Listen to a reading of this article:
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Sometimes I can only stop and stare in awe at the power of the US propaganda machine. Almost the entire global north has been paced into perfect alignment with cold war agendas geared toward securing US unipolar dominance by an unprecedented propaganda and censorship campaign.
There’s nothing intrinsic in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which says the nation must be strangled to death by unheard-of levels of economic warfare from Washington-loyal governments. A huge international consensus needed to be manufactured for that specific response, and the public needed to go along with it. Just absolutely incredible.
By securing control of global narratives via Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and plutocratic “news” outlets, the US empire has effectively supplanted the UN and international law in its ability to get whole groups of nations moving in a certain way with the consent of the governed. The human species is being led around like a dog on a leash by a collective mind control system of unparalleled and unprecedented sophistication that hardly anyone even notices. Imperial propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society.
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What is the functional difference between state media broadcasters uncritically reporting what the government tells them to report and western news media outlets which always uncritically report “scoops” that are fed to them by government officials?
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American mass media reporters are only allowed to forcefully interrogate US officials when demanding to know why they still haven't started another major war. https://t.co/WAoyi4Wrpb
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 16, 2022
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The fawning hero worship of Zelensky is the most embarrassing and self-debasing thing liberals have done since those pink pussy hats.
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War is without exception the very worst thing in the world. The most insane, the most traumatizing, the most self-destructive, the least sustainable. All of the parties involved in this war should have done everything possible to avoid it, and any who claim they did so are lying.
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The hawks from the first cold war claimed the collapse of the Soviet Union vindicated their brinkmanship, which meant all those nuclear close calls we had during that period were worth it, but it turns out all that happened was a short break before resuming the insane nuclear brinkmanship.
We see now that this is set up to go on for a very, very long time. This completely invalidates the belief that these “great power competition” games of nuclear chicken are sane and worthwhile, because if you keep rolling the dice on nuclear war day after day and year after year, eventually they’re going to come up snake eyes. The only sane choice on the table is therefore to move into a cooperative, friendly relationship with these powers, because facts in evidence show very clearly that trying to dominate and subvert each other will keep going and going until it eventually results in a nuclear conflict.
We came close to wiping ourselves out many times during the last cold war; very close in some cases (look up Vasili Arkhipov). And now we’re back at the most dangerous levels of nuclear brinkmanship since the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is unsustainable.
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All this talk about setting up a no-fly zone where the air force of a nuclear superpower is conducting operations reminds me how glad I am that Hillary Clinton lost. pic.twitter.com/3MTK5xYDYH
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 17, 2022
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It says so much about the madness of our species that half the controversies surrounding this war exist because we made up a rule that killing people with chemical and biological weapons is illegal but killing them with bullets and military explosives is perfectly fine.
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If you have a problem with someone highlighting the culpability of the most powerful government on earth in giving rise to this war, it’s because imperial propaganda has turned you into a power-worshipping bootlicker.
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“Aha I see you’ve been speaking critically of the most powerful government on earth. That looks very strange and suspicious to me. Perhaps you are a secret agent working for a foreign government. I am very intelligent.”
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Empire loyalists hold that the US empire may stage coups and threaten foreign nations in ways it would never allow itself to be threatened, and that if those nations retaliate against those actions the empire bears no responsibility whatsoever.
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There’s a common unexamined assumption that the US can’t possibly have a villainous role in every major world conflict, that sometimes it’s just other governments being evil and that’s it. But there really is one uniquely evil asshole on the world stage who fucks with everything.
Few people have trouble believing there’s a uniquely evil tyrant in the world. They just have a hard time accepting that it’s their own government.
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32 responses to “The Awesome Power Of US Propaganda: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
Um you left out the most powerful and easiest aspect of information control. People are so busy! So don’t flood them with TMI. Like, heard of Fukushima? Biggest nuclear boo-boo ever in three way tie with Chernobyl and Mayak? There was a 7.3 quake last week in the SAME fault line that busted Dai-ichi open. Do you remember THAT? Yah. Same right there. What happened? Dunno. Anyone report on that? No.
