Weltnachrichten – CA – The increasing separation from reality by the ruling elite masks their complicity – here’s how

Joe Biden’s victory immediately erased the Democratic Party’s longstanding accusation that Russia hijacked and compromised US elections. The Biden victory that the leaders of the Democratic Party and their courtiers in the media are now insisting on is proof that the democratic process is strong, unsullied, and that the system is working. The elections confirmed the will of the people.

But imagine if Donald Trump had been re-elected. Would the Democrats and pundits of the New York Times, CNN and MSNBC pay homage to a fair election process? Or, after four years of trying to question the integrity of the 2016 presidential contest, would they once again use the blunt instrument of Russian interference to paint Trump as Vladimir Putin’s Manchurian candidate?

Trump and Giuliani are vulgar and goofy, but they play the same slimy game as their Democratic opponents. The Republicans are the scapegoats of the deep state, the communists and now, bizarrely, Venezuela; the democrats scapegoat Russia. The increasing separation of the ruling elite from reality is intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by predatory global corporations and billionaires.

« This is a shameful thing that has been done in this country, » Giuliani said at his recent press conference. « Probably not much more shameful than the things these people did in office, which you didn’t and didn’t cover, and which you hide from the American people, but we’re allowing this, we are essentially using a Venezuelan voting machine to vote counting. We let that happen. We will be Venezuela. We can’t let that happen. We can’t allow these crooks, because that’s what they are, to steal an election from the American people. They voted for Donald Trump. You didn’t vote for Joe Biden. Joe Biden is at the forefront because of the fraudulent ballot papers, the illegal ballot papers that were produced and allowed to be used after the election was over. « 

Giuliani’s ranting was surpassed by Sidney Powell’s until yesterday another of Trump’s attorneys blamed the software for Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, for Trump’s loss and « the massive influence of communist money. ». « The software » was created so that Hugo Chavez would never lose an election again, and he didn’t do it after this software was created, « Powell said. « He won every single election and then they exported them to Argentina and other countries in South America and then brought them here. « 

Compare this to how Hillary Clinton warned during the last primary campaign that the Russians are « fostering » a candidate who is widely believed to be a Representative. Tulsi Gabbard, to run as a third party candidate for Russian interests. Clinton had previously called the 2016 Green candidate, Jill Stein, « Russian capital ». « She insisted, although special adviser Robert Mueller and his prosecutors found no evidence to support her charges, that the 2016 Trump campaign worked closely with Moscow and WikiLeaks – which she believes is a Russian front ». to defeat them. Hillary’s staff compiled a « hit list » in the final days of their 2008 campaign, as revealed in the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which lists those who were not loyal to the Clintons. They used a scale from 1 to 7.

« Stand back and think about it, » wrote Clinton in her book « What Happened » about the 2016 election. « The Russians hacked our voting systems. They got in. You tried to delete or change voter information. This should send a chill down the spine of every American. « 

Never mind that both ruling parties are silent about Israel’s massive interference in our elections, which their lobby groups are using to lavishly fund political candidates in both parties, and members of Congress and their families are flying to Israel to pick up junkets in seaside resorts to obtain. Israel’s interference in our political process, even when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress in 2015 without informing then-President Barack Obama to attack the President’s Iranian nuclear deal, dwarfs that of any other country, including Russia.

The two belligerent factions within the ruling elite, who mainly fight for the spoils of power while also serving corporate interests, are selling alternative realities. When the deep state and Venezuelan socialists or Russian intelligence agents pull the strings, no one in power is responsible for the anger and alienation caused by social inequality, the invulnerability of corporate power, the legalized bribery that defines our political process causing endless wars, austerity and de-industrialization. The social breakdown is instead the fault of shadowy phantom enemies who manipulate groups like Black Lives Matters or the Greens.

« The people who rule this country no longer have workable myths to distract the public and in a moment of extreme crisis they decided to foment civil war and defame the rest of us – black and white » instead admit a generation of corruption, betrayal and mismanagement, « writes Matt Taibbi.

These fictional stories are dangerous. They undermine the credibility of democratic institutions and electoral politics. They assume that news and facts are no longer true or false. Information is accepted or discarded depending on whether it offends or promotes one political group vis-à-vis another. While branches like Fox News have always existed as the arm of the Republican Party, this partisanship has now infected almost all news organizations, including publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with major information-dissemination and news platforms. A fragmented public with no common narrative believes whatever it wants to believe.

I initially assumed that this New York Times job ad for a Moscow correspondent was a parody of the onion. It was not. It speaks volumes about the self-immolation of the New York Times and the press.

