Listen to a reading of this article:

Kremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the UK, where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube. Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia.

In the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you years in prison.

Twitter, historically the last of the major online platforms to jump on any new internet censorship escalation, is now actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter”. This censorship-by-algorithm tactic is exactly what I speculated might emerge after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned back in November, due to previous comments supportive of that practice by his successor Parag Agrawal.

Twitter is also placing warnings labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even ‘like’ a post linking to such outlets on the platform. It has also placed the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of those platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. Some are complaining that this new label has led to online harassment amid the post-9/11-like anti-Russia hysteria that’s currently turning western brains into clam chowder.

https://twitter.com/calebmaupin/status/1498329706889977866

This is all on top of all the other drastic escalations in censorship which came roaring in at the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I personally find it a bit scary how fast it’s all happening, how fine people are with it, and how much worse it seems likely to get.

Others agree.

“The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship,” tweets journalist Michael Tracey. “Go ahead and argue it’s justified, but at least don’t be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.”

“The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes ‘political truth’ and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one,” writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. “They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.”

And I can’t help but find it odd that the fight for freedom and democracy should require such copious amounts of censorship. You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn the other side of the debate about a war which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting, rather than being forced to consume only western mass media narratives which tell us this is happening exclusively because Vladimir Putin is evil and Hitlery and hates freedom.

https://twitter.com/Tom_Fowdy/status/1498434192907984899

You’d think a society devoted to truth and freedom, the kind of society western powers purport to be trying to defend in Ukraine, would not require a Ministry of Truth to protect us from “disinformation” about a government long targeted by the US-centralized empire, or from trying to seek out alternative perspectives beyond the homogeneous blanket of authorized mainstream narratives.

You’d think the truth would be more robust than that. You’d think freedom would extend farther than that. You’d think democracy would be more tolerant of dissent than that.

Almost like this has nothing to do with freedom, or truth, or democracy.

Almost like it never has.

Kind of makes you wonder if perhaps rallying behind the idea that it’s fine to censor people to preserve the establishment narrative about things, like Covid-19 and vaccines for example, was every bit the slippery slope that everyone warned it would be. If perhaps we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire.

And it kind of makes you wonder, as we watch the same empire that just destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen being entrusted to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world, if we might perhaps be better off with a lot more dissent, rather than a lot less.

_________________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Liked it? Take a second to support Caitlin Johnstone on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!

94 responses to “Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship”

  1. Friday morning here in New Mexico. FYI – last evening I was unable to access the Consortium News web-site for several hours, this morning it is available, but – I am unable to post a comment to Caitlin’s (same piece here) piece on censorship. Big Bother says NO to alternative views on this subject. Makes me so proud that they are protecting me from the Truth with their constant lying about how we got into this place. Will this comment be permitted ?

  2. Unable to not only access RT but also unable to post a comment that can be considered critical of the official narrative of the US. Would love to write more but wondering if even this comment will be allowed.

  3. SomeoneInAsia Avatar
    SomeoneInAsia

    Looks like the Biden administration, and for that matter all of the elite in the Western world, have now been collectively possessed by the Devil.

    I wonder if before long they’re also going to ban all Russian authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and also the music of Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rimsky-Korsakov?

    1. Alcheminister Avatar
      Alcheminister

      That’s what “freemason” hierarchy and qlippoth is. The more “degrees”, the more possessed they become, the more hollow. It’s ironic, since “freemason” means enslaved and destructive (because of their attempts at absolute power and control).

      1. Do you really know anything about freemasonry. or were you denied membership for some reason ??

        1. I know enough about it to know it’s bullshit that I don’t want to associate with.

          Bizarrely, a “freemason founding family” girl once lived here with me, for what purposes, I don’t know.

          But yeah I’ve seen, experienced and know some shit that would probably break your brains.

        2. Oh also, tell me about 47.

          And you might not have noticed, but “freemasonry” is a a distraction, a veil for, I guess “Lilith”/”Hecate”, whatever you want to call that. That’s why it’s so “manly”. That’s also why children and women are so abused in society.

          Have you watched Dark City? It’s a sort of parallel of “freemason” society.

          And there really are inexplicable sort of “supernatural” shit around, hey. I could probably mention send you some “messages”.

        3. Here’s one example, try explain these two subsequent comments (I’ve “predicted” rather a lot of this sort of stuff):
          https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/06/the-mainstream-bubble/#comment-318181

          Also, I warned people about covid fraud shit in January 2020, with explanations (coz I did a sort of spontaneous shamanic ritual on New Years 2019/2020, went to the “other side” and saw/experienced some horrible shit regarding pharma).

          Check the comments here (comments button way at the bottom) and tell me how inaccurate it was, I even mentioned opioids in the context, what happened? Oh and Zika (Booby Malone being a prominent souled out peddled of malicious garbage, relating to shit like Zika)
          https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-global-coronavirus.html

          1. Excuse my typing. I haven’t had enough beer today.

    2. Alcheminister Avatar
      Alcheminister

      Oh and it’s not just in the west, the other side is on the same coin. Mammon worshiping anti-life industrialist scum. There is almost no difference between corporate statist capitalism (“communism”) and capitalist state (“capitalism”). Same fraudulent fundamentals, both tending to the ‘A’ hierarchy (notice the dividing line), huge amounts of parallels.

      Collectivism is a plague.

