Donetsk City residents suffer devastating foot and leg injuries due to the placing of petal mines by its authorities so they can blame the Ukrainians.
Russia, having taken a nuclear power plant, was now firing artillery rounds at it and now are apparently planning to blow it up to start a second Chernobyl event.
These things have, in all seriousness, been said by the Ukrainian president and those around him in charge of public relations and propaganda.
The level of fabrication is on such an industrial level that an entry for the Ukrainian regime into the Guinness Book of World Records for enormous lies and consistency of surreal forms of fabrication is well deserved.
Surely world weary western journalists and editors must eventually look askance at such claims and greet them with acerbic statements and grimaces of barely concealed scepticism?
But no.
They are solemnly accepted as the truth and communicated as such. Virtually each claim to date has appeared mirrored across the western world’s most illustrious newsprint vendors and mainstream media outlets.
The great western public open up their newspapers and look at the headlines emblazoned on front pages to discover these “facts” whereby that arrive through their eyes to their subconscious, adding to all else they “know” about those “evil Russians”.
On their screens ten or twelve times a day they will find these “facts” displayed, analysed and pontificated upon by numerous talking heads and garrulous moderators and anchors, with ever-rolling electronic ticker tape messages endlessly in mesmeric repetition.
It is difficult to encompass the sheer farcical and surreal quality that has overtaken the elite quadrant of western lives with mere words. Black is white, bad is good and of course war is peace. These days outdo even Orwell and those who deign to say so, watch out. The truth is no longer welcome here. Get on the bus… or else.
The process of news manipulation has a long and inglorious history. Always linked with those who see winning a war of some kind or other as far more important than the mere communication of verified fact. Informing the public is so much less important than conditioning them to accept every state narrative.
Operation Mockingbird was not the first attempt to control press and media narratives, without doubt every war saw the same impulse repeated again and again until the success sought for was achieved. On ancient maps fictitious monsters would be said to dwell where others didn’t want you to venture. The Saracens were said to be addicted to the blood of dead Christian babies within the walls of Jerusalem. This tactic worked well for Richard the Lionheart as he crossed Europe toward the Holy Land seeking to recruit knights and their followers as he went. Making radio programmes about Hitler’s possible sexual peccadilloes and those of his immediate circle apparently was very effective in disturbing Nazi morale.The CIA’s Operation Mockingbird was simply a much more well organised venture into news manipulation.
Many journalists and editors were only too happy to patriotically assist in sticking it to the Reds. Others could be made pliable with a few inducements of one kind or another. Eventually you had a veritable army of compliant manufacturers of misinformation who suffered no sleepless nights over the fables they created. In fact it is pretty certain they slept like babies as it was all in the best possible cause, denying those evil Reds the chance to enslave the good people of Europe, Asia, Africa or anywhere across the planet.
Later saw the creation of the ‘Psychological Operations’ teams and those of ‘Black Operations’. Anything that could harm the enemy of the day whether true or untrue could be endlessly enhanced or made believable. Whether it required counterfeit documents, false witnesses or a propaganda film… or simply a statement that such and such occurred when it was convenient to have people think it did. All in a day’s work.
Create a story about a young female trooper caught by the Iraqis and her rescue by heroic marines who risked their lives to save this damsel in distress. It makes great news and fits the subconscious stereotypes and feelgood factors of breast-beating idealists. The Jessica Lynch story has become a quite infamous example of these dark arts.
Or the fabrication concerning cruel Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and dashing their little heads on the hard stone floor. As told by a disaffected Iraqi colonel’s daughter to a senate committee and rapidly distributed as God’s own truth by George Bush Senior. Again, all in a day’s work when you are at war, and when you are within a forever war, the practice also goes on forever.
And this is where we are today.
The stage had been set after a decade of Russophobia and a decade and a half of the Hitlerization of Putin. Russia initiating its campaign against Ukraine simply confirmed the conditioning. So who is going to resist? How many will dare act like the little boy in the crowd who pointed out that the emperor was wearing no clothes. The clothes that all others said were so lavish, resplendent and fine? Those who want their characters assassinated perhaps? Few others. Only those who either have unassailable reputations, who have made their money and can’t be bought, or those whose integrity has delivered the same result. This relative few resolutely keep pointing out the reality they see before them rather than the political elite-demanded narratives that are designed solely to win some war.
So we see the picture being thrust before our eyes and hear the words assailing our ears in the West day in and day out.
The “evil Russians” are targeting school children, hospital patients and civilians in their homes. They are shelling themselves or those they have sworn to liberate and protect. They are actively trying to get the nuclear plant they have taken blown up so as to be blamed for a second Chernobyl. It’s all true because the Ukrainians told those clever, glamorous and ubiquitous media folk and they told us… so it MUST be true.
But what about Amnesty International saying that those schools, hospitals and homes had been taken over by Ukrainian troops and used as bases? Shush! That’s misinformation spread by terrorists! Do you WANT to be cancelled as a traitor and spreader of fake news?
This is where we are now in the West, within the distorting and media-assisted mirrorworld of Ukraine’s propaganda war.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment