The Subtleties of Anti-Russia Leftist Rhetoric
Edward Curtin
While the so-called liberal and conservative corporate mainstream media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.
A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them.
This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.
Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article. Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…”
But I read on.
By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going. Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]
While ostensibly about European anti-war and anti-NATO activists caught on the horns of a dilemma, the piece goes on to assert that although US/NATO was guilty of wrongful expansion over many years, Russia has been an aggressor in Ukraine and Georgia and is guilty of terrible war crimes, etc.
There is not a word about the U.S. engineered coup in 2014, the CIA and Pentagon backed mercenaries in Ukraine, or its support for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Ukraine’s years of attacks on the Donbass where many thousands have been killed. It is assumed these actions are not criminal or provocative.
And there is this [my emphasis]:
The uncertain response of Europe’s peace activists is both a reflection of a brutal, unprovoked invasion that stunned the world and of an anti-war movement that has grown smaller and more marginalized over the years. The left in both Europe and the U.S. have struggled to respond to a wave of support for Ukraine that is at cross purposes with a decades long effort to untangle Europe from a U.S.-led military alliance.
In other words, the article, couched in anti-war rhetoric, was anti-Russia propaganda. When I told my friend my analysis, she refused to discuss it and got angry with me, as if I therefore were a proponent of war I have found this is a common response.
This got me thinking again about why people so often miss the untruths lying within articles that are in many parts truthful and accurate. I notice this constantly. They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously.
Few do notice them, for they are often imperceptible. But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them. This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful or not. It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly schooled people.
For example, in a recent printed interview, Noam Chomsky, after being introduced as a modern day Galileo, Newton, and Descartes rolled into one, talks about propaganda, its history, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, etc.
What he says is historically accurate and informative for anyone not knowing this history. He speaks wisely of U.S. media propaganda concerning its unprovoked war against Iraq and he accurately calls the war in Ukraine “provoked.” And then, concerning the war in Ukraine, he drops this startling statement:
I don’t think there are ‘significant lies’ in war reporting. The U.S. media are generally doing a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.
In the blink of an eye, Chomsky says something so incredibly untrue that unless one thinks of him as a modern day Galileo, which many do, it may pass as true and you will smoothly move on to the next paragraph. Yet it is a statement so false as to be laughable.
The media propaganda concerning events in Ukraine has been so blatantly false and ridiculous that a careful reader will stop suddenly and think: Did he just say that?
So now Chomsky views the media, such as The New York Times and its ilk, that he has correctly castigated for propagandizing for the US in Iraq and East Timor, to use two examples, is doing “a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine,” as if suddenly they were no longer spokespeople for the CIA and US disinformation.
And he says this when we are in the midst of the greatest propaganda blitz since WW I, with its censorship, Disinformation Governance Board, de-platforming of dissidents, etc., that border on a parody of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Even slicker is his casual assertion that the media are doing a good job reporting Russia’s war crimes after he earlier has said this about propaganda:
So it continues. Particularly in the more free societies, where means of state violence have been constrained by popular activism, it is of great importance to devise methods of manufacturing consent, and to ensure that they are internalized, becoming as invisible as the air we breathe, particularly in articulate educated circles. Imposing war-myths is a regular feature of these enterprises.
This is simply masterful. Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis. And while he is at it, Chomsky makes sure to praise Chris Hedges, one of his followers, who has himself recently wrote an article – The Age of Self-Delusion – that also contains valid points appealing to those sick of wars, but which also contains the following words [my emphasis]:
Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.
The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.
‘The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,’ historian Andrew Bacevich writes.
But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures.
Russia’s revanchism? Where? Revanchism? What lost territory has the U.S. ever waged war to recover?
Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.? The U.S.’s history is a history not of revanchism but of imperial conquest, of seizing or controlling territory, while Russia’s war in Ukraine is clearly an act of self-defense after years of U.S./NATO/Ukraine provocations and threats, which Hedges recognizes.
“Nine weeks of humiliating military failures”? – when they control a large section of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Donbass. But his false message is subtly woven, like Chomsky’s, into sentences that are true.
“But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public.” No, it is exactly what the media spokespeople for the war makers – i.e. The New York Times (Hedges former employer, which he never fails to mention and for whom he covered the Clinton administration’s savage destruction of Yugoslavia), CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, the New York Post, etc. impart to the public every day for their masters.
Headlines that read how Russia, while allegedly committing daily war crimes, is failing in its war aims and that the mythic hero Zelensky is leading Ukrainians to victory. Words to the effect that “The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself” presented as fact.
Yes, they do inflate the Russian monster myth, only to then puncture it with the myth of Sampson defeating Goliath.
But being in the business of mind games (too much consistency leads to clarity and gives the game away), one can expect them to scramble their messages on an ongoing basis to serve the US agenda in Ukraine and further NATO expansion in the undeclared war with Russia, for which the Ukrainian people will be sacrificed.
Orwell called it “doublethink”:
Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary….with the lie always one step ahead of the truth.
Revealing while concealing and interjecting inoculating shots of untruths that will only get cursory attention from their readers, the writers mentioned here and others have great appeal for the left intelligentsia. For people who basically worship those they have imbued with infallibility and genius, it is very hard to read all sentences carefully and smell a skunk.
The subterfuge is often very adroit and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past – e.g. the George W. Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Chomsky, of course, is the leader of the pack, and his followers are legion, including Hedges. For decades they have been either avoiding or supporting the official versions of the assassinations of JFK and RFK, the attacks of September 11, 2001 that led directly to the war on terror and so many wars of aggression,and the recent Covid-19 propaganda with its devastating lockdowns and crackdowns on civil liberties. They are far from historical amnesiacs, of course, but obviously consider these foundational events of no importance, for otherwise they would have addressed them. If you expect them to explain, you will be waiting a long time.
In a recent article – How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy – Christian Parenti writes this about Chomsky:
Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit.
Parenti’s critique of the left’s response (not just Chomsky’s and Hedges’) to Covid also applies to those foundational events mentioned above, which raises deeper questions about the CIA’s and NSA’s penetration of the media in general, a subject beyond the scope of this analysis.
For those, like the liberal woman who referred me to The Intercept article, who would no doubt say of what I have written here: Why are you picking on leftists? my reply is quite simple.
The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.
Smelling skunks is not as obvious as it might seem. Being nocturnal, they come forth when most are sleeping.
Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.
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Nice discussion (although David, not Sampson, slew Goliath. Sampson was the misogynistic biblical story “Never trust a woman!”
I was shocked how the background to US Puppet state Ukraine was completely avoided by State Media (omission is important in propaganda). The US installed Yushchenko as President after the Orange Revolution in 2005. Yushchenko was the perfect puppet; he was a banker married to an American State Dept/ CIA agent). However when he came up for re-election in 2009-10, monitored by the UN, Yushchenko received only 5% of the vote.Yanukovych won the closely monitored Election, and began playing the EU against Russia for the best deal. Having been burnt by high interest loans from the EU (the money went poof! This is Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe), Yanukovych went with Russia in 2013. Kiev is on the Western (EU-leaning, NAZI-worshipping) side of Ukraine, so it was easy for Nuland, VP Biden’s NAZIs and the CIA to overthrow democraticly elected Yanukovych in the Coup in 2014. Eastern and Southern, Coastal Ukraine are largely ethnic Russians; Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk were uphappy losing THEIR President to the Americans and broke away (much like Kosovo leaving Serbia). Russia had no interest at the time in the Donbas, but Crimea was important, so they annexed it with a plebescite. But after 8 years of atrocities and war in the Donbas between the breakaway republics and the NAZI-dominated Ukraine army, Putin used Clinton’s trick of recognizing “the independence and sovereignty” of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk (no more “free” than US puppet Ukraine) and providing “collective self defense” under UN Article 51 against puppet Ukraine, which had killed over 80% of the14,000 who died in the Donbas. This was the legal basis of Russia’s Special Military Operation (again analogos to Clinton’s Bosnian War), which the West shrieked was an “Invasion”. The Russians so far have used kid gloves since many of those they are fighting are ethnic Russian Ukrainians. US puppet Ukraine refused to honor the Misk II accords they signed in 2015, so Russia will not quickly accept terms (the US has made it clear this is another Forever War and it’s to Ukraine’s advantage to have ceasefires and more weapon deliveries. Look for Russia to move to Odessa next and take most or maybe all of the Coast of Ukraine. If Ukraine continues its attacks on the Breakaway Republics or Russia itself, look for Western Ukraine to receive a very bloody nose without the kid gloves.
