Politics & Power Quote by Helen Suzman

Suzman’s phrase “grist to the mill” is doing quiet but lethal work: it recasts sensational “stories” not as neutral information but as raw material fed into an institutional machine. The government isn’t merely responding to events; it’s processing them, grinding them down into something politically usable. That metaphor matters because it drains the romance from wartime rhetoric. War, here, is not destiny or defense but production.

The core target is the feedback loop between narrative and power. “All these stories” suggests a flood: rumors, headlines, briefings, selective leaks, atrocity anecdotes - the kind of material that can’t be easily verified in real time but is perfectly suited to shaping mood. Suzman’s subtext is that the state thrives on the emotional residue of such accounts: fear, outrage, moral certainty. Once those feelings coagulate into a “war psychosis,” dissent becomes suspect, nuance becomes disloyalty, and the public starts policing itself. The word “psychosis” is a deliberate escalation; she’s not calling it patriotism or vigilance. She’s describing a collective break with proportion, a mass susceptibility where anxiety replaces judgment.

Context sharpens the blade. As a South African parliamentarian who spent decades challenging apartheid’s security state, Suzman knew how governments justify coercion by manufacturing emergency - invoking threats to normalize surveillance, censorship, detention, and militarized “order.” Her intent isn’t to deny conflict; it’s to warn that the real victory of war propaganda is internal: it captures the citizen’s mind first, making extraordinary state power feel like common sense.