This post is about very recent fake history, debunked misquotes of Mahmoud Ahmadienjad, which the mainstream media is propagating and which aid the push for war with Iran.
This time around it's not so much yellowcake 'n aluminum tubes but, rather, fake Ahmadinejad quotes and just about everybody who's anybody - The LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, AP - is getting into the fake Ahma-quote biz....
[image, right: Boogah Boogah ! Hitler !]
What's so bad about putting a few words into the mouth of a guy like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who dabbles in Holocaust denial ? Well, first of all, if he never said the words, "wiped off the map" or whatever, that's called "lying", or perhaps "fraud", or even "slander" and when many journalists from leading news organizations repeat the same fabrications over and over it's called "mass propaganda".
note: this is a long post so I've broken it into sections, with bolded titles
To begin with, it should be noted that the "wiped off the map" meme was initially set in motion by the official Iranian News Service, and it would perhaps be inappropriate to come down heavily on random internet bloggers who believed the mis-translation.
But, my post concerns major news services that have the basic responsibility to get the facts straight ; Ahmadinejad's statement ""the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" was made during a speech Ahmadinejad gave in October 2005, almost 2 years ago, and so there's been plenty of time for accurate translations to diffuse out.
Given the extent to which the misquote has been used - it has even made its way into a Congressional resolution, I feel the mainstream media has the responsibility to stop spreading the 'wiped of the map' misquote. But, do they want to stop ?
The most succinct smackdown of the "wiped off the map" misquote attributed to Ahmadinejad that I have so far encountered comes from a letter to the editor printed August 2, 2007 in the Boston Globe:
THE JULY 30 story by the Associated Press "Citing Iran threat, Olmert backs US move to upgrade Saudi arms" (Page A8) repeats the charge that Iran's leader "has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map."
A simple Web search for the speech in question will show that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually said that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," comparing the withering away of Zionism to that of the Soviet Union -- a historical anomaly whose internal contradictions will prove insupportable. Note the passive "vanish," not the active "wiped off the map." Note "regime," not "Israel." Note that the Farsi word for "map" does not appear in the original, further suggesting that Ahmadinejad was referring to a political system, not a country.
I'm not interested in rehabilitating the ridiculous Ahmadinejad, or in arguing the merits of Zionism. I simply remember how the fables of WMDs prepared us for war in Iraq, and I'm wary of this latest urban legend's potential for similar mischief. ( source )
The end goal we have seen before ; Saddam Hussein was the last "Hitler". He served well. Now, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the next "Hitler" in line. Proper "Hitlers" need to say suitably Hitler-esque things...
So, let's turn on the fake quote machine.
Yesterday, I had an experience that, in a small way, was rather similar to what led my friend Chris Rodda to write an entire book debunking fake American history; she encountered some, noticed it for what it was, and got mad.
For my part, I ran across an LA Times op-ed posing as a story, and it mentioned the ubiquitous "wipe Israel off the map" quote attributed to the current President of Iran that seems to be everywhere.
Was there anything to it, I wondered ? Some worthy intellectual debate with two credible sides ? No, I found out. And, I discovered, that fake Ahmadinejad quote has given birth to a second generation of child-quotes derived from the parent "wiped off the map" misquote. Further, I found a new fake Ahmadinejad quote that's now being cited though it was only born this September.
I think I conceived of these misquotes as fake history because I've been learning about the falsification of American history and had the sudden insight that I was seeing the same process, with many of the same methods employed by those who falsify American history, only on a much shorter time scale.
The process is not incremental the way the falsification of American history is. No, it's rapid and temporary; the falsification of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements needs to stick only for the short time necessary to get the US into a war with Iran.
All the fake quotes support the push for war.
As I wrote yesterday, about Tim Rutten's LA Times article:
My first cup of coffee is always a perilious affair.
Today, it was a thoroughly delicious, organic, Fair Trade, Trader Joe's Breakfast Blend that brought me to a proper state of mild outrage, good for writing, over a vicious smear job, by Tim Rutten and published in the September 29, 2007 LA Times, in the "entertainment" section, that played off the Ahmadinejad=Hitler! meme to tie Columbia University's decision, to host a visit by Ahmadinejad, to the fascist leanings of Nicholas Murray Butler, who ran Columbia University in the 1930's. In his piece, Rutten cites a claim that's unfortunately become graven in the minds of many Americans, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened to "wipe Israel off the face of the Earth" "
Columbia's President Lee Bollinger, in his speech given prior to Ahmadinejad's, cited the omnipresent "wiped from the the map" quote too.
