Tag: propaganda

How US and UK Government Propaganda Specialists Collaborated with Nazis in Ukraine

A MintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine, which MintPress revealed recently.

While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Yet, as we shall see, this collaboration goes much further.

Perhaps a good place to start is with the ongoing role of a key intelligence-linked official who has taken on a propaganda role on behalf of Ukraine since the launch in February 2022 of what the Russian government calls its “Special Military Operation.” Meet Cormac Smith, a member of the first Irish bobsleigh team to qualify for the Winter Olympics in 1992. He has appeared in scores of news reports passing on Western propaganda talking points about the role of Russia in Ukraine. But who is Smith working for?

According to his own account, he is a “private citizen” supporting “Ukraine/global freedom.” Yet until December 2018, he was the deputy director of communications for the British Cabinet Office – the official body responsible for supporting the prime minister. He was also previously attached to the UK Foreign Office as the strategic communications advisor to the foreign minister of Ukraine.

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People Need To Understand They’re ‘Being Used Against Each Other’: Filmmaker

Most people do not realize that America has been at war for a long time, but it is not a conventional war—it is a psychological war, said a filmmaker who recently released a documentary directing people’s attention to this important issue.

“It’s a war of propaganda,” said Mikki Willis, filmmaker and creator of the “Plandemic” film series. The third installment, “Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening,” was released in June.

“It’s a war to divide the people and weaken the strength of our collaborative communities to do anything about these new ideologies being forced upon Americans,” Willis said in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

The new film does not highlight much about COVID-19 or COVID vaccines as filmmakers stayed away from these topics, Willis said. Instead, the documentary illustrates “what all of those [COVID-related] crises were used to advance.”

To explain their point, the filmmakers drew a comparison to a couple of cultural revolutions in history—primarily Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China—to show that the only way for the past dictators to be able to commit atrocities and genocide was to lure the people into a hypnotic spell, to become their force for doing evil, Willis said.

Organizations, such as Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Hitler’s Youth, Lenin’s Red Army, and Mao’s Red Guards, were examples of such forces formed to accomplish dictators’ evil objectives, Willis added.

“It’s a real wake-up call to the people to understand that we’re being used against each other,” Willis said. “When we are united, that’s when we are literally unstoppable.”

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HOW US AND UK GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA SPECIALISTS COLLABORATED WITH NAZIS IN UKRAINE

AMintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine, which MintPress revealed recently.

While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Yet, as we shall see, this collaboration goes much further.

Perhaps a good place to start is with the ongoing role of a key intelligence-linked official who has taken on a propaganda role on behalf of Ukraine since the launch in February 2022 of what the Russian government calls its “Special Military Operation.” Meet Cormac Smith, a member of the first Irish bobsleigh team to qualify for the Winter Olympics in 1992.  He has appeared in scores of news reports passing on Western propaganda talking points about the role of Russia in Ukraine. But who is Smith working for?

According to his own account, he is a “private citizen” supporting “Ukraine/global freedom.” Yet until December 2018, he was the deputy director of communications for the British Cabinet Office – the official body responsible for supporting the prime minister. He was also previously attached to the UK Foreign Office as the strategic communications advisor to the foreign minister of Ukraine.

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Best-Selling US Author Cancels Her Own Book In Response To Anti-Russian PR Campaign

Elizabeth Gilbert, the best-selling American author, announced last week that she would soon be publishing a novel set in Russia. In light of a Russo-phobic public relations campaign unleashed against her, the Eat, Pray, Love author has since rescinded those plans.

In a “massive outpouring of reactions,” Ukrainian readers expressed “anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain,” over the book’s setting, Gilbert said. This led the author to make a self-described “course correction,” shelving the novel indefinitely.

Originally slated for a February 2024 release, Gilbert’s The Snow Forest is set in Siberia during the 20th century. It follows “a group of individuals who made a decision [in the 1930s] to remove themselves from society to resist the Soviet government and to try to defend nature against industrialization,” says Gilbert. For 44 years, they manage to live undetected but in 1980, they are discovered by a Soviet geological team. According to the Guardian, “a scholar and linguist is sent to the family’s home to bridge the chasm between modern existence and their ancient, snow forest life.”

Gilbert reported that, over the weekend, she was flooded with messages from Ukrainians telling her it was unacceptable to publish her work. “The fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now, any book, no matter what the subject of it is, that is set in Russia,” is beyond the pale. That was the consensus amidst the deluge.

