You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide To Media
Distortion, Historical Whitewashes & Cultural Myths
By Russ Kick (Editor)
Razorfish Subnetwork
400 pgs., $19.95

Everything you think you know is wrong

By Steven Martinovich
web posted July 30, 2001

Reading "You Are Being Lied To", born of the web site
disinfo.com, is a little like being trapped with an intense version
of Fox Mulder. Not only will he tell you everything that you think
you know is wrong, you'll even be wrong about why you're
wrong. Though it's thick enough to be an encyclopedia, the book
is actually a collection of essays, both original and previously
published, with writers ranging from Noam Chomsky to
Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore.

While it isn't an encyclopedia, there doesn't seem to be much
that it doesn't touch upon and few targets that it won't take a
shot at. Some, like the essay on the Columbine shooting, are
compelling in the questions they raise: How did two teens walk
through a busy high school carrying a large propane bomb,
carefully laying out nearly 100 pipe bombs all the while heavily
armed and no one saw them until they started shooting? Who
were their real targets? And perhaps more alarming, was there a
third shooter as many students asserted?

Others are bit weaker, such as M.M. Mangasarian's attempt to
prove that the Jesus Christ worshiped by Christians was invented
after the fact and that many of the things they take for granted
are merely stolen or merged into Christianity from other older
sources. The fact, if you can take anything that happened two
millennia ago as fact, that Paul was "ignorant of the Gospel
stories about the birth and miracles of Jesus" and "equally ... just
as innocently ignorant of the teachings of Jesus" isn't proof that
Jesus Christ was a myth - merely that Paul was ignorant.

The modern famous also get their defenders and licks, with
Oliver Stone and his movie JFK singled out for praise by Sam
Smith for accomplishing "something truly remarkable that goes
far beyond the specific facts of the Kennedy killing. For
whatever errors in his recounting of that tale, his underlying story
tells a grim truth." Media darling John McCain, who has used his
past as a Vietnam POW to further his political career, comes
under attack for "his long-time opposition to releasing documents
and information about American prisoners of war in Vietnam and
the missing in action who have still not been accounted for." Not
something you heard raised during the Republican primaries.

Jimmy Carter's human rights record, World War II, Martin
Luther King, the real story of communism, why the Associated
Press changes its stories, the CIA, high school textbooks, the
drug war, toad licking, the alleged cover-up of Yitzhak Rabin's
murder and corporate media, among other modern conspiracies
and distortions, all serve as fodder for the agendas of the writers.

If "You Are Being Lied To" does have a glaring weakness, it's
the writers, with an overwhelming concentration of what Kick
refers to as "leftists/progressives." As my e-mail inbox readily
proves, conspiracy theorizing is as much a trait of the right as it is
the left. One only has to mention the words "Waco" or "TWA
800" to some to trigger a torrent of evidence that the authorities
have allegedly buried or ignored to prove that the right is just as
capable of seeing what might or might not be there. To his credit,
Kick says he did try and engage conservatives whom he
respected (pointedly stating Rush Limbaugh was not one) but
most chose to avoid the project.

As "You Are Being Lied To" points out, it only takes one white
crow to disprove the notion that all crows are black, a theory
born out by the 1997 movie "Conspiracy Theory." If you see
conspiracy theories everywhere, sooner or later - like Mel
Gibson's character Jerry Fletcher - you're bound to stumble on
one that actually exists. Which of those presented in the book
are which is up to readers to judge for themselves - though I
don't think that should be the point. As Fletcher stated, "A good
conspiracy is improvable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means
they screwed up somewhere along the line."

Steve Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario and
the editor of Enter Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com