Thank you, Edward, for your services to Russian imperialism.
Despite the title of your article, subtleties apparently escape you. The so-called neo-nazi Azov Battalion was founded as a volunteer militia by Andriy Biletsky, a known Judenhasser as a volunteer militia to defend Mariopol against Russian backed separatist forces. After its successful defense of the city the militia was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard as a regiment. Today it is composed of primarily of Russian speaking Greeks, Jews and Crimeans. Supporting Russia’s fiction of a “neo-nazi” battlalion is unintentionally or intentionally parrot Putin’s propaganda and legitimizes the Russian invasion of the sovereign nation of.Ukraine.
Since you brought up neo-nazis let’s be sure to not exclude Putin’s neo-nazi tool of “managed nationalism”, Russkii Obraz.
But Azov and C14 and others are neo-Nazi paramilitary outfits, using SS insignia and Nazi hand gestures, predicated upon ultra-nationalist, white-supremacist ideologies. Is this really disputed? Whatever you think of the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine or past/present invasions by the West of ‘non-European’ sovereign states with similar euphemistic epithets and/or divisive/legally dubious pretexts, or whatever you think of Russia or the West in general, I don’t think it serves any purpose to get caught up in the cartoonish, fake moral binary erected by the media surrounding Ukraine, or to downplay the unsavoury battalions operating there. A2
They were formed from the Nazi history loving hooligans from football galleries of Galicia. May 2nd massacre in Odessa was one of their “triumphs” against “Colorados” which directly underpinned the declaration of independence of the Donbas republics against Hohol terrorists, which to this day shell, and murder civilians in in Donbas.
Mariupol came later, where those psychopaths were given free reign to torture, and murder “separs”.
Their “models” are OUN, UPA, Bandera, Shukhevych, SS Galizien Division, Nachtigall Batallion, and all Nazi criminals who murdered defenseless civilians during WW2.
To understand Chomsky, and others of his tribe, one has to read the Best Book written in the past fifty years: THE CULTURE OF CRITIQUE, by Prof. Kevin MacDonald! You will thank me.
Please refrain from labelling the neo-liberal agenda of the finance capitalist elite, as “left,” there is nothing “left” about it.
While I admired Chomsky during the Vietnam war (I am a geezer), his strong support for the Official 17 Boxcutter Arabs of 911 fame for me was an immediate giveaway that he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a Zionist fascist masquerading as a anti-imperialist champion of liberty. While I was a chemistry major, physics minor in college, I am quite sure that Chomsky’s mastery of those subjects surpasses my own, and it is the most obvious giveaway, while far from the only one, of the 9-11 official bullshit, and its myriad physical science impossibilities. Thus Chomsky’s positions cannot be attributed to physical science ignorance, but fully intentional duplicity. He is not to be trusted about anything. If he writes that the sky is often blue, one must research it for oneself with utmost skepticism.
There is a trend throughout everything to conflate politicised belief systems with fractal patterns within nature. The whole of philosophical history is adorned with inconsistencies that fail to interrelate differing dimensions of argument. Chomsky and Hedges are far from alone in this frailty.
It is for others such as Edward Curtin to expose this so-called monopoly of truth which upsets paid-up members of the religious elite. There is no logic without dissent and the calling out when awareness of calumny is out of sight.
In the world we live in there are more and more who glue labels to themselves or have them bestowed, and to which they are even proud to be illogical in the myths of their creation. One example very recently was the fact that Ukrainian anarchists are fighting against the Russian invaders – so when did anarchists begin to defend the State, Government or political ideology of their chosen country? Fighting authority does not mean opting for the lesser evil if there is one.
A lot that has been said by Chomsky and Hedges I do agree with but not in this context.
I am late here; quickly: surely it’s time to retire “left/right” – taken from a chance seating arrangement 230 years or so ago. Case in point: (and case of habits die hard) – your last paragraph “right wing ,,, pernicious agenda” – so? DeSantis ? right wing? – yes. Pernicious Agenda? – surely no – rather, last best hope of any Western Executive office holder.
Let’s let “The Pandemic” be the new organizing concept and see where that takes us. In those terms, “:the left” organized themselves in an unmistakable way – and, I can claim, entirely unsurprising way.
The Subtleties of anti-Russian Rhetoric versus the Forthrightness of pro-Russian Facts:
“Neon (a material needed for semiconductor production) comes from factories in Odessa and Mariupol. Both towns have now firmly returned to Mother Russia.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-ukraine-halts-half-worlds-neon-output-chips-clouding-outlook-2022-03-11/
“Some 45% to 54% of the world’s semiconductor-grade neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, comes from two Ukrainian companies….”.
“Ukraine’s market dominance comes from the Azovstahl steel making process operating in common with Russia, exploiting special materials that mainly come from Russia. The Ukraine’s historically unique combination of a Russian steel process and specific materials mined in Russia makes it hard to replicate elsewhere.
“Years back, when the Ukraina was part of Russia, the Neon was almost a waste product of steel manufacture. Then semi conductor chip production elevated Neon to a critical material for our so-called 4th Industrial Revolution.”
[As with our previous sniff over a differerent gas, I fear Russia might ask us to pay for Neon in dirty old rubles instead of nice clean euros or dollars fresh fresh fresh; however, we can salve our consciences by assigning a “shabbas goy” to handle the conversion while our hands remain pure (see “Empire of Hypocrisy”.]
What Russians are thinking about their “Ukraina” (former border regions) coming home to Mother. Not just “Subtleties” about “Rhetoric” but real issues — ecology, industry, welfare:
https://t.me/OpenUkraine/16948
“1. The economic and logistics complex from Kharkov to Odessa, including Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Nikolaev is inseparably connected with the industry of Russia and allows the supply of raw materials and products by rail and sea;
2. This super-region carries out serious power generation;
3. If the South-East of Ukraine is not reunited with Mother Russia, then ethnic Russian Ukrainians will suffer further genocide, including cultural genocide to turn them into enemies of Russia;
4. Russia, having already welcomed back the northern Azov and Black Sea regions, increases its share in world grain production, besides consolidating domestic food security;
5. The Sea of Azov becomes an inland Russian sea, which greatly simplifies its environmental protection, commercial use and navigation;
6. Russia cuts off NATzO from ports of the northern Black Sea;
7. Russia recovers its western and southern borders’ “buffers”;
8. The vastly underpopulated Russian Federation acquires a couple of tens of million citizens of Russian culture, among whom there is a high percentage of qualified specialists;
9. Russia receives territories with a favorable climate, which will not only contribute to Russian agriculture, but also come bearing historic memories on founding and religious grounds. [Also of an historic Russian recreational ground: it was at the seaside in Crimea that Chekhov said to Gorky, “A great, big, clumsy bear, this Russia of ours”.]
uh, david, david “defeeted” goliath.
Easy to punch left. NO courage from authors to dare speak out about the so called freedom movement bloggers podcasts who couldn’t wait to scream China wu flu lab leak.
Similar to msm it is easy mentioning things 2 years later.
China still sucks though
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/least-300-azov-fighters-surrender-russians-azovstal-plant-ending-lengthy-siege .
Apparently the last remnants of Mariupol’s crack Natzo Nasties in Azov gave up. A couple of Anglo high-ups along with them; including a Canadian general — member of Kryszia’s Ukie-Canuckie Banderite clan?
I’m grateful for this discussion, and I recall that Curtin and some others have addressed it in a number of essays here (and invaluably elsewhere, such as RFK Jr. at his CHD site and in interviews, as well Michael Parenti, and Dave Emory, relentlessly at spitfirelist.com)
And I hope “it keeps on keepin’ on” with all the challenges to the faux Left.
To our “faux conscience”
on the left that is.
