The Protocols of the Elders of Putin
Not since the Nazi era have we seen a state-sponsored campaign of murderous hatred and warmongering to match the one being whipped up against Russia. Even more ominously, never before in America have government agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ - and the overt censorship/propaganda of the "Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016") directly spread fascistic propaganda. If you think "fascistic" is too strong a word, take a look at these excerpts from the widely approved definition of fascist behaviors by Umberto Eco:
Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Umberto Eco makes a list of the 14 common features of fascism
US propaganda against Russia is reaching the level of Nazi propaganda against Jews. The Russians are made the scapegoat for everything. They must be punished. This "big lie" propaganda is repeated constantly in all media channels. Anyone who criticizes this propaganda, anyone who dissents about anything the US government is doing, anyone who just wants to rein in the out of control MIC budget, is a "Russian puppet". Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein are "Russian puppets". Pipeline protestors are "Russian puppets". It is Manichean hysteria.
Rationally, this stuff is laughable; but emotionally, it is political dynamite. It is the equivalent of being called a Jew lover in Nazi Germany. Again, if you think I'm over the top with the Nazi comparisons, look at Hitler's own tactics:
(In Mein Kampf, Hitler) laid down five rules for successful propaganda:
1. avoid abstract ideas and appeal instead to human emotions
2. employ constant repetition of a few simple ideas (Big Lie)
3. put forward only one side of the argument
4. constantly criticize the enemies of the state
5. concentrate on one enemy for special vilificationSimon Adams, "Propaganda in War and Peace"
Re 1: The attack on the Russians is completely emotional. They are not communists anymore. They are as neoliberal and market-driven as anyone. Their military budget is 10% of ours; and they have only one overseas base, which they use to fight real terrorists. They pay their debts and honor their treaty commitments. They are an Orthodox Christian community that is very tolerant religiously, supporting large Jewish and Muslim minorities. In short, there is absolutely no factual basis for hating them, yet we do.
Re 5: see the title of this essay.
Re 2: The intelligence community, the corporate media and the corpo-Dems have been hammering on the complete nonsense of Russiagate since Hillary lost. After a year of investigation, there is no public, examinable evidence of any Russian involvement in the DNC leaks, or election "meddling". Yet the irrational obsession with this so-called plot is ratcheted higher every week. For example, this week, sadly, Jane Mayer joined the "hang Putin" bandwagon by raking through the two-year old, bogus Steele "dossier" yet again. We also have the hysteria about "suspected" Russian poisoning of a Russian spy in UK. Meanwhile, the direct connection of Ukrainian Dmitri Alperovich to the DNC hacking story is never mentioned:
The cyber security firm outsourced by the Democratic National Committee, CrowdStrike, reportedly misread data, falsely attributing a hacking in Ukraine to the Russians in December 2016. Voice of America, a US Government funded media outlet, reported...
CrowdStrike’s bias has been cited as undependable in its own assessment, in addition to its skeptical methods and conclusions. The firm’s CTO and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Cybersecurity Firm That Attributed DNC Hacks to Russia May Have Fabricated Russia Hacking in Ukraine
But, the point is to keep the propaganda simple: Russia is responsible for EVERYTHING bad in the world, the US (or the Ukro-Nazis) for none of it.
Re 3: Russia is not the aggressor here, it is reacting to decades worth of encirclement by NATO and the US. It is reacting to the abrogation of the ABM treaty in 2002 and to Obama's trillion dollar "modernization" of our nuclear weapons and to Trump's new nuclear posture. But that side of the story is never presented.
The real menace: Ukrainian Nazis
If anyone is the bad guy in Eastern Europe, it is the Ukrainian Nazis. What the anti-Russian propagandists never mention is that, since the day of its founding, the CIA's Eastern European policies have been written by ex-Nazis (the Gehlen Organization) who employed Ukrainian ex-Nazis (the Vlassov org). The CIA has always loved Ukrainian Nazis, who have always hated Russia.
Even as the United States was publicly proclaiming a policy of unconditional German surrender, Gehlen and his organization were being established at the very core and seat of the American system of foreign intelligence under the responsibility of Allen Dulles’s Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS. By the time of the transformation of the OSS into the CIA in 1948, Gehlen had grown tight with Dulles and his organization had become in effect the CIA’s department of Russian and East European affairs. Soon after the formation of NATO, it became the official NATO intelligence organization. And as per Gehlen’s third condition, his organization was installed as the core and he as the director of the West German CIA, the Bundesnachtendienst (BND)...
Look what power the victors conceded the vanquished. Exclusive purveyor of intelligence on the Soviet Union and East Europe to the United States, West Germany, and NATO, Gehlen, and the spirit kept alive in him and his staff, had more power over the official American perceptions in the postwar than even a German victory could have given them. The Gehlen-Vlassov intelligence system had become a main source and fountain of official American consciousness.