The quote is false but it, along with at least one other newly evolving and fake Ahmadinejad quote, is centrally important to the dubious Ahmajenidad/Hitler comparison that's being used as a justification for a US attack on Iran.
As Rutten began his "article" (it was really an op-ed), "One of the world's truly dangerous men, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left New York a clear winner this week...
If the blood-drenched history of the century just past had taught American academics one thing, it should have been that the totalitarian impulse knows no accommodation with reason."
The totalitarian impulse is also one that tends to play fast and loose with the facts but it was unlikely Tim Rutten knew that he was actually indicting himself via his own falsified Ahmadinejad quote.
Rutten had actually wrote a new permutation of the 'original', fake quote ; It was evolving, changing ! Soon, it seemed, Rutten's new version would give birth to a third generation hybrid, maybe "wipe Israel off the face of the Earth with the nuclear weapons we know he's gotten from North Korea !", or something like that.
It seemed like a cottage industry of fake Ahmadinejad quotes, all pointing towards a foregone conclusion - the man's a monster who, given any chance whatsoever, will most certainly be the doom of Israel.
Hey, You Got Fake History In My Mideast Apocalypse !
Lately, as I've been studying the falsification of American history, by the American Christian right, to bolster the claim that the United States was founded as a "Christian Nation" (65% of Americans now think the founders intended that), I've noticed that people who promote falsified American history are also usually among those clamoring most noisily for a US or joint US/Israeli attack on Iran.
Indeed...
I've identified a curious subset which 1) pushes fake US history 2) Lobbies for war with Iran, 3) Promotes apocalyptic Christianity, 4) Denies Global Warming is a problem, 5) Promotes Creationism 6) Opposes abortion, reproductive, and women's rights 7) Wants 'Biblical Law', 8) Thinks church-state separation is a myth and that people of minority religious and philosophical beliefs should just shut up and move to the back of the bus.
I could probably add more items to that interesting political and cultural and religious position plank, but suffice it to say that the group I mention above probably would not be especially upset if the clock were to be rolled back to the Pre-Enlightenment age so as long as they got to keep their technological gadgets and stuff. But, most social, political, and intellectual advances could go.
That's just one faction shoving us towards expanded war in the Mideast; there's also a relatively secular, neocon associated faction, and there are corporate, especially military-industrial, interests. Then there are the journalists charged, in theory at least, with bringing us the truth...
Those disparate factions seem to hold, as during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, at least one common imperative ; war must happen, and it's OK to lie to make it happen.
"Aluminum tubes 'n Yellowcake du jour": Fake Ahmadinejad quotes
Falsified quotes are central tools of propaganda and one can create them, especially from public speech that gets translated from another, relatively dissimilar, language, quite easily with only three basic techniques:
- Use the wrong words. So, "regime" gets turned into "Israel", "vanish" becomes "wipe", and "pages of history" becomes "map"
- Use ellipsis; chop out words as necessary to arrive at suitably bloodthirsty-sounding falsified quote.
- Pluck out of original context. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejah has made painfully clear he's discussing Israel as a political regime by previously citing other political regimes, such as the Soviet Union, which have vanished though the people and countries lands that comprised such regimes still exist, then get rid of the troublesome mitigating context.
Accurate translations of Ahmadinejad's statements are readily available and I believe it should be the responsibility of those who cite the misquotes, given that those are essentially being used towards the construction of a justification for attacking Iran, to bother with spending the minimal amount of time necessary to determine whether the quotes attributed to the President of Iran were actually what he said.
Some misquotes of the misquotes go so far as to suggest that the President of Iran has, at least on several occasions, proposed preemptive strikes on Israel, and such alleged statements, paired with reports claiming that Iran seeks to build nuclear weapons, have given rise to considerable concern.
I'm going to call the sort of misquotes I'm discussing, for the purposes of this piece, falsified quotes or fake quotes because, given the magnitude of the stakes (another, bigger US war at best, world catastrophe at worst) and the basic laziness, incompetence, or willfully deceptive malice of those who repeat the fake quotes, I think it's unwise to put lipstick on this pig.
