Listen to a reading of this article:

The US and its allies are pushing the world toward nuclear armageddon. The US and its allies armed Al Qaeda in Syria. The US and its allies are carrying out a literal genocide in Yemen. The US and its allies are deliberately starving children by the thousands. Shut up about Russia and China.

Desmond Tutu said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” This is especially true of the unjust situation in which the largest power structure on earth oppresses and tyrannizes populations around the world to force their obedience. Refusing to take a clear stance against that power structure is siding with it.

William Van Wagenen has a new article out with The Libertarian Institute documenting the mountains of evidence that the US and its allies were supporting Al Qaeda-tied militias in Syria from the beginning of the war, in direct contradiction of the mainstream narrative that that started later.

This is what happened in Syria, it’s what happened in Libya, and it’s what was on track to happen in Xinjiang before Beijing said “nah” and launched its crackdown. The west isn’t mad at Beijing for committing a “genocide”, it’s mad at Beijing for preventing one.

Like so many other western propaganda operations these days, this one is predominantly about China’s Belt and Road Initiative which it plans to use to help rise above US hegemony and create a multipolar world. The actual interest in Xinjiang has been about the fact that it is a key geostrategic region that the western empire would greatly benefit from balkanizing away from China so it can’t fulfill the crucial role planned for it in the BRI.

Criticize Beijing’s crackdown in Xinjiang all you want, but it is indisputably orders of magnitude less draconian than the US “war on terror” approach which has killed millions and displaced tens of millions since 9/11.

Yes, China’s government is more authoritarian than yours in some ways. Also, you’re being deceived by a massive, sweeping propaganda campaign about the things China’s government does and the threat it poses to you. Both of these things are true. They do not contradict each other.

If somebody somehow managed to leak 100 percent of all classified information on all US government malfeasance, it probably wouldn’t have the effect you’d imagine. The mass media would either ignore it or spin it into obscurity, and it would be quickly shuffled out of the spotlight. We may be sure this is true because there’s already more than enough publicly available information on US government depravity to completely discredit all of its leading institutions. The reason that information hasn’t caused uproar and unrest is because of narrative management. Propaganda is the ultimate enemy.

The real problem isn’t access to information so much as the way that information is presented to the average citizen. That’s why it’s so important to attack and discredit the means of information presentation at mass scale wherever there’s an opportunity. Imperial narrative control is our real prison.

You can understand why the US political system refuses to bring Americans out of debt and impoverishment by imagining what would happen if it didn’t. Ordinary people would use their new financial influence to create a system that serves them rather than serving a globe-spanning empire. In a system where money equals power, people would begin using their new economic power to change political and economic realities for their benefit. They’d begin working to divert wasteful war machine spending to themselves. The oligarchs who control both US political parties can’t have that.

Money is power and power is relative, so those with lots of money are incentivised to keep as much money as possible for themselves to maximize their power. If everyone is a king then nobody is a king. There is a tremendous amount of power riding on keeping Americans poor and busy.

Echo chamber dynamics and cognitive biases are the uncrowned rulers of the human worldview. They shape our perceptions of what’s happening in the world and tend to do so without ever even being noticed. That’s why introspection and self-awareness are fundamental to understanding.

The world is burning and psychopaths are brandishing armageddon weapons in the name of global domination. If you are going to spend any of your remaining time on this planet fighting, it would probably be wise to spend it fighting for something that truly matters.

__________________________

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43 responses to “Refusing To Oppose US Tyranny Is Siding With It: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”

  1. Refusing to oppose tyrrany is siding with it, the ‘US’ merely happens to be tyrrany’s most publicly visible face mask at the moment.
    When tyrrany has no further use for it, another (of any color whatsoever) will already have been prepared and chosen.

  2. EVERTHING generated by the Rothschilds owned and controlled media is a LIE !

    Carbon Dioxide emissions would actually cool the planet – NOT warm it !