Behold the span of this concatenation. First in the time of Trotsky there is General Vlassov and his anti-Bolshevist army and spy ring. The Vlassov apparatus is then at a certain later point assimilated to the Gehlen apparatus. Then just as the White Russian spies jumped to the Nazis when their own army went down, so now the German Nazi and Russian Czarist spies together jumped to the American army as the Wehrmacht was falling. Vlassov first became a department of Gehlen, then Gehlen became a department of Allen Dulles.
This is how it came to pass that a Czarist spy ring inside a Nazi spy ring took up the inner seats in the American foreign intelligence apparatus at the precise moment that this apparatus was starting to come forward as a major player in the great policy wars of Washington and the world. This is how it came to pass that everything official Washington would know about the Soviet Union and East Europe on the most believable report, everything about the enemy our policymakers would most confidently believe, would come by way of Czarists and Nazis installed at the center of our national intelligence system. That was a buzzard that would come home to roost again and again.
Carl Oglelsby, The Yankee and Cowboy War
That long relationship explains why the US paid $5 B for the 2014 coup. It explains why Obama looked the other way as literal Nazis have taken power in the Ukraine. Given the openly expressed hatred of the Ukrainian Nazis, it is no surprise that after the coup, Ukrainian mobs burned Russians alive - a move reminiscent of Nazi sondercommandos in Poland.
Ukrainian nazis burned Russians in building in Odessa
The US is now feeding the Ukro-Nazis military weapons for yet another attack on the Donbass - an attack the US hopes will start a shooting war with the Russians. Dog save the planet, because the US won't.
In addition to being founders of the CIA, Ukrainians hold some high offices in the West, and use those offices to shamelessly defend not just today's Ukro-Nazis, but actual WW2 Nazis. Chrystia Freeland, the foreign minister of Canada, speaks Ukrainian at home and is proud of her Nazi grandfather.
Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper
The US also has a large Ukrainian community, especially in the Midwest. Marci Kaptur, an Ohio Congresswoman who took Dennis Kucinich's seat after a gerrymander put them in the same district, not only supports Nazis, but also supports ISIS.
Democrat Says Americans Owe Nazis for Suffering and Gives ISIS Eulogy on C-SPAN
The Ukrainian Russophobia has spread all over the NATO countries in Eastern Europe, especially the poverty stricken Baltic states that were some of the biggest victims of neoliberalism. Case in point: Latvia.
Latvia has an even larger Russian minority than Ukraine at approximately 40% of the population, though many of this demographic are regarded as “non-citizens” since they don’t fluently speak the local language and are therefore ineligible for citizenship per the country’s post-Soviet laws.
Riga regards them as the descendants of “foreign occupiers”, while this community argues that they’ve legally moved to Latvia when it was part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, thus making their presence there as natural as if an American moved from Illinois to California, for example. The Latvian government doesn’t see the situation that way and is accused of violating the human rights of this minority because of its strict citizenship requirements, though the EU – which is known for being overly sensitive to these sorts of things – ignores the Russians’ plight for political reasons...
The EU and Latvia share an ungrounded paranoia fed by the Mainstream Media-manipulated narratives about Crimea and Donbas that ethnic Russians and Russian speakers outside of the Russian Federation are apparently “fifth columnists”. This in turn is why they’re so obsessed with forcibly “assimilating” them into society,
Bottom line: if you want to call someone evil, call the Ukro-Nazis and their neocon funders and their CIA handlers evil. Call Joe Biden evil for making a fast buck off them via his son.
In closing
Have people genuinely forgotten what happens when industrialized countries decide entire nations and peoples are collectively guilty? Have people forgotten that both sides have nukes and that firing no more than 30 of them could cause a nuclear winter? It appears so.
The warmongering grows stronger every day, with weapons sold to the Ukrainian Nazis, US troops, illegally in Syria, shooting at government forces and embedded Russians. We are proposing to use nukes in response to bullshit charges of cyber-warfare. (Trump is just along for the ride. He will do what his Deep State masters command when it comes to warmongering. The rest of his act is just to distraction the sheeple from the drive to attack Russia.)
Putin has finally directly addressed the whole situation. Of course, his detailed explanation of new offensive weapons is blown off as either "a bluff", "election year politics", or "a threat that we will respond to". No one in the US is trying to engage in a dialogue about this. But that is exactly why Putin had to develop the weapons and make the speech. The only thing the US listens to anymore is a punch in the face.
Sanity has left the building in America. Its time to build that backyard bombshelter.
Comments
My concern
is how blatant the Russophobia is. It's not like they are even trying to hide how phony it is.
That makes me wonder what exactly they are trying to distract you from?
I don't think its for distraction; its for indoctrination...
and to shutdown any and all political opposition. As I say, the country is on the verge of going fascist. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are into active censorship. The US government is into domestic propaganda on a big scale. They just voted anothe $200 B+ on top of the already obscene defense budget, and that was before Putin's speech.
The corpo-Dems are completely on board - the Senate voting on the latest round of Russia sanctions was something like 95-2. Thanks to Clinton, the neocons now own the corpo-Dems. So politics is a joke. The military goons can do what they please, and both parties are OK with it.
