Untwisting Reality

Using Celebrities as Agents of Change

• By Poetry X
• 31 August, 2015
• No Comments

As we all know it was John Wilkes Booth, an accomplished stage actor, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865 proving the lie that politics and art don’t mix. Nowadays, art is not just an important weapons of mass distraction, but plays a key role in generation change where we want impose the United States agenda. Under no means I imply we are going to use the artists themselves to commit the assassinations like in the case of John Wilkes Booth, but rather as a complement in the structure of media mis-information. Trying to keep artists in line, and using them as agents for political ends if possible is nothing new. Artists like Michael Angelo were politically opposed to the unjust hierarchy of the time and had to be controlled somehow [NatGeo].

But not all artist refuse to collaborate with the status quo as seen with John Wilkes Booth. In modern times, the assassination of singer Victor Jara and poet Garcia Lorca makes clear artistic expressions are open threats to oppressive regimes. Famous artists on these days have a deep impact in society. It was not a secret during WWII Picasso was quite a celebrity artist and the nazis tried to seduce him into joining their cause, but he refused [CMIG June 15-2019]. Nowadays we can see the case of famous Venezuelan artists such as Paul Gillman, los Los Guaraguao, Omar Enrique, among others being banned from performing outside Venezuela just for supporting the left leaning government [Panorama].

Celebrities such as Gloria Estefan are outspoken on their right wing political inclinations, which is not a surprise anyway, since she is part of the Cuban exile in Miami, famous for their hatred against the Cuban Revolution. What we must take into consideration is that Estefan’s father was a bodyguard to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. That on itself proves the self interest on some artists who speak against certain political tendencies. Unified in this cause of taking down the Cuban Revolution, the Miami exile and the US power regime have created a monopoly of the hispanic entertainment all across the continent and the Estefan family control a big part of that agency.

It was in 2014 when an avalanche of artist practically colluded in a massive plan to take down the government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Celebrities like Rihanna, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Ricky Martin, Sofia Vergara among many others, specially Mexican artists made in way accusing the Venezuelan government of violating human right when the people committing crimes were actually people related to the opposition sector. The part of Mexican artists slandering Venezuela is very telling since, those who did so, never said anything agains their own government on massacres committed by their own government months later they accused the Venezuelan government. Bloody events such as the massacre of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa, went un-noticed by the those Mexican celebrities.

Other kinds of artiest that collaborate pretty well in this task of attacking unfriendly government to the US agenda are comedians. In this way it has not been just by chance that comedian John Oliver just slandered against three leftist governments – against Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina. Keep in mind Oliver is employee for the powerful Viacom Inc. Comedy is a soft but effective way to to shape the public perception. Among the multiple attacks against Venezuela, comedy is widely use as part of the smear campaign [La Iguana Feb 15-2015]. This is not the first time comedy is used in this way – there’re tons of dark jokes that are still in use to libel the Cuban Revolution.