Our attention span is deliberately clipped to um whuh? Nevermind. Funny LOLcatz! Look!
I actually did catch and fixate on that quake, but saw no point in wasting my breath talking at the vacuous “brick walls” by which I am surrounded. Don’t cast my pearls before swine anymore, lest they turn and rend me, and trample me (and my precious pearls of wisdom) beneath their filthy cloven hooves. No more, no more, I’m wasting my breath no more, but I know, I know, so thought I’d at least take a moment to validate your comment. Blessed Be =)
Davos lied to us endlessly about COVID-19 and these lies were WMDs that went a long way toward wrecking our world. Now they want to finish it off with the contrived war in order to usher in their NWO.
So as they ramp up their media deceit machine and begin swamping us with a new mountain of lies about WWIII, lets go back and examine their tactics with one of the biggest lies told about COVID: that the vaccine is safe and effective.
This exploration is intended to remind us – in the face of a veritable hurricane of new upside-down propaganda about the war – just us how blatant, deadly, depraved, and above all transparent their lies can be:
https://tritorch.com/shakedown
This bit got under my skin: “The human species is being led around like a dog on a leash by a collective mind control system of unparalleled and unprecedented sophistication that hardly anyone even notices. Imperial propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society.” And it is absolutely TRUE. But I HAD to share MY two cents here, because I find it offensive that I’ve been lumped in with ALL of the OTHER RABIDLY brainwashed monkeys living here in the demonic GHOST of what was once (debatably) the good ol’ USofA. <(note that I said that is DEBATABLE). Anyway, *I* am well AWARE of the FACTUAL REALITY of the above statements (in quotation marks). It's a SAD reality here. But here's the thing: DON'T claim that EVERYONE has been taken in by all of the propaganda, because SOME of us have NOT. SOME of us can SEE right THROUGH this bullshit, and we TRY to tell others and make others aware of it, It's just that WE can't get ANYONE else among the REST of these rabid little monkeys to LISTEN, they just start SCREAMING OVER all that they don't want to hear, and turn it AROUND on US and call *US* the *"crazy"* ones. < You see how that sneaky SHIT works? It's FUCKED, ey? It's INSIDIOUS. And that is why this same old bullshit is happening AGAIN. Humans are fucking IDIOTS, and I'm DONE trying to get through to these witless, braindead ZOMBIES. FUCK that bullshit, I'm DONE casting pearls before swine. I now plan to lay low & see to my OWN shit, thank you very much, I'm DONE wasting my breath on a bunch of RABID little monkeys who are plainly BENT on self-destruction. Fuck it. But word to anyone WISE out there: Grow your own food, find others with a CLUE, & dig in deep & prepare for the WORST ~ & possibly total extinction, because this is an option that is and always has been on the table, whether these idiot monkeys actually GET that and are capable of ACCEPTING it or NOT. I don't care anymore either way, I just want an END to the BULLSHIT, one way or another. But I'm DONE wasting my breath and energy on those who plainly are just deliberately REFUSING to see what's really going on and DO something about it, man, FUCK this bullshit, I'm just OVER it. I hear you, Cait. I feel you. You're right. But not ALL of us are taken in by it. We are just done WASTING our breath and energy, when these rabid monkeys are BENT on self-destructing, that's all there is to it. Sorry, BUT… I'm done casting MY precious pearls before the zombie SWINE. That's all.
Propaganda always works better, and usually goes hand and hand with censorship. Therefore the “other” side never gets into daily discourse. It’s highly discouraged in fact, no dissent is allowed and if dissent does show its unruly face it gets tossed in the rubbish bin and those that dare speak of the ‘other’s’ they are humiliated into obscurity. Labeled a nut, crazy, or off their meds.