    Russia has been probing the ocean depths for decades and found a very slight warming of the ocean floor which they attribute to a very slight warming of the earths molten core !

    Which is a lot more feasible than the BS fabricated theory that the outside temperature of the earth is warming the depths of the oceans !!!

  3. Caitlin, Russian scientists have been studying the effect of the fallout from Chernobyl on the animals living in the area, after the people had been evacuated. They found that the animals are doing fine. They concluded that it was the people who were the problem in the animals’ lives, and not nuclear radiation.

    And we hippies of the 60s had a saying: “If a lie goes down in front of you and you don’t call it (out, for what it is), then you bought into it.” We knew this stuff back then.

    1. That’s not even remotely true, the animals have greatly diminished lifespans and far worse health, they’re just doing better than when humans were there. It gives an insight into the destructiveness of human ecocide, not the safety of nuclear radiation.

  4. So the majority of humans see the world with their senses which are manipulated by other humans to create a world view which is desired by the manipulator towards the targeted human population the decided outcome of the cognitive enslavement and deception of the human species is to enforce generational hierarchical aristocratic privilege of which the homo sapiens who inhabit planet earth are the dominant species ..If a person can consider the queen of England moving out of Buckingham palace into a council flat as old people do then change is possible but then she is set in place by a world order that will destroy this finite planet to prevent such a tectonic shift of hierarchical aristocratic privilege debating the possibility of nuclear war is just another manipulative implant by the ruling class as is religion as is covid as is war you want to save the world become aware that while we debate the merits of human actions humanity has enslaved this finite planet and it is dying because of hierarchical greed and proletariat ignorance humanity has always had enemies throughout history and they have always been other humans read orwells 1984 still relevant….

  5. Actually, it’s difficult to talk about propaganda without evoking people’s gullibility which is what makes propaganda’s success possible. Ain’t much we can do about it but it’s interesting to study. I was surprised to see the other day, in this very comment section, somebody – otherwise globally skeptic about the Covid scam – answer in essence to someone else saying that it was just a flu: “Did people fall in the streets in Wuhan because of a flu?”
    Now, it was understandable that, at the time these images of two or three people falling and one lying down in the street (IIRC) were broadcast, the general panic would lead a majority of naturally pusillanimous people to believe what they were told: in monstrous China full of CCP bloodthirsty murderers with their knives between their teeth ready to slit your throat while you’re asleep (shiver), people were falling like flies in the streets because of a new disease called Covid – when they were not welded into their flats by barbaric authoritarian police thugs. These yellow devils won’t stop at nothing! kinda stuff. They ain’t like us Gladys!
    Now, two years later, how can anybody in his right mind still take that bullshit seriously? We’ve had two years to realize that people who die from Covid don’t fall in the streets because they’re sick in bed. I don’t know what these images were but they were certainly not people falling in the streets from Covid. It could be anything from a hidden camera stunt to a staged psyop. The camera had to be there when the guys fell. How does that happen? You’re filming a street where nothing is going on (which is a strange idea to start with) and lo and behold, somebody falls right in your field of vision and lo and behold again, you immediately know he’s got this new disease called Covid and you email your shot to a TV channel? How does that happen? Not once but two or three times? Well… it doesn’t.
    Since nobody’s fallen in the street from Covid ever since and China has kept its number of Covid deaths at 4,636 for two years, you can pretty well deduce, without being Sherlock Holmes that 1/ this “people falling in the streets from Covid” bullshit was just that and 2/ the whole Covid commotion in the West is a power-grab and money-making scam. Otherwise why was it contained so easily in China? Because they welded people in their flats? Gotta laugh! In another (debunked) video, you can also hear people’s screams come out of a whole high rise buildings neighborhood like in a horror movie. That the New York Times and CNN publish that shit is one thing but that people still believe it two years later is an absolute wonder. That’s what makes propaganda successful: people will believe anything if it’s shot into them in a moment of fear. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself and fighting fear relentlessly and by any means possible is the only way to peace.

