Last Sunday morning, I had a brief scan of what Mediapart had been posting regarding Morocco’s alleged involvement in the Pegasus affair. I curiously wanted to look at Morocco from a critical perspective, thinking that Mediapart is as good as its word when it describes itself as a “participative and independent” digital media platform. I was expecting to read truth-grounded and fact-based reporting from this self-proclaimed independent media organization.
As an academic, I teach my students that the truth does not exist; there are, as Foucault says, regimes of truth with people – and institutions – that have the designated power to declare something as true or factual. But I was expecting a professional and self-reflexive discourse from Mediapart on reporting this Pegasus affair it has covered repetitively on its website.
The Op-ed published by Mediapart on July 24 chooses a title that begins with a proper name, Abdellatif Hammouchi, written in bold letters to attract attention. With the man’s picture in the foreground, the whole landscape betrays the expectations of professionals and academics, revealing many facts about Mediapart’s biases, ideological motivations, propaganda discourses and intent of blasphemies. The article shows that Mediapart is a propaganda machine and stands amateurishly far from being independent. The media agency takes sides in this article, and appears to be fundamentally averse to the Moroccan state and its institutions.
A propaganda discourse analysis of the opening text of the article may elucidate how biased this newspaper is, and how it encourages baseless allegations against Morocco to be consolidated via the repetition of propaganda. Apparently, operating from the premise that what is repeated may be believed to be true, the article rehearses a piece of propaganda to be summed up in the following unsaid catchphrase “Morocco: The Kingdom of Spies.”
Let us start first with the picture in the article: Is this how professional, credible media agencies like the BBC and CNN report visual information? What is the use of visual-effect-and-graphic-design techniques on the picture? Is it to frame silent meanings of camouflaged blasphemy, that Abdellatif Hammouchi is a 007 in the crooked sense of the word?
That graphic design or poster resembles Hollywood films such as Tom Cruise’ Mission Impossible or the poster of the legendary hero, James Bond, albeit in this context, Hammouchi is portrayed as an anti-model and the prophet of what-not-to-be or what-not-to-do. Consider, too, how maliciously the word “feared” is used by Mediapart in the text. According to the French outlet, Hammouchi “is feared in many capitals, including Paris.”
The use of the quantifier “many” explains how unspecific and ambiguous the institution is in reporting events and committing itself to verifiability. In this sense, the aim of the article is not to inform but to propagandize, and the word “many” – like other linguistic clues in the text – is used to aggrandize international fear from the “Kingdom of Spies” by launching a propaganda offensive against it.
On what basis does Mediapart build this very strangely generalized argument? When we say “feared,” it means that the man is not a civil servant doing an institutional job in his country, but is equated with criminals, outlaws, and gangsters. Will this be acceptable as a domestic representation of the “Spy Chief” in France?
The picture at the top of the article tells a story of its own. First, the graphic design applied on the picture uses blurring effects, obscuring every person and contextual features, keeping Hammouchi in the foreground. This is intended to put him in the spotlight. In addition, the picture chosen of Hammouchi is not without consequence. Why did the media outlet use the image of the man in a listening posture?
Of course, he was listening because he was presumably on the phone during a conference in Marrakech, as the anchorage explains. But the picture is recontextualized and repurposed for special effects – and this is a technique used extensively in propaganda – to portray Hammouchi as an eavesdropper or spy. Now, according to the text and title of the Pegasus affair, the picture illustrates Hammouchi’s spying, and hence contrives a visual proof. With the use of visual effects, the image demonizes the man by portraying him as a dangerous spy, [probably] adding lines and dots in the background of the picture to emphasize that the man is running an extensive spy network. The red color and clouds in the far background creates a gloomy atmosphere and inspires fear in the audience, after all this spy is “red in tooth and claw.” He is a “spying killer.” All these are possible meanings with moral panic effects encoded in the text.
The picture is enriched with a mischievous title that heralds: “Abdellatif Hammouchi: Morocco’s spy chief at the heart of the Pegasus Affair.” Is this how an independent press constructs its arguments and proofs? Is Hammouchi a “spy,” an agent of illegitimate espionage, or the head of a national, legitimate security institution in Morocco? Is this how we treat institutions in sovereign states, or is Morocco a slave/disciple ex-colony of France that can be trampled on at any time?
