Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

Putting aside the undoubtedly sincere reactions of many people who were exposed to evidence of properly selected atrocities that passed through the media filter, the only rational conclusion from this illuminating record is that the West was consumed with horror over Khmer Rouge atrocities during phase II not because of a sudden passion for the fate of the suffering people of Cambodia—as the record during phase I, and elsewhere, makes sufficiently clear—but because the Khmer Rouge had a useful role to play: namely, to permit a retrospective justification for earlier French and American crimes in Indochina, and to facilitate the reconstruction of Western ideology after the Vietnam trauma, so as to overcome the dread “Vietnam syndrome” and prepare the ground for a “resurgent America” pursuing its historical vocation of defending freedom and justice. The actual facts were, and remain, of little interest, for the same reason.