They are going on full war footing. They have been completely unsuccessful diplomatically, and their proxy wars have hit the wall in Syria and Yemen; so they are looking for targets on which to use the military. Perhaps Venezuela, whom they have been torturing for a decade. They don't dare go after nuke-armed PRNK or Russia-protected Iran. But they need to show people who is boss, because the military is all we have anymore.
You can add Reddit to that list.
I think c99 is the last uncensored site on the internet.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Question
I rarely comment on essay dealing with foreign policy because I am too ignorant to contribute to the discussion, so normally I read to learn. My question is didn't we (the United States) give North Korea the technology to create nuclear weapons during the Clinton administration? I have read elsewhere that North Korea is actually a CIA operation.
Honestly I am not even sure of the truth any more other than if there are bad things happening in the world, the US seems to be behind them all.
Thank you for this enlightening essay.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Yes!
Thank you. Here is the Fortune magazine article that made the deal public. The idea that North Korea could be a CIA asset is fascinating, but of course it does align with reality because the industrial core of Soviet military development was American, and therefore the CIA and KGB worked for those companies. So North Korea could also have been part of the industrial development of the communist threat for the communist part of the global military industrial complex.
The support the United States gave to the nuclear development of North Korea is suggested to have been essentially loan guarantees, which amounts to a lot and is similar to what we did for the entire Soviet debt.
Actually the industrial core of the USSR pre-war was a
wholly Soviet construct that dated back to Stalin's 5 year plan starting in 1928 so it was well established by the start of the war. The real problem that all these plants had to dismantled, shipped east of the Urals and re-assembled in addition there were severe shortages of raw materials by 1941. (The US industrialists would NEVER, NEVER, NEVER have assisted the Communist USSR in the pre-war years to even manufacture a pot to piss in.)
The US did supply a considerable amount of materiel but most of it arrived after the Russians had turned the course of the war.
The Soviets admired the US
and wanted to industrialize along US lines. The trouble was, how to do it without capitalism or even private property. How do you get large US-style farms with modern, mechanized agricultural production without large landowners ? Collectivization.
Russia under the Tsars had no auto industry. How to get one like the US ? You buy it from them with hard cash, even if the money comes from selling wheat on the world market while your people starve or using slave-labor to mine gold in Kolyma. When Ford was tooling up to make their famous V-8 of Little Deuce Coupe fame, they sold their entire Model A factory, with tools, spares and shop foremen, to the Soviet Union. This became the GAZ factory, makers of the GAZ/Ford Model A car and the GAZ-AA line of trucks.
Their other main car and truck plant was ZiS which made copies of tucks designed by the US firm Autocar. In 1935 they sent food commissar Anastas Mikoyan to the US to learn how to do large-scale industrial food production. He bought a bunch of machines to make hamburgers and ice-cream, among other things.
What we call the Great Depression started during the first five-year plan and cash was king in those days. If the Soviets could come up with the hard currency, they could buy whatever they needed from the capitalists in the US.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
I agree with you to a point.
But, the major industrialization of the USSR in the 30's was done by the Soviets on their own. Relations with the US started to deteriorate by 1935 when Stalin started his purges. By 1939 they were at their lowest and there was now little to no relationship with the US.
Every nation borrows technology from other nations, improves upon it and makes it it's own. The US was originally an agrarian economy supplying the raw materials for the factories in England.
To say that manufacturing in the USSR was an American construct is misleading.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKBoDfsvitE]
I agree, that would be overstating it.
But still, the Studebaker US6 truck was pretty important when it came time to push the Germans out of Russia.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
With all the respect
that I have for you, which is immense, I disagree, and I urge you to read as much as you can of the works of Antony Sutton of the Hoover Institution. His life's work there, WESTERN TECHNOLOGY AND SOVIET ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, documents the contribution to Soviet military industry from U.S. corporations from 1917-1970.
In addition, the personal works of industry figures, from Ambassador Francis during the revolution in 1917, to Averell Harriman in his personal memoirs, describe in detail the involvement of U.S. companies, as well as our government in support of those companies, in Soviet military development.
This is a difficult concept. These military industrial corporations were in Russia from the tzarist period onward. They are still there. They consider the wealth of the Russian subcontinent, which Francis described as "immeasurable," to be theirs.
Sutton deals with this difficult concept first by quoting Lenin, who called these capitalists "deaf mute blindmen":
As it turned out of course, the capitalists are still there, and the Bolsheviks are not. But here is Sutton speculating about the rationale, after having documented U.S. capitalist support for revolutionary parties, for the intervention:
And here is Harriman, second from the right in the rear, ubiquitous, Nazi industrialist, Soviet industrialist, American industrialist, and as he called himself, the man of the century:
Tks for the indepth reporting.
Re: CIA and North Korea
is something that really surprised me, but it has repeatedly come up during the Q anon posts. I would not have believed it even one year ago. But so far, nothing in the Q posts has been proven wrong while many of the things predicted have later been proven true, so I am putting some believability in this revelation until it is proven otherwise.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
No!
