exists instead is legalistic verbiage and a deaf bureaucracy.

There is an abundance of such cases, both national and international in scope. Every day—on television screens, radio broadcasts, and in the print media, as well as on social media and in any forum controlled by the mafias of power—an individual or a political organization is bombarded with fallacies, slander, or attacks of every kind. A full range of unpunished offensive tactics is deployed, spanning everything from seemingly trivial “jokes” to the sowing of baseless suspicions and accusations made without evidence. They employ dramatic tones or mocking laughter, use arguments with an air of erudition, and resort to the most perverse ideological ambushes to impose—upon “public opinion”—the twisted imagery of their lies, which always serve the interests of the ruling class. It matters not whom or what they sacrifice—whether partially or completely—in the “public square” of oligarchic villainy.

There are “politicians” who have built election campaigns on systematic lies regarding society’s most sensitive issues, all while knowing full well they would break every promise made. There are television programs masquerading as “debates” that serve as launching pads for daily barrages of ruthless falsehoods and accusations against political leaders and organizations that do not align with their commercial interests. There are websites dedicated exclusively to hurling insults and spreading lies about individuals who are denied even the most basic right to a legitimate defense. A system of fear reigns, established to discipline or annihilate dissent and criticism. To make matters worse, mass dismissal tactics are deployed against journalists and popular opinion leaders; these firings are accompanied by a torrent of fallacies that heap disrepute upon the loss of employment. A globally emblematic example remains the front page of the Spanish newspaper ‘El País’, which—amidst various forms of insidious misrepresentation—displayed an image of a person passed off as President Hugo Chávez.

As yet, there is no unified discipline linking the fields of law, communication, and culture—that is, a legal framework to protect the population from the crimes of communication committed on a massive scale and with total impunity. No one can deny that media violence—and the public “lynchings” it incites—constitutes a global calamity. It is a horrific spectacle, a crime against the people; it is crucial to shatter the grip of impunity and the notion that it is an untouchable, irreversible reality. Fear of stating the obvious will not silence the necessary, combative rebuttals. The oligarchy attacks—safeguarding its own interests and those of its henchmen—using damning labels and a macabre plan rooted in the hegemony of the Yankee military-industrial complex, organized crime, and ideological war machines. It relies, of course, on the servility and complicity of the murderous packs that have hijacked governments across the globe. Some of them call themselves “journalists.”

A world of communicative and cultural justice—at peace, free from exploitation, hunger, and social classes—can only be won by those fighting to help bury capitalism and striving for the reign of social justice. It is crucial to be absolutely clear—to make it understood—that we must simultaneously protect ourselves and go on the offensive to defend against a new “multipolar” colonialism. We must shatter its economic and cultural paradigms, which serve as dumping grounds for imperial logic and bourgeois arrogance. We must dismantle its forms of deception—no matter how “illusionist,” “generous,” or “progressive” guise—for what is actually at play is the inoculation of “false consciousness” directed against peoples worldwide, and especially against emerging initiatives from the Global South. These initiatives must—without self-deception—embrace the emancipatory role demanded of them by the people.

Establishing a global network of specialized prosecutor’s offices for communication-related crimes—controlled by the people themselves—cannot be achieved through mere wishful thinking; it cannot be settled by “cooperation agreements,” effusive hugs, or diplomatic handshakes. At the heart of the matter lies the capital-labor conflict and the horrific, painful history humanity has endured due to the barbarism and profligacy of ruling classes—classes that have now multiplied exponentially to act as a thermal silencer, aiming to erase the very words “justice” and “communicational and cultural equity” from the political lexicon of the people. We must be on guard against the kind of anesthetic rhetoric designed to manufacture doses of class reconciliation and macabre amnesia—all while masquerading as a democratic approach to communication.

Let us demand semantic and political actions robust enough to ensure that communicational justice does not become just another mirage—a concept cooked up by trendy think tanks belonging to the “top ten” of plunder and “revival” exploitation, where the working class is invariably condemned to foot the bill for the whole spectacle. Let us not kid ourselves.

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Better than justice in the abstract is the justice of free peoples—a justice that allows us to look upon one another with fraternity and solidarity, fostering participation that does not enslave; a justice that is uncompromising in the fight against hunger, exploitation, and plunder; a justice that does not ravage the planet or human beings. Better is the justice that does not hide its own shameful secrets away like a mad relative locked in the attic. Better is the justice that lays bare the wounds inflicted by capitalism and demonstrates how to combat both endogenous and exogenous ills through an emancipatory plan—spanning everything from the economic to the intellectual spheres. Justice that does not hide the exploitation of workers—whether in China, Russia, or anywhere else—is superior. It is for this justice of emancipated peoples that the long struggle has been waged; it is the justice yearned for by those fighting for a unity in which we have nothing to lose. Let us weigh it up.

 

 

(Rebelión)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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