  4. From what I can still glimpse on Russian websites, it says Western reports of missiles and bombs hitting Kiev and other Ukrainian cities ARE NOT TRUE.
    Ukrainian government is trying to buy time by delaying negotiations.
    This must be what we are not allowed to see in US news.

  5. I cannot get tass.com in the US since yesterday
    Thats official Russian news channel.
    This is not only censorship issue, but the issue of our rights.
    The various state agencies, financed by our obligation to pay them taxes, make decisions about our freedom.

    1. Just learned about sanctions on Russian cats.

  6. The supposed “war” is obviously staged, to “justify” some other garbage and distract from say…

    When people get clued up about virology being fraud, viruses not existing or functioning as claimed, contagious diseases being mythical, all vaccines being toxic garbage peddled based on fraud with no benefit whatsoever, that the entire pasteur methodology is backwards and addresses (as well as frames) results as causes with non-essential toxins, based on reductionist idiocy for an industry that relies on sickness and religious belief, for exploitation?

    And they desperately need to have people distracted from that, coz the stakes are huge?

    Notice any “stealth” “pandemic” “agreements” in the EU earlier today/yesterday?

    1. Behold the irrefutable health benefits of vaccines (any and every vaccine)!

      https://ghostofjfk.substack.com/p/behold-health-benefits-of-vaccines

      Oh btw, any protocol is inherently failure. Pasteur methodology is backwards (framing and addressing results as causes by attacking the body with toxins) for an industry that requires belief and sickness, there is no “immune system” (it’s an abstraction of health status to avoid addressing health status), any “immune response” is also provably a measure of damage, a reaction to toxicity (physics be like that), and does not provide any protection in the future. An antibody response, for instance, is a sign of cu rrent toxicity, not future defense, antibodies also have nothing to do with supposed “viruses”. Aside from that, contagion is a myth, SC2 is a synthetic construct and virology is entirely fraud (any aspect of it which I can explain away).

  7. …..rt getting the 86 all around…dr. seuss convicted of kiddie porn….a possible democracy not now….trump&kardashian ’24……free speech tv in amerikkka unplugged……disneyland declares nationhood…..recaptcha?……

  8. Talked to people at the grocery and an office, and neighbours.
    Seems Americans think the war is between Russia and Ukraine, but still do not realise it is because of new American nuclear installations in Europe.
    If you recall the MSM, they do not talk about American nukes, just about Putins’s.

  9. not-from-this-world Avatar
    not-from-this-world

    I would rather write “Freedom and Democracy” between quotes in the article title…

  10. Christian J. Chuba Avatar
    Christian J. Chuba

    We have no choice Caitlin. If we do not silence RT then the pro-Russian / anti-American / anti-Ukrainian coverage will drown out everything else. Have you watched CNN? It’s one Russian talking about after another [sarcasm]

  11. The Covid vaccine debacle has made the globalists change the definition of the word. Yes, I know, it’s a stiff way to start which will send our embedded Pharma troll farm windmill fighters through the roof but it’s a fact that no matter how much energy they invest into calling the truth-seekers “disinformation agents”, one just has to glance at the figures to see that the number of Covid new cases have never been as high in the West as since 80% of its population has been vaccinated. Yikes! So the Merriam Webster dictionary produced a new definition of vaccines last May which will probably make its way into the courts: “a preparation that is administered – as by injection – to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease.” Instead of “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease.”
    The difference? In spite of the hair-splitting contest between various “fact-checkers” (aka Big Pharma shills), the fact is that for decades, people have been given the impression that a vaccine would immunize them against a disease, i.e. prevent them from getting it, be it smallpox, measles or yellow fever. According to the new definition, the vaccines now only “stimulate the body’s immune response”. They do what they can. They might not stimulate enough to keep you alive but we are free from the previous notion that it is administered to “produce immunity” – or admittedly “artificially increase” it. There’s a very subtle conceptual nuance here… And this is indeed more accurate, not only for the Covid vaccine but also the flu one – even though the fact that half of the people who die from the flu each year had been vaccinated remains unknown to the vast majority, for which you get the flu shot to ward off the flu, period. If you die nonetheless, it’s climate change.
    Of course, in everyday life, the song remains the same (“the vaccine protects everybody”), which is why the money-makers insist on mandates – except in civilized countries like Iceland, Sweden, the UK or Spain which are now headed for herd immunity, claiming that in view of the vaccine debacle – even if they don’t put it in those exact words -, the sooner people get Covid the better.
    The same fact-based definition changes should be made about the meaning of “freedom” and “democracy” in the self-styled “free world”. Freedom is now the permission to hear, say, read, write and do what its Mammon-trained elites (aka “global leaders” or more colloquially WEF obey-freaks) want the rubes to hear, say, read, write and do and democracy is giving them the choice between two sockpuppets of their making whose campaigns they finance even though their media only shamelessly supports the most corporate compatible one – the sheep’s clothing expense being on him. A few changes like that and we’ll finally end up in a world that makes sense!