Sovereign states have a right to enrich uranium. The Clinton Administration made a deal with N. Korea that we would assist them in developing peaceful uses of nuclear energy in return for their commitment not to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels.
In nuclear power plants the U235 (as opposed to U238) is usually enriched to 3.5 to 4.5% of total uranium. Research reactors may use uranium enriched to nearly 20%. Weapons grade uranium has U235 enriched to 85% or higher.
The basis for the Clinton agreement with N. Korea was similar to the non-proliferation treaty. N. Korea opened its nuclear facilities and did not proceed with weapons grade enrichment during the Clinton years. The experience they gained with low level enrichment certainly contributed to their ability to produce weapons grade material. But they would have advanced faster without the restrictions as demonstrated when the Bush Administration attempted to place additional restrictions, then abrogated the arrangement. The N. Koreans threw the inspectors out and began to develop the capability to produce weapons grade uranium.
Those were not Hitler's own ideas about how to effectively use
the tools of propaganda. He openly stated in Mein Kampf that he respected the Americans and British who were much more effective.
The Americans had used the ideas and techniques designed by Edward Bernays. Propaganda in the US has been renamed as public relations even though it is the very same thing. The word propaganda is always reserved for the enemy.
Here is a fascinating documentary on how propaganda works and why it is so effective.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04]
If you would rather read about it:
OK. I stand corrected.
I have never had the desire or the strong stomach to read Mein Kampf. So I took the first sensible precis that Google gave me. Other precis said pretty much the same. Sorry for the misattribution.
I certainly know of Mr. Bernays, Freud's
?cousin?nephew who invented modern PR.Remove the name Hitler, change the dates and places and you
could read much the same shit in the western media at that time.
I'm assuming you just mean manipulative advertising...
not incitement to genocide.
Both. We need to go back to 1925 and you will see the parallels
Jews, Korea, China, USSR, Vietnam, racism. Gooks, japs, chinks, ni**ers, spicks, pollacks, strange fruit. The US just learned to use a more "polite" language. If you scratch the surface it is almost identical at that time in history. Most of the American shit has disappeared down the memory hole.
When I was a kid - eenie, meanie, minnie moe. Catch a ------ by the toe, in the schoolyard. Used to buy ------ toes, 3 for a penny at the corner store. Cartoons with Jews and blacks at the movies and on b&w TeeVee are now banned. Fortunately, for the most part, America did not cross the Rubicon. But we came close.
I see what you mean
I'm going to stay in the time frame from 1920 to WW2, for fair comparison to Naziism.
Racism in the US prior to the Civil Rights movement was as disgusting as it was widespread. Segregated everything; and the Jews were also persona non grata. When WW2 started, Japs became racist targets too, complete with internment camps. So, yes, we treated many ethnic groups horribly. Americas elite had also long practiced pitting one group of ethnic laborers against another: Irish against Blacks, Polish against Irish, etc. The "Melting Pot" had a very large bad side. But, as you say,
There is a big difference between lynching even a ten thousand blacks over 100 years and gasssing 6 million Jews in three years. There is a difference between racism and genocide. I mean their had pogroms against Jews in Poland/Russia for hundreds of years. It was really big news if more than ten people got killed.
How many Koreans have died. How many Laotians have died
How many Vietnamese have died. How many Cambodians have died. How many South Americans have died. This is only 5 of the 65 bombings the US has done to foreign nations since WWII. In some of these "police" actions, the US dropped more bombs than were dropped during WWII by all combatants. None of these countries had a fraction of the anti-aircraft protection that Germany had.
Americans don't kill up close and personal. They kill from a distance so as to keep their hands clean.
Do you know how painful a death from firebombing is?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wy85JcWPA]
Arende
specifically chose to consider the period up to WWII. Your listing of American attrocities since does not affect the argument.
It's official. We are the Good Germans
Now I see how it happened. Also, imagine if Russia overthrew Mexico's government and installed ISIS. How would our government react to that? Or the Putinphobes? This is what we did to Russia when Obama overthrew Ukraine's government and installed the Nazis. I've written about this particular group of Nazis and how even Hitler was afraid of them. This is who is on Russia's border, not to mention the troops and military equipment that is going to Poland.
People are happily cheering for war with Russia even though Putin just warned us not to even think about it.
Can anyone explain to me why Israel doesn't have a problem with our relationship with the Nazis after WWII? We brought the worst of the worst of them to this country and sheltered them from prosecution and recently installed them in Ukraine. I'd think that Israel and every Jewish congress member would be appalled by this. I know that I am. I've read the stories of what they are doing to the Russians who live in Ukraine. I'm surprised that Putin has been so calm about it so far.
The Lead Cheerleader of Russian Propaganda
Another outstanding essay on the Blue Blog!