It’s a mysterious thing, how the left has got so out of whack with its values and how grossly that has been exposed by Coronapalooza since 2020. One smells a rat, of Intel manipulation and infiltration and multi-level monied collusion. Well, many have speculated, but I relish more analysis, so much light can shine with it.
And, clearly there are many coordinated “pincer psyops” to pinch all the values of yore and “punch them up” as in making them more entertaining and lucrative to pimps in an increasingly pimping society where pimpology is almost the only course of study available. Pimpology 101.
I was a member of a site called ‘Energetic Synthesis for a few years. The energy of the organizer never quite gelled with me, but I was desperate to find some outlet where I could honestly and openly discuss the planetary situation.
One thing that always irked me about it, and irks me about pretty much all the ‘new age’ sites and communities that I’ve come across, is that they all seem to place a primary focus on what’s happening ‘over there’, meaning, in space, or what white hats are doing in such and such a place.
Similarly, cult leaders pretend to be caring and loving, but act sternly towards those that “don’t get it yet” or some variation; critically, cult leaders also claim (or otherwise act as if) they have all the information.
I’ve yet to find a group that effectively and earnestly merges a solid geopolitical knowledge-base with a wider spiritual view…nowhere close, in fact.
P.S. This article published at Energetic Synthesis in June 2020 is a big reason why I ended up leaving. The article was published after the author insisted that she and her husband had always stayed away from politics ‘with a ten-foot pole’, and I think it’s a good example of something that fits the pattern of what was discussed in this article. https://energeticsynthesis.com/resource-tools/news-shift-timelines/3617-groupthink
“This is simply masterful. Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis.”
I appreciate you pointing this out, because it’s something I’ve noticed all across the internet – various groups calling out propaganda or manipulation techniques as they are using it themselves to trash communism, steer people into a political affiliation, or otherwise to promote fear and control. Unfortunately, it seems that humanity is very disorganized right now at addressing this existential threat – in no small part the result of generations of torture and brainwashing inflicted through capitalism and its various enforcement and ‘acquisition’ mechanisms.
All so true. My sense is that the public underperforms so badly on so many of these issues because there are mechanisms in place throughout society to goad us into denialism and to turn us to easier (propaganda) explanations to accept. Bogus explanations to be sure, but that is what the mechanisms of denial are all about!
That hardly exonerates the public, but it makes the problem clearer how to address the problem: an irrational one. Fear-based.
The dearly departed Mort Sahl was inserting in his standup bits over 50 years ago (and widely blacklisted at that, “muted” far and wide) the query to audiences, “What have you got to lose?”
He asked that from 1963 up to his last days some months ago, at 93.
Pepe Escobar asks today:where is the west’s Ukraine strategy? A brilliant situation report, the finest overview of current events.
Plus a typical Pepe historical bonus: “To Strategikon” the art of war as written in Byzantium instead of China. Byzantium, like China, managed to keep at bay a host of enemies for more than 1,000 years: “Sassanid Persia, Arabs, Turks, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Pechenegs, Magyars” and finally — most ferocious and destructive of them all — Western Christian Crusaders.
Pepe comments: “Here [in the art of “Strategikon”] Byzantium could not prevail just by following the pattern of Late Roman [or Late U$A] Empire — overwhelming power – they simply didn’t have the means. So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by Orthodox Christian President Vladimir Putin and diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.”
Rarely can one who has been in either the Left or Right camp transcend them without having dwelt in each for a time.
To those who have, welcome aboard.
As for Mr. Chomsky, I have seen my tendency to override visceral impressions of people and accord them respect, kindness and benefit of doubt erode. Him I ever found repugnant.
American intellectual left takes a role of grievance counselors/guard collaborators in a death and torture camp. They tell us the truth that the guards lie to us and will inevitably kill us but when we want to save ourselves, act upon the information they gave us and run away or defend ourselves they denounce us as those who are ignorant making things worse by resisting or escaping.
I describe this morally parasitic attitude, thriving of people’s pain and suffering and when people want to free themselves from slavery they scold them and denounce them to their masters.
Chomsky is such a morally questionable character and it showed itself dramatically and openly in 2016 elections when he blamed and denounced everyone who would not vote for Hillary, he himself described as evil but a lesser evil, even those who voted for Greens.
Covid only confirmed Chomsky questionable political morality. Someone who wants us to forget all he wrote and act as stupid sheeple and support cruel masters the very cause of our misery.
Caitlin Johnstone is a similar character of “I feel your pain” patronizing phoniness in one sentence admitting and denying the same medial lies in a double-speak style.
In old days such thing was called gray propaganda spread by shills for the system.
You’re more on it tyan you may know, considering the entire planet has been turned into a death and torture (capitalist labor) camp.
We should not be pro or anti when it comes to nuclear war. And that is what this crisis is building towards. Yet all the parties dragging us to destruction are blind to the consequences of their actions, impotent to change course. As always in history: every great power eventually meets the war it seeks to avoid – destruction. None of them want world war, nuclear war. That’s the one they will get if they cannot heed the warning of history.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
Worked it out yet? Your own government hates you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt4zvaTYd3c&t=2s
[..The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler..]
Even this subtle style of well intended criticism acts a wedge. If we still need to see everything as a dialectic then let it be of our construction, we the people against those who seek to control.
The Left vs Right dichotomy is totally bogus, and has been for decades; this is the only two-way split that matters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMGgemHh4Do&t=2s
What a brilliant article. THANK you Edward Curtin!
Please don’t give up.
Ditto!
A great Dominican I have known always punctuates his ongoing “Mission” with a standard refrain of his, “You don’t have to give up.”
Indeed. That is a perennial refrain, too, with roots in the “ontology” of our entire species.
Accept no substitutes! Joy abounds Beyond!
A great article.
Poison pills get wrapped inside almost all Covid-dissenter claims, such as
And don’t get me started on “early treatment” or “masks don’t work for a respiratory virus.”
This brings Del Bigtree to mind. I still support the ICAN organization that rigorously challenges Big Pharma/government chicanery, and on the whole I am (or was) a fan of the Highwire despite Del’s conventional background hyping Big Medicine on corporate network TV– and his unfortunate narcissistic tendency to genially interrupt and smother guests and contributors.
But since the Megadeath Virus of Doom scamdemic began, Del has steadily moved away from a relatively open-minded stance. He used to at least nominally welcome unconventional scamdemic resisters, but is obviously more comfortable showcasing conventional “resistance” doctors and researchers, e.g. Dr. Robert Malone, Geert Vanden Bossche, etc. whose views are loaded with exactly the “poison pills” you describe.
Now Del is all wrapped up in the “variants”, the “poorly-designed vaccines” that “pressure” the ubiquitous “virus”es to mutate into more harmful strains, etc. He touts articles and statistical reports based on the well-worn “tests” that he once understood are entirely fraudulent.
I know it’s fashionable to glibly denounce nominal scamdemic critics as “obvious” bad actors from the beginning, but I think Del started off conscientiously, then gradually lost the plot and gravitated towards becoming a poison-pill pusher in spite of himself.
Definitely. The Vanden Bossche phenomenon seemed so staged from the start. My guess is that it is a psyop to promote more fear and to prepare a cover story for “vaccine” damage. Rosemary Frei, on her website (and reprinted on Off-G), did excellent analyses of the (weak) evidence for his claims. (I almost wrote “was a psyop” but sadly he’s back and, as you say, Del is on it. I think that Del means well but has lousy judgment.)
If Vanden Bossche is such a threat to the Convid-op sociopaths, why is it so easy to search for and to find his claims? I’ve just googled “geert vanden bossch” and the first hit is his own website, the second is his Twitter profile, the third is his testimony to the Oregon legislature, and so on it goes.
For comparison, I’ve also just searched “andrew kaufman md” (the “md” to disambiguate from others of the same name). The first hit: “The Psychiatrist Who Calmly Denies Reality – McGill University”! Or for “tom cowan md”, the first hit is “Conspiracy theory doctor surrenders medical license.”
So Ed Curtin is another one who can’t update his mind map to take account of the New Normal.
How disappointing.
How so?
Not sure why this was downloaded, seems pretty clearly tongue in cheek to me.
