Fascism is most dangerous when it can force itself so deep into society that opposing fascism seems like opposing society itself. This is what the “centrists” in modern America have been able to do. It’s easy to oppose Trump. But the imperialists and corporate capitalists of the intelligence agencies, the Democratic and Republican party establishments, and the “liberal” corporate media are untouchable. As the political establishment’s representatives, they’re presented as the “least biased” or “neutral” voices. And so their deceptions can be forced onto us far more widely, and with more perceived authority, than anything from self-styled demagogues.
The establishment can make an unsubstantiated claim about Russia “hacking” into the DNC, and most of the country will accept it as fact, because it comes from the central news and law enforcement entities. The establishment can then revise the basis for its “Russian interference” narrative multiple times after the initial claim has been disproven, with the backup claims including similarly unfounded charges of Russian Facebook ads, Russian voter roll infiltration, and Russian troll accounts. With these deceptions in particular, the state has been able to take the American consciousness into a truly Orwellian state of doublethink and reality control.
For instance, watch the recent debate between the journalists Glenn Greenwald and James Risen about the basis for the Russia story. At one point, Greenwald described why the charge of “treason” does not apply to the still unproven Trump/Russia collusion case: because the constitution only defines treason as giving aid or comfort to a nation that congress has declared war with, and congress has not declared war with Russia. Risen responded by revising his own definition of treason, saying, “I think there’s a common usage and a legal usage” of the term. This remaking of facts and language is how the state’s propaganda operates. And the fact that Risen is an independent journalist who’s himself been falsely charged with treason shows how effective this propaganda is.
This is what a government will do when it has the power for psychological manipulation that ours has gotten amid the technological revolution. CIA-controlled companies like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and Google are now using artificial intelligence tools to suppress disfavored material, while directing users towards “reliable” sources like The New York Times. The CIA, which has been able to spread covert media propaganda since 2013, uses an array of sophisticated manipulation tools to mold the sentiments of the population.
Words the state disapproves of, like “deep state” and “neoliberalism,” are banished from corporate media and discouraged from use by establishment pundits. War narratives, like the claim that Assad was behind last year’s chemical incident, are accepted as fact, even as the government has admitted there’s no evidence for that Syria claim. This disinformation and censorship campaign extends to Europe, as the EU sets up an anti-“fake news” authority amid a saturation of Syria/Russia war propaganda throughout the west.
The Democratic Party has become the main representative of these tactics of empire, as neoconservatives like Robert Kagan have defected towards the party amid Trump’s unreliable stances towards Russia and Syria interventionism. In the last year, the Democrats have used the bogus Russiagate scandal to pressure Trump into moving closer towards Hillary Clinton’s positions on these issues. Which, as Clinton continues to make clear in her hawkish Russia tweets, are terrifying.
This has its parallels in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where the state uses intimidation, strategic inctitements of division among the public, and media deception to silence dissent. As well as in communist China, where the state has responded to social media criticism of Xi Jinping by banning disfavored words, including the title of George Orwell’s 1984. The only difference in America is that dissent isn’t punishable by the law. Though that could change soon as the new Red Scare continues to consume the nation. Meanwhile invasive mass surveillance pervades all of these lands, with it being the most extensive in the U.S.
As all these deceptions result in a nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Russia, the world is watching for the moment it all spills over into something catastrophic. “Even at the height of the Cold War during the 1960s, when Soviet Communists ruled Russians with zero freedom of speech or press, most U.S. political and media elites recognized the vital need for détente.” Wrote Normal Solomon yesterday in a column titled Is MSNBC Now the Most Dangerous Warmonger Network? “They applauded the ‘Spirit of Glassboro’ when the top leadership of the United States and Russia met at length. Now, across most of the U.S. media spectrum, no such overtures to the Kremlin are to be tolerated. The U.S. government’s recently released ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ underscores just how unhinged the situation has become.”
This war has essentially started. Amid an attack on U.S. forces in Syria this week from Russian mercenaries-and it’s important to note they were private mercenaries, not Russian troops-the U.S. media has moved towards military fearmongeringabout Russia. Specifically, U.S. intelligence claims Putin approved the attack, which WaPo and other media outlets have accepted without the appropriate skepticism. This adds onto the nuclear threats that Trump and Putin have exchanged in the last month.
There’s a hopeful part of this. If we resist the state’s efforts to invert reality, and do so in big enough numbers to turn public opinion against these wars efforts, it will be a revolutionary victory that’s unprecedented in history. Every time we spread the truth about these establishment narratives, or even choose to feed the better side of humanity, we make this victory more likely.
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