Listen to a reading of this article: The widespread refusal to accept that the US government bombed the Nord Stream pipelines is based solely on the faith-based belief that the US government would never do something so evil, despite its having done many things that are far more evil than this right out in the open.
As a child of the sixties, I and our family, were heavily involved in anti war and anti nuclear bomb demos in Sth Aust.. As you correctly point out, there is no movement. I think there is a SA branch of Anti Nukes but it's got a low profile.
On US gov doing nasty things to their own, there's the Tuskegee incident, the Hanford nuclear release, just to see where the winds take it, and our facourite, releasing LSD into the subway for a few off the top of my head.
In SA we had the atom bomb tests which they failed to inform the local indigenous population they were going to do. I've spoken with Bobby Brown born nearby and even though he was a baby at the time, he remembers the black cloud that blotted out the sun and the sickness that followed after for many. He died last year and would have been the same age as me at 69ish. He did say to me that he thought it may shorten his life. And, yes, he was a stolen child bought up in Koolunga in the states mid north.
Americans”know” their country is democratic and benign and humane. I am reminded of a quote attributed to the boxer Mike Tyson, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth...”. Americans will learn the error of their baseless opinions when their world is rocked, when their dream home is in ashes, when their money can buy nothing, when their biggest fear is their armed neighbors. When reality smacks America in the mouth, it may be the boot of LE on the neck, or very possibly a toxic air that burns the skin and leaves no survivors.
"The worst thing about Australia is America. All of the most destructive and dangerous things our country has done in recent decades, and all the most destructive and dangerous things it continues to do, have been the result of our role in the US-centralized empire". Caitlin
"The biggest problem with the western anti-war movement is that there is no western anti-war movement."
Well, one of the reasons so many people try to analyze the anti-war, atni-imperialism movement, or the lack thereof, is that they agree with that statement and wonder what can be done about it.
Let me suggest that maybe the analysis, the questioning, has not gone deep enough. The violence of our rulers and their institutions, the support they get from the people, must grow out of daily life, because it obviously does not fall upon us from Mars.
Start from wherever you are, and work from there. To ask why there isn't an effective anti-war movement, you must question why you aren't participating in one, or why the one you are participating in isn't effective. People's answers will be locally different but will cohere later. Keep asking, keep pushing, consult the evidence. Try to explain yourself to yourself. If there is hope, it lies in us, not in cursing out opponents. We have already wasted enough time on that.
Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PR industry (which stands for Public Relations--or PRopaganda) discovered in their days of working for the tobacco industry, more than half a century ago, that you don't have to convince the public a lie is true. All you have to do is "manufacture doubt." If people aren't sure whether cigarettes cause cancer or not ("I saw this article that said a top scientists says it isn't true..."), or whether climate change is real or not, or who's lying about Ukraine, they do nothing. And that's all the toxic industries need, to go merrily on their way of making money from death. What's happened in the US this century is that the "culture wars", a real thing that's been roiling around since the Sixties, have been heavily amplified until we have a hot angry division between two camps. It's said that this is result of the media finding a niche where each outlet feeds its audience what it wants to hear, including emotional triggers, because this is what gets clicks and clicks are what brings the money in. No doubt true, but it's also awfully convenient for the ruling class, at a time of inequality so stark that in the past it brought on the pitchforks and guillotines. There is great anger but people are training their guns on each other instead of the ruling class. It's hard for me to believe the ruling class just got lucky; I think they worked to amplify this division. They've got all the psychosocial experts they need, and free access to media outlets of every sort from the New York Times to Qanon.
Consider this--The Vietnam peace movement, if it had a theme, was John Lenon's, "All we are saying is give peace a chance." Now, having coopted the language of war into our fiber so deep our "activism" calls us to be warriors as we "rage against the war machine." Just as America cannot kill its way to peace, the peaceable cannot rage their way to peace. If MLK taught us anything it was the central theme love must play. "Lift up your voice and sing till earth and heaven ring!"
With mass media suppression we have widespread ignorance of truth. Widespread refusal to accept it, of course, would likely follow for most -- but not all.