One of the key tricks to managing information is defining your baseline. Our (western) media starts the Ukraine timeline on February 24th. and, in addition, has put the conflict in binary terms — you’re either pro-democracy or pro-Putin (the authoritarian leader that has crushed the Russian people under his Iron Heel etc. etc.).
Once you take a longer, more historical, view then everything makes sense, at least to me. This obviously makes me a victim of Russian propaganda but I’d claim its probably because I read too much of the wrong material. Russia’s been treated as a pariah since at least the 19th century (Crimea War and later Tsar Nicholas II being described as “The Bad Boy of Europe”). They were rehabilitated temporarily around WW1 but the Revolution put paid to that. They have tried repeatedly to be a European nation but Europe rejects them (and periodically invades them) so 2022 is that point where they just went “Screw It!” — they’re fed up with being the boiled frog, they don’t need Europe anything like as much as Europe needs them. I don’t know if the war – the “special military operation” — was a good idea (war is rarely the answer) but looking at circumstances from their perspective their actions are understandable. The only practical snag is that NATO is prepared to fight to the last Ukrainan — we’re going to pour weapons into the theater because we’ve decided we can neuter Russia once and for all. Tough luck if you live in the region.
I’m not sure “we’ve decided we can neuter Russia once and for all” but it certainly appears that that’s the plan.
However, as ideologically impoverished as is the “West” (USA Inc. -entrenched families- and vassal states) you would wonder how well it can ultimately succeed, as was another “sure bet” gone sour, in Indochina, a half century ago (“…for who would consider the saving of capitalism a Great Cause?” ~ Graham Greene).
They say Americans love the underdog?
Seems to me that the western powers (monarchy, financial etc) have wanted regime change in Russia since at least 1945. The fact that they overthrew both monarchy and finance in the Russian Revolution might have something to do with it.
Chomsky is probably pro vax because he defers to medical authorities.
He’s ancient, ailing, and no doubt thinks that doctors and medical specialists are God’s gift in white coats.
As for the lame Left, we all know most of them are paid up (or paid off) members of the smug middle class.
They like to rock the boat, but there’s no way they’re gonna jump out.
Your giving him too much of a break. His views on the death shot exposed him as a fascist.
Correct, Chomsky could well be just another technocratic Malthusian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9BO_Rn9My8&t=3s
Chomsky is WAY smarter for sure than just to defer. He is part of the problem, not its solution. Sadly.
People can change, but he’s been quite stuck on message, and not at all the right one.
Perceptive observations about Hedges. Though I often am in agreement with him about American domestic issues, I’ve almost always smelled something rotten in his commentary about foreign affairs, especially the US/NATO attack on Yugoslavia.
It may be high time for a reassessment of Hedges, as that concern has been steadily growing. I read “American Fascists” by him and got a lot from it, verifiable, but how much is fake is often hard to say, you have to proceed gingerly and question and not assume it’s the real deal. Still he has a lot to say….
But…he got his chops overseas for NYT. Enough said?
It”s like Président Macron of France, he was still wet behind the ears when he was coming up through Banque de Rothschild. What can we expect?
Personally I prefer Benson but neither of them will stop me rolling my own.
What happened to me ‘pending’ comment. Censored just like the ‘Guardian’?
Putin reminds one of Churchill and his stance in the 1930s when he was tireless in warning Parliament of the ongoing. accelerating, massive buildup of weaponry on land and sea by a warmongering 3rd Reich. His mantra was that allowing it would just make things that much more deadly and dangerous as time went by.
Truth be told, it’s sons and grandsons of the same bad actors then that are doing the same thing now. Right?
Same rogues, different decades. So, we maybe changed a call letter, wow: from NAZI to NAZO, whatever. Suits Wall Street to a “T”. That is the epicentre of “NATO” aka NAZI NATO.
O, and it seems to suit Chomsky. That’s telling.
Russia spent years trying to get the western democracies to face up to the danger of Fascism. They were constantly rebuffed. Our propagandists like to make a big deal of the Nazi/Soviet pact (“See, they’re just the same people”) but anyone who knows history will know that the Russians kept trying until May 1939. Poland was, as it is today, fiercely anti-Russian and, again like today, had a completely overblown idea of how strong it was militarily, even after the annexation of Czechoslovakia. So eventually the Russians gave up, cut a deal with the Germans in order to buy themselves some time.
There’s lots of other historical material out there. But we’re only told stuff that fits the approved narrative — its not that the other stuff is hidden, rather the noise of the superficial message blaring from the media drowns out any voices that say “But…..”.
Well said.
I think you ought to learn more about Churchill. The Churchill who ordered the bombing of Berlin, until Hitler retaliated by bombing London thus ensuring that ‘the people’ were right behind Churchill’s warmongering.
It’s true that Churchill initiated the bombing of cities / civilian populations, apparently to provoke the Germans to do the same to England.
Reasons offered: the Brits hadnt the heart for another (major) war, and appeasement sentiment was widespread (We know many in the upper classes admired what Hitler had done, especially for pulling the workers into line.)..
Churchill needed a German attack on English cities to unite the country to prepare for war.
Not quite a ‘false flag’ ? but had the same objective.
Yes, all the world is a stage, and has been for a very long time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APX9Q-rCo0Q
This may interest you.
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster81/lob81-scotland-churchill-hess-1941.pdf
Dungavel ! active internement camp.. currently refugee types,… soon to change?… i joked about seeing folk in Dungavel a year ago : )
It may be history but it reads like conspiracies, and the upper classes indulge in them as a pastime.
Let’s cut Winnie a break … he never could decide who he hated more, the Russians or the Germans (regardless of the contemporary politics).
The initial Berlin raid was quite small scale, almost symbolic, but it had an outsize effect by causing the shift away from fighter bases and radar facilities in the south-east of England. At the time the continual raids by the Germans had worn the RAF down to the point where it was in danger of losing the Battle of Britain so the respite given by the attacks on cities such as London not only helped these squadrons to rest and rebuild but allowed other elements of the RAF to come into play effectively. This is why daylight raids rapidly became nighttime raids — the RAF was decimating German bomber formations who could not be effectively defended by fighters away from the UK’s southern coasts.
So, like with everything in this world, “Its complicated”. The Germans had already shown its willingness to bomb cities on the Continent (e.g. its attack on Rotterdam). It was only a matter of time before they started strategic bombing over Britain and so only a matter of time before the British started systematically bombing German cities.
O snap. Every time, for years, that I say the slightest aside about Churchill, I get someone, or two, telling me to brush up on the subjects, especially as regards bellicosity, etc. etc.
All too true. But I will always reserve the studious right to weigh the qualities of a quite remarkable, gifted, flawed, and complex genius that was Winston.
I remember the bon mot of Charlie Chaplin, who said he had known 3 geniuses: “Einstein, Churchill, and Clara Haskil.” (The 3rd one is the most startling and edifying, as I am the Other classical concert pianist on this thread: yeah, I’m looking at YOU, Wardropper!)
David Irving’s biography of Churchill is amusingly acerbic.
{it used to be available for free on his website, among other books, but maybe not now. According to the Wikileaks drop, it got hacked by US spooks, possibly with the help of, or at the instigation of those whom Irving refers to as “the usual suspects”.
The other explanation is that he sacrificed London (mainly the poorer quarters) to divert the Luftwaffe away from bombing the RAF bases that were essential to The Battle of Britain.
Outstanding analysis!!!
I wrote a comment to the ‘Consortium’ in response to the Hedge’s article mentioned above.
I think H. S. Thompson had folks like Hedges in mind when he opined, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damn shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.”
It was, of course, CENSORED.
I wouldn’t clump Fox news’ Tucker Carlson blindly with the other US MSM. Not perfect but at least a different loud voice.
Maybe the NSA / FBI don’t have “the goods” / compromat on just him? One of the very few?
Tucker Carlson? He’s been blighting the broadbands and airrwaves for decades. He fought Bill Press nightly during the Bush/Gore “Recount” in 2000 saying every incredibly inane thing under the sun for the Bush side, and for nearly a quarter century now he has been our our reward for permitting that.
Risible Reep Rhetoric, reheated with different bland spices each new election cycle. Ughh.
