With their campaign towards their very own dissident, the US and its allies betray the desperation of their collective propaganda machine
The US and its ever-loyal followers Canada and Nice Britain have launched a contemporary info conflict offensive. If “contemporary” is the phrase: In a brand new season of the long-running, apparently never-ever ending Russia Rage present (aka “Russiagate”) that a minimum of the American “elites” merely can’t get sufficient of, it’s once more – drum roll – RT that’s the goal. This time, it stands accused not “merely” of spreading “disinformation” (that’s, any info Western governments don’t like) however of intelligence work as nicely.
After which some. Resembling attempting to affect the American elections (yaaawn) and by some means being linked to gathering volunteer contributions for Russia’s conflict effort in Ukraine – a type of outreach, by the best way, which is precisely the identical as what Ukrainian organizations do. There is also an much more terrifying revelation. It has dawned on some troglodytes within the US State Division that RT isn’t counting on mechanical typewriters and the telegraph however has a “cyber” functionality!
Or one thing. That cost actually appears to boil right down to being internet-literate, a really particular ability set that should seem fiendishly futuristic to some within the US administration. And who can blame them? Are you able to think about its – official – chief, Joe “Variety-of-Nonetheless-President-When-he-Can-Keep in mind” Biden dealing with even one thing as nearly antediluvian as a laptop computer? That is best left, as we all know, to his son Hunter “The-Bare-and-The-Paid” Biden. And even then, the implications are typically dire.
In fact, the entire efficiency comes with extra sanctions, too. As a result of sanctions are to American coverage on Russia as popcorn is to a extremely unhealthy B film: indispensable but additionally not making issues any higher.
Inevitably, this newest US initiative has attracted ridicule, with excellent cause. In essence, it’s one more piece of self-owning, unhappy cringe from a regime struggling – and by no means making any progress – to return to phrases with its steadily declining energy, authority, and relevance. It is usually simple to identify that, as soon as once more, these self-appointed guardians of the “rules-based order” and its “values” have dialed the hypocrisy as much as eleven. Severely? You wish to discuss “disinformation”? Whereas Western media, from American CNN, by way of British BBC, to German ZDF, have turn out to be complicit by means of silence, bias, and even the spreading of outright Israeli propaganda within the by now nearly year-long genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and more and more the West Financial institution, too?
In fact, we may look again and identify one instance after one other of Western flagrant lies with horrific, typically mass deadly penalties. Certainly, so many who we will’t, truly, do this right here. So, simply recall two: the brutal marketing campaign of presidency mendacity and media propaganda that the identical powers used to “justify” their unjustifiable conflict of aggression towards Iraq in 2003. By March 2023, the Prices of Conflict undertaking, primarily based on the prestigious Brown College within the US, put the losses amongst Iraqi civilians alone at, as a really conservative minimal estimate, between nearly 281,000 and over 315,000 “killed by direct violence for the reason that US invasion.”
Notice the phrase “direct.” If we add, as we realistically need to, these killed “not directly,” that’s by avoidable malnutrition, illness, infrastructure destruction and so forth., then the true dying toll, so the Prices of Conflict undertaking, was “seemingly a lot increased” once more. Bear in mind additionally that those that had been killed are solely the tip of a darkish iceberg of the ruined, injured, amputated, displaced, bodily and psychologically scarred for all times and over generations. These are the true, countable outcomes of brazen Western lies. And now the US and its accomplices are right here to evangelise about “disinformation.” What’s left to say? Besides maybe that Western “elites” are usually not solely actually mass-murderous however completely shameless and tone deaf, too.
The second instance of brazen Western mendacity, very a lot together with by the mainstream media once more, that we must always recall on this context is the persecution and torture of Julian Assange, the founding father of Wikileaks, who, amongst different issues, uncovered US atrocities within the Iraq Conflict. For that excellent service to humanity – and different “sins,” within the eyes of the West’s highly effective – he was subjected to greater than twenty years of assorted types of incarceration, together with lengthy stretches {that a} UN skilled has rightly referred to as torture. He was additionally consistently threatened with extradition to the US, the place he would have been slowly murdered by much more torture by way of remoted incarceration. In the meantime, US officers additionally sometimes entertained the thought of merely having him murdered. Now, Assange is lastly free. However the vicious retaliation visited on him when he was, with out exaggeration, the only most vital political prisoner on this planet, was, in fact, meant to frighten others into submission and silence.
And that brings us again to an particularly sinister side of the renewed US assault on RT, particularly the allegation that – by some means – RT is “de facto” (oh, what an elastic time period!) engaged in intelligence. Being not a “actual” journalist and writer however as an alternative some sort of spy was exactly the keystone lie on which Washington constructed its many crimes towards Assange and his household. And all too many within the West’s media performed alongside. Join the dots. By leveling the identical unsubstantiated cost towards RT, the US “elite” is sending a mafia-ish message – just like the mobster clan it truly is – about what it could actually and may very nicely do to any journalist caught working for RT, particularly what it did to Assange, and even worse.
But different journalists are usually not the one ones being threatened. The opposite main goal, exterior Russia, is the entire International South, the place, so the People declare, it’s RT that has mightily contributed to its elites and populations not following the US lead on the West’s proxy conflict in Ukraine. Clearly, that could be a message of breath-taking conceitedness. Perish the thought that individuals within the International South may simply have chosen to see issues in a different way! All of the “company” that now we have been admonished to incorporate in our night prayers with regard to Ukraine, there it goes, straight out of the window. No “company” for the International South! There, so Washington isn’t ashamed of attempting to inform us, any divergence from its perverse bipartisan conflict social gathering line can solely be because of depraved Russian “exterior agitators.”
That’s, in fact, the patronizing “logic” of a deeply colonialist mindset steeped in narcissism and unquestioned assumptions of supremacy. What’s attention-grabbing – although probably not shocking – is that the Washington blob, as an example, applies the identical conceitedness to the “extraordinary individuals” of the West. They as nicely, beneath the strict gaze of their “betters” on the prime, should not be left alone to resolve what they wish to watch, learn, and hearken to. As a result of in the event that they did, they could get concepts, or to be exact, concepts of their very own. In that perspective, going after RT is just one a part of a determined, futile effort to close down any platform for various, together with very a lot various Western, voices. Suppose, if you’ll, of RT because the samizdat of the West, to recall the phrases of Soviet dissidence.
However right here is the tragedy of the West’s info warriors. All too many, inside and out of doors the West, are already “uncontrolled,” unwilling to imagine the nonsense dished out because the mainstream views they should maintain. The deepest cause for that has been defined about two-and-a-half millennia in the past by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus: even essentially the most sensible rhetoric (right here we will translate that time period as “propaganda”) can solely get you to this point. What actually wins the argument is having the higher case. And rhetoric constructed on an atrocious case is not going to prevail, even with the largest, meanest, most CNN-level-resourced bag of tips. Finally, that’s the West’s actual downside. From the proxy conflict devastating Ukraine to the genocide in Gaza, the West has nothing to face on when it comes to each morality and cause. That’s the reason it should lose.
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the creator and don’t essentially characterize these of RT.
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