  12. Beau of the 5th Column just informed me that we have nothing to fear if we get tangled up with the Russians in a conventional war. The reasons, seem be two-fold. One, the Russian miles long armed column that we’ve all seen moving toward Kyiv, is a sitting duck. It could easily be destroyed if the air power was available to destroy it.
    This is correct.
    Two, what America has proven to world, is that when even weaker elements of our Air Force catch an enemy column in the open, they are more than capaple of killing every last vehicle in it. At our famous victory over retreating Iraqi forces known as the “Highway of Death,” on Feb 25-27, 1991, every tank, armoured personell carrier, unamoured truck, bus, or civilian vehicle of any kind (including a surprising amout of Mercedes and BMWs),* were either rocketed, ripped apart by cannons, struck by missiles, or ripped apart by machine gun fire provided by ground personell in the final stages. It did take us ten hours to complete the task, but we did get them all, and suffered no casualties in the doing.
    This too, is correct.
    *I had a friend who had once been a Captain in the US Army, in fact he was with the fabled 3rd Army Division when it rolled into Bagdad in ’03. He told me a story once; he was quite drunk at the time and he had transformed in his retirement years into an anti-war peaknik tree-hugger type, so take it for what is; that during the battle of the Highway of Death, we also destroyed several two seat bicycles that were in fleeing column. I laughed and told him that’s a f*cking urban legend, and that sobered him up pretty quick, it seemed to me, and he said, “No, it’s not.”

    1. Please google what Russian FM said about WW3 being nuclear like today?

      1. Max: Driiiiing! We are now in 2022, not in 1991 or even 2003 and the US wouldn’t have to fight the Iraqis but the Russians who happen to have hypersonic missiles called Kinzhal that fly at Mach 10. Ever heard of that shit?

        1. I have, yes.
          I don’t have much interest in the hypersonics at the moment, as they will play no role in this “struggle,” even should it go nuclear.
          What concerns me today, and probably will tomorrow, is that there are a tremendous of amount of airmchair warriors, in the various great power militaries and out, that are chomping at the bit see how their nation’s most up to date war fighting equipment fairs in a conventional contest against a worthy rival.
          My God how desperate some folks are to bare flatscreen witness to a real 5th generation dogfight, it is without question, the Holy Grail of Modern War.
          There is an armored column brazenly moving toward Kyev right under our watchful gaze, and the thinking is, for so many armchair fightin’ Americans, “who the f*ck do they think they are.”
          Like Beau of the 5th Column, who correctly points out that this is our bread and butter, from The Crater to Wounded Knee* to Mai Lai to the Highwary of Death, if we catch an opponent in a disadvantageous, or better yet, a completely helpless position, we have proven, time and again, that we know how to take swift and decisive action.
          I have been quite alone in my belief, until just this week, when people started to rise from their slumber and learn a few basics about how this shit works, that once the missiles start flying between nuclear armed superpowers, nuclear war must, almost by definition, follow, for the simple reason that a missile carrying a conventional warhead looks no different on radar than a missile that can vaporize your position and everything around it for miles and miles – depending on size of warhead, of course.
          *20 Medals of Honor were awarded to various troopers of the 7th Cav, for all the extraordinary and heroic actions that were taken at the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek. The 7th were certainly relentless when it came killin’ time, I’ll give em that.

          1. I was just answering your claim that the Russian column was sitting ducks by pointing out that those ducks are armed with missiles flying at Mach 10 that can intercept anything sent their way and can’t be intercepted if they’re fired at the launching position of the enemy. Some ducks!

    2. The Russian Airforce is similarly capable of eliminating Ukrainian columns. Recall that the U.S. created terror state known as ISIS was crippled beyond all hope in late 2015 by Russian airstrikes against its long lines of oil tankers filing into Turkey.

      At this time, there is no sign of the Russian airforce. Why?

  13. We must all understand the REAL US foreign policy. I’ll start the ball rolling down the road to enlightenment, with Part 1, by referring to a wonderful speech by nuclear Liar and Murderer in Chief Harry Truman, who just happened to be POTUS at the time the US dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing like video to tell the story, but I’ve transcribed the most important of God-worshiping Harry’s God-inspired words. Part 2 follows
     
    “Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us instead of to our enemies. And we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.”

    1. Part 2. Now fast-forward to not that many years ago with a rare bit of a US VIP’s equally honest description of REAL US foreign policy that was delivered to one of the US’s most loyal vassal states – “Australia” – in typical undiplomatic, crystal-clear language. The following video that contains the description is just over 8 minutes in length and it is all well worth watching IMO, but it is what starts at 6 minutes and 18 seconds into the video that is most important. At that point, VIP John Mearsheimer spells out to US Vassal State 2 (or is it 3?) just exactly what it would mean if #2 improved relations with China instead of continuing to bow to US diktat.
       
      “Now, the question is: what does this all mean for Australia? Ahh, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows…..everybody knows what the quandary is. Security-wise, you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense ….. right, uh,… you understand that security is more important that prosperity? ……. because if you don’t survive, you’re not going to prosper. Survival is of the utmost importance ‘cuz you can’t pursue any other goals if you don’t survive. Right. So security’s gotta be number 1,….. so you’ll sacrifice prosperity for security. Right. That’s what will happen. That’s why you’ll be with us. Now, some people say that there’s an alternative. You can go with China. You have a choice here. You can go with China rather than the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number 1, if you go with China, you wanna understand that you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States………..cuz, again, we’re talking about an intense security competition. You’re either with us or against us. And if you’re trading extensively with China….. and you’re friendly with China,……..you’re undermining the United States in the security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective, …. and that is not going to make us happy and when we are not happy, you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”
       
      And this is a speech delivered to one of the US’s ass-licking vassal states! With a “friend” like this, who needs enemies? (More apt question: With an enemy like this, who needs a friend? Answer: all of the US’s vassal states.)
       
      I believe that it is an absolute certainty that somebody equivalent to Mearsheimer has delivered the exact same ultimatum to absolutely ALL of the US’s vassal states, wherever they may be in the world, and this includes the US’s relatively new vassal-state formerly called Ukraine, now called “Ukraine”.
       
