"VOA’s congressionally funded Persian News Network received more than $17 million in taxpayer funds last year,” US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook wrote in an article on Wednesday.
[US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook] in Trump's White House has lashed out at the Voice of America, specifically the Persian language part of it, saying it's a huge waste of the taxpayers’ money.
Well, he may be right about that. The Voice of America is the US government official propaganda channel that is out there trying to undermine any governments that remain at least a little bit independent.
And, of course, Hook may be right that actually the commercial US channels may be doing a better job of undermining independent governments and selling American propaganda than VOA is. So, let's give him that. But he is completely out of his mind in terms of his specific criticisms of the Persian language VOA.
It's actually rather hilarious to look at what Hook is saying and of course, he represents the thought of Mike Pompeo. These people are psychotic. They are complete maniacs and their criticisms are that the anti-Iran propaganda put out by VOA isn't rabid and one-sided enough.
He apparently wants VOA to do nothing but viciously attack Iran in its Iranian language program, and he thinks that would be effective propaganda for trying to convince the Iranian people to destroy their own country and overthrow their own government and become traitors to their own constitution.
Well, the fact is that the VOA people, as bad as they are at their jobs, are at least proficient enough to know that the way you do propaganda is you have to be somewhat subtle. You have to come across as if you're being reasonable and balanced, while subtly highlighting a particular point of view that you're trying to get across. And that is what VOA does in its Persian services as well as other services, attacking other independent countries.
But Pompeo and Hook apparently think that if they can force the VOA Persian service to only hire rabid lunatics like them who lash out and drool with rabid mania at all times, 24/7/365, and that will somehow convince the Iranian people that they (Pompeo and Hook) are right and that Iran is wrong. And, well, go ahead, try it.
The people that Trump has brought into his administration, many of them, like Pompeo and Hook, are just not very sophisticated —like Trump himself—and Trump's unsophisticated approach to the world is not bearing a whole lot of dividends in many areas, not least of which is the response to the coronavirus with 100,000 US deaths and counting, and probably Trump has blown his reelection.
That kind of ineptitude is going to carry over into other areas, but the smart thing here would be to just shut down VOA Persian as Hook is threatening, rather than to waste even more money by turning it into a voice of Pompeo and Hook's rabid lunacy, which would get absolutely no traction in Iran or anywhere else.
Of course, the one area where Hook is right is that the $17 million of US taxpayer money going to fund the VOA Persian service propaganda is largely wasted. As I said earlier, the whole regime change effort on Iran is a wasted effort in terms of actual US interest. But even if we accept the idea that the government should be encouraging propaganda, the commercial efforts are vastly bigger and probably more effective than VOA is anyway.
So this is indeed a waste of the American taxpayers’ money and it's also very offensive that all of these efforts are being used to undermine independent governments.
I think if the American people understood what's going on, they would pressure their government to allow other countries to be themselves and to have independent policies.
Unfortunately, that's not the approach of the current [US] regime. And, in fact, the whole bubble in which the foreign policy experts in America exist in is all based on this American exceptionalist ideology. And so they are going to be propagandizing people, and stealing the taxpayers’ money to do it for some time.
Kevin Barrett is an American author, journalist and radio host with a Ph.D. in Islamic and Arabic Studies. He has been studying the events of 9/11 since late 2003. He recorded this article for Press TV website.
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