Asian Angle | Silence, propaganda reign as West stokes fears of ‘looming threat’ of war with China
- America’s ‘war on terror’ has cost millions of lives but the enormity of this violence and suffering seems to have no place in the Western consciousness
- As China-bashing heats up in mainstream journalism, no literary critics and journalists seem prepared to question the foundations of the Western way of life
In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on “the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists” to discuss the “rapid crumbling of capitalism” and the coming of another war.
They were electric events. The most celebrated writers of the age, Arthur Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett and John Steinbeck, warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and writers and journalists had a responsibility to speak out.
The reporter and novelist Martha Gellhorn spoke from the floor about “the comradeship of humanity. Where is it?”.
Martha, who became a close friend, told me later over her customary glass of Famous Grouse whisky and soda: “The responsibility I felt as a journalist was immense. I had witnessed the injustices and suffering delivered by the Depression, and I knew, we all knew, what was coming if silences were not broken.”
Her words echo across the silences in the Western world today: they are silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear. Let me give you one example.
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