      It also includes “Canada” – nickname for Vassal State #3. For just one example among an innumerable many, a few days ago Trustin Judeau and Marc Garneau said some very anti-Russia and anti-China things in front of TV cameras (that were broadcast that evening to the “Canadian” Bewildered Herd by the “Canadian” MSM). I know with absolute certainty that that was done after some US State (War) Department VIP delivered to them a Mearsheimer-like ultimatum. I’m also pretty sure that the aforementioned US slaves were handed US-approved statements to recite.
       
      And now we all understand the REAL “foreign policy” of The Greatest Nation On Planet Earth – the United States of America. The most important question for the rest of the world is amazingly simple. Is the modern-day incarnation of Harry S. Truman going to pray to God so that “He may guide us to use it (nuclear weapons) in His ways and for His purposes”? Let’s face a very ugly truth. The US Elite used nuclear weapons on Japanese cities when the US Elite knew with certainty that the US would defeat Japan in the near future. What will the US Elite do with its nuclear weapons NOW, when it knows that its “system” and its NWO is about to be defeated by Russia, China and Iran?

      1. The US elite used nuclear weapons on Japan purely as an example for the world to know the terror it wielded. They even rushed the process because they were afraid the war would end before they had the chance to brandish their new toy.

        They never believed that the “primitive commies” would ever be able to build their own bomb. The hubris and insanity and inhumanity is staggering on all levels.

        Nazism was only “defeated” in name in WW2. All of the key values and beliefs and methods were adopted by the US, and they just shifted the name to “democracy”.

      2. Here’s an interesting question. Would Harry have still bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki had Japan completely evacuated the populations of those cities?

        1. The main reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targets is because they were visually beautiful cities with dense, non-reinforced (i.e. easily destroyed) city structure. The goal was to have that stark visual contrast between a whole city standing and a whole city annihilated. They could have targeted more densely populated areas, but a death toll would have just been a number. Those images of vaporized cities lives forever.

  14. Watched the SOTU last night, an orgy of psychopathic monsters, followed by a rebuttal by Caleb Maupin, who trashed Abby Martin and the Bernie Sanders movement. Young Cal seems to want the USA to be occupied by billions of people wallowing in nuclear waste and industrial pollution under a communist dictatorship. After the contrast of murderous imperialism and idiotic Marxism, please people, come up with some new ways to think and live. I can’t take the right left paradigm anymore.

    1. I did not watch SOTU bcs instead I watched Joseph Campbell’s (old) interviews with Bill Moyers on youtube.
      But I agree with you that it is hopeless to continue conversation between M. Imperialism and I. Marxism, I am now familiar with both, having lived exactly half of my life under each.
      So I invite everybody to watch 6 interviews of Joseph Campbell, the writer of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Human religions and mythologies concern development of our soul, and Campbell says we need to keep evolving and not be so stuck in ancient religions.
      There must be #1 somewhere too, these are marked 2-7

      1. SomeoneInAsia Avatar
        SomeoneInAsia

        With all due respect, Campbell himself showed plain Nazi-like or at least racist inclinations. One of his favorite lines was that the Oriental ideal is that of the ‘obedient soldier’, that individualism never did and will exist in the Orient i.e. all of India and China. Either he was too lazy to do his homework or he had an axe to grind in propagating this… myth.

    2. It struck me when I saw a photo of the SOTU speech this morning, with Harris and Pelosi lurking behind Saint Jo, that the Bible is wrong about the Apocalypse too. It’s not going to be finished by the Four Horsemen but by the Three Stooges. These three stooges.

      I didn’t listen to the speech. Already used up all the barf bags during the network evening Gnuze.

      One can only hope that Ukraine might be where the American Imperial project will come apart. Humiliated by Vietnam, failed in Iraq, beaten in Afghanistan, outflanked and outmaneuvered by Iran, Syria, Russia and China – the fall of its most visible client state and backfiring sanctions might be the straws that finally break the evil camel’s back.

  15. The Russian Federation has been crushed in the Information War. I’m sure going in they knew they would be soundly defeated, but it hasn’t even been a contest. For the once proud Masters of Propaganda, I’m sure this ignominious defeat, stings a little bit.
    On the Diplomatic Front, who can say? It is theoretically possible that Vlad the Backchannel is treading water, and not actually drowning, as is so often been reported. Russian bloggers, the ones who have taken to calling themselves, “the white N words of Europe,” with open debates raging in their comment sections, seem to believe there are a few small rays of hope on this front.
    As for the Financial War, now encompassing the entire globe, again, who can say? It’s in an early phase, I think. The last bullet in the Sanction Chamber has been fired. The gun is empty once you freeze a sovereign nation’s central bank, I’ve been told, so it now the Financial War moves seemingly unchecked into unchartered waters and territories; like the possibility of simultaneous mass embargoes on oil, food, gas, minerals and other related items in our shopping carts that could set the global finacial markets aflame, while moving starvation concerns – but only in the global south, thank god – up to page 9 in the New York Times.
    On the Operational Front, the only one that really matters , it does seem evident that the Russian Army has achieved its first prioty goal, the taking of the Zaporizhia complex on the lower Dneiper. For anyone unaware, which I assume is basically everyone due to the news blackout that recently rolled in unannounced, there are 5 live nuclear reactors and tens of thousands of tons of hot nuclear waste in that complex, and should something go tragically wrong there, most of Europe WILL have to pack up and move elsewhere.
    The point being, the major battle of this “war” is about to begin. The Russian’s have made it clear,* they are going destroy all Nazi formations in southeastern Ukraine, and there are a lot of them. Everyone else, all Ukraine elements not affiliated, are free to go, but all Nazi’s must remain in the cauldron until they surrender.
    One hopes. Unfortunatley, I believe there is a growing sentiment on the other side, that every last Nazi who chooses to fight for even one second beyond a set date, will be killed.
    So, some good news. The cauldron battle that is about to take place, will most probably, not put all of Europe at risk of being eliminated as a viable civilization, as the missiles and other high HE munitions that will be employed to reduce the pocket, will be headed in the opposite direction of the Zaporizhia complex.
    *One thing you have to say about those evil and diabolical Russkies, they don’t talk in riddles.

