Unfreely speaking

I've established a new policy for all slacktivist personnel.

In the extremely unlikely event that I or any member of my staff (in the unlikelier event that I hire a staff) should be taken prisoner by a foreign/enemy power and that said foreign/enemy power attempts to film a video of the captive slacktivist personnel coerced into saying false, derogatory, unflattering, unpatriotic, rude or anti-American statements and/or confessing to crimes against the foreign/enemy power, our new policy is this:

• We will say whatever they want, cheerfully, verbatim, without resistance and without regard for the content or meaning of whatever it is we're forced to say.

This being our policy and, as of this post, the world being fully informed that this is our policy, all such statements will be obviously and utterly meaningless. All such confessions would be pointless and invalid. And the bother of coercing all such statements and/or confessions would be, patently, a silly waste of time.

The idea here is that if, hypothetically, Bob the slacktivist intern is yanked off of the streets of Montreal by radical Quebecois separatists who days later release a video of Bob confessing to spying for the imperialist American Anglophone blogosphere and generally denouncing the English-speaking world, then there would be no need for collective worry by the American public that Bob has betrayed his country or that he is succumbing to Stockholm syndrome or failing to take a stand for national honor or any other such thing.

The video would be met with an appropriate mixture of boredom and mockery.

"Voila!" the enemy agents will say, "Your man has confessed!"

"Uh, right, sure, whatever" the rest of the world will say. "He's just following the policy. Can we have him back now? Or did you want to pick up a full 22 episodes of Pointless Political Theater?"

To underscore the meaninglessness and the ridiculousness of all such presumed-to-be-coerced statements/confessions, the international community is further invited to play a variation of the fortune cookie game with any statements made by captive slacktivist personnel, adding a phrase like "in my pants" or "in bed with your wife" to every such statement.

Some readers may feel that I'm not being sufficiently serious here about serious matters, but to treat the ridiculous as though it were not ridiculous is not a sign of "seriousness."

The string of videos recently produced by the Iranian government is a fundamentally ridiculous and pointless charade. Like the journalist Jill Carroll, the British sailors shown in these videos are captives. It makes no sense at all for the Iranians to pretend that people who are not free are speaking freely. And it makes no sense at all for anyone else to agree with the Iranians on this point.

After Carroll was forced by her captors to make videotaped statements, she was condemned by foolish people (Fox News, the right-wing blogosphere, etc.) who responded as though the content of her coerced statements somehow mattered. Once she was free, she spoke freely:

"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed," she said in a statement issued Saturday.

"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Allan Enwiya are criminals ..."

It's absurd that any of that needed to be said. Of course the coerced statements of captives are not an accurate reflection of their personal views. Of course such videos prove, mean and signify nothing.

One year ago today, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., discussed the propaganda tapes released by Carroll's captors on NBC's Meet the Press

MR. RUSSERT: What should the American people be thinking when they’re watching those tapes?

SEN. McCAIN: I think they should be thinking that this was a young woman who found herself in a terrible, terrible position, and we are glad she’s home. We understand when you’re held captive in that kind of situation that you do things under duress. And God bless her, and we’re glad she’s home.

MR. RUSSERT: And not listen or take those seriously?

SEN. McCAIN: I would not take them seriously. I would not. Any more than we took seriously other tapes and things that were done in other prison situations, including the Vietnam War.

That's exactly right. Do not "take them seriously."

The Christian Science Monitor article linked above contains another quote from McCain, taken from his book American Hostage. "The point of taking hostages is to get them to make propaganda statements," McCain wrote. "The job of a civilian hostage ... is to stay alive."

I would add that the job of the rest of the world is to disregard as meaningless the coerced statements of any captive in any propaganda video. People who are not free are not speaking freely. It is foolishness to regard propaganda videos as anything other than ridiculous.

Comments

[cjmr's husband]

Addendum: This rule does not apply to Gitmo. Any statements recorded there are to be assumed to be freely given and entirely factual.

[TomK]

I don't comment often

But I wanted to say that some of your writing has been particularly good as of late. Keep it up!

[PK]

Haven't you heard? The radical Québecois separatists were soundly repudiated last week.

[PK]

But yeah, I agree with your post. Coerced statements reveal much more about the captor than the captive.

[Make That 85%]

What unspeakable things must those Fox News Fundamentalists be doing to poor Brit Hume's anus? It's time for our Fox News anchors to be brought home! No more forced propaganda! Free Brit! Free Brit!

[David]

@ cjmr's husband (sort of):

I thought it was odd when I started seeing reports about the British sailors "confessing," and the newspapers explicitly put "Confessed" in quote marks... because, while I thought that was appropriate, they hadn't put quote marks around the "confessions" of prisoners who had been detained and tortured in Gitmo over a long period of time. They just said things like "This confirms accusations the U.S. Government has made against [whoever confessed this time]," and so on.

I mean, the U.S. Government's accusations may be true, for all I know. At least in these particular cases. But as soon as torture (or even the threat of torture, or just indefinite detention and coercion, or...) becomes involved, "confessions" should be considered irrelevant and absurd. If you still wish to make a case against someone after any of those things have happened, you'll have to look for evidence somewhere other than their testimony.

