How the US Propaganda System Works

Americans are told that other governments practice censorship and propaganda, but not their own. Yet, the reality is quite different with many reasonable viewpoints marginalized and deceptive spin put on much that comes from officialdom, writes Lawrence Davidson.

By Lawrence Davidson

Many Americans assume the U.S. government speaks the truth to its citizens and defends their constitutional right to free speech (be it in the form of words or dollars). On the other hand, it is always the alleged enemies of the U.S. who indulge in propaganda and censoring of the truth.

In practice it is not quite that way. Washington, and many local American governments as well, can be quite censoring. Take for instance the attempt to censor the boycott of Israeli academic institutions institutions engaged in government research that facilitates illegal settlement expansion and the use of Palestinian water resources.

In this case, the fact that a call for boycott is an age-old, non-violent practice also falling within the category of free speech, is mostly disregarded. Instead we get a knee-jerk impulse on the part of just about every American politician to shut down debate, even to the point where various state legislatures threatened their own state colleges and universities with a cutoff of funds if they tolerate the boycott effort on their campuses.

It is not only American academics who suffer censorship at the hands of a government that claims to defend freedom of speech. Academics of countries deemed unfriendly to the U.S. have been subjected to the same treatment. Take, for instance, Iranian academics. U.S. trade sanctions on Iran, put in effect in 1980, included strict curbs on academic exchanges.

Later, a few in Congress managed to ease these with a free trade in ideas amendment, but the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sabotaged the effort. That office violated the spirit of the congressional amendment by asserting that while there could now be exchanges of information with academics in sanctioned states, say, in the form of manuscripts submitted to U.S. journals for publication, they could not be enhanced by such practices as editing for style purposes. Violation of this regulation could result in fines and imprisonment for journal editors.

On the other hand, as far as we know, no OFAC official was ever fined, fired or imprisoned for violating the intent of Congress.

Several organizations, including the American Association of Publishers, took the U.S. government to court over the issue in 2003. In 2004, the matter was settled out of court, granting the right of publishers to use standard editing procedures for manuscript submissions from Iran.

However, the OFAC has failed to officially promulgate this change in regulations, and as a result many journal editors are ignorant of the revised regulation. Many still play it safe and simply return submissions from Iran marked denied due to sanctions.

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How the US Propaganda System Works