Caitlin Johnstone
ROGUE JOURNALIST
The Biden administration is supposedly planning to set up a temporary pier in Gaza to allow for the large-scale shipment of sorely needed goods into the enclave, which reportedly will take weeks to build and will still be subjected to an Israeli checkpoint. This is on top of the widely ridiculed airdrops of pitifully small amounts of aid the US has already been making in this continuing charade where Washington pretends Gaza is surrounded by some kind of unassailable invisible barrier between itself and Israel.
And hell, why not? Why not build a pier. Have they considered digging a giant tunnel to get aid into Gaza as well? Or launching aid into Gaza by building a giant slingshot? Or perhaps they could invent some type of portal gun à la Rick and Morty?
Ooh! Hey! Or what about simply making their fully dependent client state let the aid in, or force them to stop the genocidal onslaught that makes it necessary? As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp rightly notes of the planned pier construction, “The drastic measure is being ordered instead of Biden using the enormous leverage he has over Israel to pressure them to allow in more aid or halt the genocidal campaign.”
Journalist Mark Ames tweeted of the report, “This is an incredible scoop, a direct window into how the genocide-propaganda sausage is made.”
My favorite part of the article is where the author Max Blumenthal writes that Republicans and Democrats were found to be receptive to different words used to describe Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza, saying “Republican voters prefer phrases which imply maximalist violence, like ‘eradicate’ and ‘obliterate,’ while sanitized terms like ‘neutralize’ appeal more to Democrats.”
That’s pretty much the only difference between Republicans and Democrats right there. That’s it in a nutshell.
When western officials bitch at Israel over settlements, they’re essentially saying “Stop it you guys, you’re giving the game away! Now how are we supposed to pretend we care?” They need to be able to credibly bleat the phrase “two-state solution” once in a while in order to create the impression that they’re not just permanently taking the side of genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, theft and apartheid — even though that is exactly what they are doing.
I’ve noticed that on social media I’m getting more and more comments from dopey right wingers yelling at me for what I have to say about Gaza, and what’s weird is that most of them don’t even post about Israel-Palestine normally. They appear to be doing it solely because they see opposition to the Gaza genocide as a left-wing issue, and so they’ve reflexively taken the opposite position because that’s just what political engagement looks like in this insipid, brainwashed dystopia of ours.
Until recently most of the hostile responses I’ve been getting have been coming from virulent Israel supporters with Israeli flags and “proud Zionist” in their bios who shriek about Hamas 24/7. Now a lot of the pushback I’m getting is just from standard MAGA chuds and other rightists who tweet mostly about partisan politics in their own country. They’re not pushing back against me because they love Israel, they’re pushing back because I’m a leftist and they automatically push back against lefty-looking things because that’s what they’ve been programmed to do.
It just says so much about the state of western civilization that even genocide has been turned into another vapid culture war wedge issue for people to masturbate their tribal identity constructs on. As though “don’t starve children to death or rip them to shreds with military explosives” is some kind of ideological position that only makes sense through a specific political lens, instead of just the normal human default perspective for anyone who isn’t a psychopath.
But that’s the genius of the empire. Propaganda has been used to split the general population into two warring factions of equal strength, and the propagandists get each faction arguing about which imperial military project should be supported and which should be criticized. A lot of the people you see supporting the US-backed butchery in Gaza today have spent two years criticizing the US proxy war in Ukraine (and vice versa), because they took those positions based on what the pundits and politicians in their political faction told them to think. It’s got nothing to do with values or morals, it’s just blind tribalistic herd mentality.
And that’s exactly where the empire wants us. Evenly divided against each other too thoroughly to get anything done, arguing back and forth about WHICH imperial agendas should be advanced instead of IF any of them should be advanced. A bunch of bleating human livestock unknowingly bickering about how best to advance the interests of their owners.
And now this...
Oscar Winners Who Don’t Speak Out On Gaza This Weekend Will Be Complicit In Genocide
Emma Stone at the Oscars. Failed the test big time. Gaza on my mind? Nah.
If you’re given a major platform and your government is committing genocide, you are morally obligated use that platform to condemn your government’s actions.
Caitlin Johnstone
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Caitlin Johnstone · Oscar Winners Who Don't Speak Out On Gaza This Weekend Will Be Complicit In Genocide
people are being deliberately starved at an incredibly fast pace and the massacres haven’t stopped. We’ve seen severe death count lags before in places like Yemen, where in 2017 the media stopped counting at 10,000 deaths and just kept repeating that number for ages.
