Caitlin Johnstone's got an excellent piece up at RT.
Everyone's anti-war until the propaganda starts
Yes, so true. They are. Woodrow Wilson won on an anti-war ticket, as but one famous but dreadful example. But is the title an accurate description of its contents, its ultimate thrust?
Caitlin's sub-header really spells something out.
And that is more true than many imagine. This IO, perfected over a decade, has employed as many as 40,000, many in Ukraine, working to influence all levels of government and corporate life. But they're only the latest iteration of something that's been going on almost forever.
"Being truly anti-war isn't easy", writes Caitlin. "It doesn't look like what people picture in their imaginations. It looks like getting smashed with a deluge of information designed to manipulate and confuse and working through it while getting screamed at by those who've fallen for the brainwashing. It's not cute. It's not fun. It's not the feel-good flower power time that people intuit it is when they look at the part of themselves that seeks peace. It's standing up against the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed while being offered every reason not to."
Things certainly don't get better when every method imaginable is used to shut down any voice calling for calm and clarity. Those who've followed the Ukraine tragicomedy for at least the autumn of 2021, even more those who've followed for the past eight years, know what a rubbish heap of lies is being perpetrated on the unknowing, the dimwitted. For, at least to some extent, the power-brokers are counting on the people not having a clue. The people are important - and not just the voters, but also the lawmakers, the faces on the nightly news, anyone and everyone who can "influence". It's not necessary to bamboozle everyone. Someone will always be smart enough to see through the lies. But what is important is that you bamboozle enough so the truth is never trending.
"Because selling the war to the public is a built-in component of all war strategy, the war will always look necessary from the mainstream perspective, and it won't look like those other wars which we now know in retrospect were mistakes."
Michael Parenti went on at lengths about this for the longest time. It's also wrong, he astutely pointed out, to think of those past "mistakes" as "mistakes". Because they're not. They may appear to be so to the people, who get told - after the fact of course - how much money was wasted on another useless and immoral operation. But, if that were really the case, why do you find the same warmongers back at it again?
Parenti explained it. So did Assange. Those wars are only a clever money-laundering scheme. That's it. Remember Smedley Butler? No? Smedley's not a poet. He's a realist. And warmongers are thieves.
“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps... I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism...” - Smedley Butler
Here he is, Smedley. Written in 1935.
https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Another link.
https://www.wanttoknow.info/warisaracket
Here's Ron Paul on the subject in April.
https://cnsnews.com/index.php/commentary/ron-paul/ron-paul-ukraine-war-racket
“Gen. Butler's observation describes the US/NATO response to the Ukraine war perfectly. The propaganda continues to portray the war in Ukraine as that of an unprovoked Goliath out to decimate an innocent David unless we in the US and NATO contribute massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine to defeat Russia. As is always the case with propaganda, this version of events is manipulated to bring an emotional response to the benefit of special interests.”
“Former Warsaw Pact countries now members of NATO are in on the scam as well. They've discovered how to dispose of their 30-year-old Soviet-made weapons and receive modern replacements from the US and other western NATO countries.
“While many who sympathize with Ukraine are cheering, this multi-billion dollar weapons package will make little difference. As former US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter said on the Ron Paul Liberty Report last week: "I can say with absolute certainty that even if this aid makes it to the battlefield, it will have zero impact on the battle. And Joe Biden knows it."
Ron Paul's final words are sombre.
“War is a racket, to be sure. The US has been meddling in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, going so far as overthrowing the government in 2014 and planting the seeds of the war we are witnessing today. The only way out of a hole is to stop digging. Don't expect that any time soon. War is too profitable.”
But enough Ron Paul and Smedley for now. Back to Caitlin. For she sees a way out, a way many have already found (although escape seems very much to be an iterative process).
On war propaganda, Caitlin writes:
“It's always designed to look appealing. There's never not going to be atrocity propaganda. There's never not going to be reasons fed to you selling this military intervention as special and completely necessary. That will be the case every single time, because that's how modern wars are packaged and presented.”
Remember: they need you. Up and down the line. From you the garage mechanic to you the seamstress to you the congressman. They need all of you. (That's how modern IOs are organised.)
“This is why you'll always see a number of self-described leftists and anti-imperialists cheering for the latest US war project. They are ideologically opposed to the idea of war in theory, but the way it actually shows up in practice is always different from what they pictured.”
That's only part of it of course. Getting this far also means grabbing onto further demographics.
Shaped by Propaganda
“Our entire civilization is shaped by domestic propaganda, but the only time you ever hear that word in mainstream discourse is when it's used to discuss the comparatively almost nonexistent influence of Russian propaganda on our society.”
Or any enemy for that matter. The Japanese are so vile they eat their own babies. That made it OK to roast half a million of them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Companies with Japanese-sounding names had to change their names. Part of this is just John Q Hysteria but it's encouraged by War Offices and MiniTruths.
Then more recently you had "Freedom Ketchup" to support the bloodbath of a search for WMDs in Iraq. And now it's Dostoevsky. It'll never end. Unless...
And Caitlin goes on to astutely add:
“All the mainstream alarm ringing about Russian propaganda gives the impression that it comprises close to 100 percent of the total propaganda that westerners consume, when in reality it's a tiny fraction of one percent of the total propaganda that westerners consume. Instead, almost all of it comes from western sources.”
Nitty Gritty Dirt
But to get to the heart of the matter.
