Loyalists of the western empire have been growing increasingly honest about their desire to use censorship and propaganda in order to win an "information war" against Russia.
The other day we saw a Guardian article arguing for the necessity of a coordinated campaign by western governments to "combat Russian disinformation" due to Russia's disinterest in "cooperating to reach a common understanding of the truth", i.e. agree with unproven western accusations and capitulate to the longstanding western agendas those accusations are meant to advance.
Before that, we saw a Defense One article authored by an Atlantic Council official arguing in favor of the creation of a "NATO for Infowar" to propagandize westerners against Russian interests for their own good. The author of this article went so far as to suggest that the Kremlin-backed television channel RT ought to be forbidden to air in western nations.
It always comes back to RT. Because of the network's relatively high profile in comparison to other Russian media, it has been made into an ideal Emmanuel Goldstein for the empire's daily Two Minutes Hate. RT is now so completely reviled by establishment loyalists that citing it in an online debate will be taken as an instant debunk of not just the point you were trying to make but of your entire position (and often your humanity itself by getting you labeled a "Russian bot"), even if your citation is comprised entirely of independently verifiable facts.
Luckily for the screaming hysterical Big Brother devotees, there is a very easy and 100 percent guaranteed way to get RT removed from western airwaves forever. Are you ready? Here it is:
Allow leftist and antiwar perspectives to be voiced on western mainstream media.
That's it. That's the whole entire recipe for RT's destruction. If western media simply ceased deliberately excluding leftist and antiwar voices from mainstream discourse, there would no longer be any demand for RT's output, since the only reason anyone outside of Russia watches RT is to get perspectives they can't get anywhere else.
A few leftist, antiwar and activism-oriented programs on stations like BBC and MSNBC is all it would take to kill any interest in RT's programming and steal their entire audience. They wouldn't ever have to have a single Russian on their programs; there is an abundance of home-grown talent with clear antiwar, anti-capitalism, pro-environment perspectives to keep reliably churning out fresh content on a daily basis, and there is simply no way RT's feeble budget would be able to keep up.
And of course they wouldn't just be stealing RT's audience, they'd be stealing their talent as well. Redacted Tonight's Lee Camp has gone on record saying the only reason he's on RT is because his leftist antiwar perspective got doors slammed in his face everywhere else. He went to RT, and they make no attempts to influence him to say or not say anything other than what he wants. Talent wouldn't have to rely on RT if it could share the same ideas with bigger audiences for better pay.
That's actually RT America's entire schtick: people like Chris Hedges and Jesse Ventura get de-platformed by western mass media due to their anti-establishment views, so they go to RT where they are given a platform. There are Americans who are drawn to those perspectives, so their eyeballs go to RT programming. If CNN had some programming that allowed for such perspectives this would steal all the demand for RT, but they don't. The closest they ever get is having Jill Stein on once in a blue moon so Chris Cuomo can admonish her for not participating correctly in the information war against Russia.
This is a surefire way to get rid of RT without violating the US Constitution, committing unprecedented acts of government censorship, or having anything whatsoever to do with the Kremlin. But of course, we all know that it will never happen.
It will never happen because RT is not the real enemy. Leftists and antiwar activists are the real enemy.
Indeed, the fact that RT America gives a platform to Americans who oppose war, ecocide and plutocracy is the US establishment's primary grievance against it. In January of last year the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its hotly anticipated report on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election. The disappointing report provided no proof whatsoever of those allegations, and instead spent much of its space accusing RT of covering stories which are inconvenient to US plutocrats. According to the report, RT America's offenses included the following:
- Airing two new shows that were critical of the US government.
- Running reports on the vulnerabilities of US election machines.
- Broadcasting, hosting and advertising debates between third-party candidates.
- Covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.
- Criticizing the US surveillance state and alleging widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.
- Criticizing “the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt” and comparing the United States to Imperial Rome.
- Running anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health.
- Opposing Western intervention in the Syrian conflict and blaming the West for waging “information wars” against the Syrian Government.
- Trying to expand RT America in the US.
The fact that there is a very easy way to eliminate RT, and yet establishment loyalists continue fearmongering about it instead of solving the problem they claim to have, should be taken as a tacit admission that they have no real problem with RT. The only people the plutocrat-owned media corporations have ever had a problem with are those who oppose plutocratic interests, be they oligarchy or war profiteering or ecocidal fossil fuel agendas.
So remember that the next time you hear some empire loyalist whining about RT. They have no problem with RT. They have a problem with you.
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Not only do they not have a problem with RT, but they actually prefer having it there as a way to point the finger at the evil enemy. It's a great way to boost fear, hyper-ventilating citizenry, think tank influence, the siphoning off of more tax revenues through off shore accounts and industries, enriching the plutocrats at everyone's expense, war propaganda to justify bigger military budgets and so on and on it goes. It's a never ending list of benefits!