Absurd accusations were levied against Gilbert, including that her book would be akin to a novel “glorifying” the “brave Germans” during the Second World War.

According to The Atlantic, “Gilbert’s unpublished book garnered a slew of one-star reviews, all from commenters who hadn’t seen the text. Even though her book doesn’t seem to remotely venerate Russian nationalism, Gilbert committed the sin of setting her narrative in Russia – and for some of her readers, that was a deeply insensitive, borderline-treacherous act.”

The author concluded shortly after her announcement, “It is not the time for this book to be published.” Adding “I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced and who are all continuing to experience grievous and extreme harm.” Further, she insisted to her fans that anybody who pre-ordered the book will be “fully refunded.”

Since she announced her decision to pull the book from the publication schedule, Gilbert has been criticized by authors and other writers who feel that caving to the pressure is “setting a terrible precedent.” Even vehement supporters of escalated US involvement in the Ukraine war have admonished Gilbert for participating in her own modern-day book burning.

“In meekly complying with the angriest voices, she accepted their argument that setting a book in Russia is an act of collusion, even though that’s an entirely nonsensical argument. In effect, she’s allowing the irrational feelings of her readers to set the terms of acceptable discourse. For a group to block a book, it just needs to clog the comments on Instagram with hurt feelings,” Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic, said. This was after he recommended the protesters’ energy would be better spent lobbying their governments to send Kiev F-16 fighter bombers instead.

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Killing The Story – Bakhmut, Nick Cohen, Kakhovka, Nord Stream and Piers Morgan

The late writer, broadcaster and wit Clive James formulated what he called the ‘Barry Manilow Law’:

‘Everyone you know thinks Barry Manilow is absolutely terrible. But everyone you don’t know thinks he’s great.’ (James, cited Martin Amis, ‘Inside Story,’ Vintage, 2020, e-book, p.74)

A Media Lens version of this might read:

‘Everyone you know thinks BBC News is absolutely terrible. But everyone you don’t know thinks it’s great.’

The BBC wasn’t always quite this bad. When we started out in 2001, people like Director of News Richard Sambrook and Newsnight editor Peter Barron sent us long, respectful replies to our analysis. We were invited to appear on BBC One, BBC Two and BBC radio (we were interviewed by BBC Radio Five Live). Barron even blogged about us positively on the BBC website.

All of this has gone. Our criticisms, now, are met with paranoid silence. And there is much for BBC journalists to be paranoid about, for they are now clearly operating as de facto agents of state.

When the US targeted Syria for ‘regime change’ in 2011, a flood of anti-Assad atrocity claims and pro-‘rebel’ propaganda washed across the BBC’s news pages. The BBC’s campaign ended the moment the US campaign for regime change ended. When Iran, Venezuela and Libya fell under the US crosshairs, the same BBC propaganda machine cranked into action. Similarly, anyone measuring BBC performance 2022-2023 will find hundreds of reports and comment pieces favouring the Ukraine/Nato version of events, against one or two favouring the Russian version of events. This, even though our country is technically not at war with Russia – certainly Russia is not attacking us. It couldn’t be more obvious that when the green light for war and ‘regime change’ is on, the BBC is expected to host daily propaganda pieces to generate public support.

In his superb book, ‘Falsehood in Wartime: Propaganda Lies of the First World War’, published in 1928, Lord Arthur Ponsonby analysed the key propaganda techniques that had been used to deceive the public during the catastrophic war of 1914-1918:

  1. We do not want war.
  2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
  3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
  4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
  5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; we make ‘mistakes’.
  6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
  7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
  8. Recognised artists and intellectuals back our cause.
  9. Our cause is sacred.
  10.  All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

Most BBC, Guardian and other ‘mainstream’ war coverage is a cocktail of these ten forms of bias.

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EXPOSED: DISTURBING DETAILS OF NEW PENTAGON “PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT OFFICE”

Ken Klippenstein, an investigative journalist at The Intercept, has exposed how the Pentagon very quietly launched a new internal division, dubbed the “Influence and Perception Management Office” (IPMO), in March.

Its existence is not strictly secret, although there has been no official announcement of its launch, let alone an explanation from Department of Defense (DoD) officials as to its raison d’être or modus operandi. Its budget likewise remains a mystery but purportedly runs into the “multimillions.”