Censorship rules supreme these days. Google is now worthless to find dissenting messages or even websites that go against the grain. I tried to find several home pages with Google today for sites that looked interesting to no avail, they never came up. I had to re-find them and put the address(link) on my desktop on my PC. It’s now almost full. It’s frightfully obvious now that we are to be infantilized and to be totally reliant on corporate(MSM) media propaganda with direct messaging from the government as gospel. What happened to the journalists? Oh yeah, they all came to Substak and rely on subscriptions to live, or to get ‘real’ info disseminated for actual discourse “not seen on TV”.
“The human species is being led around like a dog on a leash by a collective mind control system of unparalleled and unprecedented sophistication …”
This, except it really doesn’t require a high degree of sophistication.
Yep, that one got ME too, really got under my skin BAD. And you’re right, it doesn’t require a high level of sophistication, but our US MSM has taken the (debatable)> “art” to an entirely new level, that is so intricately twisted and convoluted that it might as well be considered “sophisticated”. And if you look up the origin of the root word/words (“sophism”, “sophistry”, “sophie”), you will find that the word is PRECISELY the right one to use, as it actually refers to the sly and wily mental/verbal artifice which only lends the ILLUSION of wisdom, but is actually just “*false* wisdom”. I’ve studied the etymology, it’s fascinating, and ultimately very deeply revealing, you should check it out. The way they MANIPULATE words and the entire LANGUAGE is a whole other level of the same mass-brainwashing operation that began millennia ago and has been going on ever since.
As usual, you are on point today. I do question what else/more Russia should have done to protect the people of Donbas – assuming, as I do – that thousands of civilians have been intentionally killed there since 2014 and no one (West) would do anything. There is a news clip of Zelensky going there in 2019 and asking them to please stop the atrocities and the neoNazis refused vehemently and insultingly.
I’ve been posting on FB a short recap of recent wars and their consequences – intend to do so today for DPR and LPR but first I must sign up for “protection” -ala criminal gangs- as I am locked out for being “influential”. I will warn anyone reading hereafter that they are being watched thru my site. Actually, I’m not influential, my number of “friends” is misleading, not many people interact with me and I’ve been slogging through to cut back from Bernie numbers (I never did own or wear a pink pussy hat). I have, however, been outspoken in criticizing my government.
Ach! Das is nicht schön! :o)
Propaganda?
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I am shocked. When did this start to happen? Is the FBI making lists and are agents authoring comments under internet blog articles?
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Oh say it ain’t so!
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Are media companies fronts for intelligence agencies? Spinmeisters for the State Department?
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Nation security can justify anything. What kind of scumbags get paid for propaganda?
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The ones that are good at it.
When this is all over in a few weeks ( and it will be ) and China moves in to prepare Ukraine for the BELT road which they joined in 2013 – well – all hell is going to break loose !
The economic consequences of the Rothschilds losing the coveted Ukraine are going to be monumental and those consequences will be passed onto us – because the Rothschilds will be stuck with the debt Ponzi that they – themselves created !
The Insane money printing – derivatives – gold contracts – mortgage swaps – the chickens will be coming home to roost !
Inflation ( especially energy and food inflation ) is the weapon they will use to destroy their compliant vasal economies !
The Rothschildless BRI caravan will move on !
I think we need to drop moralizing (“uniquely evil”) and recognize that it doesn’t carry much weight with the average citizen-schmuck. We live in a world controlled by psychopaths (because we let them) and the political framework of that world is psychopathic, regardless of the foibles of the individuals involved. The dealings between the Russian ruling class and the US ruling class have the same form as a contest between two Mafia gangs. If we want something different, we have to walk away from the game and stop supporting it.
Well said, hear, hear! Could not have put it any better (or more succinctly) myself. It is high time we walk away from all of these broken power structures, deprive them of our money, and rebuild our own world on far saner foundations and moral principles. I am so copying and pasting this comment of yours to my desktop screen. May I have your permission to use it as a quote on other social networks as well? I promise to give you credit.
The lady in red with the black mask asked, “Does a drone into Poland count?”
This is a very good question. ‘
What would it take to false flag us into WWIII, if you were to believe such things as false flags?