I hear the exact same things coming from the alt-right, I'm not alt-right or leftist for the record, but follow all sides of the political spectrum for a more complete picture. I don't think that the anti war movement is particularly leftist. There are sane humanitarian people in all political camps. The problem is the elites control both team red and team blue and we all fall for it time and time again.
This information war is a war that they are losing though IMO. Once social media platforms move onto decentralised blockchain platforms there is really nothing they can do to censer opposing political views.
The big mistake people fall for is that the right believe the elites are leftist and left believe the elites are right wing. They are neither. They are a cult who dominates ALL sections of political thinking through blackmail entrapment operations - amongst other Machiavellian tactics. They corral us into separate paddocks and endlessly set us agains each other with opposing labelling in order to rule over us all as we fight amongst ourselves over scarps.
But don't you think people like Lee Camp are playing the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Russia is anti USA, and while the propaganda is thick around the facts constituting that position, it's clear that RT promotes dissent in the US?
Dissent is good and has a place, but without balance it's destabilising. RT are very one sidedly dissenters. There are some great American journalists on it (I wouldn't personally count Camp among them, he's a clown). But because it's one sided it becomes a war of ideas, i.e. propaganda.
That's not to say the mainstream isn't largely one sided too, so then for me it becomes more like a situation where to get balance the viewer must watch 5 minutes of CNN, then 5 minutes of RT, then 5 of Fox, etc.
Thank you @caitlinjohnstone for this post
I always read your good posts.
U received a 100% upvote from @popyhq with best wishes.
I like RT.
another excellent article! thank you for your perspective, and for finding ways to get your voice heard. we are sharing with friends who need to hear things outside of the foxcnn network. imagine cnn giving a half hour to you, eva bartlett, lee camp, jimmy dore and abby martin...even once a month. they could preface it with "these are the insane leftist analysts that we do not support or agree with, but we do feel that we have an obligation to allow their perspectives to be heard." they could be completely absolved of any guilt through connection just by that simple caveat, and they would actually look like they were making an honest attempt to allow different voices to be heard. it would also get insanely good ratings. there is no good reason for cnn, fox, or any other network to not want to tap into that obvious revenue stream. so advertisers get to choose what society is okay with, and what is untouchable. it is frightening. again, you are awesome, and your honesty is appreciated.
There's very little correlation between 'leftists' and anti-war activism. MSM is basically dominated by leftists.
Even conservatives are no better... and am a conservative.
The only group of people that genuinely oppose war are libertarians and moderates.
Other than that I agree with most of your points.
All media is controlled - it's there to mess with your mind and cause division. Only media worth anything are some of the alt-channels
Labels don't mean much any more. Just because you're "anti-war" doesn't mean you're "left." Caitlin is always getting slandered as alt-right by the "left" but she still identifies as "left" according to some long lost sixties hippie counterculture stereotype that doesn't exist anymore. The "left" is the mainstream culture just as the "right" was 50 years ago. War is a racket for the rich. It just so happens that the rich these days tend to be "liberal."
I've always considered labels important. However, I must agree that the labels we are using now have become meaningless. I've heard Trump referred to as a fascist and Clinton as a Marxist, I mean please. Unfortunately the average man on the street self identifies his opinions with certain media outlets - here in the UK we have Telegraph man and Guardian reader as epitomes of right and left. Each side accuse the BBC of being biased in favour of the other. However what we have is a very tight circle of allowed political views. The shows on RT by contrast are fresh and refreshing. I always catch Redacted Tonight and I'm also a big fan of the Keiser Report.
You ask too much.
This solution... is not a solution to them.
What T.H.E.Y. want is to control all the information you hear and see. T.H.E.Y. have spent tons of money to own every media outlet, control every voice. T.H.E.Y. do not care about news, the care about propaganda.
If we had any care for news, we would have a far right news channel.
RT is sorta in the middle, everything else being extreme left. We don't even know what right sounds like anymore.
Fortunately, we are shifting, completely away from the left-right line that the (completely controlled) media has defined for so long.
RT vanishing would be a clear sign we are in an information tyranny. But I don't think it will have any effect. There would simply be another outlet popping up and taking over RT viewers and their talent.
Or can you imagine they would go back to watching/working at CNN?
It's as simple as that.
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They'll never give center politics a podium (which is all the Progressive movement is, it's not particularly Left). USrael's politics will remain far Neocon right, well in the nineteen eighty-four zone, as USrael's public have their institutions and rights stripped from them as part of USrael's domestic cleansing, just as Genocidal Israel has had success with on the Palestinians.