MEDIA FRONT

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—It isn’t true that if you allow authority to come after dissident journalists they’ll necessarily end up coming after you. That’s only true if you intend at some point to publish something that those in power don’t want you to publish. If you’ve closed the door to the possibility of your ever doing that, then you know that there is no risk to you, so there’s no need to defend dissident journalists when their reporting sees them targeted for legal persecution by the powerful.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Sometimes all I can do is stare in awe at the power and efficiency of the imperial propaganda machine. When I first started this gig in 2016 Assange had way more support, from Berners, Greens, Trumpers, all across the spectrum. Now a large amount of that support has been eroded. For Trumpers Assange is being extradited for his own good to bring down the Deep State. For liberals he’s a Russian asset. For leftists he’s a rapist and fascist enabler. There’s a narrative for everyone, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. It’s really impressive.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The plutocrat-owned narrative managers of the political/media class work constantly to shrink the Overton window, the spectrum of debate that is considered socially acceptable. They do this by framing more and more debates in terms of how the oligarchic empire should be sustained and supported, steering them away from debates about whether that empire should be permitted to exist at all.

As the global crisis worsens, constantly inching toward a terminal catastrophe, this issue—the malignant role played by the corporate media—rises in urgency.  Yet we know that there will be no real reform of “Western media”, no cure for all the evil it facilitates, until capitalism itself, the matrix it protects, has been eliminated. The two are inseparable. Thus attacking one is as good as attacking the other. These dissections of the US media system by Paul Street are an excellent—and concise— starting point for any serious understanding of this subject.

RS AHTHION—But this is what the Americans do. They take shockingly vile and horrific stuff they have done to people the globe over and then shamelessly and straight-faced lie about it. They stand history on its head accusing the people they have subjected to terrible abuse of the crimes they themselves committed.