In a now-lost and spectacularly black-holed Dan Rather interview with Ronald Reagan in the Kremlin, in Ronnie's and Nancy's living quarters, as they stayed there as Gorby's guests for the night, Rather let loose with yet another convincing example of why he'd never be a Cronkite, despite being able to negotiate for over twenty times his predecessor's salary.
His question to Ronnie went something like this.
"But SURELY, Mr President, you don't believe any of that Soviet propaganda?"
Whereupon Ronald Reagan calmly and gently took the inept Rather to task (and almost on his lap or over his knee) and explained that one man's truth can be another man's propaganda, that the ideals Gorby espoused were ideals Gorby had grown up with, that these ideals may in many ways be good ideals, and that his job and Gorby's job was to amalgamate the best of all of those ideals, from both points of view, and put them into one cohesive and viable set of ideals for both countries, perhaps for all countries.
(No, it matters not that Reagan was secretly conspiring against Gorby, something the Russian people will never forgive. That's another topic.)
"Propaganda is the single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society", Caitlin writes, and surely she's right. But things go into overdrive when propaganda is not only "another viable point of view" but, in addition, a carefully blended cocktail of lies - or, even worse, part of what today is called the "information operation", something diabolically inserted into a collective consciousness to achieve a specific reaction on the part of the people - such as, for example, the infamous Bell-Pottinger IO to create racial tension in South Africa to help keep their despot client in power.
”All the fretting about Russian propaganda from establishment narrative managers comes so close to giving away their secret: that they know it's possible to manipulate the way the public thinks, acts, and votes using media. They just don't admit that they're the ones who are doing this.”
It's about misleading, even in its most innocent form. As Scott Ritter explains in a new piece, the western MSM pounce on "wishful thinking" and magically turn it into "truth" to support their delusional assessments of the situation in the Ukraine.
Caitlin gets closer and closer to her target now.
“It's actually the weirdest thing in the world that there's something that has been directly affecting our minds our entire lives, and which directly affects the way our entire society is organized, but we don't talk about it constantly. It should be at the front and center of our attention.”
It sure is. But you're barely scratching the surface, CJ, and we all know it. But you're getting there!
“But of course that's the whole idea. Propaganda only works on those who don't know they're being propagandized. The US-centralized empire's ability to hide its propaganda machine is a foundational element of its brilliance.”
Of course. One sees the scepticism seeping through at times but no, people don't much dare talk about things like that.
Here comes Caitlin's first major truth bomb.
“Being truly anti-war is necessarily a commitment to finding out not just what's true about all the war narratives currently promulgated by the imperial war machine, but all the narratives you've been fed about the world since you were young. It's a commitment to truth that takes on an almost spiritual quality in the way it informs every aspect of your life when truly espoused.”
But that doesn't apply to "anti-war" alone - it applies to everything.
All your life you've been taught/told. The history of the world according to somebody else. One lie or half-truth can be the foundation for another layer of the same. The "spiritual" aspect is actually something of the opposite - it's the dull realisation that you've most likely been bullshitted to all your life, and now you can calmly and methodically - and with tangible satisfaction - start to unravel it all, with one “aha” experience after the other.
(This actually works. Those who master at least two languages - the majority or 60+% of humans on this planet - have an easier time of it. Those who don't are sadly going to have a tougher time, as they’ll find it harder to distinguish between “reality” and corresponding semantic concepts.)
“It's important to research and learn new things about the world, but what's equally important and which doesn't get emphasized nearly enough is the practice of examining the beliefs you already hold about your society, your government, your nation and your world. Inquiring as to whether they're really true, and who might benefit from your believing them.”
Yes, so true, and the old "cui bono". But more: consider this.
Almost no adult of today has been taught by people who themselves were raised on "scientific journalism". That's a new WikiLeaks concept. "Show us the docs!" We don't want to be told by CNN that, "according to informed sources..." We want - we demand - the actual documents. Let us see them too. Let us make up our own minds.
Very important words from Caitlin:
Don't make the error of assuming you'll be aware and informed enough to spot all the lies right away. You're dealing with the single most advanced and powerful propaganda machine that has ever existed, and you've been marinating in its effects your entire life.
And:
It takes some time. Even the most aware among us were indoctrinated into the mainstream worldview to some extent earlier in their lives, and to this day most of the information they get about the world has some of its roots and branches in parts of the propaganda matrix.
It really is a bit like Trinity, Morpheus, and Neo. That analogy takes things to the extreme to be sure, but the idea that humans are incubated for energy is not at all that far off-point.
“It takes work to see things clearly enough to form a really truth-based worldview. But unless you do this it's impossible to be truly anti-war, because you can't skillfully oppose something you don't understand. To fight the imperial war machine is to fight the imperial propaganda machine.”
Again: this is stated from an "anti-war" perspective, but it applies to almost everything. And actually not just "almost" everything but, plainly and simply, "everything". There are some who believe the human race is run by psychopaths, and not the kind who like inflicting pain, but the kind who fully understand the human psyche and know how to exploit it - especially on an aggregate level. Once you start to chip away at their facade...
We don't need people's opinions anymore. (We'll certainly be better off without ideologies of any sort.) What we need - and will always need and always must demand - are cold hard facts.
Bonus
Obama resisted? Aaron Maté with the late great Stephen Cohen.
"An opportunity for Trump to do the right thing."