Propaganda is based on confused ideas about belief, what it means, and how it operates in the human mind. There are many lies so sacrosanct that the fact they are lies, fables or fiction, simply doesn't matter: they cannot be debunked, even if they are basically nasty. It's a strange fact about humans and human experience. And that's the problem. We "knowingly" -whatever that amounts to - make up stuff, and then believe in it. But one positive function of suffering is that it tends to bring you down to earth. Except of course for the sadists and masochists- who actually enjoy it. But that isn't "most people," who just want to bring up a family, enjoy a football game and a beer. And people who prefer thinking, art, intellectual games, etc.. Not that the groups don't overlap. So we can expect some pushback when all this lands or - crashes. Because there is a limit, and it has to do with beer, food, kids, and various types of games. Take that away at your peril.
Have you ever been in a situation reported on by news media? They usually get at least some details wrong. But it's true that US media lies much more blatantly about non-US topics.
Absolutely! Another so-called "conspiracy theory" proven correct. We all knew the US was behind this. Another factor is that the US may have pushed the release of this information in an attempt to push Russia into WWIII to cover up its involvement in the Ukraine biolabs and money laundering (see Clandestine's substack and Twitter posts). To believe that the US is not capable of such an evil is so naïve as to be laughable (no, if you believe that, you deserve to be ridiculed, for YOU are part of the problem).
We are living in an eternal denial about our gov, wrongdoing, because we just hear, read, and watch what the government wants we know. Western mainstream media corporation parrot what the mogul of the press order to print and say. We have been told lies since pre-K until that are shaping our reasoning.
“All our world's troubles are ultimately due to propaganda; people only consent to status quo systems which hurt their interests because their consent is manufactured via propaganda. And that propaganda only works because of public trust in the messengers.”
Trouble is, as humans turn away from belief systems that once comfort and were trusted, they quickly seek alternatives. Sometimes they find what fills that space are simply cults peddling different propaganda. Which they come to believe and trust with equal vehemence. We’re all looking for community, hope and meaning. And sometimes that’s on offer though totally unhinged from reality. 😢
"Propaganda only works if people don't know it's happening — if they don't think of its source as untrustworthy."
An old joke: a Russian and an American are on a airline flight from Moscow to Washington. The American asks the Russian what he does for a living.
The Russian answers "I work for the government."
"Why are you traveling to the United States, then?"
"I want to study American propaganda techniques."
The American responds, a smug look on his face "oh, but there is no propaganda in America!"
"Exactly!" the Russian replies.
People in the Soviet Union also thought that they were the freest in the world.
As a child of the sixties, I and our family, were heavily involved in anti war and anti nuclear bomb demos in Sth Aust.. As you correctly point out, there is no movement. I think there is a SA branch of Anti Nukes but it's got a low profile.
On US gov doing nasty things to their own, there's the Tuskegee incident, the Hanford nuclear release, just to see where the winds take it, and our facourite, releasing LSD into the subway for a few off the top of my head.
In SA we had the atom bomb tests which they failed to inform the local indigenous population they were going to do. I've spoken with Bobby Brown born nearby and even though he was a baby at the time, he remembers the black cloud that blotted out the sun and the sickness that followed after for many. He died last year and would have been the same age as me at 69ish. He did say to me that he thought it may shorten his life. And, yes, he was a stolen child bought up in Koolunga in the states mid north.
I was just told I cannot share this post because people have reported it as abusive. Caitlin, you must be doing your job.
Americans”know” their country is democratic and benign and humane. I am reminded of a quote attributed to the boxer Mike Tyson, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth...”. Americans will learn the error of their baseless opinions when their world is rocked, when their dream home is in ashes, when their money can buy nothing, when their biggest fear is their armed neighbors. When reality smacks America in the mouth, it may be the boot of LE on the neck, or very possibly a toxic air that burns the skin and leaves no survivors.
I sincerely hope we can free the collective mind. It’s our only chance.
Pink Floyd line. "Us and them... them ...them.... them ....them...."
"The worst thing about Australia is America. All of the most destructive and dangerous things our country has done in recent decades, and all the most destructive and dangerous things it continues to do, have been the result of our role in the US-centralized empire". Caitlin
It is time to end this one-sided arrangement
"The biggest problem with the western anti-war movement is that there is no western anti-war movement."
Well, one of the reasons so many people try to analyze the anti-war, atni-imperialism movement, or the lack thereof, is that they agree with that statement and wonder what can be done about it.