And even after all that time he still looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Or just an aging clue-poor preppie. Reagan had more of a collective clue. In ’88. And that’s setting a low bar.
People have few problems wrapping their head around classic military “pincer movements” where you put the squeeze on an adversary from both sides, or all sides. If you can do it, it’s mostly game set match.
What can it mean but mass mesmerism, that so few can see the preplanned, premeditated “pincer psyops” where most of the left is made to look foolish in masked servitude and the right wing made to look like champions as the flag bearer for medical rights? (Despite the plain numbers that it’s the monied conservatives and right wingers of elites that hold almost all the stocks in Big Pharma and weaponry etc etc etc?)
This is serious?!
This role reversal is just a classic shopworn military pincer movement, by means of psyops, and it’s been going on for some time, long before Coronapalooza 2020.
Propaganda with carefully sharpened fangs.
And apparently too many are too tranced out to get it. It’s not rocket science. (Or virology.)
Here, here, as they say on the Interwebs. I know he’s saying things that I would like to hear but I have been genuinely surprised. Another surprise was Joe Rogan. And some of the alleged right wing Youtubers around the Duran at least acknowledge that some of their information may not be entirely reliable due to its Russian state origins — something the MSM would never admit of their CIA sources.
LOL
We live in an age of lies and while war has always been submerged in lies, founded on lies, funded by lies, it is all much, much worse. Once we had academics and professional war correspondents who would and could reveal necessary truths but no more. We just have lies.
The truth always becomes known https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yG02d44jcI&t=8s
As regards Curtin’s first example, “subtlety” is a bit of politeness, I think, for his friend. As to the others, they don’t quite make the truly “subtle” grade either. What strikes me as most indicative of this in the so-called Left response is both its avoidance of openly criticizing the pivotal US role in the Ukraine War and/or its reluctance to do this by using neutral techniques which are so common in the Nation or NPR. It’s not so prevalent as it was with Covid, but it’s just as infuriating.
There is no political ‘left’ or ‘right’ when it comes to fear of contagion,,,
The intellect can function in the service of self-repression (The repressive intellect)…
The intellect fights the brave fight against the subconscious fears, unaware that it is conditioned by the fears, and is testimony of their existence…
FEAR dictates its own rationality…
and…
‘Dont follow Leaders, watch the Parking Meters’ (1960s folksinger)…
My, my ! A two-minute hate Chomsky session ! Was Goldstein’s name changed to Chomsky ? Can anyone join in ?
Chomsky, a red rag, flash it and the rage rises, and the tormented charge…
0, brother
Chomsky was a true hero through the early serious resistance days, the 50s and 60s and somewhat into the 70s, then the reactionary movement got seriously underway, somewhere in the 90s they did a winston with him, and he became part of the dark side
My comment was a comment on the Comments section, not on the article…
I’m no fan of Chompsky…
But i’ve read the same “Chomsky’s a Sell-out !!” charges by various shades of anarchism since back in the mid-1990s. Seems Chomsky just cant please everyone !
And is Chomsky really a representative example of ‘the left’ ?
various shades of anarchism
What does that mean? Is it from Procol Harem?
No the Procol Harem hit was supposedly a reference to intercourse, according to John Lennon and others, which they thought made it “fly”. Lennon said it was his all time fave. (I maintain, as a Bach worshipper -his whole opus being my 5th Gospel- that the song was carried to greatness only by the ‘amalgamated’ Bach riff on organ, which was already total blues before blues was cool, like a century or two before — but that’s just my take. Correct, though.)
No: “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is simply what the American “Left” has been offering us ever since the Kennedys and King were killed.
les, it’s much simpler regarding Chomsky: For years he aggressively told the truth: He outed and documented US imperialism. Then he stopped telling the truth– it was especially obnoxious re 9-11. It cd be as siamdave says, “They did a Winston on him.”
It’s not the case that “He can’t please everyone”– as if we were asking the impossible of him. Rather, it’s much simpler: He has become a liar.
FWIW, Penelope, I was surprised to belatedly learn that Chomsky’s penchant for avoiding and rejecting the truth dated back to the early 1960s.
I’m taking the liberty of re-posting a relevant comment posted at Off-Guardian on Aug 27, 2021; it was “Awaiting spam check”, but never returned; it was one of my few pended comments that inexplicably disappeared permanently. I don’t see anything “lethal” in the text, so I’m interested to see whether it sticks this time 😉 :
________________________________________
Until I read James Douglass’s justly praised JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (2008), I had “sensibly” avoided the topic of JFK assassination research. Although I was always skeptical of the official “Lone Nut” narrative, I bought into the overclass and “Sphere of Acceptable Discourse” meta-narrative that dismisses and derides contrarian research as the product of lunatic-fringe “tinfoil-hatters” wantonly digging surrealistic rabbit holes or self-expanding subterranean mazes and jumping into them.
After this epiphany, I reversed course and stepped into that mother of all rabbit holes. During the course of my research, I was surprised to discover that somehow, Noam Chomsky’s dubious public response to the JFK assassination had gone right by me.
I was stunned to learn that both Noam Chomsky and I.F. Stone notoriously refused to be drawn into the controversies surrounding the assassination, even declining to challenge the legitimacy of the preposterous Warren Report.
Apologists for this “nothing to see here, move along” response assert that such willful obfuscation and denial was precipitated by legitimate, or reasonable, fears arising from the precarious and tense geopolitical circumstances at that time.
Leftists like Chomsky and Stone supposedly feared that pursuing the truth about the assassination– ergo, calling attention to irregularities in the official narrative– might cause horrific results, especially if Communist nations like the USSR or Cuba were implicated in the crime
They were reportedly terrified of the prospect that undermining the relatively safe, self-contained Big Lie that a deranged Lone Wolf assassin was wholly to blame might precipitate everything from domestic “pogroms” against leftists in the US to thermonuclear war.
I had already begun to wonder about Chomsky after his public response to the events of September 11, 2001. My nascent skepticism took shape as a question: I asked myself, “Hey, come to think of it, how is it possible that the world’s foremost authority on ‘manufacturing consent’ never cited or deconstructed the greatest exercise in governmental and mass-media false-narration of a generation: the JFK assassination cover-up?”
As noted, I discovered that Chomsky, the radical sociopolitical critic and expert on government/mass-media propaganda– the muckraker’s muckraker– opted instead to help the overclass manufacture consent.
So Chomsky’s history of studiously declaring that the “elephant in the room” is a misguided, delusional distortion of focus and the “elephant” is just an unremarkable mouse, goes back to at least 1963. Alas! he’s not above manufacturing some consent of his own when crowded by circumstances.
He couldn’t serve two masters.
A 48 minute “Gotcha !” moment of Chomsky…
Or, having declared “he’s not a virologist !”, saying the same thing over and over for 48 minutes…
And there was the smug “Gotcha !” look JD couldnt conceal…
Is Chomsky really a representative example of the American left ?
Is he really a major ‘cultural’ force in the US ?
PROXY…now there’s an in vogue word for you…and all throughout the chat i kept wondering “What’s Chomsky a proxy for ? What’s this chat centred on Chomsky a proxy for ?”
Max Blumenfeld and JD are both pro-vax…nothing to be smug about !!
While on the subject:
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”…Hannah Arendt…
“A man who isnt a socialist at 20 has no heart. A man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.”…William Casey…
Max Blumenfeld and JD are both pro-vax
well, that’s a lie, as demonstrated by the same video.
who are you a proxy for?
I expected someone would point out when during the near 48 minute “Gotcha !” Chomsky video there’s clear indications that JD and MB are anti-vaxx…The average person is not likely to get the impression they’re ant-vaxxers from watching the video…
JD says somewhere that he is not anti-vaxx but anti-mandate. No ban on vaccines, no compulsion either. And he is vaxxed.
and vaxx-injured, which he makes a point of.
A man who by 60 doesn’t see that individual freedom (a la the Right) must be combined with social fairness (a la the Left) for broad popular support hasn’t learned enough about the world.
Whoever thought that a cold/flu infection would cause all this insanity.
you couldn’t make stuff like that up, if you tried.
but somebody did.