    1. Native Chinese speakers say the screams from high rises weren’t screams of anguish and horror so much as people calling to each other, kind of “I’m here!” “So am I!” Or as ravers would put it, “Make some f’ing noise!” – which makes a lot of sense when normal life’s come to a halt, everyone’s indoors, and the streets are silent.

  6. Here’s the most important question of all. Just exactly WHAT do people do after they’re all woke up — pick up a gun?; guillotine some VIPs?; march hand in hand down Penn. Ave. forever and demand, demand, demand that the Elite behave better, or else?
     
    Here’s what you are eventually going to HAVE TO DO because
     
    there. is. no. other. way.
     
    If you do not want More Of The Same that you’ve gotten after every election in the past, do not vote for another R or D, ever, no matter what an R or D promises! Jimmy Dore explains EXACTLY why.

  7. We have moved from a MAD world (Mutually Assured Destruction), to a SAD world (Self Assured Destruction).
    The Russian S-500 Missile Defense System can pluck our missiles from the sky, nuclear and conventional.
    America and the Collective West has no such defense.
    Should we attempt to use nuclear weapons when we lose a conventional war, as we will, then we invite a catastrophic response by the new hypersonic missiles, against which we have no defense.
    That is why the Russians, backed by China and Iran, have issued an ultimatum which they know in advance the Americans and Collective West will not comply with, they are forcing the issue.
    We are walking into a “Bear” trap that has been in the works for a decade or more.
    Either we capitulate and admit our rivals have the upper hand.
    Or we are forced to capitulate and accept terms of surrender that will be far worse.
    We can never catch up with Russia and China’s superior missile offence and defense capability.
    Plan B for the West will be to have a deadly plague in one hand and the vaccine in the other.
    That would bring the world back to temporary MAD equilibrium.
    Our fangs and claws must be drawn before that happens.
    Which is why the issue will be settled this year.
    One way or the other.

    1. I have seen some hints about what you are saying when reading the news headlines lately. I think USA and Britain too want to start a world war because they hope that the outcome of it will be their preferred world order (as after WW II). And they want Australia to support them from the other side of the globe. (I am completely opposed to any war, not to mention a world war.) But these folks are literally making arrangements to start it.
      Even though in the past the greatest nuclear risk was due to an accident, as of now they are seriously planning a first strike and how to win (there are publications online with the estimates of loss of life in USA, Russia etc.). Thinking that a world war will follow their “scenario” shows how they deceive themselves and us. If nothing else works, they will continue to starve 30% of the world’s population, or more, with their “economic sanctions”.
      There is even a conspiracy theory of “depopulation”. If you look at what the governments of the opposing (major countries) are doing, it increasingly looks like their goal is not safety of their citizens, but depopulation of the whole planet. I wonder who is paying for this, or who will benefit?

      1. The survivors are the ones who benefit. Too many people, not enough resources. The system was strained even before covid disruption. It was just the final nail. The smart people saw this coming ten years ago. The 08 financial crash was the first big warning.

        1. The FAKE 2008 financial crisis was orchestrated by Rothschilds yo give them an excuse to print more money out of thin air !
          Caitlin has finally ‘got’ it – EVERYTHING (even COVID) is about trying to stop the BRI – which will spell the end of the Rothschilds banking cartel !
          Putin has already said that the greatest gift he can give his people is to release them from the shackles of the Rothschilds !

  8. Ah! Now that the late Archbishop has finally made it into the purview of caitlinjohnstone.com, we can rest assured that he was not simply joyously dancing around in his tutu, speaking truth; in the garb of institutional religion, the world over, for all those years.