    1. The answer to the information war (influencing others or being influenced) is to be an authentic self. Information war is for zombies.

    2. BB Benderhaus Avatar
      BB Benderhaus

      What few realize is this attack is just using the vanguard of the Russian forces stationed at the border. The west is expecting shock and awe as used in the middle east. Putin is using a slower method of minimizing damage. His goal is not to turn Ukraine to rubble but bring about regime change.

      1. Max: “the Russian Federation has been crushed in the information War” except… in the Russian Federation. And also in China, India, most of the Arab world and a good chunk of the Western world who doesn’t believe a word of what their overtly corrupt media tell them anymore. The Russian Federation was crushed in the Western information War long before Putin invaded Ukraine. It was crushed because the US MIC needs an enemy. Whatever Putin does, he’ll be demonized, so he might as well do the right thing, i.e. stop the massacre of the Donbass people started as a consequence of the ousting of the democratically elected president in 2014 by a US-backed Ukronazi coup.

        1. Agree, with it all.
          I follow the YouTube “leftist” blogger set, from the extra mighty TYT all the way down to Mr. Hinkle and the Lads at the Vanguard, and everything has gone exactly as expected. Everyone has been absorbed who I thought would be absorbed, with the exception of Ms. Ball. I thought she would fight to remain unabsorbed for a spell, but she didn’t.
          Anyway, what I found most interesting in this absorption process, apparently The Hill has been getting views the last few months, for the sole reason Kim Iverson refuses to be absorbed. I didn’t notice, I had stopped watching, but clear Ms. Iverson is a little ray of sunshine peeking through all the madness, and there are people still out here who enjoy a little sun.
          The only unknown, on TubeLeft, is Briahna Joy Gray. A most brilliant mind caught off-guard by a subject she knows nothing about. Learn Ms. Gray. This subject, at its core, is magnitudes less complex than one’s you routinely dissect with ease.
          There are greater personal stakes invovled, of course. Much, much greater.

    3. Russia lost the information war in 2014 too. One would think they learned. But the reckless speed at which the West clamped down on dissidence is perfectly acceptable to people because they have been trained for two years to clamp down on covid narrative questioners.

      I dread what will happen to organized strikes and protests for better wages and lower prices in the coming months and years. The hysterical pandemic of anti-Russia reaktion may break the markets, stocks to plummet, bonds to crash, commodities to soar, and make food and fuel too expensive for anyone’s wallet — but especially in the Middle East.

      What happens when these immense powers are turned against people with grievances, and organizers are stripped of their bank accounts, jobs, reputations?

      1. ” … they have been trained for two years to clamp down on covid narrative questioners.”

        That’s the other thing. Covid is about to explode over this nation, and the explosion will have nothing to do with the virus. Wall Street wants their money back, and Big Insurance is lining up to take on everybody, including the likes of Big Pharma and Big Government.
        Non-absorbed truthteller Kim Iverson just put out a vid on this very same subject. A convergence of the remaining few seems to taking place.
        Good questions, btw. What chance does labor have in this environment? Somewhere between none and the Zero Bound, I suspect.

  16. deschutesmaple Avatar
    deschutesmaple

    Here in Prague, Czech Republic hysterical Czechs are now harassing ethic Russians, defacing their shops, vandalizing Russian food stores, etc. Some Czechs are now demanding that all Russians be kicked out of CZ! When these Russians have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, and moved to CZ for a better life. Really fucked up, this type of anti-Russia hysteria that has swept Czech Republic. And now the CZ chief prosecuting office are shutting down pro-russian websites and law enforcement is warning people, that if you say things supportive of Kremlin, it’s actions in Ukraine, or if you deny that Russia is commiting war crimes, you can go to jail. I’m totally against the war in Ukraine and Russia’s invasion, but this type of extreme censorship and jailing people who see things differently and dare to question the official Washington/EU narrative is totally wrong. If Washington/NATO/EU are so sure they are in the right, why do they need to jail people who disagree with them? That’s totalitarian censorship, it’s totally wrong!

    1. I followed one of the links in comments made on previous days, and it was to an article written by one of university researchers in Berkley, CA.
      He said that towards 2nd WW the CIA recruited senior Nazis, and kept fascism alive and made it into a global phenomenon.
      Surely hope that all the “democracies” that the US has been supporting are not going to turn out to be fascist. If you called them fascist and end up in jail then they are fascist indeed. But please do not try it at home.
      Praying for all humanity in these difficult times.

    2. Because they are afraid they could not win a fair debate about their case. Censorship says nothing about the content censored. It says alot about the censor.

    3. thorsjackhammer Avatar
      thorsjackhammer

      In times of war, being openly totalitarian is the states standard mode of operation. Engineering groupthink/ hive mindset to ensure optimal support and allegiance.