One in Tehran Beats Two In The Bush-League ?
Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a Holocaust denier ? He's certainly trafficked in Holocaust denial rhetoric, and a number of statements he's made, indicating there might be some question as to the reality of the Shoah, have been execrable.So of course criticism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is thoroughly valid but it needs to remain factually accurate.
Ahmadinejad can certainly be accused of anti-Semitism. But if he gets lambasted for, apparently, sanctioning a form of Holocaust denial, should an American religious leader, Pastor John Hagee, who meets with, and gives speeches before, top US political leaders get a pass for acknowledging the Holocaust but blaming it on Jews themselves, or for spreading crypto anti-Semitic conspiracy theory ?
And, should critics of Ahmadinejad who assert he desires the physical destruction of Israel, rather than the downfall of the current Israeli political regime, look the other way when it's discovered that the United States Pentagon is permeated with Apocalyptic Christian Dispensationalist beliefs which hold that Israel will be mostly wiped off the map in the immanent end-time battle of Arageddon, with most of its inhabitants killed (probably quite soon) and all those who survive converted to Christianity ?
The Lobbyists Who Cried Hitler
The Christian Zionists of CUFI, who also envision Israel being wiped off the map (more or less), and NeoCons associated with AIPAC are leading the way in Hitlerifying Ahmadinejad. Here's Pastor John Hagee, a man who has blamed Jews for the Holocaust, speaking at the 2007 annual AIPAC conventiin in Washington DC this Spring:
"As you know, Iran poses a threat to the State of Israel that promises nothing less than a nuclear holocaust. I have been saying on national television, in churches and auditoriums across America it is 1938; Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler." Texas Megachurch Pastor and founder of the new, ostensibly "pro-Israel" lobby CUFI, speaking March 11, 2007, at the national AIPAC conference, in a keynote address delivered to a substantial portion of the members of the US Congress and Senate
John Hagee is a notable voice crying Hitler but he is only one of a mighty chorus. Also echoing the charge is AIPAC. As Arash Norouzi, who maintains a website devoted to debunking the "wiped off the map" misquote, writes:
An October 2006 memo titled Words of Hate: Iran's Escalating Threats released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel." These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.
W's The Hitler-Of-The-Month Club
Let's turn back the hands of the clock, prior to the invasion of Iraq. Who was George W. Bush then comparing to Hitler ?
On Anne November 22, 2002, Anne Kornblut and Charles Sennott reported, for the Boston Globe, on a speech Bush gave prior to his appearance at a NATO summit in Europe:
In a speech to students on the eve of a two-day NATO summit, Mr Bush compared the challenge of the Iraqi President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led to World War II.
"Ignoring dangers or excusing aggression may temporarily avert conflict, but they don't bring true peace," he said.
Suggesting that terrorism was as dangerous as Hitler in the 1940s, Mr Bush told the teenagers: "We face perils we've never thought about, perils we've never seen before. They're just as dangerous as those perils that your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers faced."
He demanded that Saddam "declare completely and truthfully his arsenal of terror" and threatened serious consequences if he failed to meet the December 8 deadline to disclose his weapons of mass destruction. ( reprinted on the online edition of the Sydney Morning Herald )
Now, that the last "Hitler" has been disposed of via a preemptive invasion of Iraq, we need a new "Hitler"
Thus, "Hitler" #2 is being now being inflated to monstrous proportions, blown up to a properly menacing size with fake journalism, and fake quotes... Like "wipe Israel off the map". But if we're looking for Hitlers, we might consider following the body count.
The "Ahmadinejad is like Hitler !" comparison is absurd and risible given the regional context - the body count of the Bush Administration's "preemptive" invasion and occupation of Iraq; a credible statistical study suggests that very soon the impact of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq will be one million Iraqi deaths, with millions more injured; millions of Iraqis, furthermore, have been internally displaced or have fled their country. Comparisons of George W. Bush to Hitler can lead us into a morass of less than useful Nazi comparisons, because those can distract us from actual details at had, but it's still worth noting that Hitler favored preemptive war too.
Truth Gets Wiped Off The Map
Does Ahmadinejad wish Israel well ? Probably not.
