The Imperial Propaganda Machine - International Prose

The Imperial Propaganda Machine
by Caitlin Johnstone via jaxie - ICH Tuesday, Nov 5 2019, 6:49pm
international / prose / post

Whenever [mainstream] news media reports unsubstantiated assertions from anonymous sources in government agencies, just mentally insert “Here is something the government told us to tell you:” into the beginning of the report, because that’s all they’re doing.

Russia and China haven’t become any more of a threat to you than they were three years ago, yet you think about them many times more often than you did back then. That’s propaganda at work, FYI.

All the establishment loyalists you argue with are ever really saying is, “No! The TV would NEVER lie to me!”

Sometimes all I can do is stare in awe at the power and efficiency of the imperial propaganda machine. When I first started this gig in 2016 Assange had way more support, from Berners, Greens, Trumpers, all across the spectrum. Now a large amount of that support has been eroded. For Trumpers Assange is being extradited for his own good to bring down the Deep State. For liberals he’s a Russian asset. For leftists he’s a rapist and fascist enabler. There’s a narrative for everyone, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. It’s really impressive.

I love alternative media, but we’re fucking idiots sometimes. You never see MSM doing our job for us, but we do their job for them all the time by attacking other alternative media figures, circulating CIA/CNN narratives about targeted nations and targeted individuals, etc. The only reason to ever do mainstream media’s work for them is if you’re looking for a job in MSM. If you actually want to participate in alternative media it’s your job to make things harder for establishment narrative managers, not easier. They get paid enough to do their own work.

Dominant power structures are corrupt beyond the possibility of salvation and humanity is driving itself toward miriad cataclysmic disasters all at once, yet many are more worried about those who share their basic ideology but have slightly different opinions. This is stupid.

There’s no separation between the personal struggle to free yourself from untruth and the collective struggle to free the world from untruth, in the same way there’s no separation between an antibody attacking an individual pathogen and the entire body recovering from a sickness.

Anyone who wants Silicon Valley oligarchs to censor the flow of information in any way is a drooling idiot.

MSM’s official position appears to be that there is no ideological difference whatsoever between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, other than the fact that you have permission to elect Warren but not Sanders. Apart from that, though, they’re exactly the same.

There’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the sense that there’s a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used to set up the more damaging cross, but they’re both wielded by the same boxer, and they’re both punching you in the face.

The “feud” between mainstream Republican pundits and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fits perfectly within the Overton window of establishment-approved debate, and can therefore be safely ignored.

Remember when voters in 2016 were like “can we please have even one major candidate who doesn’t have something seriously wrong with them?”, and the entire US political system was all “LOL nope,” and then nobody burned that system to the ground and flushed it down the toilet? Good times.

War is the worst thing in the world. It’s worse than economic injustice. It’s worse than the war on drugs. It’s worse than racism, xenophobia, homophobia and sexism. Those things are bad. War is worse. The priorities of leftists and progressives should reflect this, as should the priorities of anyone who claims to care about their fellow humans.

Trump: I am ending wars!
Neocons/liberal hawks: Oh no it sure is bad and horrible that this isolationist president is ending all the wars!
Wars: [continue completely unabated]

Imagine someone coming up to you with a money jar saying “Excuse me, we’re raising funds to build another military base in Somalia, would you care to make a donation?” No one would ever knowingly put money toward such an endeavor. Yet taxpayers do this unwittingly all the time.

Nobody comes out of the womb demanding to go to war. Left unmolested it would never occur to a normal human brain that strangers on the other side of the planet need to have explosives dropped on them by overpriced airplanes. The problem isn’t democracy, it’s propaganda.

Back when the wealthy had less wealth and ordinary citizens could support a family on a single income, the rich had a concept called “noblesse oblige” meaning their status came with obligations to society. Now the wealth gap is much greater, and the rich feel no obligation to anyone.

Less contempt for imaginary “Putin apologists”, more contempt for actual billionaire apologists.

The narrative that Gabbard is preparing a third party run is revealing, in that there’s zero evidence for it whatsoever yet they keep bringing it up. It’s literally just something pundits started saying in an authoritative tone of voice, and it was magically transformed into accepted orthodoxy. It’s a great illustration of how effective the establishment narrative managers are; they can create the illusion of a fact out of thin air just by saying something over and over again in an assertive tone.