Klaus Schlob …
He looks like a forest gnome from a Grimm Fairy Tale, with some gnawing vendetta. Shocking. Maybe a change of attitude might be salubrious.
“Noam, O Noam? This is your soul calling! Pick up soon please.”
Right on. Chomsky’s support for the covid coup and technocratic biosecurity and eugenics (even his linguistics claims a genetic basis), horribly displayed in interviews where he calls for nazi medicine like forced isolation of the unvaxxed and denial of access to survival resources, climaxes a long career of gaslighting and gatekeeping, from CIA-inspired conspiracy theory with the JFK and later 9/11 coverup to toeing the party line for Killary and the lesser evil left wing of the capitalist class. It’s a tribute to Operation Mockingbird.
Re global gaslighting and gatekeeping:
Empire of hypocrisy
I recognized Chomsky as a fraud the first time I heard him say ‘The government lies about everything, here’s a government study to prove it!’
The near psychotic anti-Russian pro-Ukrainian propaganda is such that the official Left notice it but it is all so obvious that a sense of theatre is unavoidable. After two years of autistic covid worship we now have a bit of “breathing space” where the old Left/Right production swings back in.
But it’s a show. Another phase in the furtive shafting of the public. Or, to be more accurate, the bloody obvious but nevertheless unmentionable shafting of the public.
Having followed various commentaries, on a diverse number of sites and blogs, what amazes me is the virtual blanking of the bio/chem labs and experiments that the Ukie Nazis and their collaborators and instigators have been undertaking.
The scope, aims and modus operandi is in MO justification for the Ruskie SMO on its own and this should be the first item on any agenda for Legal Scrutiny of events in any NewRemBurg event that may transpire.
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words can never hurt me.
After anti-Russian “sanctions” the ruble has almost doubled in value against the euro.
After Brussels EUrocrats called for a boycott of dirty Russian gas rather than handle filthy Russian money, 14 leading EU companies which need gas have opened accounts in rubles.
After NATZO’s anti-Russian “cookie” regime in Ukraine banned the Russian language, Russian speaking provinces have quit Ukraine and joined Russia.
After 12 years of furious tirade against the Russian “Untermenschen”, Adolf’s last words, with the Red Flag flying over his Reichstag: “I should have led the Russians, they are the Ubermenschen”.
“What an ass am I to unpack my heart with words like a drab” — Hamlet, after resorting to useless invective.
Or, Hamlet’s nemesis: Claudius lamenting that his words do not bring answered prayers, reminiscent as decades of pious poses by warmongers out “West”:
“My words fly up.
My thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts
never to Heaven go.”
+1
During the runup to our Coalition of the Killing against Iraq, I sincerely believed we would not wage such an Unjust War because Bush and Blair were obvious Christians. How slow and painful was the lesson to come!
“Pharisees that pray in public.”
Yep, spot on. Biblical as sorry History.
maybe not directly, but when someone’s words inspire someone else to start throwing stones, it’s not all that different
I do not believe in banning words for their “potential danger against society”. I believe we have individual responsibility for our action in response to someone else’s words.
“I shall fight for your right to speak though I do not agree with what you say” — Voltaire
Hey, Ed. Good stuff. Even Finkelstein understands the question, “After 20 years of Nato expansion and many years of arming Ukraine, what was Russia to do?” Then, Chomsky calls it a criminal offense this special military operation.
Here, you can find it at his site, where he was interviewed by Briahna Joy Gray, April 8, 2022.
Norman Finkelstein : Okay. On the question of the Ukraine, the thing that’s troubled me about the public conversation of the Ukraine or hysteria —it’s not even a conversation, it’s hysteria about the Ukraine— is the following: those who are not totally immersed in the mainstream propaganda, some of the people you’ve had on your program and people who are not especially of the left, they have no particular left-wing allegiance, like John Mearsheimer at University of Chicago, or before he passed away Stephen F. Cohen who predicted that if you keep up with this NATO expansion in the Ukraine, there’s going to be a war. He said that in Democracy Now in 2014, and he was right. And other people, Professor Chomsky. I would include in that group several others, and they’ll all say the following thing:
Number one, the Russians were promised that there would be no NATO expansion to the East, that was the quid pro quo for the reunification of Germany after the decomposition of the Soviet Union. The Russians were promised that but the West went ahead. We’re talking about the 1990s: the promises were given, but the West then went ahead and started to expand NATO once, as John Mearsheimer likes to put it there was the first tranche, then the second tranche of expansion… Then NATO starts expanding in Georgia and in the Ukraine. The Soviet Union says it’s a red line.
To stop this, the Soviet Union offers a perfectly reasonable resolution: just neutralize Ukraine like we neutralized Austria after World War II, neither aligned with an Eastern bloc nor aligned with a Western bloc. That seemed to me perfectly reasonable. And the people I mentioned, Mearsheimer, Cohen passed away since but Professor Chomsky and a number of others, they’ll all agree on the reasonableness of Putin’s demands.
And then the reasonableness of those demands, those demands have to, as Briahna says in her paper and as she said this evening, they have to always be seen in context. So what’s the context? The context is the Soviet Union, the former Russia, it lost… the estimates are about 30 million people during World War II. The United States which, if you watch American movies, you would think the US won World War II, it lost about two hundred thousand people. The UK was the second candidate for winning World War II, they lost about four hundred thousand people. The Soviet Union lost 30 million people. Even those who didn’t take courses in the hard sciences can reckon the difference between several hundred thousand and thirty million. Now that’s not an ancient memory for the Russians. If you… I remember Stephen F. Cohen saying “when I grew up in little America —he was from Kentucky— we used to celebrate…” I forgot what was called here Victory Day, V-something, he said “but you know now as adults we don’t celebrate that anymore in the United States, Victory in World War II”, he said, but Russia, he said, they still celebrate V-Day, they still celebrate it. I live in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. A large part is Russian Jews, a large part is Russian Jews. You go out in May, you go out on the V-Day, and you can see that Russians up to 80 and 90 year olds, they’re wearing medals, they’re medals from World War II. That memory is alive.
And now there’s this Ukraine, where Nazis are playing an outsized role. I’m not saying they’re a majority, but in the political and military life, they play an outsized —disproportionate let’s call it— role. This Ukraine where Nazis are playing an outsized role, are aligned with a formidable military bloc called NATO, NATO keeps advancing and advancing and advancing, closing on Russia, trying to suffocate it… And beginning around 2016, under Trump, begins to arm the Ukraine, pouring in weapons, engaging in military exercises with NATO, behaving very provocatively. And then the Foreign Minister Lavrov finally says we’ve reached the boiling point.
Now everything I just told you, Professor Chomsky, John Mearsheimer and others will acknowledge it. The mainstream press won’t even acknowledge that but people who call themselves just, legitimately call themselves dissidents, although Mearsheimer wouldn’t call himself a dissident, he just calls himself a realist. Nice guy, I consider him a friend, I like him. They’ll acknowledge all that. But then they say the invasion was criminal. Criminal invasion, criminal, criminal, criminal. And my question which I’ve constantly been putting in correspondence is a very simple one: if you agree that for 20 years—more than 20 years, more than two decades—, Russia has tried to engage in diplomacy; if you agree that the Russian demand to neutralize Ukraine —not occupy it, not determine its government, its form of economy, just neutralize it like Austria after World War II—, if you agree that was a legitimate demand; if you agree that the West was expanding and expanding NATO; if you agree that Ukraine de facto had become a member of NATO, weapons pouring in, engaging in military exercises in NATO; and if you agree… You know, Russia lost 30 million people during World War II because of the Nazi invasion, so there’s a legitimate concern by Russia with all of these —if you excuse my language— Nazis floating around in the Ukraine, then the simple question is: What was Russia to do?
Little is known about the history of Ukraine, including the illiterate ‘left’. You have to go back beyond the Orange ‘revolution’ and the rise of the ultra-right movements which came of age during the German invasion in 1941. I am speaking here about the rise of the indigenous fascism which emerged particularly in the west Ukraine around Lviv on the wrong side of the River Dnieper.
