Right now we’re seeing saturation condemnations of Russia across all corporate media. That these media are incapable of prioritising truth, over the agendas of the tiny elites who beneath a chimera of democracy rule us, is a given for reasons I speak of often. Here for example.
But this is the most relentless propaganda blitz of my lifetime. (And I’ve lived through Cuba ’62, Vietnam, IRA armed struggle in the Six Counties and the demonising of assorted “new Hitlers” from Arthur Scargill through Robert Mugabe to Muammar al-Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.) The most elementary causes of a situation which may yet go literally nuclear are being kept from us by all media, most importantly:
- the lies, insults and broken promises dumped on Russia since the fall of the USSR, in particular the expansion of NATO to her borders: an encroachment Washington would not for a moment tolerate – we know this from Latin American actual history as well as from the Monroe Doctrine – for itself;
- … the nature of the 2014 Maidan Coup and grip on subsequent governments of the country’s far right in tandem with Washington;
- the fact it would cost Washington next to nothing – were it genuinely desirous of the wellbeing of Ukraine’s people – to give the guarantees to allow Russia to withdraw.
We’ve also seen Russia’s musicians sacked, her athletes barred, access to RT and Sputnik made much harder and social media platforms – in the week of the earth shattering news of this site’s founder’s no-platforming by Facebook – relaxing their ban on “hate speech” to allow calls of Death to Putin.
Oh, and the first man in space has had his name airbrushed out for being Russian. Elsewhere the University of Florida has renamed its Karl Marx study room (?!?) and Russian cats were declared felina non grata …
So much for Western democracy, free press and open society values. A climate of fear is being created, in which it will get very much harder to speak out in defence of Russia’s actions. But what about those – within Ukraine – whose criticisms of Russia are deemed too qualified, too pallid or otherwise insufficiently damning? How are they faring? Here, in a report late yesterday by Ben Norton, is how.
Ukraine’s Western-backed government has used Russia’s February 24 invasion to drastically escalate its repression of the left, banning Ukrainian socialist parties and imprisoning left-wing activists.
There are widespread reports of Ukrainian state security services arresting and torturing leftists. Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists have systematically infiltrated Kiev’s police, military, and intelligence agencies since a US-sponsored 2014 coup installed a compliant pro-Western government.
In an early morning speech on March 20, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council was banning 11 opposition political parties, half of which are left-wing.
Some of the parties that were criminalized include the Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, and Party of Socialists.
Zelensky published an English-language transcript of this speech on the official website of the office of the president, boasting of having prohibited the dozen opposition parties.
To justify illegalizing these left-wing forces, the Ukrainian government accused them of being pro-Russian, or having unproven “ties” to Moscow. However, some of these opposition parties have publicly condemned the Russian invasion.
Ukraine, which is under martial law, is using the war with Russia to crush all political opposition. And the US and EU are staunchly supporting the regime as it consolidates absolute power.
On March 20, Zelensky also signed a decree to seize control of all private media outlets, combining them into one state-controlled platform, with a “unified information policy” that ensures no deviation from the official Ukrainian regime propaganda line.
As Caitlin Johnstone points out in her own post today, we’re risking a very radioactive third world war defending the “democracy” of a regime who just banned eleven opposition parties.
* * *
John Helmer argues that the Imperialists are re-using the Lucky Luciano strategy- the imprisoned Mafia Boss backed the Allied invasion of Sicily for fun and profit.
That’s one aspect of the Putin/Russia demonisation that is often misunderstood- “Regime Change” in Russia is designed to bring back the glory days of the 90s when the life expectancy of the average man plummeted almost ten years. By ‘democracy’ is meant rule by crooks and thugs. You know just like in the West.
He might have mentioned Bill Browder and the Magnitsky sanctions scam.
http://johnhelmer.net/new-york-court-reopens-trial-of-leonid-lebedevs-2-7-billion-attack-on-victor-vekselberg-and-len-blavatnik/
We saw similar in the Kazakhstan failed coup in January. A convicted fraudster, big time money launderer and murder suspect wanted by Interpol was redeemed, repackaged and sold as the glittering golden boy of that Russia bordering Central Asian state’s heroic opposition. Check out Mukhtar Ablyazov …
Then there is this – the banning of all opposition parties was preceded by campaigns against dissidents. This article details it.
https://newcoldwar.org/kyivs-unobserved-war-against-dissident-public-intellectuals/
So the West really is fascist? Who would have thought?
Washington and the West’s ugly perfidy is becoming monotonous. The incidents Bevin refers to have been going on for a long time, for those who dared to bad mouth the nazification and the bold way they swaggered around towns and cities bullying people. According to some Ukrainians living in the UK who have been in contact with friends and family still in Western Ukraine, people have been going missing only to turn up as body dumps with obvious signs of torture as well as their ultimate cause of death since at least 2016.
I am so proud to be British that I have been going around telling people I am part Irish and it’s not my fault I was born in England.
What a shower!
🙂 Susan
Don’t expect to be reading this kind of stuff in the Guardian! The greatest lies of our media are those of omission. They are not only harder to call out but in the long run more effective.
I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between Zelenski’s banning of the Left groups with what the Labour Party has done in Britain under Starmer’s so-called leadership. This silencing of the Left is an international phenomenon and require international analysis and understanding. As do the parallels and interactions between AZOV and the IDF and Israeli state.
I hadn’t made that connection Esther but you’re not wrong. Nor when you speak of:
Israel has a history of backing – or rather, weaponising reactionary and antisemitic tendencies to play a longer game. So has the west at large, of course, but less blatantly.
Especially ironic given previous silencing of the Labour Left under hysterical stigmatisation as “anti-Semitism” under Corbyn.
It seems to be a sign of the times that a more realistic analysis can be found from sources such as this (Larry Johnson a former CIA operative):
https://sonar21.com/the-ukrainian-army-has-been-defeated-whats-left-is-mop-up/
Who observes:
When former CIA operatives like Johnson are more to the left of a significant section of the self defined ‘left’ in their analysis it seems reasonable to conclude something has gone seriously FUBAR.
I can only conclude that ‘western’ society (at least) is very sick. The mass enthusiasm in the UK for hatred of Russia and swallowing jingoistic propaganda wholesale indicates that the mass of western society is either stupid or depraved. It’s reminiscent of the advent of WW1, when previously socialist workers converted overnight to belief in anti-German propaganda. If it wasn’t for that previous example I’d be tempted to believe that there actually is something now in the water supply which is making us all stupid. I don’t think that humanity is actually fit to survive in the long term. Maybe the cockroaches will do a better job.