CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Russian propaganda is not dangerous. Having access to other ways of looking at global geopolitics is not dangerous. What absolutely is dangerous is a vast empire concerning itself with the information and ideas that its citizenry have access to. Get your rapey, manipulative fingers out of our minds, please. If our dear leaders are so worried about our losing faith in our institutions, they shouldn’t be concerning themselves with manipulating us into trusting them, they should be making those institutions more trustworthy.
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ANDREW LEVINE—For the first time in living memory, what C. Wright Mills called the “power structure” is profoundly, perhaps even irreconcilably, divided. On the one side, there is the Republican Party, rightwing media, and a sizeable number of especially venal corporate moguls, drawn mainly from industries (oil, gas, coal, and so on) that are leading the planet to ruin. On the other, are all the rest, including even the “intelligence community” and the FBI, our national police.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Because let’s be honest, it’s not like you really have a choice anyway. If you don’t play along we’ll just be forced to brutalize your psyches with even more aggressive psyops while still doing what we want behind your backs. We will get our wars, we will get our internet censorship, we will get our social engineering projects, we will succeed in hoarding all the money to ourselves to deprive you of power and political influence while you suffer and die. And you slaves will learn your place. So don’t ruin this for us, understand?
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MOON OF ALABAMA—Alinejad claimed several times that she was slandered by Iranian media. I have seen no evidence for that claim but would not be astonished to find that an agent working for a foreign government, which is openly attempting to overthrow the Iranian political system, is somewhat disliked in that country.
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ANDRE DAMON—On January 16, 2018, the World Socialist Web Site livestreamed a discussion on Internet censorship, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North. WSWS reporter Andre Damon moderated the discussion. The webinar explored the political context of the efforts to censor the Internet and abolish net neutrality, examine the pretexts used to justify the suppression of free speech (i.e., “fake news”), and discuss political strategies to defend democratic rights.