JOB DESCRIPTION: Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains one of the greatest stories in the world. She sends out hit squads armed with nerve agents against her enemies, most recently against the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. The cyber agents are sowing chaos and disharmony in the West to tarnish their democratic systems while promoting their false version of democracy. It has used private military contractors around the world to secretly spread its influence. At home, hospitals fill up quickly with Covid patients while the president is hiding in his villa. If that sounds like a place you’d like to cover, we have good news: we will be opening a position for a new correspondent as Andy Higgins becomes our next head of the Eastern European office early next year.

Of course, any foreign interference charges brought here against Russia can be brought against the United States in both the present and the past, and even the implicit criticism of its pandemic response appears to be a textbook case of projection. More specifically, why would the Times even send someone to Moscow to cover what Russians think, feel, and how they see themselves and the world when they have already decided to be a cartoon villain? Why a Moscow office at all?

A parody answer widespread on the Internet imagined a parallel publication of Pravda for a U.. S.. . Correspondent:

JOB DESCRIPTION: Donald Trump’s America remains one of the greatest stories in the world. It sends its armies, drones, and agents all over the world to kill its enemies. The cyber agents sow chaos and disharmony, undermine and overthrow regimes, while promoting their false version of democracy. It has used private military contractors around the world to secretly spread its influence. At home, hospitals fill up quickly with Covid patients while the president is hiding on the golf course. If that sounds like a place you’d like to cover, then we have good news. We will have a position for a new correspondent.

I was a foreign correspondent for twenty years, fifteen of them with the New York Times. My job was to go bicultural, which requires hundreds of hours of language classes, to see the world from the perspective of those I have covered and to bring it back to an American audience. That kind of reporting is now anachronistic. The paper might as well hire the con man Jayson Blair again to sit in his apartment sniffing Coke while submitting fictional variants of the predetermined narrative the paper calls for. Or maybe computer algorithms can do the job.

I think I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it was the Times that produced a ten-part podcast of its reporter Rukmini Callimachi, based on interviews with a Muslim identified as Abu Huzayfah al-Kanadi who claimed to be a member of ISIS in the Middle East. He made garish reports of murders and crucifixions that he allegedly carried out. His stories, which take account of the rampant Islamophobia that is poisoning American society, were the audio version of snuff films. You were a lie too. The Canadian « Abu Huzayfah », whose real name was Shehroze Chaudhry, was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in September 2020 and charged with falsifying his story under Canadian joke laws.

The blatant partisanship and the discrediting of the truth across the political spectrum are rapidly driving the rise of an authoritarian state. The credibility of democratic institutions and electoral politics, already deeply corrupted by PACs, electoral college, lobbyists, disenfranchisement of third party candidates, gerrymandering and electoral repression, is being eroded.

Silicon Valley billionaires, including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, donated more than $ 100 million to a Democratic Super-PAC that campaigned for Biden in the final weeks of the election campaign sparked a spate of anti-Trump television ads. The heavy infusion of corporate funds in support of Biden was not done to protect democracy. It happened because these corporations and billionaires know that a Biden government will serve their interests.

The press has largely given up journalism. It has retreated into competing echo chambers that only appeal to true believers. This catering exclusively for one population group, which is directed against another population group, is economically profitable. But it also guarantees the Balkanization of the United States and brings us closer and closer to fratricide.

If Trump leaves the White House, millions of his angry supporters, hermetically sealed in hyperventilating media platforms that return their anger and hatred to them, will see the vote as fraudulent, the political system as rigged, and the establishment press as propaganda look at. I’m afraid they will violate Democratic Party politicians, the mainstream media, and those they demonize as conspiratorial members of the deep state, such as Dr.. . Anthony Fauci. The Democratic Party is responsible for this collapse, as is Trump and the Republican Party.

The choice of Biden is also very bad news for journalists like Matt Taibbi, Glen Ford, Margaret Kimberley, Glenn Greenwald, and Jeffrey St. . Clair or Robert Scheer, who refuse to be courtiers of the ruling elite. Journalists who fail to spit out the approved right-wing narrative, or alternatively the approved Democratic Party’s narrative, have a credibility that the ruling elite fear. The worst things will be â ???? and they will get worse as the pandemic kills hundreds of thousands and plunges millions of Americans into dire economic hardship – all the more those who try to hold the ruling elites, and especially the Democratic Party, accountable will be targeted and held accountable censored at one Wise, familiar to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, who is now in a London jail, facing possible extradition to the United States and life imprisonment.

Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties, including repeated abuse of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, the passage of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to enable the military to act as domestic police, and the Ordering the murder of U. . S.. . Citizens considered terrorists in Yemen were far worse than those of George W.. . bush. I suspect Biden’s attack on civil liberties will surpass that of the Obama administration.

