by Caitlin Johnstone - 18 Feb 2022
Listen to a reading of this article:
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Post-Iraq the US has zero moral authority. The narrative managers aim to suck you in to arguing about the minutiae of the inner workings of the latest target of the empire, when in fact a simple “Shut the fuck up, it’s none of your business” is all they deserve.
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What the US and its proxies are doing with Yemen is universes more horrific and universes more urgent than what Russia is doing with Ukraine.
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The Ukraine invasion that never arrives is showing us once again that when it comes to Russia you really can just completely ignore all the so-called “experts” in the mainstream media. Just dismiss 100 percent of everything they say. Any random schmuck’s best guess is better than theirs.
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The US has spent years accusing Russia of inflaming far right extremism in America and that whole time they were fixing to ship weapons to Nazis in Ukraine.
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Putin should run an aggressive propaganda campaign insisting the US is about to invade Mexico and threatening severe repercussions if it does, then when the invasion fails to materialize take credit for it and say it’s because of his bold actions against the Biden regime.
“Oh, right, it’s not like the US already has a history of annexing Mexican territory or anything, you despicable White House propagandist. And I guess you’ve never heard of a little thing called IRAQ??”
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Saying we need to defend Ukrainian democracy is like saying we need to defend Iowa’s fjords.
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To be a westerner is to be continuously inundated with made-up stories about evil tyrants who want to terrorize the world while living under a vast empire that is actually terrorizing the world.
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Boy I feel sorry for all those ignorant assholes who don’t watch the news and have no idea that Putin is invading Ukraine and Trump was a Kremlin agent and Saddam had WMDs and capitalism is totally working and America is the greatest country on earth.
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Looking to the mainstream media for truth is like looking to a prostitute for love. That’s not what they’re there for. That’s not their job.
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The type of financial blockade they’re setting up in Canada today will with 100 percent certainty be used against other protest movements which pose a problem for the powerful tomorrow. Including the ones you support.
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It’s not about Zero Hedge. It’s not about Russian propaganda. It’s not about Covid misinformation, election security, foreign trolls or QAnon. It’s about ruling power structures needing to normalize and expand the regulation of online speech to protect consent for the status quo.
Few people understand just how important it is for the powerful to control the narrative about what’s going on in the world. It’s the primary thing standing between the status quo and revolutionary change. They’d do anything, and I mean anything, to keep it.
When governments and their media mouthpieces keep offering diverse and unrelated reasons why online information needs to be more strictly controlled, it’s not hard to see that the strict control of information is itself their real objective. Today they’re back to focusing on “Russian propaganda”. Tomorrow it will be back to “Covid misinformation” or “domestic extremism” or some other justification. But that’s all they are: justifications. For something they already intend to do and have been working toward for a long time.
It’s like if some stranger kept following you around telling you all different reasons why it’s very important that you hand him your wallet. At a certain point it must occur to you that it’s not really about those reasons he’s giving you, it’s just him trying to get your wallet.
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The US empire does not promote democracy, it violently opposes it and subverts it at every opportunity. Opposing the planetary domination of the US empire is what promotes democracy.
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Westerners are so propagandized that the ones I encounter find it easier to believe I just so happen to support every evil regime in the world, whether capitalist or communist, than to consider the possibility that the US regime is the real evil and I simply oppose that evil. They actually imagine I’m looking at each of the governments being targeted by the US empire, thinking “Hmm, this Kim Jong Un has some good ideas. Oh look, I also agree with Vladimir Putin! And the Iranian government as well! All their positions sound good to me.”
I mean, how brainwashed do you have to be to think that? It can’t possibly be because the US and its allies are quantifiably the most destructive and murderous power structure in today’s world, and opposing such a beast is a completely normal thing that literally everyone should be doing.
Person criticizing the most powerful and destructive government on earth = RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA!
Entire western political/media class pumping out uniform plot hole-riddled narratives about governments who disobey Washington = just the normal news teaching you what’s true.
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Hollywood movies allow us to fantasize about beating up murderous villains, stopping terrorists and defeating evil empires without having to actually stand up to them in real life, which we don’t want to do, because we’re afraid of them, because they’re our own government.
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Internet communists like to talk tough about supporting violent revolution but we all know we’re so far from any kind of real revolution at this point in the game that it’s about as brave as saying you’re willing to fight Skeletor.
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Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the mainstream news media are just as integral a part of the empire as its military.
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Don’t worry if people call you a “contrarian”. Frequently disagreeing with mainstream consensus is probably a sane and healthy thing to do in a profoundly sick society.
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