But apparently newspapers only realize this when it's people on our side who "confess."

(I guess FOX is at least consistent in this respect... they take these confessions seriously no matter who makes them, which is why Gitmo detainees must be guilty, and kidnapped Americans must be traitors.)

What about at the 2:47 mark?

[yesteray]

Fred,

The only reason that you would need to institute such a policy is that in the vast Slacktivist empire you have another policy that your employees with attempt to communicate fairly, accurately and truly at other times.

The US and British Governments have no such policy. We are already permitted to assume that anything that they say is said, "cheerfully, verbatim, without resistance and without regard for the content or meaning."

[Stephen]

The only people who take these "confessions" seriously and subsequently condemn the captives who make them are those who believe with all their hearts that if they were in a similar situation, they wound NOT do the same.

"Do your worst," they would say through gritted teeth, "I'll never do what you want. Do you hear me? NEVER!" And the brown-skinned Fundislamofasocialist terrorists would fall away in terror of the stalwart resolve of the Great American Patriot.

These are people who refuse to enlist, but who believe that if they did they would each singlehandedly be able to win the war.

[ako]

The only people who take these "confessions" seriously and subsequently condemn the captives who make them are those who believe with all their hearts that if they were in a similar situation, they wound NOT do the same.

The scary thing is that they take their own fantasies so seriously they'll condemn someone with a gun to their head for mouthing a few stupid and obnoxious political slogans. It's one thing to imagine yourself as the brave heroic holdout (nearly everyone has daydreams that make them look implausibly good), but it's another thing to ignore basic reality in favor of treating statements made while held hostage as reflective of someone's actual loyalty.

And seriously, is filming a hostage spouting propaganda any more demoralizing to the American public and the American military than filming them being executed? Because depending who's holding the prisoner, that could be the next most likely outcome.

[cjmr's husband]

The only people who take these "confessions" seriously and subsequently condemn the captives who make them are those who believe with all their hearts that if they were in a similar situation, they wound NOT do the same.

It can hardly be a coincidence that many of these are people who think that blasphemy ought to be a felony.

[Professor P]

And seriously, is filming a hostage spouting propaganda any more demoralizing to the American public and the American military than filming them being executed?

Yeah, and I doubt that the British generals in Iraq, upon seeing these "confessions", are going to go, "Bloody hell! They've got 15 of our chaps locked up in a remote facility with a gun pointed to their heads and now they're saying mean things about us! Pull out! PULL OUT!"

.... well, maybe that's not the best example since they are going to pull out of Iraq, but that has nothing to do with anything Iran did.

[the opoponax]

this whole thing is like when you're 9, and you're arguing with your 7 year old brother, and he starts repeating back everything you say, so you start saying things like "I am the biggest idiot ever!" and then he has to repeat it, and you act as if he had actually called himself an idiot.

[cjmr's husband]

Did not!

[Daniel]

Don't know where else to put this, but the Onion just nailed it: Bush Refuses To Set Timetable For Withdrawal Of Head From White House Banister.

Though critics have argued that he does not understand the futility of his current situation, President Bush announced today that he has no plans to remove his head from its current position: wedged painfully between two balusters on a White House staircase.
"Setting a timetable for withdrawal of my head would send mixed messages about why I put my head here in the first place," Bush said at a press conference on the Grand Staircase. "I am going to finish what I set out to accomplish here, no matter how unpopular my decision may be, or how much my head hurts while stuck between these immovable stairway posts."

[Make That 85%]

He's got his head up his ass. Which is probably a good place to keep it as long as Snarly is a free man.

[Rhys]

Only terminally religious wingnuts can believe that such confessions mean anything. It comes down to the Magic Words Principle: if you say it, then it is binding on your soul. Professing faith in Christ, stating that there is No God by Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet, etc, etc. Merely stating the magic words makes them binding on you. Even if done under duress. You can't take back the magic words, because you have already cast the spell. These are the kind of people who burn witches ... because they actually believe that spell casting works!

[NBarnes]

I can only hope that someday I'm in a position to read a statement at gunpoint denoucning the US in as flat and deadpan a delivery as possible. If that does not satisfy my captors, my next trick will be a Tim Curry impression, complete with slavering and rolling of eyes.

[chris y]

Does anybody here have the necessary artistic skills to draw a weekly strip of "The Adventures of Bob, the Slacktivist Intern"? Because that would be splendid.

[PK]

For some reason, Matthew 21:28-32 comes to mind:

"What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.' " 'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

"Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go.

"Which of the two did what his father wanted?" "The first," they answered.

Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

[Bugmaster]

What about at the 2:47 mark?

Hahah that was an awesome clip. "I'm still waiting for you to find Mohammed... actually." Ouch.

[X]

Actually you got to admire someone willing to make statements who'll get misused
http://www.colbertnation.com/ (check now, while the remix thing is still posted)

[Chris K.]

Am I the only one who read the first few sentences of this post, and began examining his resume with a critical eye, concerned that he was sadly completely unqualified to ever be a slacktivist intern?