    1. Many in the West are Christians, including many with great influence, such as Blair, Bush, Biden, Pence and Pompeo, to name but a few. Quoting Chomsky or Trotsky isn’t likely to sway them, but Archbishop Tutu or Martin Luther King might be harder for them to dismiss as godless heathen cranks and commies. Tutu’s had quite a few obituaries and eulogies in the mainstream press recently, kind of making out he was a decent, liberal, moral, upstanding kind of guy. I think it’s a good opportunity for pointing out what he had to say about nuclear weapons, the war on Iraq, apartheid in Israel, and so on. And I pretty much agree with him on those issues, so I can do it in all sincerity, regardless of his religious opinions.

      1. The Roman Empire was a slave society. Apart from its potential economic impact, the suffering of a slave was something to be laughed at or mocked…if it were noticed at all. Along with the games, where slaves battled each other (or wild animals) to the death, crucifixion of slaves or rebels was a popular form of public entertainment. NONE of the humane values of today’s left would have come into existence, much less spread to be expressed here and elsewhere, had it not been for the now-despised “religious opinions” that began to take hold in the first century and were thereafter intermittently embodied in people like Desmond Tutu.

  9. This is a gem. After refusing to send an official delegation to Beijing for the Winter Olympics (to which no US diplomats or officials had been invited), the US is now applying for eighteen three-month visas for its officials, and indicating it may want another forty.
    https://news.antiwar.com/2021/12/27/us-wants-china-visas-for-18-officials-to-attend-olympics-despite-boycott/

  10. I am going to take an opposing view on this being neutral is taking a side. My personal mental health depends on ignoring alot of what is happening worldwide. Most of it I simply cannot affect one way or another. Peace of mind comes from looking within instead of without. Getting angry or upset will change nothing but stress yourself. Be aware but also be pragmatic of your place in the world. Do what you can and dont worry about the rest.

    1. In the video on the Destruction of the Mind, it is explained that elimination of contact with other people is a requirement for development of Mass Psychosis, which is a prerequisite for Totalitarianism, fascism being a form of totalitarianism.
      The writeup on Klaus Schwab is horrific, and I only read some of it, but let’s just say he is not the only one who is trying to do this, and that is a problem. Our billionaire’s wealth went up 70% during the pandemic, so there will be more who want “prosper in new economy” like that.

  11. I think you need to distinguish between narrative management in the US+vassal states vs global narrative management. There’s zero evidence that Russia, China, plenty of parts of the Middle East have any brainwashing by US narratives.

    All you need to do to escape narrative brainwashing is find non-Western sources of information. You need to be careful not to assume they are true, but they are certainly not conforming to the western brainwashing.

  12. Actually I think that Tutu was quoting Paulo Freire/ “Pedagogy of of the Oppressed.”

  13. The West may control the narrative (propaganda) against China but China controls the outcomes (results). For example, the USA has dismally lost the Trumps trade war with China. Australia has lost a significant amount of trade with China. Canada has lost 4500 workers from Huawei in Canada. Covid-19 is out of control in the West with no end in sight to end or control the pandemic.

    What most people must realise if there is a nuclear war then the next war will be fought with sticks and stones that if there is anyone left on the planet to fight a war.

    If anyone wants a war with China then they and their family members (sons and daughters) must be on the front line leading from the front. The question that needs to be answered how many parents want to send their sons and daughters to die in the South China trying to do what?

  14. You are my favorite critic of U,S,aggression/empire but do you see the vital role patriotism plays in justifying doing bad things to people whose only crime is to not be one of us and to have something we want? Your sister Diana has given me a grnat quote that I will be including in my critique of patriotism and I would love if you offered one as well, ps I’ll let you guys know when my screed is ready for prime time and hope it will help the severely lacking case against patriotism as a license to kill.

    1. I believe it is important to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. Far too often nationalism is passed off as patriotism.

    2. Patriotism means loving your country (which includes all people living in it). Love does not equal hate. Perhaps some people do not know that. Someone who places his/her ideology above other people is not a patriot but is a zealot or similar.