When the text says Hammouchi is a “spy chief,” this is a very significant lexical choice intended to pigeonhole the man in an essentialist representation as being immoral and doing blasphemous work. In this case, it is not the legitimate work of intelligence that is being highlighted, rather it is the unethical scandal of espionage, hence framing a polarization from the beginning between Good and Evil, Morality and Immorality.
The syntax of the title starts with a proper name + colon + phrase with an elegant variation “Morocco’s spy chief,” referring to Hammouchi. Though the Pegasus scandal is an event situated in a specific time and place, the sentence in the title is moodless. The choice not to use a verb is meant to make the event timeless and thus eternal, valid for all times. Hamouchi is, thus, a spy chief by nature and forever and the contiguous existence of the words “Morocco” and “Spy Chief” frames further the meaning that spying is the natural conduct of a nation, and thus turning back to the unarticulated catchphrase: “a kingdom of spies.”
Mediapart goes on with its propaganda offensive against Morocco when it opens the article by describing the Moroccan state as “repressive.” It is obvious that we are not dealing with an independent or “neutral” media organization, but with a propaganda machine employed by an external source. The opening of the text shows that there is a line of propaganda going on against Morocco to distort its largely positive image on the political and economic international scene. It is an endeavor to delegitimize the much-lauded work that the Moroccan intelligence has been doing for decades, including for the benefit of EU countries.
Mediapart also maintains that Morocco “is accused” of using Pegasus. The question remains, who is accusing Morocco? Which tribunal in the world has pressed charges against Morocco? Why is this legal term used here? Why is the passive voice used? It is clear that the use of passive voice is intended to obfuscate agency, and the choice of a legal register of the word is intended to legitimize the accusation claim while leaving it anonymous. We know that Mediapart and its allies are the ones behind this propagandist campaign of false accusations intended to besmirch Morocco’s reputation, immediately after Omar Hilale’s legitimate demand in the United Nations to consider the Kabyle case for self-determination.
In line with its propaganda, the text also makes use of mischievous lexical choices to persuade its progressive audience that Morocco behaves without morals. Mediapart says that Morocco spies on “people,” a lexical generality that involves the reader, who is also part of this category, then specifies other civilians like journalists and politicians who are granted immunity in this respect. The goal here, of course, is to portray the alleged use of Pegasus by Morocco as unethical and even immoral, denying Morocco’s official and legally submitted claim that the intelligence services have never purchased or used this software.
What are the legally accepted proofs for such accusations? That is how documented, fact-based reporting works. We cannot build false allegations by mischievous rhetoric of persuasion and gloss over the proof of law. In court, Mediapart will be accountable for their propaganda offensive.
Read also: The Pegasus Project Affair Becomes a Question of Ethics
The text also uses lexis to create moral panic, aggrandizing what seems to be a banal affair. The moral panic rhetoric attains its zenith when Mediapart stigmatizes Abdellatif Hammouchi as a dangerous criminal by saying that he is “feared in many Western capitals, especially Paris.” For many Moroccans, Hammouchi is the epitome of righteousness and civic responsibility. An interview of passers-by in Moroccan streets or a survey of activism videos on the internet is all it takes to get close to capturing the gist of most ordinary Moroccans’ appreciation of Abdellatif Hammouchi. So why does Mediapart insist on demonizing this national symbol in its propaganda?
History is our best teacher: No one could imagine in colonial France or in the historical nation of intercontinental philosophy and the voices of enlightenment, that a day would come when fanfare voices of unskilled propaganda could effectively demean the value of professional press in France and set their agenda of distorting the brand reputation of a legitimate, patriotic intelligence institution in Morocco.
One major lesson we learnt from this experience is that the fact Morocco is under attack by some loud contingents in the French media and political class is an acknowledgement of how the North African country has grown into a formidable force of national and international security that is causing immense fear and considerable panic to its geopolitical foes.
It is unbelievable for Mediapart propaganda secret planners to accept the painful blow by Moroccan intelligence when it discovered the plot by Spain and Algeria to arrange for the clandestine arrangement for the Polisario Front fugitive leader to be assisted with medical care inside Spain.
In this case, I will totally agree with Mediapart on breaking its silence on the unsaid and unseen of its ideological motivation to launch a propaganda offensive against Morocco: Moroccan intelligence “spied” on the bilateral plot and divulged the scandal in the nick of time. Will Mediapart be convinced again that Moroccan intelligence services discovered the plot without the use of Pegasus?