The German occupation enabled the rise of these indigenous proto-nazi outfits with a collaborationist agenda – namely the (OUN-B) under the tutelage of one Stepan Bandera and its military wing the (UPA-Ukrainian Insurgent Army) under the command of Roman Shukhevych. Their programmes were based on simple political imperatives, i.e., kill Jews, Communists, Poles, and any other enemy of the new order. The stamping ground was of course the western Ukraine – particularly the massacre in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the UPA, with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority.
In present day Ukraine the heroes are lauded every January 2 (Bandera’s birthday) with mass torchlight processions in the major cities mainly in the west. Visitors to the west Ukraine will be impressed by statues of Bandera in almost every city, adored with flowers at his feet.
This is the country that the ‘West’ sees fit to have gained as a loyal ally standing proud and confronting the Russian menace.
Well, Andrew Bacevich is ex-Military; so, I’d expect this from him & Chomp-sky I’ve had no use for since his interview with Amy right after 9/11 & neither would even discuss other possibilities than the Govt. narrative. I ended viewing Democrcy Now! Hedges goes both ways & much of the time, on the same show.
So much of DN, not to mention NPR (National Petroleum Radio), has gradually degraded into slick psyops aimed at the half-informed.
I join the chorus of praise for Curtin’s commentary. Coincidentally, I just happened to come across the Hedges/Bacevich article about an hour ago; I prudently skimmed the opening paragraphs because I had a pretty good idea I would encounter the deplorable perspective Curtin critiques. I soon bailed out.
FWIW, one of my pet peeves is ostensibly moderate (“balanced”) pundits who carefully signal to their actual and potential Normal readers and followers that they espouse key Establishment concepts, narratives, and ethics. The obvious example is the scamdemic/vax critic who hastens to assert that they do not question the existence of the viral pandemic, and/or are not “anti-vax” loons, but have always endorsed “safe and effective vaccines”.
Some pundits defend such, er, hedging on the grounds that espousing “extreme” positions will surely offend and alienate the very open-minded Normals they are hoping to reach and persuade. They want credit for bravely walking a high wire strung above public discourse, when they are actually sitting on a sturdy and relatively comfortable fence.
Concerning Chomsky, I don’t know if it’s clinical dementia, or if Chomsky’s formidable, if erratic, intellect is simply wearing out as a manifestation of psychological entropy.
But when he pronounced a Scrooge-like doom upon scamdemic/vax resisters– suggesting they should be shunned and abandoned, consequences be damned, à la “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”– I concluded that he was descending into a terminal spiral of dotage like Nietzsche, not to mention The Ghost of Joe Biden (Barely) Present.
I admit that I was amused when, in a moment of lucidity, he pronounced Donald Trump to be a “statesman”– this was a comparative plaudit, insofar as he was contrasting Trump’s apparent lack of deranged Russophobia with the abundant and burgeoning Russophobia in the present US maladministration. For one brief, shining moment, Chomsky was a “radical” cat causing consternation among the TDS-enthralled pigeons.
That is subtle. Most folks don’t need that kind of deceit to encourage them to bash Russia. An elderly woman shuffling through debris does the job.
The Russian military effort is being measured against US invasions of under developed nations. Even without NATO aid it would not have been a walk over.
However, the way then Russian army is being described in the western media, you’d think that your local primary school, armed with rulers and pencils and led by their amiable head master Mr C.O. Ward would have more chance of taking Kiev than the Russians.
Quoting the editorial posted here just 2 days ago,
“There is a titanic struggle going on right now globally between the forces of darkness/enslavement and the human desire for truth and freedom.
It’s not about Biden v Trump
It’s not about Labour v Tories
It’s not about Russia v Ukraine
It’s not about East v West
It’s not about men v women
It’s not about LBGT v straight
All those things are either pure theater, invented controversies, or internal struggles between rival gangs of exploiters.
The real struggle is the one the “pandemic” lie inadvertently exposed to us all in stark clarity, and which we are all now being driven to forget as quickly as possible by all the above distractions.
It’s between us as individual humans and the techno-fascism that is being rolled out globally.
It’s between truth and the matrix of lies we are being invited to live in, populated with fake binaries, fake crises, fake solutions and fake heroes.
The choice is ours. Wake up or get in line for the New Normal global prison. “
Edward Curtin is (once again) falling for these false divisions.
Good.
+1
As you say, “once again”. Fortunately, most OffG writers (like the piece you quote) are less prone to fall for false divisions.
ecurtin:a fine honest man no matter how some of you pieces shit want to control it,if you need someone to persecute i suggest chomsky or one of his closest admirers hedges,
Just pointing out basic flaws. Don’t get me started on Chumpsky or Hedges, upholders of the official 9/11 story since… 9/11.
Funny how the minute you point out the motives for Russia’s (illegal) invasion you’re immediately classified as categorically pro-Russia. Pointing out the human rights violations within the Ukraine and the US meddling in Ukraine’s politics, including the putsch, you’re guilty of ‘misinformation’.
Not really, he’s just reporting them. Be fair, or someone is bound to think, just “another false division’. A lot of ’em, being fabricated.
Just reporting false divisions?
Well said. Curtin is becoming just another irritating fool
Take it easy, and without more content most will think you’re just another irritating troll! (Among a plenty!)
excellent example of how to analyze content for misleading narrative; it might be fake content embedded in the propaganda we call the news. Can it be shown that torts-against-the-truth type content embedded in propaganda causes actual damages to the members of the audience; especially when offered to news hungry, but uninformed gullible audiences?
Are Harms (actual damages) caused when tort containing contents are promoted as news? All expressions of content (i.e. news, books, reports and speeches) are propaganda. Does the delivery of news containing propaganda titled the news to susceptible naive audiences, commit a tort on those audience members who have limited time and knowledge insufficient to judge the truthfulness of the distributed information?
Audiences with limited time to engage information have a right not to be lied to, misled, or falsely engaged, during the limited time these persons have to seek information and learn about events. Whole nations of people are lead by propaganda and wrongful content in propaganda can cause all kinds of harms?
Can it be shown that exposing tort against the truth type contents <= into the propaganda exposed to time available pressed audiences harm the members of the audiences?
Both tort containing embedded content and media presentation of that content, seem to me, to be torts with harms so great they can mislead whole populations? Mislead, harmed members of the audience should be able to recover for the damage those harms. cause. Juries should decide the damages to be awarded in each case? Because the content and the media presentation are both intentional, why can these cases not be considered intentional torts? I believe offending the truth is a tort when it leads to harm.
It was tort law that reduced and minimized medical malpractice <=forced physicians to limit their practice to their actual insured expertise, and it was tort law that eliminated false and habit forming advertising, which promoted habit forming Tobacco to naive audiences.
To force the truth into propaganda it is only necessary to get courts to recognize that misleading, mis-characterized or false content in propaganda are often torts committed by both the content provider and the media that distributed the content.
Something which I think the audience in every nation state and international court should join hands to do( a global project of humanity maybe), is to get the courts to recognize mis-statement, falsehood, mischaracterization, etc. in content exposed to audiences to be a tort when harm, or threat of harm, occurs.
https://twitter.com/GalGlassy/status/1525470270156582912
Mark Steyn – another “Right Winger” (by his own definition “a fully paid up Right Wing bastard”) – tells more truth in five seconds than the entire official Left have for those two years.
the popular constituency of the “right” at least believes in their public ideology, problematic as it may be. the “left” does not (do they even have a popular constituency anymore?); they’re just a bunch of self-serving, virtue-signalling, upper-middle-class assholes, who are acutely sensitive to what public positions will best further their social status and comfortable NGO careers. once you can feign belief in transgenderism, anything is possible.
it’s likely that many of them are now such accomplished outer-party doublethinkers that they are no longer capable of distinguishing between what they “really” believe, and what will aid their ascent up the greasy pole of the (ruling-class-funded) academic/NGO/alt-media industrial complex.
I have a bit of “insider info” here – speaking as a “Leftie”. Pre-covid, I hung around sites which went balh blah blah a lot with their sanctioned “correct materialist analysis” and – in retrospect – it was all rather fun to indulge in that stuff.
