ABSTRACT
The conventional wisdom among human rights activists holds that a great deal of the ethnic conflict in the world today is caused by propagandistic manipulations of public opinion. Human Rights Watch, for example, points the finger at unscrupulous governments who try to save their own skins by “playing the communal card.” As antidotes, such groups prescribe democratization, wide-open debate in civil society, and greater freedom of the press. 1 Scholars likewise argue that a major stimulus to belligerent nationalism is the state’s manipulation of mass media and mass education to infuse the nation with a sense of in-group patriotism and out-group rivalry. 2 They, too, prescribe greater freedom of speech. 3