Yep. Hitler and Goering learned about propaganda from President Wilson. h/t Pluto
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
I'm still trying to find the answer to that question
maybe having the US MIC as your benefactors for all these years
blinds one of the fact that these people helped kill your parents
grandparents etc.etc.etc. Bibi is as bad as any past dictator the
world has known.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
watching above video about propaganda and Bernay
with the aviator woman (forgot her name) saying 'express yourself with how you dress', I wonder how today's massive tatoo-ing of ones body - both for men and women - is not in a similar manner a result of some wickedly secretive propaganda to express your "freedom's and resistance desires" from the "elites".
I might not understand it, but I haven't found an answer to my question, why so many folks torture their skins with tatoos that are also sold as a matter of "art". Why do you think people need tatoos to exactly express what?
Just came to my mind watching the video The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines".
This essay, thread and comments are excellent and I have may be read and watched 1/4 of it. So apologies if I missed something that you would have expected be clear to my mind by now.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Almost got into an argument
with mia famiglia the other night, over dinner.
They were wittering on about some NYT article, and I posited that I found it hard to believe that 13 odd bods, mucking around with Farcebook and Twatter, could have influenced the election to the extent shouted about.... especially with the sums involved.
Silence and withering looks.
I decided to wash the dishes. Dishwashing being the better part of valour.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Not really.
We need to push back each and every time, whether with loved ones, friends, colleagues, family, whomever propagates this bullshit story, or we ALL get to face destruction. I ain't buying None of it, and I don't let this BullShit go unchallenged At All!
I hit them with facts, history, and information. They don't like it, they resent my very presence at times, but I give no fucks and no quarter when they start spewing their bullshit leading us to War. No one wins in a war and the World will lose Everthing in a nuclear war. I ask them if that's what they want and am usually answered with 'No, but. . .' but What? I respond, where in Hell do you think this will end up?
It makes life kinda tough and a little lonely at times, but the alternative is worth the pushback I feel.
Stop These Fucking Wars
peace
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
You're absolutely right.
It's that serious, just as you say, and it's absolutely necessary to have this confrontation now. You've reminded me how long it took for so many of my friends and family to start to question the Vietnam War. Because opposition to the war was so total in the last years, it has become easy to forget how many years Americans bought the propaganda that Hanoi and the Viet Cong were going to take over the world.
I agree , hit back at them. They are not even trying anymore
to offer solid evidence of wrongdoing, they are just throwing shit at the wall and everything is sticking.
Read this paragraph about a secret meeting that happened after the election. Note that it had nothing to do with 'collusion' during the election anymore.
Here’s what you should know about the Seychelles meeting.
It’s not clear what Prince and the official talked about. But according to The New York Times, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, eventual national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak discussed the possibility of setting up the communications channel in a December 2016 meeting.
The Washington Post also received an anonymous letter claiming that Kushner, Kislyak and Flynn “talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a ‘Russian contact’” in an unidentified third country. The Post’s Adam Entous told MSNBC that the letter said “Flynn was deemed too high-profile to do the trip.”
Kushner has denied that the request took place.
First it says that it is not clear what they talked about, but then it describes exactly what they supposedly talked about. Whatafuck? Does that make any sense? Not to me it doesnt.
Next up apparently anyone can send a letter to a newspaper anonymously and it is taken as fact these days. Who knows who sent the letter to the Post? Maybe it was Brennan, who seems to have a high interest in spreading this shit. And why not? Everyone believes everything that has been stated or assumed since this started. And this is what they have been doing since it started. Using un-named sources and many innuendos but not hard facts.
Good grief, I am beyond belief that this country could have slipped down the rag so quickly. And all because Her didn't win.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
The New Yorker Piece Was a Masterful Piece of Propaganda
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man...
15000 words and nothing about his employment relationship with the FBI.
There are several other doozies of omission in there and the whole thing is a Paean of Steele Virtue.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
The problem with the United States is that it hasn't ever
personally experienced warfare war on it's soil since 1865. Americans have never experienced modern warfare firsthand other than through a glorification produced by Hollywood.
This is how Americans experience war.
[video:http://www.nsfwyoutube.com/watch?time_continue=201&v=4yU5fLl49c4]
This how the people on the receiving end of those B52 bombs experience war.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3ILW7RvpE]
Its scary how utterly irrational people are about this stuff
The whole scenario is ridiculous. The amount of advertising by that Russian guy (not the government - that's like blaming the US for whatever rubbish Peter Thiel tweets out) has been compared to a raindrop in a hurricane. The assault on Putin has been compared to "blaming him for taking a crap in an outhouse".
The fact that people mis-educated enough to think the NYT is worth reading have completely suspended their critical faculties tells me that democracy here is over. People have given over their thinking to whatever propaganda outlet they have chosen.
Notice how you were silenced. Its all part of the indoctrination. Big Brother is watching you.
They appear to be dedicated to the cause
Much like the supporters of the whole 'Benghazi Thing'.
