Hidden Agendas

Abstract

Modem democratic society is a mixture of centralized state power, a powerful corporate/finance sector, a virtually monopolized media network, and various civil institutions, the underlying ideological themes of which are the freedom of an individual to participate in the decision-making process and to express alternative viewpoints in the political, economic, and social spheres. Freedom has always been a cherished ideal, and freedom of thought a hard fought-for reality which today symbolizes one of the outward hallmarks of modem, particularly Western, societies. Pilger's book highlights the fact that when this ideal - in essence the ability of a citizen to think, understand, and play a meaningful role in managing the public affairs of his own society - coexists alongside the reality of a set of powerful groupings working toward a different agenda within the same society, then true participatory citizenship becomes meaningless and democracy a sham. In other words, privileged elites working for their own wealth and self-interests become the leading orchestrators of plans or "agendas" to maintain skewed power distributions, keeping the reality of matters so "hidden" from the public that a smoke screen of half-truths and propaganda is created, preventing those outside from understanding reality, and therefore, acting in their own interests. These hidden agendas can take the fonn of direct concealment or by the manufacture of consent (as defined by Noam Chomsky) whereby facts are manipulated and presented in such a guise as to obtain the firm support of the individuals making up society. To the general reader, the title and subject matter of the book will undoubtedly have an almost conspiratorial ring about it, enough at least for most ...