Commenting today on news that New York prosecutors have charged Luigi Mangione with “murder as an act of terrorism” over the shooting of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson, Caitlin Johnstone writes:
… the label “terrorist” is a tool of narrative control, moved around based on whether or not a use of violence is deemed legitimate by the managers of empire. Because Luigi Mangione’s alleged crime ignited a public interest in class war, the label “terrorism” is being used to frame it as an especially heinous act of evil against an innocent member of the public.
A favorite trick is to begin the historical record at the moment its enemies retaliate to its abuses. Oh no, a health insurance CEO was victimized by an evil act of terrorism. Oh no, Israel was just innocently minding its own business when it was viciously attacked by Hamas. Oh no, Iran attacked Israel completely out of the blue and now Israel must retaliate. Oh no, Russia just launched an entirely unprovoked war on Ukraine.
Everything that led up to the unauthorized violence is erased from the record, because all the violence, provocation and abuse which gave rise to it were authorized by the empire. Authorized aggression doesn’t count as aggression.
It’s not just the “violence, provocation and abuse” antecedent to “unauthorised” violence that get erased from the record. So do the consequences – insofar as these things can be separated in a lethal chain of cause and effect – of empire’s crimes. As I put it in the previous post:
I can’t recall when Iraq last made the headlines. Same goes for Libya. Both have been memory-holed: out of sight and – for a public infantilised by lies, its memory wiped clean, all capacity for nuance starved by editorial omission – out of mind too. Once the plot gets complicated, and scorched earth realities threaten Kool-Aid narratives of Bad Guys Taken Out by Good, our media move on – ‘more tea, vicar?’ – from the wreckage.
Caitlin continues:
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world …
Not 100% true but let’s not quibble, it’s close enough. A voice more soberly authoritative than Caitlin’s (all sources quoted approvingly by me have something of value to offer, and hers is a peerless facility for voicing concealed hence counterintuitive truths in accessible and strikingly colourful terms) says similar. Apropos the “liberation” of Syria, Brian Berletic has this to say:
The US spends millions of dollars every year, gathering more people who work to expand US reach in a targeted country, until it reaches critical mass, with a large segment of the population willing to vote a US-backed opposition party into power to make institutional changes within that country. Before you know it, political capture has taken place …
Brian Berletic, The New Atlas (podcast) December 8, 2024
Back to Caitlin:
… If you control the narrative you control not only when the historical record of violence begins but what kinds of violence qualify as violence. Killing people by depriving them of healthcare because that is how your company increases its profit margins? That’s not violence. Inflicting tyranny and abuse upon a deliberately marginalized ethnic group in an apartheid state? That’s not violence. Violence is when you respond to those aggressions with forceful aggressions of your own.
Need we look further than the responses of the West to those extremists who actually think genocide an unspeakable crime, even when the perpetrator is – for reasons set out here and here – an ally or proxy?
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Such distortions do not take place in a vacuum. They are inevitable in a Western world …
- pervaded by lies: look no further than advertising, which acclimatises us to mendacity as a thing quite unremarkable;
- morally rudderless, as the mutually contradictory but power-serving idiocies of identity politics are viewed with derision and incredulity in those parts of the planet not shown here:
- where the historic gains – paid for in tears, sweat and oceans of blood – of industrial capitalism over feudalism’s non productive monopolies have for half a century been steadily negated – with real wealth creation exported to the global south and the home economies now FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) dominated – by the rise of rentier capital, with its attendant hollowing out of any meaningful democracy in favour of circus acts fronted by clowns and venal mediocrities;
- where assumptions premised on five centuries of global supremacy become less tenable with each passing day, a truth whose implications our ruling elites – witness its absence as a thing in the historically high number of elections this year – refuse to share with us …
… in sum, a Western world where unearned profit for a tiny few (its much trumpeted appetite for risk a thing of the past) cannot but trump every other consideration: be it averting war and environmental disaster, or prioritising prosperity, harmony and rule of law.
Though I guess I already covered all this with “morally rudderless “.
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