As the U.S./NATO empire quickly declines in its influence, the empire’s propaganda machine needs to promote multiple war runups, a new era of censorship, and the collective illusion that the empire remains strong. These things are the best defenses that the power establishment has against its impending collapse, so the media has created the completely false reality that’s needed for getting people to support them.
For instance, as Trump and Putin have prepared for their peace summit, mainstream media outlets have put out Orwellian narratives to try to discredit the very idea of good relations with a nuclear superpower. The articles warning against the meeting, which have taken on a strangely uniform theme, argue that the event will be a “dangerous” power play from Putin, since Trump is undoubtedly a “Russian agent.”
These attacks on the summit are baseless. The charges of collusion between Trump and Putin-as well as the charges of meaningful Russian interference-are still yet to be proven. Trump, despite his administration’s pro-war actions in other areas, is pursuing stronger relations with Russia because this is objectively the best thing for America’s national security. The risk of a nuclear confrontation with Russia should make the rest of Washington support Trump’s diplomatic efforts, but that wouldn’t fit with the U.S. empire’s current agenda. Forcing Russia back into submission has been part of the empire’s agenda since Putin blocked America’s Syrian regime change attempts in 2013, and the system isn’t going to let this task get derailed.
So Americans are being told to distrust Russia to the point where war is seen as a legitimate option, like is the case with the other nations that the empire targets. In recent weeks, the media has promoted an NBC report which claims that North Korea has violated last month’s peace agreement by building new nuclear facilities. This report, while is at first glance something that strengthens the case for the empire’s much-desired war with North Korea, is sourced from unnamed intelligence “officials,” ex-CIA agents, and Koch-funded think tanks.
These kinds of inflammatory distortions of world events are the reason why media expert Mark Crispin Miller compares the current American press with the Nazi press. When the Nazis wanted to invade Poland, Miller pointed out in a recent interview with Chris Hedges, they had Germany’s newspapers report that Poland was threatening to invade Germany, even though this was completely untrue. Miller assesses that in recent times, the U.S. and its media have behaved similarly; the Nazis’ attacks against Poland are a good parallel to America’s classification of Venezuela as a “national security threat,” and to the other threats that the U.S. has invented.
It’s this recent shift by the U.S. empire toward unrestrained warmongering that’s turned the mainstream media into an aggressive propagator of false information, with facts and nuanced perspectives being shouted down as “treasonous.” For instance, when the journalist Glenn Greenwald recently visited Moscow to discuss the onslaught of Western pro-war propaganda, he was described by MSNBC’s Malcolm Nance as “an agent of Trump and Moscow.” Nance didn’t even need to back this charge up with evidence for it to be taken seriously, a lax journalistic standard which has applied to every other hyperbolic statement that Western public figures routinely make about Russia.
This is all a symptom of what empires historically do when in decline, which is engage in massive war efforts with the futile hope that this will bring back their power. This underlying insecurity behind the war propaganda is also revealed in how Americans are now being told to view their society, and how to view their place in the world: we have a strong democracy, and it’s being attacked by Russia. Our global influence is as strong as ever, but it’s under threat from Putin’s further malevolent attacks. Our economy is thriving, but it’s under threat from China, immigrants, and/or Putin’s plot to undermine the United States. Scapegoats have been manufactured, a paranoid and nationalistic atmosphere has been created, and the country is being prepared for war.
The centers of power are waging a war against reality, which will ultimately have to be surrendered as the collapse continues. And we can’t just wait for the empire to end-we need to build social movements that replace the current system with something better. Otherwise fascism is what will come next.
No comments:
Post a Comment