Imagine this. A document containing lies and slander is widely distributed. It seeks to discredit individuals and it is used by those whose common purpose is to spread fear and loathing of their target. The document was intentionally fabricated to demonise certain people and organisations, and to suggest a conspiracy aimed at domination. The fraudulent work is presented as authentic.
This work of fiction is, above all, a text designed to inflame mass hatred. Alleged meetings, alleged minutes of meetings and secret conspiratorial plans are detailed.But in the end, it turns out that the conspiracy and its alleged leaders never, in fact, existed. The document is an elaborate hoax.You might think, with some justification, that I am talking about the document introduced into Parliament last week by Yatta MP Charles Kilonzo.
You would be wrong. Although the Kilonzo case bears remarkable similarities, I am talking about a document called ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, produced in Russia, probably by the Russian Secret Police, at the turn of the 20th Century, and arguably the most notorious and widely disseminated anti-Semitic publication ever.
This elaborately faked document was intended to portray Jews as conspirators against the state. It took until 1921 to find conclusive proof that showed the document to be “clumsy plagiarism”. But still it persisted. (Don’t expect Kilonzo’s document to go away any time soon.) In 1935, a Swiss court described the ‘Protocols’ as “libellous”, “obvious forgeries”, and “ridiculous nonsense”. In 1964, the US Senate said the document was “fabricated”, describing its contents as “gibberish”.
That, however, was after the document had been widely distributed internationally for more than half-a-century. And it is still widely circulated today, by right-wing, anti-Semitic groups in the US and elsewhere. In parts of the Islamic world, the document’s contents are taught as fact.
Despite the fact that the document had already been proved a fake, it was also used in the 1930s and ’40s by Adolf Hitler and his propaganda genius, Joseph Goebbels, to incite the German Aryan population against Jews, leading to the slaughter of six million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other German death camps.
The story of the ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is a cautionary tale that demonstrates just how intensely dangerous the consequences of forgery and propaganda can be. And it unfortunately appears that some of our ‘honourable’ members of Parliament have no problem embracing propaganda techniques similar to those used by the Russian Secret Police, Hitler and the Nazis.
Let no one say I’m calling them Nazis. No. I’m saying, very precisely, and as a matter of empirical fact, that these MPs are themselves giving the impression they have no compunction about employing techniques similar to those employed by the Nazis. It is a shocking wake-up call to realise that there are people among us who can countenance using tactics similar to those that were evolved and considered appropriate by a murderous regime in Russia more than 100 years ago.
Propaganda was the biggest and most effective Nazi weapon. And propaganda is the everyday diet being stuffed down our throats by some of our so-called leaders, and, regrettably, by some of our media. That is how we get Prime Minister Raila Odinga “calling for the arrest” of certain leaders – when a statement from his campaign secretariat merely noted the good fortune of those leaders in being free to attend ‘prayer meetings’ all over the country while other people accused of lesser crimes languish in jail. There was no call for anyone’s arrest.
That kind of unwarranted media extrapolation leads to ridiculous statements from the likes of William Ruto, such as, “He [Raila] believes we are criminals and should be hanged.” Nothing remotely close to this has ever been postulated, but this remark, a piece of propaganda par excellence, is classic Ruto.
William Ruto has never been one to hold back from giving vent to any outlandish notion that pops into his head. More significantly, he is a man with nothing to lose, so he has no problem trotting out anything at all – however bizarre. Nor, apparently, does he have any scruples about making things up as he goes along. He seems to think Kenyans are feeble-minded enough to swallow this guff. I think he might find he is mistaken.
Ruto’s remark about being “hanged” apparently doesn’t faze his brother-in-arms, Uhuru Kenyatta, either, who prefers to chastise Raila Odinga for his secretariat’s observation, saying: “It was reckless remarks like this that led to the 2008 violence.”
No, Mr Kenyatta. There were no “reckless remarks” that led to that violence. What led to that violence was something quite different – something that boiled and bubbled up from the hellish depths of longstanding, festering, internecine hatred, as we have quite clearly been told by several investigative reports, such as those by the Human Rights and Waki Commissions, and also by the Kiliku and Akiwumi Commissions before them.
After the stolen election of 2007, Mr Odinga called for peaceful mass action to protest the theft of something that could not be retrieved by any other means. He emphasised peace in every plea he made to the nation and in every conversation he held. At the close of an ODM meeting at Orange House following the election, Mr Odinga bade farewell to MPs and party officials and advised them to go home to their constituencies and “protest peacefully”.
In meetings with the visiting Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Desmond Tutu and Graca Machel of South Africa, Sir Ketumile Masire of Botswana, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Joacquim Chissano of Mozambique and other African leaders, Raila Odinga repeated the mantra of peaceful mass action – peace, peace, peace.
He did the same in countless meetings with all manner of Kenyans arriving at the Pentagon headquarters day after day: peace, peace, peace. He repeated it in conversations with foreign leaders – Condoleezza Rice of USA, Gordon Brown of UK and many others: peaceful demonstrations, peace, peace, peace. If any reckless remarks were made, Mr Kenyatta, they were not made by Raila Odinga. He called only for peaceful mass action.
Or are you saying that Gandhi was reckless? Are you saying that Martin Luther King was reckless? Are you saying that Aung San Suu Kyi is reckless? Would you demand that they also be hauled before the ICC because of their repeated calls for peaceful mass action?
