The former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and I are contemporaries, though we never met and both lived in very different worlds. I was raised in Brooklyn, New York while she lived in Communist East, Germany, behind the great concrete Berlin Wall dividing her nation at the time. What we did have in common was German heritage, and as youngsters we both liked to read newspapers and were interested in politics and current events. In Brooklyn, New York, in the 1960s I lived in the world’s most freethinking free nation. I was able to read the (formerly great) “Gray Lady” of Times Square, NY (NYT), as well as the NY Daily News, the NY Post and even the Brooklyn Eagle. These news papers did have their Opinion and Editorial sections, but by and large the news they printed existed to inform rather than “conform” and control reader’s thinking. On the other side of the Atlantic, Angela resided in a very different controlled and censored world. For her, she had only heavily censored propaganda sheets ( viz. Russian Pravda, and Neue Deutschland which functioned to control, and mold her thoughts, rather than inform. Ms Merkel famously described how in her youth, aware what she was reading was propaganda, had to learn to “read between the lines” to get at the truth about what was actually happening in Germany and the wider world.
In Angela’s East Germany, the communist government applied an informal form of censorship, practiced through a powerful apparatus controlled by the dominant political party. The goal was to ensure that all forms of art, culture, literature and public communication, “news” and public discourse was controlled so as to support one cause, or political point of view. Rumors, half truths or actual lies might be used to promote a cause or influence public opinion. Content was controlled so as to forbid any reports harmful to the GDR. Negative portrayals of GDR were censored as well. Censorship was never admitted as such and remained as “unofficial”. But all artists and authors knew that GDR censors would review their work. If they stayed from acceptable materials their manuscripts would simply never be published. In effect to insure publication ( and remuneration) of their work they simply self censored and complied. To avoid being rejected or punished for straying from “acceptable” work authors conformed and in this way unofficial censorship functioned and controlled information. Aware of this, authors, artists, musicians journalists and creators, simply worked to fit their production into the accepted guidelines. Journalists were seen as functionaries of the the state and the communist party. Accepted journalists belonged to a journalist’s collective . The institutionalized informal manner of censorship made official censorship unnecessary. Does this sound familiar?
Over the last five or more decades Angela’s world and mine seems to have changed places. The USA, formerly the land of free speech, of our cherished First Amendment, has silently and in a sinister way morphed into Angela’s old censored world of now defunct East Germany. Our journalists of the left have in large part become agents of the establishment state. Our mainstream media (NYT) have morphed into the likes of Neues Deutschland and Pravda-like propaganda sheets. Our TV programs, entertainment, movies, and especially so-called “news casts” exist (with few exceptions) to propagandize, to alter and straight-jacket our thought, rather than functioning to inform voting citizens.
There are no official censors in the the USA, but like former East Germany, authors and performers fearful of becoming outcasts— self-censor to protect their positions and incomes. The “establishment” media, newspapers and TV programs, exist to mold the thinking of their readers, listeners, or subscribers to their own particular political and social dogma, such as: the nation’s history, political issues, foreign policy, economics, and social issues like gender, race, or religion. And they will stoop to deceit, lies, half truths and even obfuscation of science to control informationn and influence public opinion.
No longer do they respect the concept of democracy…that the majority rules. That “all the people” even the unwashed masses have rights. To these folks…the elites, the government officials, the over educated, the few, believe that they can—must— decide what is “good” for the nation. Others simply are to be ignored.
The left respects only those views that they themselves hold. Like the communists of the now defunct East German government —they think their view is the only valid truth and will use the consequentialist’s Machiavelli philosophy of the“ends justify the means” to undermine our nation’s values and freedoms to reach their immoral goals.
Now like Angela, who spent her youth behind the Berlin Wall, we face that same problem and have to learn to read “between the lines” to understand the harsh reality of a censored world.
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