subscription.
Proven fraud does little to lessen propaganda value. As the Liberators film has
been discredited, it appears to stand little chance of being accepted as
history. However, this does not make the film a failure. The film continues
to be valuable as a tool for shaping public opinion, particularly for molding
the minds of the young. At the time of the writing of the Goldberg article
above, the film was about to be distributed to "all New York City junior and
senior high schools." We may expect, then, that hundreds of thousands of
impressionable students will view the Liberators and will believe it, and that
the refutations of Jeffrey Goldberg, and the soldiers of the 761st Tank
Battalion, and others will reach the ears of only a few. The film may never
succeed as history, but it has a good chance of succeeding as popular history,
and it is popular history that influences elections and that directs the
allocation of government resources.
Choosing between useful lies and harmful truths. One of the weapons within the
armamentarium of the totalitarian controller of information - that a useful lie
is better than a harmful truth - is explicitly wielded by at least one
supporter of the Liberators film:
She [Peggy Tishman] claims that the accuracy of
the film is not the issue. What is important is the
way it can bring Jews and blacks into "dialogue."
There are a lot of truths that are very necessary,"
she says. "This [that the 761st did not liberate
Buchenwald or Dachau] is not a truth that's
necessary."
However, wielding the weapon of the useful lie will succeed only in a context
in which the flow of contrary information can be choked off. In a society that
permits the free flow of information, there is no useful lie, because all lies
stand in danger of being exposed and thus discrediting the liar and his cause.
Thus, we may expect that an ancillary goal of the distributors of
disinformation will be to strangle the free flow of information - and more
specifically, we might expect that those backing efforts such as the Liberators
film will simultaneously back efforts to suppress web sites such as the
Ukrainian Archive. In a totalitarian society, the Liberators film constitutes
a useful day's work for the manipulators of mass opinion; in a free society,
the Liberators film constitutes a self-defeating miscalculation.
Furthermore, such an open avowal of the utility of lying as Peggy Tishman's
above brings to mind the question raised during the discussion of journalistic
fraud Stephen Glass of whether there may exist subcultures which by means of
their tolerance of, or support for, lying produce a disproportionate number of
great liars.
Consorting with Hasidim. In Goldberg's Liberators story above, Hasidic rabbi
Leib Glanz embraces Rev. Jesse Jackson on the stage of the Apollo Theater.
However, "the next night Rabbi Glanz was nearly chased out of synagogue by
angry Hasidim for the transgression of consorting with Mr. Jackson." This
brief description is puzzling, and from it alone we would be unable to arrive
at any strong conclusion, were it not for our having read some of the
characteristics of Hasidism in the writings of Israel Shahak.
With Shahak's description in mind, we are tempted to interpret Rabbi Glanz