Whenever a union is on strike or in an intense organizing drive, the bosses turn up the anti-union rhetoric to a fever pitch. They put the union under a microscope, distorting or falsifying this or that incident in order to break solidarity. Union leaders become targets of scrutiny. They are slandered as corrupt or sell-outs, as if the bosses really cared about that. Unfortunately, the disinformation campaign sometimes works.
Workers get confused, start questioning the union, support is derailed and unity dissolves.
They start turning away from the union instead of defending it to make it stronger. What the U.S. government is trying to do with regard to Colombia is not so different. When the media talks about the civilian population being caught in the middle between the right and the left, the Pentagon is elated. Because it blurs the distinction between the two sides in the struggle. When the media equates the institutionalized state terror of the paramilitaries and the Colombian military with the acts of those defending themselves from that state terror, it means to confuse the issue.