Which I do, because this is precisely what I learned as part of my kindergarten curriculum. The existence Santa Claus we leave to your parents, but WWII started because Germans dressed up as Poles attacked one of their own radio towers on the Polish border, blamed this heinous mock crime on Poland, and rolled over the Polish border the next morning with a casus belli at the backs.
Operation Himmler is what it was called.
This whole bioweapon false flag thingy seems a little too convoluted to me. It’s one of those, I know, that you know, and you know, that I know, so everybody must know what’s coming, which would make it hard to pull off, even in this Era of Pointing the Lemmings in the Right Direction.
Or the Wrong Direction, however you chose to view this, pointing of the lemmings process.
However, I seems to me, that if you have both sides of the Polish border covered (a false flag luxury which Nazi Germany did not enjoy on the night of August 31, 1945), you could simply false flag attack on Poland from the Ukraine side of the border, and you take your time and plan the hell out of it and do damn fine job of performing it.
All sorts of options are available, the threshold being the only key consideration. How much damage and death would it take to get the lemmings of Zone A* to willing undertake a mad dash for the cliffs?
*Zone A is what the rest of the world, known as Zone B, has taken to calling all Nato countries along with Canada and Australia, but Japan and South Korea have yet to be prescribed a place in either zone, perhaps because the action is in Europe at the moment. No final oaths and pledges need to be declared, just yet.
Note: Ukraine is known as the 404, for obvious reasons.
Covert Cabal: NO-FLY-ONE-UKRAINE – Can it be done? Would it be smart?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Uhb84Mg4M
This came out 5 days ago. Now you tell me something isn’t going on, when my YouTube algorythum didn’t pop this fucker up the minute it came out, as it always has in the past. You know, a skeptical little bird told me, why not dig through your subscriptions to see if something relevant isn’t being suppressed, and la de da.
Put together on the fly, this one, looks like Mr. Cabal was caught a touch off guard by how quickly the insanity would overwhelm the Complex. As was I. What a naive, dumbass American I still am at my core.
Still, excellent work, Mr. Cabal, especially on such short notice, and as I’m sure you are quite aware, in this roughly 8 minute video you provide more objective information to an American audience than its entire media has in 21 days, times one thousand.
Note: On a personal note, thanks Invicta. I took 12 courses on Rome , and your classes rank with the best, and I had some excellent Professors. Thanks especially for Battle of Ecnomus (256 BC) – The Largest Naval Battle in History. I was only vaguely aware of how it played out. Hannibal takes Papa’s loss in a naval engagement and uses his exact same tactics at Canae. It doesn’t get better.
As Sun Tzu said, “The seeds of victory are often planted in defeat.” lol Ok, I lied, he never said that, but it doesn’t mean that Hannibal didn’t prove it to be true.
For anyone interested: a battle to establish a NO-SAIL-ZONE over 2,300 years ago, in what was to become a war of annihilation, much like the one we’re now.
Prepare now for nuclear war by moving as far as you can from worldwide military targets and major population centers. I know this is difficult since the world is encircled by military bases. If not a base then a factory that supports the war machine. Find a way to survive for 90 days since 90% of the people will die in the first 90 days after nuclear war.
“Twenty tablets of ThyroSafe, whose active ingredient is potassium iodide, can fetch as much as $175 on eBay. ThyroSafe’s official distributor has stopped taking new orders from its website, and existing ones will see a delay in shipping, according to a statement last week. Of the four companies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell the compound, also known as KI, at least one other has sold out.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/15/potassium-iodide-pills-nuclear-radiation-protection/
Is it the same Food and Drug Administration that approved the Covid vaccines?
It’s only approved a few Covid vaccines.
If the world leaders get a chance to talk after the capitulation of Ukraine…
Yes, capitulation because with billions of dollars in weapons being packed up to be delivered for Ukraine in Europe that’s the outcome of this conflict.
What can possibly go wrong after a lot of countries gave unconditional power to Joe Biden to enable 100K American soldiers in Poland? and some more from NATO countries, anti aircraft systems, a NATO war games with 28 NATO countries which started yesterday simulating a high intensity conflict scheduled to be ongoing for the next 2 months around the Atlantic North and Norway which is practically a Russian neighbor.