  17. I have listened to almost 20 lectures on capitalism’s bubbles and crashes, and cannot help but notice that the current bubble is in Intelligence Organisations specifically and the MIC- Intelligence Complex generally.
    They are making a leveraged bet taking on Russia in Ukraine.
    Russia planning to strike their center in Kiev shows how easy it is to pop their bubble.
    The US has been investing in the Intelligence bubble for over 20 year and it will pop eventually. The more they speculate the sooner.
    Of course Intelligence ops are as illusory as the power of dollars poured into ill will, and this will become a financial crash as before. I invite all idiots to jump into the same boat with the CiA, NSA, and 17 total state organisations, as well as countless private intelligence related firms. It will be a fun ride until it is not.

  18. I don’t expect anything to happen but you could sign my petition to stop the propaganda at
    https://chng.it/FBKvxCHBXk
    Thanks!
    I got mad when I was sent a petition to ban RT.
    Enough is enough.
    Stop the shit.

    1. I think the whole rigmarole is driven by the US Nuclear Modernization, that will cost $2 trillion. The new weapons are supposed to keep surrounding Russia, and thus the US refuses to stop now, and also keeps breaking nuclear treaties.
      American public needs to become aware of this and Europeans should refuse to put US nukes on their territories, but being the vassal states they oblige in insane requests to host US nukes.
      Unfortunately, when you tell people about nuclear war it brings up violent thoughts in their heads and they want more armaments, not less.
      Nothing short of attending their own funeral puts people in reflective state of mind and willing to listen to others.

  19. This is from one of the executives at Substack:

    “Withstanding scrutiny makes truth stronger, not weaker.”

    This is exactly why TPTB choose censorship. They know that evidence based rational arguments usually win the day. The latte sippers watching CNNdless at Starbucks aren’t supposed to think; they are supposed to obey and consume. After they completely control Facebook and Twitter, they will be coming after sites like this one. They will be defunded, or worse.

  20. thorsjackhammer Avatar
    thorsjackhammer

    No, it’s not about the pursuit of western ideology of “freedom, or truth, or democracy”, It’s about global control, like it always has been. The power brokers have to pretty it up to be palatable to the citizens of the west, of course. Same old game, slightly different packaging.

  21. BB Benderhaus Avatar
    BB Benderhaus

    Ignore the actual fighting for a second and look at the long term effects to the world economy. …..Russia accounts for 7.5% of the worlds oil supply that is already straining under current demand…..Russia and Ukraine account for 25% of the world wheat production in a world that can barely feed itself…..Russia supplies metals ane rare earths used for everything including renewable industry…..the world is about to see that green energy is a boondoggle and not renewable at all…..electric vehicles are going to crash and burn as metal production stalls…..oil prices are going to go stratospheric…..cutting Russia from SWIFT will speed up an alternative payment system which the world will adopt to get under the thumb of America. The west is effectively cutting their own throat. It will take time to bleed out.

  22. I got here just fine via caitlinjohnstone.com, just saying.
    From amongst the bubblethink horde of social co-media-ns shushing and shaming me for questioning the plain fact that thousands were falling dead in the street form Covid, two years ago this month, there now remain perzackly two of my acquaintance willing to regurgitate their tube-fed pharma-industry Covid rant out loud. One is a perennial disabled shut-in whose isolation and paranoia have increased in tandem since I knew her as a sweet young person in high school, and the other is, of course, my strident ex in the vagina hat.
    I do not think this speaks well of censorship’s results.

  23. Like you Caitlin, i’m terrified at how quickly it’s happening…. And i’m not on social media. A couple of chat group of friends around the world have rounded on me for just pointing out peace is really only a concession or two away. Or was, before all of this kicked off. I can only imagine the cacophony you and others are getting in that world. A year of this, and dissent will be so marginalised that we may as well make some popcorn and watch our extinction play out, cause where do we go from there? Maybe it turns out to have an unexpected impact and forces dissenters to get more strategic and more organised… but it’s gonna be a rotten couple of months.
    Cheers as always for your bravery. It can’t be easy being out there as you are.
    M

    1. Hear, hear! Johnstone is among the great heroes of our time.
      As for organizing, can it be done without cell phones or the internet? Because otherwise, we are totally dicked before we start.

      Anybody know where I can find a mimeograph machine?

  24. Yes, a lot of immorality goes on during periods of aggression; always-immoral violence, immoral economic pressure, immoral control of information. How did the Allies stop the cheerleaders of European domination? By killing a lot of them. Certainly killing is bad, objectively worse than censorship, and it certainly happened alongside censorship, b/c loose lips can literally sink ships. When the enemy considers you vermin, what other way is there?
    .
    I mean… It sure is weird what happens to a nation’s messaging when it chooses to target and bomb civilians.
    .
    Anyway, even in this disagreement, I’m glad you do what you do.

  25. If anything can be learnt from the past couple of years, where ‘fact-checkers’ did not check facts but rather narrative, is that big tech, along with the western ‘elites’ are stifling any dissidence to the mainstream narrative which is manufactured to suit their personal interest

  26. My latest comment on TC, –

    Yes Chris, that was my basic argument, that the responsibility for Europe should shift to Europe, and the 180 exhibited by Germany makes that a great deal more firm, and it being purely a defensive organisation is the peaceful way to go.

    Now, with Finnland, Sweden and Ukraine all applying, although it will possibly be seen by Putin as his worst nightmare, it will be the safest Putin could ever hope for, if he could just think about it.

