Reducing off funding for Voice of America, RFE/RL, et al doesn’t make the US president a ‘good man’, but it surely’s a step in the appropriate course
He’s completed it once more. Or reasonably, they’ve. As a part of their curious slash-and-burn campaign to dismantle – for higher or worse – massive swathes of the American state from the highest, President Donald Trump and his bestie-in-chief Elon Musk along with his gang of enforcers at DOGE have put the axe to one more seven authorities companies. Carried out by presidential govt order, this specific blitz is aimed toward places of work busy with issues as various as labor dispute mediation and the mitigation of homelessness.
The strategy of Trumpist assault is easy and already acquainted: The focused companies should not actually shut down, which Trump can’t legally do by decree. As a substitute, their budgets and employees are pruned so aggressively that they should stop operations.
But, tellingly, there is just one form of lower that has actually made centrists, liberals, and the mainstream media livid. Nope, not the hit on the homeless; and never the one on labor relations both. What induced a ruckus as an alternative is that Trump and Musk have gone after state propaganda. To be exact, state propaganda for the remainder of the world.
For one of many places of work that has been given the Trumpist flamethrower remedy this time is the US Company for International Media (USAGM). And that’s, in actuality, the US ministry for propaganda overseas.
Whereas it’s a reasonably new (2018) label, USAGM’s roots attain deep into the fetid soil of the final century’s Chilly Battle.
Initially, there have been Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty. Voice of America was based throughout World Battle II and was rapidly retooled afterwards for use as a Chilly Battle propaganda weapon by the CIA. Its youthful cousins, Radio Free Europe, based in 1950, and Radio Liberty (1951) have been, actually, CIA fronts.
However that “involvement was saved secret till the late Sixties for concern of Soviet retaliation,” as Encyclopedia Britannica places it with high quality British understatement in addition to a whopping portion of brute disinformation: The truth that the CIA remained in hiding was, after all, not as a result of massive dangerous Russians (the Soviets on the time) being so terribly scary. It was merely a way to control publics within the East and the West and current what was geopolitically pushed propaganda as ‘unbiased information’.
After 1971, the CIA (formally) ended its (direct) management. In case you imagine which means an company specializing in mendacity – and a lot worse – was now not pulling the strings, I’ve a Ukrainian ‘democracy’, full with ‘civil society’ and all of the fixings, to promote you.
Formally, the Board for Worldwide Broadcasting took over. It was appointed by the president, which tells you all it’s good to learn about how essential this international propaganda machine was to Washington.
Lastly, after additional label modifications, the board morphed into the USAGM. It ended up controlling not simply Voice of America, in addition to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty – lengthy merged into RFE/RL – however a bunch of different retailers, together with Radio Free Asia, and the very honest-sounding (not) Workplace of Cuba Broadcasting.
In accordance with USAGM’s personal web site, it was reaching an viewers of 427 million per week in 64 languages, and by way of conventional broadcasting in addition to the web. These fortunate viewers, listeners, and readers have been fed an unhealthy eating regimen similar to the US “nationwide curiosity” (in USAGM’s personal phrases) of “greater than 3,000 hours of authentic programming every week.”
Say what you’ll about this American ministry of overseas propaganda, but it surely was larger and richer than something comparable the poor outdated Soviets ever managed to rig up.
And that’s the group that Trump and Musk have simply lower down. The Chilly Battle, after all, has lengthy been over. Any cheap particular person’s response to this overdue transfer could be: ‘What took you so lengthy?’ Elon Musk had a degree when posting that the propaganda retailers are “simply radical loopy individuals speaking to themselves whereas torching $1bn/12 months of US taxpayer cash.” Besides, they have been under no circumstances solely speaking to themselves, sadly. And what made them “radical” and “loopy” is definitely how very American-as-applepie they have been.
Motive, in any case, is briefly provide in America’s political middle. As a substitute of a sigh of reduction that this pricey Jurassic Park of Chilly Battle media dinosaurs has lastly been taken off the US taxpayers’ books, an excellent lament set in.
The director of Voice of America, Michael Abramowitz, supplied his personal outfit’s eulogy with touching modesty, posting that “VOA promotes freedom and democracy world wide by telling America’s story and by offering goal and balanced information and knowledge, particularly for these dwelling underneath tyranny.” For Steve Capus, the top of RFE/RL, “The cancellation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s grant settlement could be a large reward to America’s enemies.”
Oh, that wealthy sound of the Fifties! It’s nearly as if Duke Ellington and his Massive Band orchestra are again to let it swing with Joseph McCarthy.
Funnily sufficient, Abramowitz didn’t embody these dwelling underneath genocidal siege by apartheid Israel. Plainly “objectivity” and “stability” have been doing about as effectively at VOA as ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ are within the US.
The previous chief monetary officer at USAGM, Grant Turner – sure, that’s his actual identify, no kidding – has bemoaned a “Bloody Saturday.”
To be truthful, it’s solely pure that high-ranking propaganda cadres gained’t yell with pleasure when their life’s work leads to shambles or their careers meet a sudden, if deserved, finish. However Abramowitz, Capus, and Turner are under no circumstances alone. NBC Information, the Nationwide Press Membership, the Affiliation for Worldwide Broadcasting, as an illustration, all joined the refrain of protest in opposition to Trump’s transfer.
And the Czech Republic’s overseas minister, Jan Lipavsky, believes the EU ought to put Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on life assist. It’s a European factor now: No matter actually dangerous concept Washington lastly drops – preserving costly Chilly Battle propaganda relics, working an much more costly and really bloody in addition to hopeless proxy warfare in opposition to Russia – the Europeans really feel like choosing them up.
Let’s hope they gained’t succeed. It’s time for these disinformation machines to go. They’ve by no means ceased doing huge hurt, be it by way of warmongering or data warfare assist for regime change camouflaged as colour revolutions. Ivan Katchanovski, the main authority on the false-flag Maidan bloodbath in February 2014 in Kiev has simply posted about how they “lined up [and] misrepresented” it by purging inconvenient video proof, and later omitting the “de facto affirmation” by a Ukrainian courtroom that the bloodbath was certainly a nationalist far-right, pro-Western operation.
The Trumpists should not ‘good guys’. They imagine in mendacity and censorship at least their Bidenist predecessors. Ask the Palestinians and their harassed and persecuted supporters or the Yemenites or the Venezuelans. However nobody wants extra well-financed mendacity on this world. And if American factions at the moment are going after one another’s propaganda machines, the sight is grimly humorous.
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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