The announcement that the Department of Homeland Security would be launching its own Orwellian Ministry of Truth called the “Disinformation Governance Board” was met with scorn and hostility from critics across the political spectrum. Now the Board’s putative head, Nina Jankowicz, has submitted her resignation, the initiative has been put on ice and the Washington Post’s chief social media mean girl, Taylor Lorenz, has written an unhinged piece decrying the online bullying that sent the new agency packing. Jimmy talks to The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and American comedian Kurt Metzger about the rise and precipitous fall of this ill-advised government censorship project.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—This kind of thing happens so often because within an empire that is held together by propaganda, capitalism and mass military violence, those who are elevated to prominence within that empire have a symbiotic relationship with those things.
Someone who is worth a quarter billion dollars is unlikely to support the end of capitalism and the elimination of vast wealth inequality. Someone whose wealth and status come from Hollywood is unlikely to oppose the imperial propaganda machine of which Hollywood is a crucial part. Someone who benefits from status quo politics is unlikely to promote meaningful opposition to them.
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EDWARD CURTIN—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 provocations.
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Prominent liberals like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich were up in arms about the prospect that mega-billionaire Elon Musk might purchase controlling interest in Twitter and change the social media site’s policies about banning content deemed “misleading” or “inflammatory.” The idea that actual free speech might be brought back to Twitter is apparently unthinkable for Reich and his ilk. Jimmy and American comedian Kurt Metzger discuss the threat of free speech to authoritarians on the left.
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Russia is far from losing the war, says military expert Scott Ritter. Granted, the Ukrainians, with tons of NATO help, have put up perhaps a stronger than expected resistance, but their strategic destiny is unalterable: Russia’s great military power will prevail, despite anything that the West may try to do to infiltrate more weapons and aid. Besides, many tactical and strategic moves by Moscow are purposely distorted or denied by Western media, including its reluctance to conduct a brutal war in the US style of “shock and awe” with indiscriminate civilian and infrastructure casualties.