The censorship was persistent during the election campaign. Digital media platforms such as Google, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook as well as the establishment press shamelessly worked as propaganda weapons for the Biden campaign. They were determined not to make the « mistake » they made in 2016 when they reported the malicious emails posted by WikiLeaks by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Although the emails were genuine, newspapers like the New York Times routinely refer to the Podesta emails as « disinformation. ». « This undoubtedly pleases the readership, 91 percent of whom are identified as Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. But it’s another example of journalistic misconduct.

After the election of Trump, the media, which is aimed at a readership of the Democratic Party, took action. The New York Times was one of the main platforms that reinforced Russiagate’s conspiracies, most of which turned out to be false. At the same time, the paper largely ignored the plight of the disposed working class that Trump supported. When the Russiagate story collapsed, the paper revolved around the breed, which was included in the 1619 project. The root cause of social decline? the neoliberal order, austerity measures and de-industrialization? was ignored as the naming would alienate the newspaper’s advertisers and the elites on which the newspaper depends for access.

After the 2020 elections began, the New York Times and other mainstream corporations censored and discredited information that could harm Biden, including a tape written by Joe Biden speaking to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who appears to be authentic. They gave credibility to any rumor, no matter how false, that was unfavorable for Trump. Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a New York Post story about the email allegedly found on Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop. Twitter banned the New York Post from its own account for over a week. Glenn Greenwald, whose article on Hunter Biden was censored by his editors at The Intercept, which he co-founded, resigned. He approved the email exchange with his editors about his article. The editors and writers of The Intercept ignored the textual evidence of censorship and launched a public character murder campaign against Greenwald. This filthy behavior by self-identified progressive journalists is a page out of the Trump game book and a sad comment on the collapse of journalistic integrity.

The censorship and manipulation of information was refined and perfected against WikiLeaks. When WikiLeaks tries to release information, botnets or distributed denial-of-service attacks hit them. Malware attacks WikiLeaks’ domain and website. The WikiLeaks site is routinely closed or is unable to make its content available to its readers. Attempts by WikiLeaks to hold press conferences distort the audio and damage the visual images. Links to WikiLeaks events will be delayed or shortened. Algorithms block the distribution of WikiLeaks content. Hosting services, including Amazon, have removed WikiLeaks from their servers. Julian Assange saw his bank accounts and credit cards frozen after the Iraqi war logs were published. WikiLeaks’ PayPal accounts have been disabled to cut off donations. In December 2017, the Press Freedom Foundation closed the anonymous funding channel for WikiLeaks, which was set up to protect the anonymity of donors. A well orchestrated smear campaign against Assange has been reinforced and made credible by the mass media and filmmakers such as Alex Gibney. Assange and WikiLeaks got there first. We’re next.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told CNN during the campaign that Russia’s disinformation efforts were « more problematic » than in 2016. He warned that « this time the Russians decided to cultivate U.. S.. . Citizens as assets. They try to spread their propaganda in the mass media. « 

This will be the Democratic Party’s official mantra, a vicious redbaiting campaign with no real reds, especially as the country is spiraling out of control. The reason I have a show on Russia-funded RT America is the same as Vaclav Havel only appeared on the US-funded Voice of America during communist control of Czechoslovakia. I didn’t choose to leave the mainstream media. I was pushed out. And as soon as someone is evicted, the ruling elite relentlessly discredits the few platforms that are ready to give them a hearing and the issues they raise.

« If the problem is cultivating ‘American citizens’ as ‘assets’ trying to bring ‘disruption’ into the mainstream media, the next logical step is to solicit internet platforms for accounts of an American journalist at the close. « The boldness of reporting material leaked by foreigners (the wrong foreigners, of course – it will still be okay to report things like the ‘black ledger’), » writes Taibbi, who has some of the best accounts of emerging censorship. « From Fox or the Daily Caller on the right, to left-wing outlets like the Consortium or the World Socialist Web Site, to writers like me – we are all clearly now in a series of new language restrictions, even if we are sticking to long-established ones factual standards. « 

Taibbi argues that the precedent for overt censorship took place when the major digital platforms â ???? Facebook, Twitter, Google, Spotify, YouTube? In a coordinated step, right-wing talk show host Alex Jones was blacklisted.

In the Soviet Union, the truth was often passed hand in hand in underground samizdat documents, secret copies of news and literature banned by the state. The truth will endure. It is heard by those who seek it. It will expose the mendacity of the mighty, however difficult it will be to get hold of it. Despotisms fear the truth. They know it’s a deadly threat. If we remain determined to live in the truth, we have a chance regardless of the cost.

Chris Hedges writes a regular original column for ScheerPost every two weeks. Click here to sign up for email notifications.

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Democratic Party, Joe Biden, Donald Trump