From Thomas Paine’s Corner
By Ramzy Baroud

“Why are those qualified to address their own affairs so widely ignored by mainstream channels in favour of intellectual middlemen who purport to have some sort of legitimacy over a range of narratives, without any convincing credentials, let alone first-hand experiences?”

What do an organic farmer from Spain, a union worker activist from Brazil, and a human rights scholar living in London have in common? They are all individuals who affect substantive change in their communities, and they are also individuals who are overlooked by the corporate media. The latter has its own lists of ‘experts’ – usually well-groomed males with little involvement in the daily struggles of the unseen and unheard multitudes of the world, yet able to influence their lives (most often detrimentally) from a well-guarded distance.

So how does the business of expertise work? Why are those qualified to address their own affairs so widely ignored by mainstream channels in favour of intellectual middlemen who purport to have some sort of legitimacy over a range of narratives, without any convincing credentials, let alone first-hand experiences?

The phenomenon precedes the advent of network television and satellite news. It is embedded in a Western tradition that was formulated around imperial conquests: for a people to be conquered, they have to be understood in a language that prioritises the interests of the colonialist over the rights of the colonized. The latter’s identity is replaced by verbal and textual reductionism. Thus Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the Somali leader who strove for twenty years to free his people from British and Italian colonialism was termed ‘Mad Mullah’ by the British. Hassan, of course, was as ‘mad’ as Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the vigorous leaders of numerous struggles around the world. The list of these individuals is ever expanding, as activists are written off by those in power, those whose ‘sanity’ preaches subscribing to the status quo and the inherent wisdom of the ‘system’.

Read more ‘Experts’