Every human rights investigation, even the U.S. government in private, concedes that terrorism is being carried out by the Salvadoran government itself. The death squads are the security forces. Duarte is simply a front for terrorists. But that is seldom said publicly. Democracy permits the voice of the people to be heard, and it is the task of the intellectual to ensure that this voice endorses what leaders perceive to be the right course.
Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism.
The techniques have been honed to a high art in the U.S. and elsewhere, far beyond anything that Orwell dreamed of. For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the propaganda system to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling or unwitting instruments. D, San Francisco, CA 94123.