Friday, July 08, 2005

Terrorism and the MediaState

There are terrible events in the world. There will always be terrible events in the world. Freedom means the freedom to do wrong. Without evil there can not be any good.

The Media wants sensation, because that is their food. They create sensation from the day-to-day, from events that might otherwise never come to our notice. And the easiest sensation to stimulate in us, the most primal, is fear. So we are kept in a heightened state of fear, panic, and even hatred.

The State wishes for enemies so it can build borders, without which the State is readily revealed as a pointless entity of control. Intangible evil must be made real as concrete foes, so that policies can be enacted to take away the freedoms of individuals, to stigmatise certain "others", and to increase the percentage of our resources which go to activities like "security". All of these are themselves tools of this self-same evil.

Today we live in a MediaState, a State which is not concerned with action but rather the image of action: "we must be seen to do...", "it is important that give the sign that...". This is not to say that actions do not occur, only that their appearance is more important. Said another way, it is the mediation of the actions that comes to us as "fact". This MediaState has evolved from the goal of fear-production shared by its two component institutions.

The MediaState and terrorists work hand-in-hand; one cannot exist without the other. They are both to be condemned for their oppressive uses of power.

"Terrorism is a lesser evil than the police state capable of ending it."
-- Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies: Crystal Revenge

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I suppose we need about two ror three more 9/11s before you get it.

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