Russia is in Ukraine after 8 years of exhausting long diplomatic journey worldwide trying to explain to the world leaders about the security threats involved in promising to Ukraine a NATO membership. Russia has a mission to. be accomplished where diplomacy and reasoning failed to achieve trying to clean up the NATO mess which enabled tens of thousands of neo-nazis to take power in Ukraine during the maidan in 2014.
Meanwhile US-UK and NATO made Russophobia the new pandemic in order to make things harder for Russia to solve the problem they created in Ukraine for Russia. I’m certain Joe Biden does not give a damn about the lives of millions of Ukrainians. If he was really caring about that he would have agreed to solve this problem with diplomacy instead of sending troops and weapons to Europe. But it seems we are far past the point for diplomacy according to Biden who stated at the very beginning of this conflict not be interested in talks with Putin but to gather worldwide consent to prepare Europe for war. No one who gave consent will have legitimacy to criticize Biden and NATO for meddling in Ukraine where Russia is right now and warned about the consequences of NATO interference there.
But let’s grab some points to be discussed in the afterlife.
1) Under no circumstances Anglo American coalition can have a unipolar world. Look where we at now.
2) International corporations will have to be under the surveillance and scrutiny of international law in order to curb their unlimited economic power interfering in political matters in every country worldwide.
2.1) Donors will not have economic and political power to threat governments or to use military structure to achieve dark agendas;
2.3) and in doing such thing they will have all patrimony seized and. a lifetime sentence.
3) Secret Services will have limited power and they must be curbed under international law with severe punishments for enabling coupe e’tat, wars, insurrections, etc.
4) UN headquarters cannot allow the host country to expel diplomatic staff from the UN. If allowing such thing to happen the UN is over in that country.
5) State propaganda worldwide over independent media is a crime punished by expelling the country from the UN.
@ Sid: Good program but who’s going to enforce it? International law is dead in the water because the UN doesn’t have $760 billion a year – and counting – to get the armament to put an end to US piracy, including threats to the judges of the International Criminal Court. In the old Meyer Lansky’s days, Organized crime used to buy politicians. Nowadays, you can’t be a politician if you’re not a member of Organized crime. An alliance of Russia and China with India, South America and Africa’s benediction might change that but the bankrupt US, $30 trillion in the red and dependent on military enforced world hegemony not to be symbolically seized and jailed – i.e. levelled down to cash payments in gold, drastic impoverishment and possible ensuing civil war -, won’t go down without a fight which might turn out like Samson’s as “Mother Superior jumps the gun” :o)
Mein herr, Ich stimme Ihnen zu. But as I said i was aiming about the afterlife, you know. In the day after, you know, when we are all pretty much dead. There I can have the luxury to be idealistic. Something we know. we can never be in this. goddammit reality. Despite. that, I am distributing the tickets, cookies and coffee. Good vibes, shit and happiness.
Thank you for this thought-provoking essay, Ms. Johnstone.
As I have been arguing for at least a decade, the USian Empire’s Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine (MMPM) is – in skill, purpose and by deliberate intent – the world’s first privately-owned, for-profit clone of Josef Goebbels’ infamous Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
In all probability, this MMPM – like the unacknowledged USian role as the Nazi International itself – is one of the innumerable mechanisms of tyrannical omnipotence devised in the postwar United States by the legions of Nazi War Criminals hired by the U.S. government and its corporate owners to ensure clandestine fulfillment of the 1934 Bankers’ Plot.
As most of us know, originally the bankers and their Wall Street and Big Business colleagues intended to make the United States a Nazi puppet-state.
But in the wake of the German Nazi collapse, these plotting plutocratic perpe-traitors and their above-the-law perpe-traitor descendants began working hand-in-glove with the sanctuaried war criminals to ensure the Empire’s future role as global successor to the Third Reich.