    Nothing is going to be able to fight it’s way through the whole of a unified Nato to get Russia, he can focus solely on keeping peace with China and North Korea.

    Hopefully he may even be able to relax enough with his slave states to let them express their own unique cultures, and the reduction of US influence can only benefit Europe in the long term

    It will also benefit Asia as the US can focus it’s diminished might on balancing China.

    Depending on how Nato works out, the rest of the world may turn it’s attention on making the United Nations work in the same way, – after all that was the original idea.

    A world at peace could do a great deal more about Global Warming as well.

  27. You cannot even participate in organised sports if your national origin is not of the correct breed now. No Russkies or White Russkies allowed.

    Seems like the so-called “free and democratic” West is trying its damnedest to violate all the principles it claims that its system stands upon.

  28. Another fine and very IMPORTANT article, Caity!! As the kids –and a few of us older kids too — like to say; “you ROCK!” And you have been especially good at refuting the regnant Western propaganda on the current senseless, easily preventable, war in Ukraine, where the Western powers, clearly at the behest of the US and it wicked NATO proxy, are even NOW, still perpetuating and ratcheting up animosities by promising still larger weapons shipment to the Ukrainian junta government. Madness on stilts!!

  29. Another fine and very IMPORTANT article, Caity!! As the kids –and a few of us older kids too — like to say; “you ROCK!” And you have been especially good at refuting the regnant Western propaganda on the current senseless, easily preventable war in Ukraine, where the Western powers, clearly at the behest of the US and it wicked NATO proxy, are even NOW, still perpetuating and ratcheting up animosities by promising still larger weapons shipment to the Ukrainian junta government. Madness on stilts!!

  30. zbigniew dzwonkowski Avatar
    zbigniew dzwonkowski

    Hi Caitlin the best wishes in your work and let us the common sense prevail …

  31. Signs that you are living in a dictatorship:
    1) Assertions Of An Alternate Reality Via The Press & Propaganda;
    2) Silencing & Discrediting All Opposition;
    3) Disabling Public Accountability;
    4) Utilizing Nationalistic Rhetoric To Control Military Force;
    5) Manufacturing Crises To Use Emergency Powers;
    6) Widespread Domestic Surveillance & Informers;
    7) Abolishing Or Restructuring Checks & Balances To Power.

    WELCOME TO AMERICA!

    1. … AND having to say you live in a democracy. It’s the difference between democracy and dictatorship. In a democracy, you are allowed to say you live in a dictatorship. In a dictatorship, you have to say you live in a democracy. Can’t get a better definition than that to realize that our long praised Western democracy has been revoked.

      1. Nice thought. It still as the core at the top of this that famous answer to Bill Clinton when NATO expansion started – “It’s about the economics, you stupid.” If I had access to the Federal Reserve collaterals to keep in hot air the American economy officially recognized national debt in 30 trillion we would maybe find all those 14 additional irrelevant NATO countries after 1997 intertwined in the equation to keep 300 trillion in real numbers about the debt. Lies. You gotta be a master of lies to keep the whole world trapped inside the hole applauding and worshiping such condition unknown to all of them.

  32. an operations manual…

    1. So sorry that your propaganda isn’t freely supported by western democracies that you want to destroy.

      Cry me a river…

      1. No-one is advocating support for anti-western based media. I read extensively and like to weigh up the pro’s and con’s – balance one against the other, weed out the partisan propaganda… and come to my own conclusion.
        To do that I need access to all sides and all publications. By what right do you believe that I should be prevented from doing that?
        ‘A Real Patriot’ you may be but I will never call on you to defend the rights of anyone. Go find a library to sack and books to burn.

        1. Never believe what people say they are. A swindler generally introduces himself as an honest man, otherwise he couldn’t swindle anybody. A “true patriot” is most likely a jingoistic dumbo.

  33. RT removed from DirecTV today. Another good reason to dump the service.

    1984 was a novel, but it’s become and operations manual.

    1. I had to laugh the other day at saying someone on a photo holding a sign saying “Make 1984 fiction again” :o)

  34. jeffrey erwin Avatar
    jeffrey erwin

    JUST SAY NO TO NATO !

    TY, Caitlin for calling out US propaganda for what it is.

    1. So much bigger than some ‘US centralized empire’. Some love to only hate the US. Understand, loyalty to one’s own country. But it’s not countries, but individuals.
      But, it’s so much bigger than we think, and Americans who *know it’s bigger, may subconsciously resist ‘joining the fight’ if they always read ‘it’s the US, it’s the US!’. Of course it’s not. It’s groups of people, often with zero alliance with any country. It’s not, never had been any one country.

      https://journal-neo.org/2022/02/16/davos-and-the-purloined-letter-conspiracy/social

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=AuJqA8OIXMU&feature=emb_title

      To grow a movement (or anything) & win, we can’t go around offending the innocent little guy by blaming hi/her country. That sends so, so many away in a huff (may be some tribal thing, idk?).

      1. Sorry, no idea how the 1st article is 100% NOT the right article.

        This is the article I intended.

        https://canadianpatriot.org/2022/02/20/davos-and-the-purloined-letter-conspiracy/

  35. The subject line of the email left off the last word; I guessed “bullshit” but I was wrong.

    I don’t know whether to be thankful for CaptainTrips unraveling or not. It would almost certainly be a component in VladTheInvader’s calculus [credibility damage/truth], although if TeamBrandon wasn’t stumbling through a poll failure (and the destruction of the DemocraticParty as it exists and/or pis erceived by voters) over it, they might have played nicer with theBears instead of trying to capitalize on conflict, roll up FoxNews into another flag ceremony, and titillate the masses with the promise of fear.