Weird stuff.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Plus they have no grasp of 20th century history
Most of them are ignorant that Russia fought 80% of the Nazis army for 3 years, while we had a few divisions in North Africa or Italy. Most of them are ignorant of the 20 M+ casualties the Russians suffered, while the US total was about half a million.
Most of them don't know that the Nazi invasion, and the Ukrainian support for it, are still fresh today in Russia. They don't know how much the Russians are simply not going to put up with another round of crap from the Ukies or the American brand of Nazis either.
arendt,
thank you for this great research and the subjects you're bringing together.
You mentioned Allen Dulles and his employment of the Nazi butcher Reinhard Gehlen. In the process of wanting to re-emphasize the fact that Dulles was an attorney for Hitler's financial and industrial enablers, I came across some paragraphs that have to do with our concerns about the targeting of civilians in WWII and now in Syria. The crucial point of the following text is that the Roosevelt administration was rife with fascist industrial operatives.
@Linda Wood Thanks for that. I
Thanks for that. I intend to read it in depth when time permits.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Let me second that. Thanks, Linda...
for bringing up some facts I was unaware of. Geez, the Wall St. gang have been shits for more than a century.
Would there have been a WWII if not for the US businessmen
who financed and armed Hitler? After all, he didn't have the resources to go on his world domination plan if he hadn't had outside help for it.
The Bush family has been craven warmongers going back even before ole Prescott who should have been hanged for planning the military coup against Roosevelt. (?)
Linda, you made an excellent point last night when you said that Americans aren't seeing the heinous pictures of the devastation wrought by our wars including pictures of the people who we are killing. People were aware of this during WWII when they went to movie theaters and saw what was happening in the war theaters. We saw shock and awe, but people were more excited by that then upset.
Thanks for this article.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
The Americans financed Hitler because he was going to destroy
Russia. The shit with Poland that brought the French and British into the war was not in the plan. The Americans waited until it was obvious that Germany was on it's himd legs due to the Russians before they entered the European theater. With Russia approaching Western Europe they no longer had any choice.
The Russian successes in WWII fucked up American and British plans for Eurasia big time. We are still living with the backlash to this very day. The US thought they finally had Russia on the mat in the 90's but Putin picked the country up and gave it back to the Russian people. Russians know this. That's why he enjoys 80% plus popularity ratings. It's also why TPTB in the west hate him with such a passion.
Allen Dulles was pure slime
He was born rich and privileged (read "The Brothers") and spent his entire life trying (and succeeding) in tearing down democracy at home and abroad.
It can't be repeated enough that corporate lawyers ran US foreign policy (and, it seems, US bombing planning) right up to WW2. Then the corporate lawyers hired themselves to be the CIA, and that naive idiot Truman went right along with it.
Given that J Edgar Hoover was blackmailed by the mob, and himself kept a safe full of blackmail material on most of the political establishment, US intelligence in the modern era has been created by and run by socicopaths.
isn't that about the same today?
https://www.euronews.com/live
Classic isn't it.
They just pound and pound and pound until it becomes a fact of life. I've noticed even many on the left who know it's all theater using a caveat when discussing it, "I'm sure Russia did try to interfere, but. . ". Kind of like "I'm not a truther but . .". It shows how the conspiracy theory aspect has taken hold even on those that should know better.
But that's the insidiousness of propaganda.
Heh, I'm sure Russia interefered too
Although that depends on what you call "interference". Yes, both the Russian government and Russian citizens expressed opinions on the internet regard a US election. That's hardly surprising since the entire world does it. We are, after all, the dominant global power. Of COURSE everyone else cares what's going on in our politics.
In order for me to get excited about that interference I need to know how it is different than the norm. The Facebook stuff is hilarious since nobody ever would've called that the "norm" because it doesn't rise high enough to even matter. Had they in fact hacked the DNC and given documents to Wikileaks I might have a problem with the hacking part. I'd still care about the content of the documents but I don't approve of direct election meddling and intrusion into someone else's systems is a crime. So I'd want some sort of "Don't do that" message in that circumstance but the Democrats have abandoned that line entirely. Now we're onto Facebook and financial crimes.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
heh...
if you want to see how bad it can get in these united states, perhaps it would be a good thing to read up on woodrow wilson's fascist attack on the first amendment.
here's a pretty good short essay i found on the web.
if you want a better reference that covers many of the previous attempts of government and elite leadership to embrace fascism, i recommend geoffrey stone's "perilous times: free speech in wartime: from the sedition act of 1798 to the war on terrorism."
Wow, so that's the law Obama used on the whistleblowers
I would assume this law is still on the books, and Trump could use it any time he pleases.
That is seriously authoritarian. At least when it was written, law enforcement was porous and relied on citizen cooperation - as the failure of Prohibition demonstrated. Today, after 20 years of building out a Stasi-like surveillance and a pile of SuperMax prisons, our militarized police are going to deal with any peep of dissent the instant the button is pushed. If you haven't got a "go bag" packed and a plan to head for the hills, you are going to be in big trouble.
