 “Astroturfing” and other useful terms Towards a new Bourgeois-Democratic Devil’s Dictionary “Astroturf” is artificial grass, including the roots: Hence the word “astroturfing”, meaning the manufacture of bogus grassroots. A good example of “astroturfing” in South Africa is the “Right to Know” (R2K) campaign, which continues to get free advertising on ETV, and which is supported by a dedicated person on the staff of the Mail & Guardian weekly newspaper, but which has no democracy, constitution or registered membership, i.e. is totally ad hoc. But it is even more blatant than that. On 31 March 2011 R2K’s Mark Weinberg put out an e-mail that said, inter alia: “If you are in Cape Town come to Parliament tomorrow @ 8h45… We must defend our right to observe in Parliament (and defend our democratic Parliament) in our numbers! If you know journalists - please alert them tonight! ... Another word for “astroturfing” in South Africa is “civil society”. Any organisation that is not government and not a democratic mass organisation may be called “civil society” here. Straight away, it is a lie. The term “civil society” is meant to mislead people to think that the actual mass democracy of South Africa, with participating membership in the millions - which is the Alliance of the ANC, the SACP, the mass-membership trade unions affiliated in COSATU and SANCO - somehow does not exist or is not “grassroots”, as far as the oppositionist bourgeois mass media are concerned. So an imaginary grassroots - an “Astroturf” – has been invented and is put forward as more real than the real one, the one which is the actually-existing organised mass liberation movement of South Africa. The “Civil Society” Astroturf, also sometimes self-named “social movements”, is a fabrication that is diametrically opposed to the NDR (South Africa’s National Democratic Revolution). The NDR stands for the deliberate expansion of real democratic mass organisation. Without this NDR the democratic form that South Africa gained in 1994 would have no content. No content, that is, other than “Astroturf”, concocted and paid for by the oppressor class and its lackeys and flunkies. Other examples of astroturfing in South Africa, apart from the R2K one mentioned above, would be the SOS (Save Our SABC) campaign, which notwithstanding its claims to the contrary is pure Astroturf; CSVR; and any organisation collaborating with George Soros or with his “Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa” (OSISA). Towards a South African Bourgeois-Democratic Devil’s Dictionary “Astroturfing ” is a US term that would fit well in a modern “Devil’s Dictionary”. Some other useful and related terms are listed below; and finally, there is an appeal for terms to cover things that exist in our politics but for which we have no clear or generally-accepted words as yet. More Useful Vocabulary: Rent-a-crowd: The British term - Astroturfing at its most blatant Claque, Fraudience: a false crowd or a coached audience, often paid or otherwise rewarded. Denial of Service, Sterile Insect Technique: Ways of crowding out genuine action with phony “activism”. Judas Goat, Pseudo-gangs, Shill, False flag: All different ways of enemies posing as friends for the purpose of misleading, and of doing harm Agent Provocateur: These false friends infiltrate good organisations, work their way into leadership positions, and then misdirect the good organisation into disastrous courses such as terrorism. Push poll: Used in South Africa by web sites, radio stations and newspapers. They float false accusations, innuendos and insinuations by making them sound like bona fide questions. Agenda setting theory: Overt, shameless, openly-admitted ways of telling lies and misleading people Spin: Manipulation of news (slang) Sock puppeteering: a form of personal astroturfing common in Internet communities Colour Revolution: bogus revolution set up by Imperialists; international astroturfing “Wag the Dog”: a film depicting astroturfing Weasel Word: all kinds of ways of telling lies without appearing to do so. Wikipedia has a very good entry on this, which includes things like Passive Voice, Euphemism, and Non Sequitur. Opportunism: In communist literature, especially in Lenin, the “opportunists” were the “social democrats” who abandoned international working-class solidarity and voted for war in 1914. Also, broadly: any reformists, revisionists, syndicalists or workerists. Beyond opportunism: A new term needed In South Africa there is an attempted literary fraud under way, that started a long time ago, which goes beyond opportunism to the point of reversing history completely. By means of this literary trick, the actual liberation movement – the ANC and its allies – is supposed to be rendered into its historical opposite, while the racist regime and its direct descendents, the DA, somehow reappear in the guise of liberators. The big lie is so incredible when stated openly in this way that its outrageousness becomes part of its cover. Who would believe it? Yet this big lie is in different ways presented to South Africans every single day, while the existing liberation movement as such is erased from our public discourse – or would be if the most prominent mass media of communications, the press and audio-visual broadcast media, were the only mass media of communications. But the press and audio-visual broadcast media are not the only mass media of communications. The masses have their organisations, and they have other means such as those by which this message must have reached you. Hence there are two contradictory “versions” of reality on offer to South Africans today, one true, and one false. The (false) media version, exemplified at its most fanatical by the South African Institute of Race Relations, says that the liberation movement never really existed, or if it did, it was a fraud; and that democracy was stolen by “the ANC”, which henceforth became like the National Party! Therefore, the argument goes, the real liberation movement is now led by the DA! Or if it is not led by the DA, then it is led by the Astroturf “Civil Society” NGOs, which are sponsored and paid for by international capitalists such as George Soros! Never mind the fact that none of these Astroturf organisations are democratic, and that they therefore have no mass membership but only a paid elite corps of propagandists. What can we call this media fraud? Inversion? Transferance? Goebbels-ism? Daylight robbery? I pause. VC -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