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Every Hollywood celebrity who fails to speak out against the US-backed genocide in Gaza at the Academy Awards this Sunday is complicit in that genocide. If you’re given a major platform and your government is committing genocide, you are morally obligated use that platform to condemn your government’s actions.
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I always get Israel supporters in my comments going “Hurr hurr, if you think what Aaron Bushnell did is so great then why don’t you do it too?”
Shallow, vapid people are incapable of understanding and appreciating what Aaron Bushnell did. They’ve no internal framework for it. When they dismiss him or disparage his motives, they’re just telling you there’s not much to them as people. They’re asleep at the wheel of life.
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A political party which views opposing an active genocide as a fringe extremist position is not a political party that should continue to exist.
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After seeing how horrifyingly murderous and reckless this Democrat president has turned out to be, I hope US leftists have fully let go of all the guilt liberals tried to heap on them for not rallying behind the Democrat in 2016. It was all a lie. They’re as bad as Republicans.
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Over and over you see people enter western mainstream political parties with the stated goal of changing them from this inside, but instead it changes them. They think the problem is that the party just doesn’t have enough nice people in it, but it turns out trying to change a mainstream political party in the western empire by putting nice people in it is like trying to change an abusive cult by putting nice people in it: the cult doesn’t change, the people who go in just get indoctrinated. The cult isn’t bad because there aren’t enough nice cult members, the cult is bad because its entire purpose, function and founding doctrine is bad.
A mainstream political party in the imperial core exists solely to promote the interests of the empire. Everything in it is geared toward this purpose. That is its nature. If you join it, you either embrace its doctrines and help it act out its foundational purpose, or you get kicked out of the cult. You cannot change it. It can only change you. How many times does this have to happen before people learn the lesson?
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The western-backed genocide in Gaza should be showing everyone that western governments don’t make the odd-looking foreign policy decisions they make because they understand foreign policy better than ordinary people. They make those decisions because they are corrupt and evil.
That’s always been the case, it’s just far more obvious now. You can see just by looking at how universal support for Israel is among US officials and lawmakers compared to the general public that any random schmoe off the street is more likely to make correct and moral foreign policy decisions on behalf of these governments than the empire managers in charge.
And that’s why real democracy is continually subverted in those nations. If the people were actually in charge of the foreign policy decisions made within the imperial core, the empire would no longer be inflicting the violence and tyranny necessary for its continued existence.
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A whole media industry is sprouting up around mainstream journalists just reading The Grayzone and presenting its findings as their own original reporting, because The Grayzone is considered naughty enough to steal from.
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At this point I just automatically assume that any Israel supporter who interacts with me is acting in bad faith, partly because that’s been my consistent experience with them and partly because in order to still support Israel in March of 2024 you have to be a bit sociopathic.
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Most of the Americans who’ll call you an antisemite for criticizing Israel would have mocked you and laughed at you if you called them racist for criticizing Obama or sexist for criticizing Hillary Clinton. It’s the exact same logic, but it’s okay when they do it.
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After watching a pro-Palestine activist go off the deep end recently I think it’s probably a good idea to issue a few basic reminders to anyone who’s speaking out about this issue:
Don’t deny the Holocaust unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. Don’t try to make Israeli atrocities about Judaism or Jewishness unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. Don’t conflate Jews as a global collective with a murderous apartheid state unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. Don’t say Jews rule the world unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement.
It’s not hard to make these distinctions, and the overwhelming majority of pro-Palestine voices have no difficulty doing so. It’s also not hard to see what messages Israel apologists will forcefully amplify as evidence that the entire pro-Palestine movement is antisemitic and that everyone needs to shift the focus from stopping an active genocide to fighting an imaginary antisemitism crisis.
This isn’t about Jews, it’s about settler-colonialism and the geostrategic objectives of the western empire — both of which we’ve seen manifest in countless examples that have nothing to do with Jewish people. Zionism is just one belief system the empire managers will utilize to advance their agendas of planetary hegemony, just as they do with Christian fundamentalism, Islamophobia, humanitarianism, conservatism, progressivism, and any other worldview that can be exploited to their advantage.
In short, don’t let your opposition to Israeli atrocities turn you into a moron. Don’t let your support for the Palestinians turn you into a tool of the empire. Stay on top of that shit. Please and thank you.
All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
Garland Nixon