The Espionage Act
Has never come before the Supreme Court regarding its constitutionality other than the case involving the Pentagon Papers.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/713/case.html
With the current court, I would fear for the first amendment if they did choose to take a case involving it, e.g. if Assange was ever extradited to the US and charged with violating the Espionage Act for publishing what Chelsea Manning sent to wikileaks. Of course, I suppose Assange would be sent to Guantanomo as an enemy combatant and never seen again if that ever happened. More likely, one day he will be assassinated by the CIA who will, of course blame Putin.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
From the essay
History textbooks typically portray Woodrow Wilson as the leader that brought America through the tragedy of the First World War and as the leader who inspired the creation of the League of Nations.
What was the goal of the LoN?
Hmm, looks like it didn't meet its goal so the PTB decided to try again and keep the world from warring with each other.
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II with the aim of preventing another such conflict
Whoops, missed again by this much..
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
thank you for that link. I needed that one. /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
Well done! And, I've believed
for some time now that WWII Nazis, (well, their progeny) have made bigly headway into the reigns of power inside the Beltway (if not the Halls of Congress themselves). Hence ultimate winners of "The Big One." You look at some of the yahoos in herr Donald Trump's admin and a bunch look straight from central casting for Hitler's inner circle.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
That's a very good question
Maybe the deal was that we looked the other way while Israel got the bomb to defend themselves; and we let them become partners in the domination of the world (Israeli spies and intelligence advisors all over Latin America.) In return, they would look the other way about our Nazis.
ON EDIT: Remember how the Israelis and the apartheid South Africans were good buddies, sharing nuclear secrets? I really am not sure if the Israelis are into anything but realpolitik. At this point, they have beaten any sympathy for themselves as Holocaust victims into the ground. The only point I take away now is that the Holocaust is what happens when you have rightwing headcases for leaders. So don't.
END EDIT
Until the last few years, Naziism was completely dead in the US and the EU; so the Israelis might have felt that "our Nazis" had just become good little neocons. I mean, America has never wavered in its defense of Israel in 70 years. No matter how apartheid-like they become, we keep supporting them.
Maybe its like the ending of Animal Farm, German fascists (4 legs) good, Isreali fascists (2 legs) better.
I'm just spitballing. It really is a good question.
As to this -
At this point, they have beaten any sympathy for themselves as Holocaust victims into the ground. .
I agree that sympathy is hard to give because of what the Israeli leaders have done to others and isn't it interesting that we don't have sympathy or any acknowledgment for the Hiroshima or Nagasaki victims of WWII? Or for the Vietnamese victims from the Vietnam war or for any of the other victims that have died from wars? Why do we only build memorials for the victims of the Holocaust and are they mostly for the Jewish ones?
3,000,000 Vietnamese died during our war which is close to half the numbers of Holocaust victims. We could add up all the number of people who have died from the all of the wars and build a memorial building, Wall or a statue for them. Just a thought.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Israel DID get a big chunk of Palestine after the war.
Excellent essay. Russiagate using Nazi anti-Jewish imagery.
Excellent insights into how Nazi propaganda methods is informaing current Russiagate hysteria. I have been saying for a while that Russiagate has been echoing and directly using Nazi anti-Jewish narratives and imagery. Your essays shows the foundational system of propaganda. My interest was in the resulting particular imagery and particular narratives.
It all really starts with Nazi propaganda about the Jewish world wide conspiracy to undermine both Germany and the Western world. Yup, Elders of Zions!!!! One thing to note is that the Nazis thought that the Jewish world conspiracy was not just against Ayrans, but all of European "civilization". This is a theme constantly echoed in current anti-Russian hysteria. The Russians are not just after the US but all Western democracies. The plot line in both cases is universal in scope. For every problem of European society at the time of the real Nazis, there was some Jew behind it. I probably should have some quotes showing the parallelism....
In the way of particular images. For example, the Nazis used various animals to show the nature of the Jewish world wide conspiracy. One of them was the octupus. This is how The Economist rendered Putin just last month.
Now Nazi cartoon from around 1943.
Another one that could my eye was a democratic congresswoman comparing Putin to a spider.
From a blogger in New Zealand. I thought I remember one of the British mags showing
Putin as a spider, but not much time to look--sorry.
Now Nazi image of Jews as a spiders. Not sure when this was produced.
Now it maybe that insane conspiracy nuts focus on the same obvious animals. Nobody is going to use a kangaroo to show a great conspiracy. Probably because they are cute, but octupus and spiders are repellent.
Now, one thing about what I have read about Nazi propaganda, there is definitely a nexus between Jews and Russians (Slavic peoples). When Nazis said "bolsheviks" it was always meant to mean Jews also.
There are other parallels as the Nazis thought of Russia as a mongrel backward nation of subhumans. John McCain has described Russia as "'gas station masquerading as a country'. The portrayal of Russia among establishment comedies shows Russia as a backward nation. SNL has used a character called Olya Povlatsky as their version of a black face minsterel figure to make fun of Russian society.