Here’s a crazy thought: If “the troops” are constantly feeling the need to commit suicide after doing what they’ve been ordered to do while deployed, maybe what they’re doing over there isn’t so great and noble after all.

It sure is cute how we’ve known for years that the US and its allies armed actual, literal terrorists in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, yet the only Syria controversy we’re ever allowed to acknowledge is whether there are an adequate number of US troops there.

I’m still tripping on how we’ve been fed all these wildly different narratives about why the US needs a military presence in Syria, from humanitarianism to Kurds to ISIS to Iran to Russia to chemical weapons to oil, yet this isn’t immediately extremely suspicious to everyone. I mean, if some guy was constantly calling me up and giving me a whole range of wildly different reasons why he needs my bank account number, I’d immediately assume that what he actually wants is my bank account number, you know?

So many of spiritual-type people’s highest values would work fine in a world without sociopaths. Forgiveness, humility, trust, seeing people’s basic innocence, etc, they work fine until you run into a manipulator with no empathy. In this world they require much more nuanced use.

Things are getting stranger and stranger. Things getting stranger and stranger is what it looks like when long-fixed patterns begin to dissolve. For a species that has been on a trajectory toward self-destruction, patterns dissolving can only be a good thing. We’ll win this.

Author retains copyright.

[Indeed, Ms Johnstone, be thoroughly in awe of the sophisticated lying, propaganda machine known as the mass media we have today in the West. However, if a jaw-dropping reaction is warranted at all, be thoroughly aghast at the stupidity and gullibility of the masses that swallow unsubstantiated lies without the least attempt at critical thought, as in, 'that is (any claim) an assertion if it's not backed by verifiable evidence or independent reference material.' Furthermore, these endlessly repeated false claims (LIES) are then absorbed by the masses as truth though of course they are clearly lies and distortions shaped by those elite powers that have an agenda ('perpetual wars' for profit) to pursue in their own interests, and to hell with humanity, innocent lives and the environment.

It should be noted that the Australian CSIRO in 1973 warned in a doco screened on Channel 7, of the disastrous effects of CO2 induced climate change, especially on the Barrier Reef, which is today dying at speed, if we failed to take immediate preventive action THEN, yet the mass media distracted the masses with paid scientists and other deniers and of course the mining lobbies ensured governments would not take appropriate remedial action as their profits were threatened.

Call me a cynic, but CLEARLY the ignorant, gullible, nose-ringed masses are really to blame as the lies and ridiculous claims of the mass media are EASILY proven wrong, or at the very least to merely be groundless opinion/assertion, NOT fact! But for a tiny critical thinking group that research such claims, the lies prevail and the masses and entire nations are led by types like Murdoch and other media moguls whose contempt for the masses is limitless, as is obvious. The mass media is directly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians in orchestrated wars based on lies and other pretexts, notwithstanding today arrogant elites have now dispensed with lies and overtly break the law as indeed the law is an ass. So what solution do you offer as none exist without social awareness. And that awareness or blindness, is induced by the owners of a concentrated media apparatus.

Perhaps if their and their family's lives were threatened, they may not be so eager to consciously deceive the masses, but again the masses fail themselves as they never question the apparatus. So if they refuse to investigate independently then the media narrative outcome is assured, as occurred with the Iraq invasion based on proven lies and all the subsequent illegal military interventions/wars since.

Today for example, the US makes no attempt to hide its illegal occupation and oil theft in Syria, an outrage, but without any reaction from the global public and other competing imperial nations such as Russia and China, what would you? You and the few alternative media journalists are "voices crying in the wilderness," and how old is that quote?

This site and its sister affiliates have been reporting truth for the past 15 years without the slightest effect on the lying mass media false narratives. And so social awareness is a lost cause in the West, but other nations immune to media lies, are now reacting, their populations are taking to the streets in pursuit of justice world wide, but while western populations sit with their thumbs up their stupefied arses no reaction will be seen for quite some time, so your best option is to support those nations/populations that are engaging in direct action against criminal ruling elites and their propaganda machines.

I leave you to remain in awe of the West's sophisticated lying machine, however, you could assist those people that are indeed rebelling by covering with passion those stories and contrasting their fight with the useless, paralysed, media enslaved masses of the West.]