Media MANUFACTURES CONSENT for war with Russia
All corporate media is desperately attempting to drag us towards a new cold war
*This was originally posted on my old newsletter on June 21*
Every time in the last few years that an American President has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the mainstream media has responded to this with wishes for the American one to be ‘tougher’ with their Russian counterpart. Today let’s break down what that means, the dangers of being ‘tougher’ with Russia and why the Media is so desperate to spread this narrative.
So, what does being ‘tougher’ with Russia mean, in the eyes of the corporate media. Given that they complained about President Trump being too ‘soft’ with the former Soviet leaders during his time in office when in actual fact he was piling NATO armies on the border, heavily funding Ukrainian militia’s and blocked a key pipeline between Russia and Germany, all of which are very anti-Russia, it is unclear as to what being the right level of toughness with the biggest land mass in the world is good enough for CNN and MSNBC. However, it seems that war is the only thing that they will deem suitable, given that everything short of it is too weak, in their view.
In my opinion, America’s strength is in soft power, based through negotiation and the eventual global shutdown of nuclear weapons to prevent another incident like we saw nearly 60 years ago in Cuba. Unfortunately, nobody on the world stage representing a major country seems to be willing to do this. In fact, they seem to be looking to do the opposite. As we have already established, President Trump increased the volume of policies that were anti-Russia, but the neoliberal media decided that that was not enough. It seems that they want full-on war. It feels self-explanatory but at this point it seems to need to be explained, war is bad. Killing innocent civilians – which is what inevitably happens during war – does good for no-one in the real world. It pits the world against each other again, like we tried a few times during the 20th century. None of them worked out too well for anyone. But, despite even these superficial problems with full-on war, the media still lambasted Trump for his weakness that never was, which were, in some ways, only one step away from this endpoint. During the reign of number 45, Fox news was, weirdly, the somewhat sane ones – barely – concerning Russia, but that was only because their guy could do no wrong in their eyes.
The even more hideous thing about this is the pure partisan brain worms that MSM seems desperate to impress upon us. When President Trump was commander-in-chief, the neoliberal media told us that we needed to be 'tougher' on Russia. Fox said that he was being perfect. Neither of those are true, but, if we go for a lesser of two evils argument, fox is the winner of this battle. However, when Biden comes into power and continues most of the policies on Russia that his predecessor did, we get told that he is standing up against Russia by the neoliberal media, and by Fox we are told that he is being too soft. To start with the Democrat-leaning corporations, the idea that Biden is ‘standing up to Russia’ is based in reality. There are a couple of problems with it, however. As we have already discussed, he shouldn’t be this hawkish against another powerful nation. Secondly, however, he is being LESS hawkish than his predecessor was on policy, and CNN is acting as if he isn’t. He is being a slightly better leader on issues concerning Russia, and MSNBC twists his policies to suit their anti-Russia narrative. They are acting, based on flimsy evidence, that Biden is being ‘tougher’ than Trump. Very marginally, he isn’t, and that is a good thing, for the reasons laid out above. Just worth mentioning that the ‘flimsy evidence’ mentioned there is things such as Vladimir Putin looking away from Joe Biden as they shake hands. This is because Putin is moving his head towards the cameras – something all world-leaders do when they meet – and he was photographed as he moved his head. Joe Biden had presumably forgotten to look at the cameras. Moving on to Fox becoming more hawkish on Russia – moving back to the general opinion they had under President Obama – this is simply stupid. Yes, Biden is being marginally softer on Russia, with the only real difference being is approval of the Russia-Germany pipeline, but he is still being overwhelmingly hawkish. He is still being tough on Syria, Russia’s closest ally. He is still leaving NATO troops on the Russian border. And he is still funding Ukrainian militias. Now, I disagree with all 3 of those policies, as they are provocative of potential advancement of war with Russia, something we should all seek to avoid. But Fox say that they aren’t enough, even though they were when they were done by President Trump. When a Democrat is in office, Fox seem to want war. CNN and MSNC are the same when it comes to Republican President’s. What this all shows is that the Mainstream Media bases their view of what policies are acceptable on Russia on whether the guy in the White House as a (D) or an (R) next to their name.
There remains one last question. Why is the media so desperate for war? One would think that, if they had any intellectual knowledge in the slightest – by which I mean an IQ above the level of a 5-year-old – they would understand that, in layman’s terms, war is bad. But they disagree. So why? There are two reasons for CNN and MSNBC, and one for Fox, with that reason being shared. Corporate donors from the Military Industrial Complex, from weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon, fund corporate media. This means that these ‘journalists’ know that their company is being funded by those who are desperate for war, so they can make fore money by selling their weapons. For this reason, they push a pro-war narrative against another major world power. The other reason, for the corporations running interference for the Democratic party, is simple: an excuse for Hillary Clinton losing in 2016. It seems incredible that these corporatist elitists are still unable to understand that they lost an election in 2016, so they continue to try to pull the wool over our eyes through Russia-gate propaganda. As the Mueller report told us, there is no evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia. That was made up by corporate neoliberals. But, despite evidence, they continue to push anti-Russia propaganda, to cover up the fact that they lost an election 5 years ago. They feel the need to continue pushing anti-Russia brainwashing, despite the fact that the basis of their original switch from neutrality to pure hatred of Russia was started by Hillary Clinton’s loss, and a lie resulting from it.
All this is not defending Vladimir Putin. As Bill O’Reilly put it, the man is ‘a killer’. But that doesn’t mean we need to go to war with him. How about we let stop the deaths of civilians by preventing war with his nation, rather than pushing for it relentlessly. That would, by definition, stop unnecessary deaths.