These are public figures, but go into the comments section of Russian conspiracy postings, and you will see full force about Russian inferiority to rival the Nazis. And of course, every German in the 1930s would have understood Clapper's comments about Russians be genetically predisposed toward basically criminality. Rep. Lieu had a twitter entry about his kid asking if Trump is a Russian because he is a bad man.
(BTW, a few years ago the Russians had a furious debate about what Russian authors high schoolers need to have read to graduate. Should in fact, they be required to have read War and Peace was required in Soviet times. Yup, backward people. Can't help write about this but....In the 70's in high school, college bound students had to take an economics course. We of course explored the various "isms", and then a major paper comparing the fruits of the various "isms". Basically everybody wrote the same paper attacking the Soviet Union about the inefficient farming system, etc. But one curious fact that was officially take as a sign of an inferior Soviet system was that 70% of their doctors were women. No shit.)
Anyway, great essay. In fact, I would say that the democrats and the mass media are creating in essence a virtual online version of the Elders of Zion, only now it is the Russians. Oh, another BTW, the founder of the Columbia graduate school of journalism made his name during the Red Scare by taking the Protocols and subsituting communists for Jews. (It may have been Russian communists--can't remember.)
Thanks for your additions
I didn't want to bring that in, because it would have made the essay even longer. Thanks for making that connection. Also, loved the comparison of the propaganda images.
Seriously? Wow, that a "professional" journalist would stoop so low. The McCarthy era was so disgusting and braindead. Looks like we are having a rerun.
About one Carl Ackerman
Misspoke. Ackerman was the first dean of the school. He was instrumental in the first years of the school. Not sure where he was a "founder".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_W._Ackerman
edit. added clarification and more quoted text.
Who really won WW2?
It does look like Nazi/Fascist (basically anything to advance the MIC) philosophy of scapegoating won the ideological (or psychological/subliminal) war.
A current look at US propaganda is exhibit A.
Mike Taylor
I think we need a propaganda effort against
all those psychoanalysts, who manipulated the masses with their research results and follow-up programs.
Psychoanalysts are the enemy, they deserve to be manipulated, let's do it ! /s
Well, it's just too much up-side down, down-size up and all the mess in between. Need to rest my brain and move my bones.
I have to read this again. It's too awful, in a good sense.
https://www.euronews.com/live
truth is the remedy.
we have to get it out there.
check link, please.
http://worldbeyondwar.org/explained/
So, $30 billion could have ended world starvation in 2017....
Unfortunately, $80 billion was added to the war budget in 2018.
With the recent announcement of new Russian weapons, I expect at least $100 billion to be added next year.
Oops, this just in.
We will have to add an additional $50 billion. Those starving people will just have to wait a few more years. We have our priorities. We need to first protect the homeland from the starving hoards.
It may be time
to re-read the labels on our bras and underpants. It could be the Chinese labels are coded messages designed to undermine our faith in democracy. I wouldn't put it past them.
Saudis, on the other hand, can openly buy off Yale Law School
and nobody says a thing.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/09/11/with-donation-law-school-to-op...
Just snuck into TOP and video taped them posting about Russia
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcE5aDTszrY]
that's hilarious.
Thank you for this, Arendt and friends
It's an honor to be able to be this close to the strength of your thought
Excellent, excellent essay.
And the comments as well.
I've copied the link into Facebook (without actually posting it), and removed it, at least four times already. I've done the same in an email to specific individuals.
I want desperately for people to (pardon me) WAKE THE FUCK UP, but I've lost hope that anyone outside C99 would even take the time to read this and engage in some critical introspection. Plus, I'll just get called a Putin-loving Russian stooge. Again.
this is great, and thank you for it.
i've covered anti-russian psyops and agitprops since my days at my.firedoglake (the readers diaries), to the disturbance of many. at the café, i'd featured a piece at the guardian that amounted to a glorification of the 'freedom fighting russian nationalists' in ukraine, showing their shields and uniforms adorned with wolf's angels, etc. some women, too, as i remember it.
robert parry at consortium news (may he rest in power) covered it all a lot, including an exposé showing that the house of representatives finally having to admit that the US was funding 'neo-nazis'. during my.fdl days, i paid a lot of attention to graham phillips on the ground, and after i'd read that 'amerika' was sending lethal anti-tank missiles to ukraine, i found him again. now i'm not saying that his newish films aren't as biased as the kyiv posts were, like: "we toured ukraine w/ cameras; do you see any nazis here...or here?"
kyiv post's 'ukraine' tab.
i do recall that after having hosted 'russian apologist' prof.stephen cohen a number of times, democracy now began hosting the little prick from the kyiv post and his ilk, much like they lauded the psyop 'white helmets', as did the intercept. pfffft.
anyhoo, these are from graham phillips. oh, and the key proxy war there, i think, is that crimea has russia's only warm water port at sevastapol, although aren't they using one in syria? i've forgotten. and greece (tsipra) just turned their ports over to...the US imperium.