  15. Multiple threats = Multiple fears.

    While those who can afford to, engage in retail therapy, alcohol and drug consumption, junk foods, their huge televisions, their smartphones, dumbed down entertainment, corporate ‘sport’ and flag waving, to assuage their fear/s. The 1% sit back and count their profits.
    In every single nation on this beleaguered Earth.

  16. > “China’s government is more authoritarian than yours in some ways”

    when we think of “authoritarian” forces acting on the citizens of a nation, we should include all the dimensions of externally imposed pressure: poverty, ill-health, homelessness, fear, etc. ie .. all those social ills are dimensions of oppression. The “democratic” US Gov is happy to have all those social injustices in place to oppress the people and keep them well away from acquiring power.

    China is, withot doubt, under threat from the virtuous democratic (/snark) US Empire which is aiming for China to suffer destructive chaos and be reduced to a slave state.
    China is reducing poverty, provides channels for the people to influence of government direction, provides a safe environment This is happening because China is self-governed, unlike the US Empire where its nations are governed by and for their powerful.
    The threats to China require the self-discipline that would be found in any dangerous situation. This is the self-discipline that the Western powers are whining about (and scorning as “authoritarian”) because it foils the social/political/economic erosion that they hope for.

    1. Every time I see this description of China as “authoritarian” I just wonder what people mean by it. I have lived here on and off for 14 years and now continuously for over a year. What is this authoritarianism? I have to get a visa to stay here. I have to register with the police, the registration lasts a year. And that’s it. Now I come and go as I please. Nobody is following me. Nobody has ever stopped me and asked for my papers. I have never received an unwelcome knock on the door at night or any other time. My friends, Chinese and foreign, they all live normal lives (virus free I might add – I read yesterday that there have been more covid deaths in one factory in the US this year (5) than in the whole of China – 3). I am double vaccinated, it was not compulsory, but if I want to travel on public transport or enter certain buildings I need the evidence on my phone, quite reasonably in my view. China now stands apart from the rest of the world in putting the health and welfare of its citizens first, and independent surveys show that the regard for the government by its people consistently tops the polls. I am very grateful to be allowed to be here and would not choose to live anywhere else: I have seen friends in tears when they could not get their visa renewed.

      For entertainment I sometimes read UK newspapers online to see the latest bunkum report, not to try to rebut it, no point: for example, Peng Shuai did not make an accusation of sexual assault, it was clear from her memo that the relationship was consensual but no media outlet would print a correction, they just repeated the lie again and again, which was first concocted by the New York Times. This past week the focus was on the authoritarian “crackdown” on Christmas celebrations: well there were Christmas trees and decorations in the malls and plenty of activity in the bars and I went to a most enjoyable party. The police did not attend. I also learned online that the CIA through its subsidiaries is channelling massive funds to anti-Chinese writers when they get their tripe published in newspapers or on Youtube, accuracy is not essential, that explains a lot. And yes, of course, we understand perfectly what the fuss about Xinjiang is all about. And as for democracy, if that is what the UK and USA (and Australia!) enjoys, give me meritocracy every time

  17. “Refusing to take a clear stance against that power structure is siding with it.” Fighting tooth and nail against Orwellian Vaccine Mandates is an example of a “clear stance against that power.” “[S]iding with” those wholly oppressive and colluded measures as a supposed lefty reveals more of you than being a Shit Lib; it also reveals your true (empty) core. “There is a tremendous amount of power riding on keeping Americans poor and busy.” And, the laptop elite (left) have received new marching orders from the deep state to keep everyone “busy” worrying about aggressions from Russia and China. Key to those orders: “We are in a Defensive mode.”
    https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/19/health-wealth-digital-passports-surveillance-capitalism/
    https://seaclearly.com/2021/12/21/will-you-accept-a-microchip-will-you-have-a-choice

    1. SOMEONE, I kind of agree with you. Do you really think that China, Russia and the United States will risk having all of their infrastructure destroyed. Would they dare attack the Golden Triangle of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
      ~
      If they needed a distraction as a cover for the take over of the world by multi-national corporations, through by Vaccine Passports/Social Credit Systems, the fear of nuclear war between the United States, Australia, China and Russia, would certainly do the trick.

