Mike Wallace and the Subversion of Democracy
Part 3 of 3: Celebrating Dominance
This is the final segment of a three part series concerning the veteran CBS interviewer Mike Wallace – and issues of freedom, democracy, subversion and manipulation. In Part One, a young Mr Wallace intervewed Aldous Huxley, a man who gave more informed consideration to the likely future directions of authoritarianism that most in his generation. Wallace asks Huxley a very curious question about freedom.
Iranian President Ahmenidijad portrayed as an 'Islamo-fascist'
In the Part 2 – Concealing the Conspiracy – we saw Wallace interview the Shah of Iran in the 1970s – and provide commentary on Iranian affairs at the time. Acting through agents such as Wallace, Zionists in the west pushed to destablize the Shah and usher in Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
Along with the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1982, this had a number of flow-on effects. It split Eygpt from Iran; led to war between Iraq and Iran; set the ‘Iranian hostage crisis’ trap, depriving Jimmy Carter of a second term as President; laid the foundations for the Iran-contra affair; led to a savage new round of repression of the left within Iran.
"And the winner is..." (Zionism?)
The resulting mayhem and bloodshed eventually killed millions in different parts of the middle east, especially Iraq and Iran. The key beneficary was the State of Israel.
In 2005, Mike Wallace came out of retirement for the opportunity of an interview with President Ahmenidijad. His interview – packaged for prime time TV – won an Emmy Award. A complete transcript of the interview – which most westerners did not read – is here (the source is a strongly pro-Zionist site, hence the annotation which is hostile to Ahmenidijad; remarkably this is the only complete transcript of the interview I could find on the web).
The final video in this series features Mike Wallace’s award-winning interview with the Iranian President.
In September 2008, Mondoweiss ran an important story about the 60 minutes Wallace/Ahmenidijad interview for its specialist readership. Here’s the whole of that short article:
The interview that Mike Wallace did of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 2 years ago was aired on C-Span recently, and a diligent blogger has reported on what “60 Minutes” cut out of the interview when it aired. When Wallace confronted Ahmadinejad with the “wipe Israel off the map” threats, Ahmadinejad said that “the solution is democracy” in Israel and Palestine, a suggestion that he favors a one-state solution. I agree with blogger Tom Murphy that “60″‘s edits misrepresent Ahmadinejad’s thrust, making him out to be far more confrontational than he is, especially after Wallace promised Ahmadinejad that he would listen to his complete answers to questions. And yes, that this amounts to “suppression of basic facts concerning Israel and the Palestinians.”Here’s Murphy’s data:The text in red was edited out of the 60 Minutes broadcast:MR. WALLACE: You are very good at filibustering. You still have not answered the question. You still have not answered the question. Israel must be wiped off the map. Why?
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, don’t be hasty, sir. I’m going to get to that.
MR. WALLACE: I’m not hasty.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: I think that the Israeli government is a fabricated government and I have talked about the solution. The solution is democracy. We have said allow Palestinian people to participate in a free and fair referendum to express their views. What we are saying only serves the cause of durable peace. We want durable peace in that part of the world. A durable peace will only come about with once the views of the people are met.So we said that allow the people of Palestine to participate in a referendum to choose their desired government, and of course, for the war to come an end as well. Why are they refusing to allow this to go ahead? Even the Palestinian administration and government which has been elected by the people is being attacked on a daily basis, and its high-ranking officials are assassinated and arrested. Yesterday, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament was arrested, elected by the people, mind you. So how long can this go on?We believe that this problem has to be dealt with fundamentally. I believe that the American government is blindly supporting this government of occupation. It should lift its support, allow the people to participate in free and fair elections. Whatever happens let it be. We will accept and go along. The result will be as you said earlier, sir.
MR. WALLACE: Look, I mean no disrespect. Let’s make a deal. I will listen to your complete answers if you’ll stay for all of my questions. My concern is that we might run out of time.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, you’re free to ask me any questions you please, and I am hoping that I’m free to be able to say whatever is on my mind. You are free to put any question you want to me, and of course, please give me the right to respond fully to your questions to say what is on my mind.Do you perhaps want me to say what you want me to say? Am I to understand –
MR. WALLACE: No.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: So if that is the case, then I ask you to please be patient.
MR. WALLACE: I said I’ll be very patient.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Maybe these are words that you don’t like to hear, Mr. Wallace.
MR. WALLACE: Why? What words do I not like to hear? [the words highlighted in red and edited out of the interview]
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Because I think that you’re getting angry.
MR. WALLACE: No, I couldn’t be happier for the privilege of sitting down with the president of Iran.
60 Minutes framed the comments of the Iranian President in so many layers of editing it’s impossible to get the real sense of the President’s words from the ‘interview’ that went to air. Not for the first time, Mike Wallace was doing a ‘job’ on an Iranian leader.
By the 21st century, editorial manipulation had attained new heights of sophistication. The emmy-winning ‘interview’ with President Ahmadinejad contrasts presents an extreme contrast with Wallace’s Huxley interview in the 1950s. In that case – fifty years ago – the interviewer’s role was minimal; the entire focus was on the subject of the interview, who was able to speak more or less uninterrupted.
By 2009, the very same ‘soft control’ techniques that Huxley had discussed with Wallace (and warned about) – all those years ago – had come to fruition. By 2006, Wallace himself was the much-feted master of these manipulative arts.
Watch the Emmy award segment below. It features very short clips from the Ahmadinejad interview and plenty of Mr Wallace’s spin, much of it delivered from the podium.
Watch it and weep for the subversion of US democracy over the last half century, in which a manipulative, tribally-loyal mass media plays a central role in promoting the interests of a plutocratic elite – as well as the special privilege of a caste of ‘alphas’ – while undermining America’s universalistic values and the prospects for world peace.
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