The Boston Globe, Bill Bulger, and the Big Lie! Shameless Propaganda

It was from Joseph Goebbels the Boston Globe learned it tactics. The Jewish Virtual Library quotes him as saying: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”  

I often think that Trump has learned from the Globe that tactic. Like the Globe he thrives with the Big Lie. He knows little of history but much about media so we could very well point the finger at the Globe for showing him the way to follow Goebbels.

The Globe’s Big Lie is the one it tells about William Bulger, known as Bill or Billy. I will write more about this when I reflect in future columns about his brother Whitey. What prompts me to write about it now is a column I read on election day by Globe columnist Joan Vennochi who continues the tradition of the Globe dating back to 1988 or even before that to the early 1970s to attack Bill. Her column is titled: “Bowing to the Bulger Brothers Tainted the Commonwealth.” 

Goebbels talked about the State propagandizing of the Big Lie. He suggested it lasted until such time as the people started suffering “the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.” He did not consider that the Big Lie could continue indefinitely where no consequences to the people exist because the Big Lie did not affect the people as a whole but only  individuals.

Vennochi’s column is topped by a photograph of Bill and his lawyer Tom Kiley. Bill is standing taking the oath. It notes he took the “Fifth Amendment during his testimony.” Judging from the comments to her column there was not doubt the Globe readership had swallowed her lies totally and completely. Bill’s good works are already interred.

You know Vennochi was in trouble in her mandated denunciation of Bill when she quoted Boston Herald’s Howard Carr. When was the last time a Globe columnist did that? Carr suggested Mayor White feared Whitey was planning to assassinate him even though there is not the slightest evidence that Whitey ever laid a finger on anyone who was a legitimate person never mind a politician.

Vennochi, like Alan Dershowoff, swings a wide net suggesting everyone “deferred to the power Bill Bulger wielded as president of the Massachusetts Senate for nearly 20 years” which apparently “tainted” the state which taint seems to exist only in their and the Globe’s imagination. To show the proof of this assertion she noted that Governor Weld demonstrating “cold indifference toward Whitey’s victims” in 1992, at the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast where politicians joked back and forth, “sang a ditty poking fun at Whitey Bulger’s acquisition of a winning lottery ticket through an elaborate money laundering scheme.” 

She refused to let the facts get in the way of her attack on both Bills. In 1992 no one knew of Whitey’s victims or any money laundering scheme. Her next example was of Weld joking about Whitey’s flight in 1995. She suggested he “was certainly plugged in well enough to know Whitey’s full story.” That likewise was a lie since no one knew of Whitey’s depredations until the late 1990s when Whitey’s partners in crime made deals for themselves.

She quotes the ever righteous James Carroll another Globe columnist.  Carroll wrote in September of 1999 of Whitey that he was “a reputed South Boston gangster.” He said that Weld “had a direct knowledge of James Bulger’s crimes.”  At that time no one did, not even Weld.

Carroll like Venocchi was writing after Martorano made a deal spelling out his crimes and including Whitey in them. Carroll noted that the image of Whitey prior to that time was “as a harmless rogue.” Carroll wrote that the “Massachusetts political establishment willingly winked at the savage behavior of” Whitey belying the truth that few if any knew of it. As is his want, Carroll said Bill’s winking at Whitey’s behavior made the pols wink which resulted in “turning the public sector into a murderer’s accomplice.”

Yikes, because of Bill we are all accomplices of Whitey.

Venocchi pretty much copied Carroll’s article and phoned it in following the groupthink demanded by the  Globe’s endless pushing of the theme of Bill being responsible for the sins of his brother. It has been carried on since their first attempt to malign him for the 75 State Street matter which in fact was another Big Lie that is still repeated even though all the investigations and parties involved showed the story was totally wrong.

The truth is that Whitey got no pass in the Commonwealth because of Bill. They were always viewed as separate persons. Bill’s record showed he was a friend of law enforcement. I know in the minds of law enforcement no one hesitated to go after Whitey because of Bill. I know because I was involved with others in chasing after him. Whitey constantly complained about my office’s vendetta against him. The State Police under Colonel O’Donovan would have had him had not the FBI busted up their investigation. As I’ve said before as one involved for twenty years in investigating organized crime the idea that Whitey should be deferred to because of Bill is preposterous. Yet the Globe with its Big Lie perpetuates that fantasy.

Keep in mind whenever you read anything about Bill that Governor Mike Dukakis said of him that when he was president of the Senate there was no question about his integrity. Time to look at the many good things he did for the Commonwealth as Senate president and to stop believing the Globe’s Big Lie.