      1. As I keep explaining, the real risk of nuclear war is not that anyone will deliberately start one, it’s that one will be started as a result of malfunction, miscommunication or misunderstanding, as nearly happened multiple times during the last cold war. The more tensions escalate, the likelier this becomes. No idea why so many Covid skeptics see this reality as something which conflicts with or competes with their area of concern. It doesn’t. This isn’t a dynamic you can understand through the lens of Covid skepticism. You can’t understand every single dynamic in the world by looking at vax passports and digital IDs. Just because it’s what you’re focused on doesn’t mean everything in the world is about it. This should really be common sense.

        1. The ability of the people to have any impact on waging war is small enough now and will be zero once we are completely suveiled and completely deprived of free speech, which is what “covid” is well on its way to enabling, with the help of those who, for whatever reason, do not take a stand.

          1. Covid’s only accelerated surveillance and censorship, which were already increasing well before. If it hadn’t been covid, it’d have been some other excuse.
            Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, have been around since 1945.

          2. Yeah that’s silly in multiple ways. Opposing nuclear brinkmanship in no way conflicts with or competes with concerns about the erosion of free speech and escalation of surveillance, which I have of course taken a very strong and consistent stand on.

  18. I see you start with a picture of and quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I’ve read and heard a lot of eulogies for him in the days following his death, but very little about his calls for Israel to be recognised as an apartheid state with nuclear weapons.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/31/joe-biden-us-pretence-israel-nuclear-weapons

    1. And I came across this:
      http://www.defenddemocracy.press/desmond-tutu-fierce-opponent-of-south-african-and-israeli-apartheid-dies-at-90/
      Beyond his home country, Tutu was an outspoken critic of militarism and imperialism in the Global North, calling for former U.S. President George W. Bush and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to face prosecution at the International Criminal Court over their invasion and occupation of Iraq.

      Tutu was also a defender of Palestinians’ rights and a critic of Israel’s violent policies targeting millions of people in Gaza and the West Bank, comparing their treatment to the apartheid system. …
      In 2014, as the Israeli Defense Forces carried out attacks that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians — the vast majority of whom were civilians — Tutu wrote an exclusive article in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, calling for a global boycott of Israel.

  19. Right now I have my hands full dealing with the COVID-19 operation that is poised to turn every western nation into an authoritarian regime owned and operated by centralized global corporations and the rest of us will own nothing and be happy. Do you think the rest of us will really be happy when all we do is work for the global elite and get nothing in return for it.
    ~
    The EU has said that they will defend Ukraine if Russia invades. The U.S. has been less committal, but it would stand to reason that they wouldn’t leave the EU to fend for themselves.
    ~
    Then there is the China/Taiwan/Australia situation which could blow up into a full scale conflict at the touch of a match.
    ~
    How do global corporations fit into this picture, since most conflicts end up benefiting global corporations and not the people who inhabit those countries where the conflict takes place?
    ~
    How doers the GPPP and the WEF fit into this picture?
    ~
    What’s in it for the average person living in these countries?

  20. Re: Fighting Propaganda. US Agency for Global Media currently has a budget of almost one billion dollars.
    US Congress is about to give it another half a billion dollars towards anti-China propaganda under the U.S. “Innovation” and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), sponsored by Senator Chuck Schumer

  21. July 2013 “Americans Finally Have Access to American Propaganda”

    “A law went into effect this month that ends the ban on U.S. government-made propaganda from being
    broadcast to Americans. In a remarkably creative spin, the supporters of this law say that allowing Americans to see American propaganda is actually a victory for transparency.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/americans-finally-have-access-american-propaganda/313305/

  22. Same is true of this plandemic. Refusing to oppose is siding with it.

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