    I don’t know what KimIverson sources to get her dial, but she called the same that GilbertDoctorow called on TomWoods and I got a validation cookie from a personal chat last week: NATO/US hegemony vs Russia (and probably emergent Asia). Watching JB do his thing right now and he already gave the line FancyNancy spun on the Sundays a couple weeks back: VladTheInvader will be stopped in Ukraine, which looks to be as far as he wants to go, so the US/NATO will claim victory by not escalating, Vlad pushes in and undermines OTAN, two international narratives emerge (in addition to the two in the US) and empire goes on while the dollar can still push some people around.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkacr7g86BY

    https://tomwoods.com/ep-2074-russia-ukraine-and-nato/

    1. And another nickel, just cause SherylCrow is a terrible soundtrack to JB captions: if the US goes all the way in Cuba style 2.0 (instead of the AlpineHeidi ideal), don’t be surprised if those websites people visit ALL start lacking dates for posts/stories.

  36. I kinda like the “warnings” that what I’m reading isn’t a pack of lies from the CIA. Almost everything else is.

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      Hmmm. That is a point.

  37. Paul Rackemann Avatar
    Paul Rackemann

    I wonder if anyone on this site has heard of Malcolm Muggeridge? I couldn’t be entirely in sympathy with him because he was overtly religious in his later years, but there is no denying that he was a clever man and an entertaining writer. His parents-in-law were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, notorious upper-class English socialists. (I believe Sidney Webb was a member of the Ramsay McDonald Labour Party cabinet in the early days of the Depression.) Malcolm Muggeridge and his wife went to Russia to live under socialism, but found it pretty appalling, and went back to England. He was an intelligence officer for the British Government in I think Angola (one of the Portuguese colonies in Africa anyway) during World War Two, and used to live in the same hotel as the Italian officer who was on the other side of the war.
    I got all that from his autobiography, which I read forty or so years ago. I actually saw him speak once, at I think Festival Hall in Brisbane. Anyway, his comment, which I wanted to relate, was that the liberal mind believed in tolerance for all things except its own critics.
    That attitude by people who pretend to believe in freedom of speech and publication has probably got worse since, but it has been around for a very long time.

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      Muggeridge and his wife lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s at the height of Stalin’s worst crimes against Marxism. His inlaws were Fabian socialists. The fact that he turned against the USSR, mistaking Stalinism for Marxism, was a serious error, but not an uncommon one among many middle class people on the “left” at the time. In the years since then, the anticommunists of the west continue to associate Stalinism with Marxism, which remains a serious and ahistorical error. Stalin murdered Bolsheviks, stuffed Lenin’s corpse and murdered Leon Trotsky. Enough said.

      1. thorsjackhammer Avatar
        thorsjackhammer

        Obviously the deliberate confusion between Stalinism and Maxism fits the western slave masters narrative better.

  38. After I read today on gazeta.ru that Russia is asking citizens living near the Ukraine Intelligence Center in Kiev to evacuate, the Russian news site was blocked.
    Then news appeared in the US saying that Russia is bombing civilians in Kiev.
    So the intent of this censorship is to misrepresent the events in Ukraine.
    Maybe in the US as well.

  39. I’m glad I subscribe to your emails directly rather than relying on social media like Twitter who have simply become part of the western propaganda machine. Russia invading Ukraine is a tragedy, but that shouldn’t prevent informed discussion of why and how we got into this mess (and it wasn’t simply because Putin is some kind of egomaniac madman).

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      Correct. I subscribe to Caitlin’s emails as well and support her financially.

  40. This blanket censorship of all things Russian confirms the West’s absurd and childish belief that all things Russian are bad.
    It also confirms their belief that the vast majority of people don’t think for themselves – because if they did, they would see this hysterical behaviour for what it is and push back. They don’t and they don’t, sadly.
    RT is working fine on my mobile, not that there is much to read about the Ukraine situation, so I really don’t know why the censors bother.

    1. RT and censorship when they do not cover Ukraine…. Could it be because RT sounds sane and is not Hitler-like? Can’t have that, people might think there could actually be rational Russian people and ideas. NOT POSSIBLE.

      1. I know! RT is so bland, it is a crime.

        1. RT tries so hard to be “non-partisan” to please the West that at times you’d think most of their audience votes Democrat and works in Langley or Arlington. Definitely not “homers.”

          1. All this freakout about RT is unbelievable! The people writing for RT are 99% Anglo-Saxons!

    2. I’d figured, it meant the same as not testing vaccinated school kids, censoring mortality & morbidity reports, mentioning COVID after five days, including vaccine status or MIS-C & delayed inflammatory organ damage/ failure or excess deaths, attributable to breakthrough; as this would confuse and befuddle delusional liberal crowds watching Biden at the bar, screaming MASKLESS at re-re-reinfected servers & scantily clad bar mistresses, dashing in from the COVID Death Shacks?

      https://mobile.twitter.com/LazarusLong13/status/1497140648993906688

  41. Dear Caitlin,
    Hell I can’t read your post except directly in my email from you. Clicking further I get or YOU Caitlin get a warning label plastered over your content. Democracy ? Not a chance. My condolences over your censorship and rage at our loss.
    Pamela

Leave a Reply to Alcheminister Cancel reply

Trending