When It Looks Like War Propaganda, It Is War Propaganda

In June, the 4Chan persona QAnon posted a message that said:

Free Iran!!!

Fight

Fight

Fight

Regime change.

People have the power.

We stand with you.

This was a clear piece of war propaganda. Despite QAnon’s being a trusted source of information for many in the online anti-establishment crowd, the persona has shown all the signs of being a covert government manipulation tool. Q has told people to be suspicious of Edward Snowden and rallied its followers towards unquestioningly supporting the extremely hawkish and anti
WhistleblowerTrump administration. It’s no surprise that Q would try to create support for the illegal attacks on Iran’s government that Trump’s White House is engaging in.

Yet whenever I’ve brought this post up with Q’s followers, I’ve been assured that this is nothing worry about. A regular explanation I get is that since Q didn’t explicitly endorse war with Iran, Q could only have been encouraging the Iranian people to independently rise up. The fact that Q would single out Iran for such a comment when the CIA is trying to instigate Iran regime change isn’t seen as a red flag. Neither are the Trump administration’s reported plans to soon militarily attack Iran.

I’m addressing Q’s supporters from a non-hostile position, because I believe they’ve been maliciously tricked by the government into trusting a war propaganda source. And the deceptions Q has used are being constantly employed by numerous other parts of the war propaganda machine, and from many different angles on the political spectrum.

I’ve found we can defend against these manipulations by applying this rule: whenever you hear someone attacking or demonizing another country, check to see if you’re being lead towards supporting the next war. Challenge the charges that are made against the country and its leaders; does it sound like the “worse than Hitler” rhetoric that we heard about Saddam Hussein? Does it echo the language about “existential threats” that’s preceded many other wars the U.S. has manufactured? These are questions that every American needs to ask themselves as they navigate a paradigm of government deceptions and manipulations.

This test should be applied to the mainstream media’s intensive demonizations of Russia in recent years, demonizations which have been incidentally repeated by neoconservative politicians like Hillary Clinton and John McCain. It should be applied to the Western media’s relentless attacks on Assad, which we know have been used to justify a murderous and illegal NATO invasion of Syria. It should be applied to the claims from politicians and pundits that North Korea poses some sort of unprovoked threat, which is a perception that’s been used to enrich weapons contractors. It should be applied to Venezuela, to China, to Nicaragua, and to all future situations where the same people who recently lied us into war with Iraq are claiming that a new threat has appeared.

Liberals, conservatives, and even those who seek to break free from partisan politics have all been largely roped into these war narratives. And what most of these war propaganda tactics have in common is a false feel of objectivity, where the propagandists act like they aren’t trying to start a war but are simply reporting indisputable facts. These “facts” are very much disputable, and they serve to advance the interventionist policies that our Orwellian government wants us to support.

If an authority you trust is echoing the language of past war campaigns, resist the impulse to rationalize it. Scrutinize their statements very closely, because modern state propaganda can come up in unexpected places.