by Caitlin Johnstone - 20 Feb 2022
Click here to Listen to a reading of this article
❖
To rule the world, make it rely on a single dominant financial system you control so anyone who disobeys you can be cut off from the economy you’ve made them dependent on for survival—whether they’re a nation, a protest movement, or an individual—without having to fire a shot.
❖
I don’t “support dictators”, as one will inevitably be accused of doing whenever scrutinizing imperial propaganda narratives. I do however always hope the US fails to accomplish its objectives against every government that it targets, because the US is far and away the single most tyrannical regime on this planet.
I don’t support tyranny, I oppose it. It just happens that the major force of tyranny in this world isn’t where the TV tells you it is.
No other regime has spent the 21st century slaughtering people by the millions in wars of aggression. No other regime is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases. No other regime works to destroy any nation which disobeys it using starvation sanctions, war and terror. Only the US-centralized empire does this. While supporting most of the world’s dictators.
❖
Anyone who talks about the Ukraine situation like it’s just Putin being evil, while ignoring the actions of the US and NATO which got us here, is a disinformation agent.
You just don’t find this information anywhere in mainstream news and punditry, so you don’t find it anywhere in mainstream discourse either. It’s just “PUTIN EVIL HITLER RAHHHH!” It should really be common sense by now that when the entire western political/media class starts screaming that a government is acting like an evil supervillain you’re probably being propagandized, but most people are still swallowing it hook, line and sinker.
This is really and truly as deep as most western analysis of this situation goes:
❖
The onus is not on anyone else to prove that US claims about Russian operations are false, the onus is on the US to prove that they are true. The burden of proof doesn’t magically disappear just because some pundits and politicians said something in an assertive tone.
❖
Still can’t get over how the liberal media spent years yelling about Trump Nazis and then immediately turned around and started doing PR segments for actual Nazis.
❖
Boy I haven’t been called a Kremlin propagandist this much since like 2018. Thing is, everything I was saying about western Russia narratives in 2018 has since been completely vindicated.
❖
It’s not that the US elects incompetent leaders who make bad decisions that kill millions of people with warfare, it’s that the global US empire is held together with military violence and the threat thereof. It’s an intrinsically evil institution and you should always oppose it.
It’s not that the US government has done evil, it’s that the US government is itself evil. The very way it has set itself up to operate in the world necessarily means it must exert endless violence and oppression to keep populations functioning in its interests. That’s evil.
The Mafia hasn’t happened to make bad decisions throughout its history that resulted in the unfortunate demise of certain individuals, it’s an institution explicitly set up to reap profits by exerting and threatening violent force. The US empire is exactly the same. Same evil.
It’s not that the American people keep accidentally electing warmongering thugs, anymore than it’s an accident that the Mafia is always led by men who are willing to bully and kill. The US empire is an intrinsically thuggish and violent institution, and needs that kind of leader.
The US empire is just a rich man’s mafia. And you should want it gone for the exact same reason you don’t want your neighborhood to be tyrannized by violent mobsters.
❖
The best critics of empire propaganda are mostly just people who went to journalism school and simply remember what they were taught about how journalism is supposed to look. Their commentary is usually nothing more than pointing out all the mass media lapses in basic journalistic ethics. It’s just kind of where you naturally wind up if you keep your attention on journalism without letting the pressures of the machine squeeze you into forgetting what you know about what it’s supposed to be.
❖
One of the main things I do here is try to help articulate the scope of the horrors of the empire. Because we’re in it, and it’s so aggressively normalized by the mass media, it becomes easy to overlook, like water for a fish. It’s hard to really notice something you’re marinating in all the time. Hard to see the horror with fresh eyes.
We have all the information we need to understand the horrific nature of the empire, it just gets obscured and distorted and spun by imperial narrative management, so people don’t really see it clearly. The challenge isn’t so much obtaining evidence of the depravity of the empire as helping people to really, truly see the evidence we already have.
____________________________
Caitlin Johnstone's work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
0 Comments