Many of the world’s greatest leaders have done as Raila Odinga did. When every other way is blocked, the people have only one option: peaceful mass protest to press for their rights. When self-expression and freedom of choice through the ballot are denied, and the courts are nobbled by controlling political interests, other avenues of protest and progress must be sought.
Funnily enough, according to one newspaper report a few days ago, the Kikuyu Council of Elders has “vowed to organise peaceful demonstrations” against the UK government. Hah! It’s OK for them to do it, apparently. Most amusing of all is Mr Kenyatta’s remark that “It is unfortunate for Raila to make uncalled-for remarks at this sensitive time. He must not be allowed to polarise our country in this manner.”
Here we have another classic propaganda tactic: When you want to deflect attention from yourself, be sure to accuse your opponent of whatever it is that you yourself have been doing.
Who is it, among our leaders, who have been travelling all over their home areas shouting about ‘our community’ this, ‘our community’ that, ‘our community’ the other? Who has been promulgating the idea that one among their community must be unchallenged and must be crowned ‘king’? Has anyone ever heard Raila Odinga shouting about ‘my community’? The only time we have ever heard him speak exclusively about or to Luos was when he was advising them on moderate behaviour.
In fact, can you imagine the furore if Raila Odinga suddenly began talking up his community in the same way leaders among the G7 do theirs? The outcry would be heard from here to Lagos.
Raila Odinga polarising our country, my foot! He is the only one consistently speaking to Kenyans as a nation, not as a group of tribes. He never calls to his ethnic origins, while his opponents continue bashing the ‘our community’ war-drum frantically and incessantly. Then we have Mr Ruto again, speaking of Mr Odinga as the “beneficiary of violence”.
This is the same William Ruto who is currently rushing to avoid court action by surrendering Rift Valley land he acquired after the rightful owner had been displaced in the 2008 post-election violence. Mr Ruto will no doubt claim he innocently acquired the land through a third party. After all, violence in the Rift Valley? Displacement? Who knew.
Let’s now stop kidding ourselves. Mr Ruto is presumably familiar with the topography and demography of the region he claims to rule. That means he could hardly be unaware that land in the area in question belonged to someone else prior to the violence and was vacated during that violence. Ascertaining the true ownership of that land should have been his first and overriding concern.
Instead, he took advantage of the desperate situation of displaced people in his very own Rift Valley to greedily and selfishly augment his own already extensive land holdings. Who is the beneficiary of violence here? This is also the same William Ruto who four years ago protested vociferously about Raila Odinga’s stolen election. Now he’s equally vociferous in saying the opposite. Does William Ruto believe in anything he says?
Are we supposed to find something admirable in this everlasting, flip-flopping, self-serving, commitment-light inconsistency? Is there anything at all of value that William Ruto really stands for? It is truly instructive that Mr Ruto thinks national office is a “benefit”, rather than a responsibility and an obligation (though I can see why, in his particular case).
Being Prime Minister is not a walk in the park. Mr Odinga is the person who took on the unbelievably difficult and onerous task of actually running this country and trying to lead it to progress, struggling against opposition not only from his so-called partners in the coalition government but also from the traitors in his own party.
Who was it, really, who ensured that we achieved a far-reaching, reformist, new Constitution? Does anyone honestly think we would have got this without Raila Odinga? Who are the people in Parliament now desperately trying to reverse the gains of this new Constitution? Think about it.
Meanwhile, day after day, from morning to night (his energy and stamina are legendary among those who work with him) the Prime Minister is involved in conferences, state functions, diplomatic discussions, meetings with foreign leaders, government workshops, bilateral and multilateral negotiations, endless study of copious government documents, trying to keep ministries in line and endeavouring to keep the coalition functioning – all against great odds, and all for the benefit of this nation.
From education to local, international and intra-African trade, alternative energy, conservation, water, sports, ports, slum upgrading, the economy, roads, transport, foreign and local investment – you name it and you’ll find he has been in the forefront of tough negotiations on behalf of this country in all these areas and many more. Don’t take my word for it. Just read the newspapers. Who else is doing all that? The answer is, absolutely no one.
While this serious, challenging, demanding, back-breaking work of running the country is going on, Mr Ruto and his pals, with no responsibilities, and no apparent sense of responsibility either, are buzzing around like blue-assed flies with only five things obsessing their brains – Raila, Raila, Raila, Raila and … er … Raila.
Two years of this bombardment have made virtually no impact on the country, as the opinion polls show, and this is presumably what provokes even more desperate measures, such as introducing forged documents into Parliament. What we have to realise is that we Kenyans, and the media as our voice in many ways, are going to be inundated with material of this nature in the months to come.
There will be need for healthy scepticism and, particularly on the part of the media, for scrupulous, intelligent examination of documents and pronouncements – with an eye not just on headlines and stories that titillate and sell, but on ensuring we all have the information we need in order to know right from wrong. People’s lives and the country’s future are at stake.
Forgery is not a joke. It is a crime. It is an incredibly dangerous crime that can lead to massive bloodshed and death. And looking at the way things are going, we are currently hurtling unchecked towards a worse scenario at the next general election than that of 2007-2008. Should anyone involved in this kind of criminal activity be considered fit to lead our country? The answer to that ought to be unanimous.
The writer is a freelance journalist
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