Sunday, January 30, 2005

Atrocity Porn

William Norman Grigg over at The New American writes scathingly about "atrocity porn": fabrications that have accompanied the Imperial war adventure in Iraq. He calles them that because they bear as much resemblance to real atrocities as pornography does to lovemaking, and has the same prurient purpose.

Writes Grigg:
"Atrocity porn plays a critical role in the process of mobilizing mass hatred on the part of the state’s designs. Like its sexual equivalent, atrocity porn (especially, and obviously, in the case of stories describing rape and other sexual abuse) appeals to prurient interests to manipulate base impulses. [...] authors of atrocity porn also cynically exploit the predictable reactions it will provoke from decent people."

Though he starts of debunking one of the most graphic atrocity stories from Iraq - that of Jumana Hanna's "rape" - Grigg puts in it the historical context, quoting three specific examples of atrocity porn: the "incubator babies" lie of the First Iraqi War, the lies about Spanish atrocities in Cuba that served to whip up the frenzy for the 1898 Spanish-American War and the WW1 "Belgian atrocities" attributed to Germans by British propaganda.

Obviously, atrocity porn has been a staple of imperialism for at least a century, because it is so damned effective. Grigg doesn't say it in so many words, but anyone who has been a victim of Western media coverage from the Balkans should find it obvious.

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