But with covid, the truth is revealed! The official Left – with no exception – couldn’t wait to get aboard HMS Covid. Indeed they were already there! Just waiting for a nod from their masters to launch the long planned operation. And their followers too jumped up and joined in the triumphalist “end of capitalism” fanfare.
Two years later nothing has changed! The official Left denounce the anti-fascists as fascists and trumpet the fascists as anti-fascists. Though their followers twitch in unease and say nothing – till Ukraine hit when they beathed a sigh of relief and pretend covid never happened.
Even the Left that see through covid can be hampered by all those decades of defeatist psycho-babble yabbadabba cf. John Steppling’s unfortunate addiction to Frankfurt School porridge.
I think that Frankfurt School porridge is a topic well-worth considering, in the context of investigating how the historical left was gradually transformed into a ruling-class disinfo agency. but such research quickly leads one into thoughtcrime territory, as does anything associated with the J-word.
The Unz Review has some potentially useful material on this subject, if you can manage to correct for their own ideological biases. They also publish a lot of COVID-1984 dissent, although Unz himself is a proponent of the “COVID is a US bioweapon” theory.
I have become so mistrustful about “mainstream Marxism”. And “Critical Theory” is supposed to constantly examine its own presuppositions. And yet there is one presupposition that it is curiously blind to. Take the following from Robert Hullot-Kentor’s “Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno”:
“The boulevards and public squares had only just been cleared of masses marching in costumed, patterned demonstration of a solidarity of will that, in the years since it had forced Adorno to flee, was responsible for acts that would be the first in history to require laws prohibiting the denial of their occurrence.”
Because he is referring to “The Holocaust”, this would completely pass by most readers who would simply nod in sage agreement. But consider what is being said here. Laws prohibiting denial? You cannot deny these acts! Is that not the very essence of fascist terrorism?
Also note the circular reasoning: the acts require the laws i.e. the acts are to be taken as absolutely beyond question.
Also note that bit about “the first acts in history”. So we have an admission that there will be other such acts? Other such dogmatically asserted demands for compliance?
For indeed we have been presented with a whole series of assertions that have implicitly been taken to be “undeniable”: the official account of 9/11, global warming and of course covid.
notice that with both the official 9/11 faery tale and the megadeath virus of doom, if not the CO2 hollow-cost, dissidents are routinely denounced as anti-yemites, without ever having mentioned that subject. this might be taken as a hint of some kind of agenda.
it seems to me that if there is some alleged historical episode from which even mild dissent results in criminal punishment, reasonable people might decline to have any opinion at all on the subject, rather than parrot the Official Story, until the normal methods of forensic and historical analysis again become possible.
I’m leaning towards the conclusion that while the nineteenth-century version of “Marxism” was entirely legitimate (except for “dialectical materialism”, a superstition leftover from the Young Hegelians which was never quite dropped), the whole movement was hijacked for tribal purposes around the time of the Russian revolution, or possibly even before that. it’s never since recovered, as demonstrated by the influence of the Frankfurt School in the 1950/60s, the growth of identity-politics in the 1970/80/90s, and the full blossoming of wokie-transgenderism currently. whose interests does all that BS serve?
other than the ruling class, of course. divide et impera, etc.
on a related subject, what group of highly-privileged victims, or highly-oppressed exploiters, depending on whose account you believe, has, since the Middle Ages in eastern Europe, specialized in managing and controlling the serfs on behalf of the actual ruling class, who disdain to dirty their hands with such worldly affairs?
Kevin Macdonald —
Stalin’s Willing Executioners
Scientologists and the Left
but with covid, the truth is revealed!
actually, the shrieking hysteria with which they attacked any challenge to the official 9/11 faery tale was quite revelatory enough, at least for anybody who experienced it in person.
or did you somehow miss that two-decade-long episode?
(strangely, for some years after the 9/11 event, the WSWS seemed to have at least a somewhat dissident position on it, which has since disappeared. something must have happened.)
though their followers twitch in unease
I haven’t actually noticed any uneasy twitching on the part of the pseudo-left ID-pol drones, but this may be because I’ve taken to denouncing such people as nazi scumbags whenever I encounter them cheering for the COVID-1984 hoax, and hence we’re no longer on speaking terms.
Because I used to follow the WSWS and noted their apparent scepticism about 9/11, I thought there might still be an official Left with some clout and insight. Covid put an end to all such illusions.
I took my sense that some on the Left were uneasy about covid from their silence on the matter. I have no doubt that the “Big” sites, I.e. the official ones, are directed by spooks. Witness the WSWS’s ferocious masturbation over fear porn which has never let up for a second. You’d think they must have drained their testicles dry by now but obviously they have an endless supply of bollocks.
It’s the little sites, the various individual followers, who seem uneasy. I sense the dawning of an insight that they have been duped. But they are resisting such worrisome suspicions.
An excerpt from Christian Parenti’s article cited above (the whole essay is well worth it):
~~~
For two years the left has championed policies of surveillance and exclusion in the form of: punitive vaccine mandates, invasive vaccine passports, socially destructive lockdowns, and radically unaccountable censorship by large media and technology corporations. For the entire pandemic, leftists and liberals – call them the Lockdown Left – cheered on unprecedented levels of repression aimed primarily at the working class – those who could not afford private schools and could not comfortably telecommute from second homes.
Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit. [1]
In Jacobin, a magazine claiming to support the working class in all its struggles, Branko Marcetic demanded the unvaccinated be barred from public transportation: “one obvious course of action is for Biden to make vaccines a requirement for mass transport.” [2] Journalist Doug Henwood has scolded the unvaccinated with: “Get over your own bloated sense of self-importance.” [3] But Henwood has championed shutting down all of society in the name of safety, while refusing to engage counter-arguments – a combination that suggests a bloated sense of self-importance of his own.
Other left intellectuals, like Benjamin Bratton, author of a Verso book on the pandemic called Return of the Real, are notable for hiding amidst academic blather: “the book’s argument is on behalf [of] a ‘positive biopolitics’ that may form the basis of viable social self-organization, but this is less a statement on behalf of ‘the political’ in some metaphysical sense than on behalf of a governmentality through which an inevitably planetary society can deliberately compose itself.” [4] This is, as the late Alex Cockburn once said, “what dumb people think smart people sound like.”
Even the American Civil Liberties Union – long a bastion of objective thinking and civil liberties absolutism – has supported the mandates, lockdowns, and censorship. David Cole, the group’s legal director, debased himself in the New York Times with a tortured op-ed explaining how everything the ACLU stood for over the last 100 years suddenly did not apply during the season of freakout and overreach. [5]
When activist left influencers did stray from the official line, it was to occasionally harumph about how school closure would be ok if we just had “free childcare for all.” That argument is so flimsy one wants to respond with: “Yes, and let’s call these new socialist childcare centers: public schools!”
All of this unmasks the Lockdown Left’s blue-city provincialism. Its adherents drink high-quality coffee and enjoy bike lanes, but have revealed themselves to be as narrow-minded, clannish, mean-spirited and faith-based as any group of small-town “deplorables” might be. If you don’t agree with the consensus in Cambridge, Brooklyn, Bethesda, or Berkeley, then you are very obviously insane. End of story. For this set, Covid vaccines have become a fetish, a talisman to wave against the specter of “contagion”; while lockdowns and censorship are treated as purely technical, apolitical interventions. Prominent left intellectuals have embraced the weaponization of solidarity and made it into a lifestyle via their obsessive masking, scolding, and hiding. They pretend to care for society while actually applauding deeply anti-social and scientifically ungrounded policies like the indefinite shuttering of schools.
All of this is contingent upon the status of Lockdown Leftists as relatively privileged laptop workers who can operate from the comfort of home, dependent on anonymous “frontline workers” ferrying food and Amazon packages to their doorstep. Prior to the pandemic quarantines, many left intellectuals already lived as if they were on lockdown. I know this because I am part of that class.
~~~
👍
Thanks for reprinting that. Words worthy of his father.
Like Malcolm X once said. “The democrats are wolves in sheep’s clothing, they come at you with a smile on their face, but will stab you in the back given half a chance” Or something along those lines, nothing had changed since then.
I think you’re commenting on the wrong tweet.