problems, Baudrillard explains that the subject has been conditioned to react compulsively
without reflection.
When applied to the fake American Ebola crisis that continues to flash across our
screens in spite of the aforementioned scientific certainty, Baudrillard’s theories that were once
deemed to be exaggerated by his detractors do not seem to be that outlandish at all. Indeed,
the utter lack of skepticism from much of the American public related to the official Ebola script
validates many of the core principles of Baudrillard’s philosophy. Baudrillard was a
provocative visionary who had the uncanny ability to anticipate all of the present and future
ramifications of certain social phenomena unfolding in front of his eyes until his death in 2007.
The phony, cinematic Ebola epidemic in the United States is yet another example which
illustrates that the deleterious effects of media saturation in a hyper-real, globalized world are
becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In The Intellig ence o f Evil, Baudrillard rather
convincingly argues that sometimes the only “events” which can even be considered to have
transpired at all are fictitious, hollow pseudo-events that permeate our fractured social
consciousness. As the philosopher outlines, “it is the news media that are the event. It is the
event of news coverage that substitutes itself for coverage of the event" (133). If Baudrillard
were still alive today, he would undoubtedly affirm that the American Ebola crisis did not occur
outside of the confines of the pervasive media sphere itself. Unfortunately, the problem is that
“the mass media have become the exclusive condition through which the social is staged, and
[...] there is nothing outside of their operational logics” (Abbinnett 69).
Not only does Baudrillard’s philosophy offer invaluable insights concerning how
information is carefully packaged and released for our immediate consumption by the
integrated political and social elite, but it also answers the question why. Why would the
corporate, mainstream media expend so much effort in order to dupe and indoctrinate
“consumer citizens” (a term created by the historian Lizabeth Cohen) by continually fabricating
non-events? The answer to this question is rather simple. Given that a handful of transnational
conglomerates which dominate the contemporary economic landscape own all of the major
news outlets, the CEOs and shareholders of these entities have too much to lose if a real
conversation were to take place.
In a globalized, neoliberal world in which social inequalities are greater than at any other
point in the history of human civilization in both developed and developing societies, the
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