Let me suggest that maybe the analysis, the questioning, has not gone deep enough. The violence of our rulers and their institutions, the support they get from the people, must grow out of daily life, because it obviously does not fall upon us from Mars.
Start from wherever you are, and work from there. To ask why there isn't an effective anti-war movement, you must question why you aren't participating in one, or why the one you are participating in isn't effective. People's answers will be locally different but will cohere later. Keep asking, keep pushing, consult the evidence. Try to explain yourself to yourself. If there is hope, it lies in us, not in cursing out opponents. We have already wasted enough time on that.
Unfortunately, this is not quite true. The PR industry (which stands for Public Relations--or PRopaganda) discovered in their days of working for the tobacco industry, more than half a century ago, that you don't have to convince the public a lie is true. All you have to do is "manufacture doubt." If people aren't sure whether cigarettes cause cancer or not ("I saw this article that said a top scientists says it isn't true..."), or whether climate change is real or not, or who's lying about Ukraine, they do nothing. And that's all the toxic industries need, to go merrily on their way of making money from death. What's happened in the US this century is that the "culture wars", a real thing that's been roiling around since the Sixties, have been heavily amplified until we have a hot angry division between two camps. It's said that this is result of the media finding a niche where each outlet feeds its audience what it wants to hear, including emotional triggers, because this is what gets clicks and clicks are what brings the money in. No doubt true, but it's also awfully convenient for the ruling class, at a time of inequality so stark that in the past it brought on the pitchforks and guillotines. There is great anger but people are training their guns on each other instead of the ruling class. It's hard for me to believe the ruling class just got lucky; I think they worked to amplify this division. They've got all the psychosocial experts they need, and free access to media outlets of every sort from the New York Times to Qanon.
Consider this--The Vietnam peace movement, if it had a theme, was John Lenon's, "All we are saying is give peace a chance." Now, having coopted the language of war into our fiber so deep our "activism" calls us to be warriors as we "rage against the war machine." Just as America cannot kill its way to peace, the peaceable cannot rage their way to peace. If MLK taught us anything it was the central theme love must play. "Lift up your voice and sing till earth and heaven ring!"
With mass media suppression we have widespread ignorance of truth. Widespread refusal to accept it, of course, would likely follow for most -- but not all.
Propaganda is based on confused ideas about belief, what it means, and how it operates in the human mind. There are many lies so sacrosanct that the fact they are lies, fables or fiction, simply doesn't matter: they cannot be debunked, even if they are basically nasty. It's a strange fact about humans and human experience. And that's the problem. We "knowingly" -whatever that amounts to - make up stuff, and then believe in it. But one positive function of suffering is that it tends to bring you down to earth. Except of course for the sadists and masochists- who actually enjoy it. But that isn't "most people," who just want to bring up a family, enjoy a football game and a beer. And people who prefer thinking, art, intellectual games, etc.. Not that the groups don't overlap. So we can expect some pushback when all this lands or - crashes. Because there is a limit, and it has to do with beer, food, kids, and various types of games. Take that away at your peril.
Have you ever been in a situation reported on by news media? They usually get at least some details wrong. But it's true that US media lies much more blatantly about non-US topics.
Absolutely! Another so-called "conspiracy theory" proven correct. We all knew the US was behind this. Another factor is that the US may have pushed the release of this information in an attempt to push Russia into WWIII to cover up its involvement in the Ukraine biolabs and money laundering (see Clandestine's substack and Twitter posts). To believe that the US is not capable of such an evil is so naïve as to be laughable (no, if you believe that, you deserve to be ridiculed, for YOU are part of the problem).
We are living in an eternal denial about our gov, wrongdoing, because we just hear, read, and watch what the government wants we know. Western mainstream media corporation parrot what the mogul of the press order to print and say. We have been told lies since pre-K until that are shaping our reasoning.
“All our world's troubles are ultimately due to propaganda; people only consent to status quo systems which hurt their interests because their consent is manufactured via propaganda. And that propaganda only works because of public trust in the messengers.”
Trouble is, as humans turn away from belief systems that once comfort and were trusted, they quickly seek alternatives. Sometimes they find what fills that space are simply cults peddling different propaganda. Which they come to believe and trust with equal vehemence. We’re all looking for community, hope and meaning. And sometimes that’s on offer though totally unhinged from reality. 😢