Thus the present-day doublethink – thank you, George Orwell – of “dying empire” deceptions versus the obvious evidence the Empire is gearing up for its final wars of global conquest, complete with the “Zieg Heil” echos of “USA USA USA!!!”
Right, I also think its the bankers who really are in charge of the US and its propaganda.
Thank you for the details you provided.
US Empire somewhere between a sociopath and psychopath
You write, “By securing control of global narratives via Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and plutocratic “news” outlets …”
Except that the US empire hasn’t secured control of global narratives. Even the New York Times admits how local and limited the supposed global consensus is:
‘In Some Parts of the World, the War in Ukraine Seems Justified’
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/world/war-russia-china-putin-support.html
or https://archive.ph/JzL0A (same, without paywall)
‘Interviews with dozens of people in those countries — from Vietnam to Afghanistan to South Africa to China — reveal that while many are disturbed by the war and the loss of innocent lives, some are sympathetic to Russia’s justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, and do not accept the good versus evil scenario presented by the United States and Europe.’
Your comprehension skills seem to be lacking. CJ was referring to narrative control, mainly here in the free-world order. And yes, despite that qualifier, the washingdum\Tel aviv consensus has certainly leaked outside the nominal core-states of Oceania. I mean, the Rules-based International order. Now, just b/c the New York Crimes has seemingly admitted that there are those in this world that do not subscribe to the uS narrative(s), hardly invalidates anything CJ has said here. The only thing it means, is, that the NY crimes probably feels they need to redouble their narrative efforts as they just discovered, to their shock and horror no doubt, that yes, people that realize the uS ruling class and their media are full of $#it do in fact, exist. The fact that many mentioned are non-amerikans, is likely going to be chalked up by said NY Crimes, to: propaganda (theirs not ours), communism, Adolf Hitler, Muslims (somehow), Iran, China, OR the editorial staff there might attribute it it to the rest of the world not being fortunate enough to be amerikan. Or some combination of all the above.
You can get around the NYT paywall (and many others) by saving the page on your computer as a .htm file, then open it in notepad or the equivalent, edit it by replacing the word “javascript” with anything you like. Save the file, then open it in your browser and you can read the full content of the original pages. The lines of nonsense code that cover a good deal of the first few screens are the trackers and ads and other rubbish you’ve disabled.
Truer words have never been spoken and this is definitely the icing on the cake:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-biden-laptop?token
So it was not Russian disinformation after all but a simple CIA/DNC/media coup to make sure Biden on leash (probably partly because of what was in the laptop too, as irony would have it) safely got into the White House. Aka CIA (= Wall Street/MIC) meddling in… US elections…
Now that Russia has been painted as the Devil incarnate is the good time to discreetly acknowledge that this banning of the laptop story – including any mention on Twitter – as Russian disinformation was just more CIA propaganda after all – and strictly internal affairs having nothing to do with Russia like the rest of the Russiagate. But never mind… This was done by the “good guys” (TM) in the name of “freedom and democracy” (TM again). Look what Russia’s doing these days, killing people and all… In Europe! We’d never do such a thing! What? Yugoslavia? The bombing of Belgrade? Of the Chinese embassy and the TV building? Conspiracy theory! How do you say “empire of lies” in Russian again? :o)
“Few people have trouble believing there’s a uniquely evil tyrant in the world. They just have a hard time accepting that it’s their own government.”
Yes, that’s it exactly. Nobody wants to think that they are on the wrong side, that their government is doing despicable things in their name. To do so makes them feel wrong and bad, as well, although that is not a rational reaction. But none of this is rational, it is all based on raw emotions – the ‘drug’ that prevents the brain from working correctly!
As long as emotions are kept high, then nobody will think about it rationally, and if they do they will be silenced by peer pressure.
You’re mentioning the pussy hats like 2020 wasn’t a shitshow of virtue signaling. Lol
Hey, _I_ got a pussy hat, and still have it! It was quite a hit with the Hispanic ladies at one of the activist groups I frequent, too. Led to some muy interesantes conversaciones, I might say. I don’t think any virtue was signaled.