Propaganda and Truth

You would think that after the horrors of the ideological/religious wars of the 20th century that people in advanced countries would understand media manipulation and propaganda. But sadly this isn't the case.

The killing of doctor George Tiller, the late term abortionist, shows that truth is still the first victim of today's ideological wars. Rather than listen to various viewpoints and try to synthesize a complex truth out of the unshapely reality of a complex world, fanatics still sell simplistic snake oil and push their true believers to extreme acts of violence using sound bites and slogans. It is tragic.

Here is a bit where Kate Harding in Salon points out the distortions of fanatical "pro-life" groups that push hate and killing in the name of "saving lives":

"Operation Rescue and all the pro-life groups are now saying that they're nonviolent. I've been doing this 35 years, and I really get infuriated when I hear pro-life people say they're not violent. There's a long history of violence." Clinic bombings and shootings are the most dramatic examples, but Hill also spoke of the harassment aimed at abortion providers and activists, the stalking of their homes and workplaces, the relentless campaigns of intimidation. She herself has survived numerous arson attacks and bomb threats. And as for Dr. Tiller, "They tortured him. They were in Wichita for months, maybe a year, going after his clinic and family. And it wasn't all peaceful."

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As Ann Friedman wrote in the American Prospect on Monday, the 1993 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, passed after abortion provider David Gunn was murdered, "specifically banned such acts as blocking clinic doors, trespassing, making violent threats, arson, vandalism, stalking clinic employees, and other forms of violence." But it didn't stop the violence, any more than preexisting laws against most of those acts did. "According to the National Abortion Federation, since 2000 abortion providers have reported 14 arsons, 78 death threats, 66 incidents of assault and battery, 117 anthrax threats, 128 bomb threats, 109 incidents of stalking, 541 acts of vandalism, one bombing, and one attempted murder." That was before Dr. Tiller's murder on Sunday.

And here is Kate Harding in Salon pointing out that the picture of abortion doctors was a mockery of the reality:

If any good can come of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of the very few providers of late-term abortions in the U.S., perhaps it's the opportunity to have a conversation about the reality of termination in the second and third trimesters. Anti-choice activists often cast late-term abortions as the murder of a viable baby at the whim of a woman who doesn't wish to be inconvenienced, carried out by a doctor who looks at her and sees only cartoon dollar signs. They're egged on by relatively mainstream figures like Bill O'Reilly, who declared that Dr. Tiller "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000." Such misinformation and outright lies about procedures that are in fact rare and only performed when medically necessary are what led anti-choice activists to call Tiller "America's Doctor of Death," and accuse him of running a "murder mill." The reality of what Dr. Tiller did, however -- helping women in absolutely desperate circumstances, when almost no one else would -- is what led one woman who had to terminate a wanted pregnancy because of a terrible late-term diagnosis to call the doctor and staff at his Women's Health Center "our heaven when we were living in hell."

Susan Hill, President of the National Women's Health Foundation, who knew Dr. Tiller for over two decades and referred girls and women to his clinic, said in a phone interview, "We always sent the really tragic cases to Tiller." Those included women diagnosed with cancer who needed abortions to qualify for chemotherapy, women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses, and rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months. "We sent him 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds who were way too far along for anybody [else] to see," said Hill. "Eleven-year-olds don't tell anybody. Sometimes they don't even know they've had a period."

Since the news of Dr. Tiller's murder broke, personal narratives from people who used his services have been appearing around the Web.

The fact is that fanatics are not interested in the nuances of individual reality. The madmen who seized planes on 9/11 and flew them into buildings were ideologues with no interest in the reality of individual lives. The fanatic who killed doctor George Tiller was not interested in him or his patients. Without any investigation the mad killer "knew" The Truth.

But in the real world you can't walk around finding The Truth lying in simplistic pose. Prior to modern science most "knowledge" was this kind of simplistic Truth that only required one to retire to one's philosophical couch and commune with some kind of "higher knowledge" to find The Truth. But what real science has discovered is that real truth requires a lot of down-and-dirty research, a lot of hard work, a lot of real expertise like mathematics that requires years of study, and that the real truth emerges slowly over years of democratic collaboration of a scientific community that proposes and haggles over theories and "facts" until a consensus is found.

In religion and ideological cults, The Truth requires none of this. Instead you consult a 2500 year old book or you sit at the feet of a guru/cult leader for a few weeks to find "enlightenment" and then go out and kill to ensure that your Truth wins out. Ideologues and religion are profoundly un-democratic. They are the scourge of our times.