Dictatorships begin with taking over media to spread lies

All dictatorships begin the same way: media outlets are put in the hands of “unscrupulous” people who spread lies and weaken democracy.

Jun 23, 2018

By Carol Glatz
All dictatorships begin the same way: media outlets are put in the hands of “unscrupulous” people who spread lies and weaken democracy. Typical standards, norms and laws in regard to communications are first eliminated, Pope Francis said.

Then an entire media or communication outlet is handed over “to a firm, a business that slanders, tells lies, weakens democracy, and then the judges come to judge these weakened institutions, these destroyed, condemned people and a dictatorship makes progress this way,” he said.

“All dictatorships, all of them, began like this, by adulterating communication, by putting communications in the hands of people without scruples, of governments without scruples,” he added.

The example the Pope gave was taken from the first reading of June 18, First Kings 21:1-16. It is about Jezebel who succeeds in a plot to help her husband, King Ahab, take possession of their neighbour’s land; the neighbour, Naboth, refused to sell what had belonged to his family for generations. Jezebel arranged for two men to accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king, for which Naboth was stoned to death.

Pope Francis said what happened to Naboth is similar to what happened to Jesus, St Stephen and all martyrs who were condemned as a result of lies and falsehoods.

Today, many people, “many heads of state or government,” forge the same scenario: start with a lie and “after you destroy both a person and a situation with that falsehood,” there is a judgment and a conviction, he said.

Many countries, today, he added, “they use this method: destroy free communication.”

But individuals, too, are also tempted to destroy others by talking behind their back, telling lies or spreading scandalous news, the Pope said.

Talking about scandals is enormously seductive, he said, and “one is seduced by scandals. Good news isn’t a seductress.”

“The seduction of scandal in communication backs one into a corner,” in that it destroys people like Naboth or St Stephen, who was stoned to death by people who didn’t want to hear the truth.

There have been “so many people, so many countries destroyed by evil and calumnious dictatorships,” he said, including the ones that persecuted the Jews with “calumnious communication” so they ended up in Auschwitz.

“Oh, it was a horror, but it’s a horror that happens today — in small communities, to people, in many countries,” he said.

The first step is to seize communications, then muzzle it and finally ban or kill it.--CNS

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