Pentagon financial documents from 2022 offer a laconic and largely impenetrable description of IPMO. The Office, it is said, “will serve as the senior advisor” to Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security, Ronald S. Moultrie, on “strategic and operational influence and perception management (reveal and conceal) matters”:

It will develop broad thematic influence guidance focused on key adversaries; promulgate competitive influence strategies focused on specific defense issues, which direct subordinate planning efforts for the conduct of influence-related activities; and fill existing gaps in policy, oversight, governance, and integration related to influence and perception management matters. [IPMO]…provides necessary support to National Defense Strategy…to address the current strategic environment of great power competition.”

Nonetheless, references to “reveal and conceal” and “influence and perception management” are tantalizing in the extreme. So too, is IPMO’s position within the U.S. national security structure and the Office’s acting director being intimately tied to the Pentagon’s spookiest operations.

Despite its low-key rollout, IPMO looks set to be a hugely influential new DoD agency in the future, waging ceaseless information warfare at home and abroad. What makes the new venture all the more sinister is that such capabilities are nothing new; the Pentagon has managed multiple similar, if not identical, operations in the past and continues to do so, despite significant controversy and public backlash.

Indeed, the DoD’s official dictionary has a dedicated definition of “perception management”, linking the practice to “psychological operations,” which are defined as actions intended to influence the “emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior” of target governments, organizations, groups, and individuals:

Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.”

This, of course, begs the question of why a new incarnation of what came before and never went away is now being inaugurated by the U.S. defense establishment. As we shall see, no reassuring answers are forthcoming.

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FROM SIMP TO SOLDIER: HOW THE MILITARY IS USING E-GIRLS TO RECRUIT GEN Z INTO SERVICE

Amid a crisis in recruitment, the U.S. military has found a new way of convincing a war-weary Generation Z to enlist: thirst traps.

Chief among these attractive young women in uniform posting sexually suggestive content alongside subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) calls to join up is Hailey Lujan. In between the thirst traps and memes, the 21-year-old makes content extolling the fun of Army life to her 731,000 TikTok followers. “Don’t go to college, become a farmer or a soldier instead,” she instructs viewers in a recent video. “Just some advice for the younger people: if you’re not doing school, it’s ok. I dropped out of college. And I’m doing great,” she adds.

If Lujan feels like a psyop (a psychological operation) it is because, technically, she is. Lujan is a psychological operations specialist; one of a small number of Army personnel whose job is to carry out influence and disinfo operations, either on or offline. Thus, she is using her femininity to recruit legions of lustful teens into an institution with an infamous record of sexism and sexual assault against female soldiers.

According to Lujan, being a soldier is the “coolest job in the world.” She certainly does make Army life look fun, as she abseils down walls, fires a howitzer, and flies around in an Apache helicopter. “101st airborne division knows what the girls (and boys) really want”, she notes as she plays around with a high-tech, remote controlled robot.

Until late last year, Lujan’s social media accounts were far more tame. But as she pivoted towards content of her in skimpy outfits or suggestive, military-related videos and pictures, her following exploded to nearly three-quarters of a million on TikTok alone. Judging by the comments, her army of followers sees military life in a new light.

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15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists

If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralized empire, in almost the same way you’d expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets.

The New York Times has reliably supported every war the US has waged. Western mass media focus overwhelmingly on foreign protests against governments the United States dislikes while paying far less attention to widespread protests against US-aligned governments. The only time Trump was universally showered with praise by the mass media was when he bombed Syria, while the only time Biden has been universally slammed by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan. US media did such a good job deceitfully marrying Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks in the minds of the public in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq that seven in ten Americans still believed he was connected to 9/11 months after the war began.

That this extreme bias occurs is self-evident and indisputable to anyone who pays attention, but why and how it happens is harder to see. The uniformity is so complete and so consistent that when people first begin noticing these patterns it’s common for them to assume the media must be controlled by a small, centralized authority much like the state media of more openly authoritarian governments. But if you actually dig into the reasons why the media act the way they act, that isn’t really what you find.

Instead, what you find is a much larger, much less centralized network of factors which tips the scales of media coverage to the advantage of the US empire and the forces which benefit from it. Some of it is indeed conspiratorial in nature and happens in secret, but most of it is essentially out in the open.

Here are 15 of those factors.

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