"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, above all, to make you see." -- Joseph Conrad (1897)
Monday, October 02, 2006
Asylum Street Spankers: Stick a Yellow Ribbon Up Your SUV
(Great band live--beware of language if you are in a monitored environment. Courtesy of Nikki Tarrant-Hoskins.)
Hello, I operate a politically oriented t-shirt and sticker company in America and we have very strong opinions about the "Yellow Ribbon" and it's meaning.
We believe that the yellow ribbon is a symbol of the political impotency of the American public.
In the early to mid 2000s the American people accepted the yellow ribbon because they literally had no other way to "support" our soldiers. We tried to "support" our soldiers by preventing their deaths, but hey, what can you do? Despite the fact that the vast majority of the American population did not support a war in Iraq, our elected officials completely ignored us and started one anyway. And since the average person couldn't "support" our soldiers by preventing them from going to war and being killed (as they tried to do), they did the only thing they could…and stuck a magnet on their car.
We created the Anti-Ribbon to express our opinion that the yellow ribbon and "Support Our Troops" slogan is a form of propaganda, and pro-war propaganda at that. We believe that whether they know it or not, people who put yellow ribbons on their car are telling the rest of the world that war in Iraq is okay, and that war, in general, is an acceptable, viable solution to our problems.
We read a Noam Chomsky quote dealing with yellow ribbons as propaganda a long time ago that became one of the inspirations for the Anti-Ribbon:
"Americanism. Who can be against that? Or harmony. Who can be against that? Or, as in the Persian Gulf War, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? Or yellow ribbons. Who can be against that? Anything that's totally vacuous. In fact, what does it mean if someone asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes, I support them, or No, I don't support them? It doesn't mean anything. That's the point. The point of public relations slogans like 'Support our troops' is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don't want people to think about the issue. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. It's crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky
From "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media", edited by Mark Achbar, p. 79
1 comment:
Hello, I operate a politically oriented t-shirt and sticker company in America and we have very strong opinions about the "Yellow Ribbon" and it's meaning.
We believe that the yellow ribbon is a symbol of the political impotency of the American public.
In the early to mid 2000s the American people accepted the yellow ribbon because they literally had no other way to "support" our soldiers. We tried to "support" our soldiers by preventing their deaths, but hey, what can you do? Despite the fact that the vast majority of the American population did not support a war in Iraq, our elected officials completely ignored us and started one anyway. And since the average person couldn't "support" our soldiers by preventing them from going to war and being killed (as they tried to do), they did the only thing they could…and stuck a magnet on their car.
We created the Anti-Ribbon to express our opinion that the yellow ribbon and "Support Our Troops" slogan is a form of propaganda, and pro-war propaganda at that. We believe that whether they know it or not, people who put yellow ribbons on their car are telling the rest of the world that war in Iraq is okay, and that war, in general, is an acceptable, viable solution to our problems.
We read a Noam Chomsky quote dealing with yellow ribbons as propaganda a long time ago that became one of the inspirations for the Anti-Ribbon:
"Americanism. Who can be against that? Or harmony. Who can be against that? Or, as in the Persian Gulf War, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? Or yellow ribbons. Who can be against that? Anything that's totally vacuous. In fact, what does it mean if someone asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes, I support them, or No, I don't support them? It doesn't mean anything. That's the point. The point of public relations slogans like 'Support our troops' is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don't want people to think about the issue. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. It's crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky
From "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media", edited by Mark Achbar, p. 79
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