Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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were needed,” in contrast to the real agrarian reforms carried out by the
enemy, now thankfully overcome.
The leading New York Times pundit, the highly-respected Arthur
Krock, explained that “the world Bolshevik conspiracy to take over the
country” had been foiled, solemnly parroting the idiocies and lies
handed out by the US government and quoting with respect an informed
diplomat who thought there was a chance that President Arbenz might
be restored “after an interval devoted to shaking the conviction of this
hemisphere that, for the first time, a Communist-controlled state was to
be set up far from the military power of Moscow,” though we might do
better yet: he was “now disposed to believe in a good chance for the
formation of a military junta, made reliably anti-Communist by
replacements of some members of the present one, to govern Guatemala
until there can be free and democratic elections again”—perhaps a
millennium hence. 202
Krock also lamented the power of the Communist propaganda
apparatus that had misled the public into believing that there had been
an “invasion” or that the US was somehow involved, even sponsoring
“demonstrations against the United States” through “the Communist
network in the Americas,” while the US, so backward in these matters,
had been “slow in realizing these maneuvers” or responding to them.
Meanwhile, the public relations experts of the United Fruit Company
were congratulating themselves on their success in peddling fanciful
tales that were eagerly swallowed by the free press, including a frontpage
story in the New York Times praising the Company’s forwardlooking
policies after a successful brainwashing operation arranged for
reporters in Honduras; much impressed with the fantasies spun by the
United Fruit PR offices, the Times editors noted (June 20, 1954) that
“American-controlled undertakings in Guatemala have greatly liberalized
and humanized their policies.” The chief PR officer for United Fruit,