But, did Ahmadinejad publicly threaten to wipe Israel off the map ? No, he did not. This is key:
The "wipe Israel off the map" misquote attributed to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become enshrined as "fact", and it is being widely held up as a key pretext for yet another preemptive Bush Administration war. And, it's not the only fake, bloodthirsty sounding quote recently attributed to Ahmadinejad.
In his superb "WIPED OFF THE MAP: The Rumor Of The Century", Arash Norouzi debunks the rumor and puts it back in a proper, but unvarnished, context and in the process casts a spotlight on just how far American mainstream media, including many of its journalists and media figures, have sunk into the morass.
"While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism". One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.
Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise". This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war." - he did not
If the case for war against Iraq requires the manufacture of falsified quotes, then it would seems to be a dubious case at best.
A Fake Ahmadinejad Quote Is Born !
A few days ago I found another misquote, that sounded almost as dire as the "wipe off the map" misquote and which is already being used in conjunction with the first to build the Ahmadinejad=Hitler! comparison. The misquote resulted from a bungled translation of a slightly notorious September 12, 2007 interview of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by Channel 4's Jon Snow, in which Snow repeated the "wiped off the map" misquote, in his questions to Ahmadinejad, no less than 3 times in succession.
As corrected the next day, Ahmadinejad's more or less direct response to Snow's question "You have said that you want Israel off the map. You really cannot accept the existence of Israel?" was "We do not accept or officially recognise Israel. They are occupiers and illegitimate. But our approach is humanitarian. I ask you where is the Soviet Union now - has it been wiped out or not? It vanished without a war. Let the Palestinian people chose. It will happen"
Note the emphasis: Ahmadinejad is saying that he thinks the Israeli political regime will vanish peacefully as did the former Soviet System (The Apartheid system/regime of South Africa is another such case).
But that's not how Ahmadinejad's statements are being presented. Actually, his words are being twisted and falsified to produce another quote that sounds suspiciously like the "wiped off the map" falsified quote.
CNN Broadcasts Gabled Misquote
'Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a hard line against Israel, calling it "an invader" and saying it "cannot continue its life."' ( CNN, September 12, 2007 )
Blitzer cites garbled, highly inaccurate translation corrected ten days previously
Wolf Blitzer: '...in fact, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on September 12th, "We think Israel is an invader, and it's cruel and it hasn't got a united public. All other countries, neighboring countries, are against it. It cannot continue its life." ' ( Wolf Blizter, to French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner, September 23, 2007, on CNN Late Edition. Kouchner replied to Blitzer's misquote, "Yes, I know". )
Actual Ahmadinejad quote :
"Because we analyse the problems of the region carefully and realistically, We do not deceive ourselves. We say a regime that does not have a proper philosophy of existence, which is an occupier which bullies people, and which is without culture and civilisation and which has all the powers of the region against it and only relies on its military power- this cannot survive."
( from corrected transcript amended September 13, 2007 one day after Ahmadinejad's interview.)
The actual Ahmadinejad quote is bigoted, highly anti-Semitic, but does not call for the destruction of Israel. It states that, for a number of reasons, the current Israeli political regime cannot survive. The meaning is basically the same as that of the infamous "wiped off the map" misquote: the Israeli political system, or regime, or Israeli as a political entity, is untenable.
Fake Ahmadinejad Quotes & Fake Washington Quotes.
The falsification of history is a not a new project and under the tutelage of Chris Rodda, author of Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of Amerian History, I've become a student of how American history is being falsified in order to support claims that America was originally founded as a "Christian Nation". That project has been wildly succesful, to the extent that a majority of Americans now appear to believe its true, and a key part of the enterprise is the minting of fake "founding father" quotes.
Recently, I wrote on how apparently, because no one has public challenged its veracity, not a single US Senator or Congress member can identify a falsified quote attributed to George Washington, known as "Washington's Prayer", as fraudulent and so I've come to look at the coining and spread of falsified Mahmoud Ahmadinejad statements in much the same light with which I regard fake "founding father" quotes; little details really do matter, because it's out of the little inaccuracies, distortions that the big lies are built, and the big lie that's being built, widely across the US mainstream media, is that war with Iran is both necessary and inevitable because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a "nuclear madman" bent on the destruction of both the United States and Israel.
Mainstream media reporters and journalists have a responsibility to accurately quote public statements made by heads of state, especially when those statements get wrapped up in a case for war. Otherwise, they are, in reality, propagandists: for war even.