Eric Zuesse

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Mainstream media lies are the first line of defense of an unjust and undemocratic order.

Protest against NYTimes insidious lies. Even staffers have staged protests in recent months.

Lying propaganda is in favor of the Government but not necessarily of the political Party that happens to be running it at the time. The standard way of running a multi-Party dictatorship is by all of the major Parties being controlled (funded) by the nation’s super-rich or “Deep State” — something that in former eras was called “the aristocracy.” They determine whom each one of the Parties’ nominees will be, to run against each other, so that, in any case, the contest will be between various factions of the aristocracy, no authentic democracy at all. A typical example of this is today’s United States, which will be discussed here.

The ‘news’-media in such a dictatorship are likewise funded and controlled (such as by billionaires’ corporations advertising in them) by the billionaires — the same category of people who determine whom the Parties’ nominees will be.

Thus, lying propaganda is in favor of the Government, but not necessarily of the political Party that happens to be running it at the time. This way it can pretend to be ‘objective’ or even ‘non-partisan’ even while being a propaganda-vehicle (regardless of whether owned by the Government or by the media-corporations).

A good example of this is shown by the New Yorker magazine, which is a puff-sheet for America’s Democratic Party, and is designed to appeal to (reinforce the prejudices of) upper-income and highly educated urban voters. On September 24th, it headlined “The New Yorker Interview: Volodymyr Zelensky Has a Plan for Ukraine’s Victory”, but Zelensky didn’t tell the interviewer what it was, and the interviewer didn’t even ask him what it was. Obviously, therefore, the magazine’s managers and editors don’t actually have much respect for their readers’ intelligence-level. Also, on October 3rd, it headlined“Q. & A. How the U.S.-Israel Relationship Actually Works”, and ignored that question. What that question really concerns, and about which there is much public speculation (and so this headline was teasing its readers about it), is whether Israel’s billionaires and Government control America’s, or instead America’s billionaires and Government control Israel’s. I’m not going to take any position on that here, but this Democratic Party puff-sheet avoided the issue altogether; and, so, yet again, the magazine’s managers and editors don’t actually have much respect for their readers’ intelligence-level. (If I were to take any position on that question today, then I might headline “Finally, the U.S. Government Is Demanding Israel’s to Halt Its Effort to Starve All Surviving Gazans to Death”; and, of course, no U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-medium would run such a headline.)

What this model of dictatorship shows us (and which holds true throughout all of at least the countries that are in the U.S. empire — the U.S. and its ‘allies’ or colonies), but perhaps also pertains in some of the independent nations, is that an aristocracy rules by treating its subjects (‘citizens’) as being fools who are willing to be deceived time and again forever and yet still retain their trust in — their faith in — their Government, believing that it is a democracy, no dictatorship.

The way to tell whether you are getting news, or instead lying propaganda (such as in the build-up to America’s 20 March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and to Russia’s 24 February 2002 invasion of Ukraine) is whether or not the given news-medium has been feeding you falsehoods in the past (such as all mainstream ‘news’-media throughout the U.S. empire do routinely). It is really just that simple. The test of whether it is news or instead propaganda is not “like rocket science,” at all. It is instead obvious, when you look at the record. Tragically few people do.

Only idiots, at this stage, still trust any mainstream American news-media.

by Eric Zuesse
October 14, 202425

Leading up to America’s shameful illegal destructive and evil invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003, all of the U.S. mainstream news-media were uncritically trumpeting the White House’s lies against Iraq and Saddam Hussain, none of these propaganda-organizations were reporting the clearly-established but unpublicized crucial truths. After the falsehood of the White House’s allegations had become no longer credible even to most of the highly deceived American public, the U.S. Government’s excuse became that it had all been due to ‘intelligence failures’ (and U.S.-and-allied ‘historians’ continue to this day to trumpet that lie), but this too was nothing more than a blatant lie. All of this is thoroughly documented HERE. (That’s my article on the Iraq-matter, which links to all of its evidences.) Ever since then, I have known for certain that I live under a dictatorship — even the claim that America is a democracy is no longer true (if it ever was) — and that this Government routinely violates the U.S. Constitution, with total impunity.

Many times since then, I have observed the same thing regarding many other matters. All of these lies have been climaxed by the barbaric U.S.-and-allied Governments’ hoaxes that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 Febrjuary 2022 was “aggression” and “unprovoked,” instead of having been an invasion that was forced upon Russia by the U.S. and its allies — forced upon Russia, which was doing only what it HAD to do in order to protect its own national security against the (up till then) ever-expanding, indeed cancerous, American empire. All of this is thoroughly documented HERE.

The latest major installment in this anti-Russian hoax is truthfully recounted and described in the following video, a 20-minute discussion that includes Alexander Mercouris, one of the greatest investigative journalists, and whose many videos I have been following for years I have never yet found to have alleged anything to be false — this being an absolutely extraordinary record:

“Woodward ‘WAR,’ Biden stared down Putin nuke threat”

14 October 2024 (also available at youtube but with interrupting ads)

I might also add here that if you might think that Mercouris is reading from a teleprompter because NO ONE can have THIS MUCH of a total-recall memory and have both maps and time-lines, and not only events, at ready-recall and logically interconnected in his head, so as to be able to tell on the very day of a historic event, what has been happening and why, this is the way he is: he doesn’t need to look at notes or at a prepared script in order to be able to do what he does. He is a great historian, and not ONLY a great investigative journalist. He is authentically a phenomenon — which none of the U.S.-and-allied media would ever want to hire (because he is too honest, too competent, and too insightful, for any of them to want to hire).

Also on October 14th, one of the major newspapers in America’s colony of the UK, the Independent, headlined as boringly as they could for a number of supposedly minor news-stories about the Ukraine war, “Ukraine-Russia latest: Kremlin accuses NATO of stoking nuclear tensions as drill with 2,000 troops launched”, including the actually ominous major news report, that Friedrich Merz, who is widely expected to be Germany’s next leader (and Germany is America’s largest colony, with 231 U.S. military bases), had criticized Germany’s current leader Olaf Scholz, for NOTtransgressing Russia’s stated red line that if any NATO nation allows Ukraine to use that nation’s donated missiles so as to strike deep enough into Russia to threaten to decapitate Russia’s central command in The Kremlin, then Russia won’t wait but will promptly destroy not only Ukraine but that nation and any (such as America) who have allowed it to allow that permission to Ukraine. Merz said he would “supply [to Ukraine] the Taurus missiles. Then it is up to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to decide how far he wants to escalate this war”, “according to N-TV” (which is viewed by only 1% of the German public). In other words: just as in America the expected winner of the White House, Kamala Harris, is not known by the American people to want to force Russia to start WW3, so too is this the case in the U.S. regime’s biggest colony.

This time it is not just Iraq etcetera that the U.S. regime wants to conquer, but Russia itself. And Russia has already made clear that they won’t allow this to happen. Russia is not “playing chicken” with America, and it is not playing cat-and-mouse with it either. Unlike the U.S. regime, it has no interest in taking over the entire world, but it DOES have not only an interest but a determination, to remain a sovereign and independent country over its own territory, even if it will have to conquer a colony that the U.S. seized (in 2014), so as to protect itself from the U.S. regime. That’s a fact which almost nobody in the U.S. empire talks about.