Listen to a reading of this article:

Neocon erotica publication The Atlantic has a new article out titled “The Rise of the Liberal Hawks” which is infuriating as much for its sycophantic empire apologia as it is for the fact that much it is entirely correct.

“Progressives typically see war as inherently murderous and dehumanizing — sapping progress, curtailing free expression, and channeling resources into the ‘military-industrial complex,’” sneers the article’s author, Dominic Tierney. “The left led the opposition to the Vietnam War and the Iraq War and condemned American war crimes from the My Lai massacre to Abu Ghraib. Historically, progressive critics have charged the military with a litany of sins, including discrimination against LGBTQ soldiers and a reliance on recruiting in poor communities.”

“Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” writes Tierney. “No foreign conflict since the Spanish Civil War has so captured the imagination of the left.”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin is the antithesis of everything the left stands for,” Tierney adds. “Not only did he launch an unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic nation, but he has also disparaged LGBTQ rights, multiculturalism, and immigration, and claimed that ‘the liberal idea’ has ‘outlived its purpose.’ Zelensky, in contrast, has built bridges with the global left. He addressed the Glastonbury music festival, in the U.K., where the revelers chanted his name to the tune of The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army.’ In Germany, the Green Party led the charge to supply weapons to Kyiv, overturning decades of German wariness about intervening in foreign wars. LGBTQ protesters in Berlin also demanded that Germany step up arms shipments to Ukraine, so that a Pride parade can, one day, be held in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol. Ukrainian liberals—artists, translators, teachers, filmmakers—have joined the struggle. As one writer put it: ‘All our hipsters in Ukraine fight.’”

Tierney concedes that “there’s a leftist fringe in the United States that still considers America the world’s evil empire and remains deeply hostile to its military power,” but says “the bulk of the left has shown remarkable solidarity with the Ukrainian cause.”

“Liberals who once protested the Iraq War now urge Washington to dispatch more rocket launchers to defeat Russian imperialism,” Tierney says. “Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, a member of the progressive caucus, tweeted: ‘We unequivocally stand with the global Ukrainian community in the wake of Putin’s attack.’”

Again, what makes Tierney’s triumphant militarist smut so annoying isn’t how he’s wrong, it’s how he’s right. You can take issue all you like with his use of the word “left” to describe liberal supporters of capitalism and empire who just want the empire to be a bit less embarrassing and maybe forgive their student loans, but that’s the fault of the generations of psyops that have gone into sabotaging the left and destroying its memory, not Tierney’s. What he is saying about liberals who once protested the Iraq invasion now supporting US proxy warfare in Ukraine is broadly true, including throughout the Bernie Sanders/AOC “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.

It’s just a fact that in 2022, liberals are gaga for US interventionism. Because this war can be (falsely) marketed as an “unprovoked” invasion by evil Bad Guys fighting against the virtuous Good Guys of the US/NATO/Ukraine partnership, and because it’s not our sons and daughters getting thrown into the gears of war, people who would normally be more skeptical of militarism and interventionism have indeed jumped aboard the proxy war train.

This war has in that sense become the Gulf War of the 2020s: a “good war” that rehabilitates the image of US interventionism for a war-weary public. Just as the 1990 Gulf War was used to get Americans over what warmongers called “Vietnam syndrome” — a healthy aversion to interventionism following the horrific disaster of the Vietnam War — the war in Ukraine is being used to wear down the public’s collective immune response to interventionism built up after the 2003 Iraq invasion.

“It’s a proud day for America, and by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” the elder President Bush said after winning his war/propaganda operation in the Middle East.

Of course, we all remember what happened after that, don’t we? A decade later came 9/11, and a public now re-warmed to the idea of beneficent military interventionism overwhelmingly consented to two full-scale ground invasions of two separate nations on the promise of swift victory where the troops will be greeted as liberators. What followed was some six million deaths — roughly two thousand times the number killed on 9/11 — while trillions of dollars were siphoned from the American public to the war industry amid an unprecedented new era of military expansionism.

The public has again been won back over to the idea of military interventionism, using an unprecedented narrative management push which saw coverage of the foreign war in Ukraine eclipse even wars the US has directly participated in. They used different tactics and different narratives, as they always do, but the end result in the 2020s is the same as it was in the 1990s.

And now the public is enthused about foreign interventionism once again, and we get to just wait and see what happens after the empire architects give us our next 9/11.

____________________

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82 responses to “The Ukraine Proxy War Has Been A Propaganda Win For Interventionists”

  1. All wars are fought over interests, or power, not ideas as Dominic Tierney (and others on both sides of the debate) would argue. The most dangerous thing is, power is an illusion: it will eventually bring us to the conflict everyone needs to avoid – WW III.
    https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/

  2. “Russian President Vladimir Putin is the antithesis of everything the left stands for,” Tierney adds. “Not only did he launch an unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic nation, but he has also disparaged LGBTQ rights, multiculturalism, and immigration, and claimed that ‘the liberal idea’ has ‘outlived its purpose.’

    He forgot to mention that many on the left still hold him personally responsible for the election of Donald Trump.

  3. The following was just posted on the Guardian’s website:
    .

    Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.
    .

    On Monday, more than four months after her killing, Israel finally admitted it was “highly probable” that an Israeli soldier shot Abu Aqleh while she was reporting on a military raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
    .

    The report said Abu Aqleh was probably shot by an Israeli soldier who was under fire from a group of Palestinian gunmen. It claimed the soldier was using a telescopic sight and misidentified her as one from his armed opponents. The army said no crime was committed so no one will be prosecuted.
    .

    However, eyewitness accounts and videos of Abu Aqleh and the area around her at the time of her killing do not show a gun battle. She was also wearing body armour and a helmet clearly labelled as “press”.

  4. As Matt Duss, Bernie’s Foreign Policy Advisor and Handler, noted the CIA was correct to anonymously out Bernie as a Putin Puppet during the Nevada caucuses of the Democrat primaries. Bernie of course dismissed the charge saying in came from the hive-mind of the WaPo. Duss said we have to trust our Intelligence Agencies.
    By Sander’s top aide’s admission, Bernie belongs in jail; this is much more serious than the Jan 6 “insurrectionists”. It also confirms Hillary’s charges that Bernie is working for Putin (along with Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump). The Clintons’ acceptance of Putin’s “heartfelt thanks” and $500,000 for Bill’s Moscow speech in 2010 when Hillary was Secretary of State was not greed or graft, but a clever ruse working with our Intelligence Agencies, who now run our Police State.

  5. I really don’t get all this left-bashing by left-wingers. Or are they! Are they in fact really right-wing shills posing as left-wingers. That said, it could of course just be one shill with a whole bunch of different user-names. A left-wing (Jeremy Corbyn supporting) news blog that I post on fairly regularly is swarming with im-posters, as I call them, and they have literally posted thousands of comments during the past four years or more falsely discrediting Jeremy Corbyn, socialist MPs in general, AND left-wingers every-which-way they can think of. *AND* repeat each and every one of their vexatious criticisms over and over again ad nauseum, because Repetition is of course a subtle form of brain-washing. And the ‘criticism is made – and, as such, repeated – by a number of posters (im-posters/secondary personas, that is) so as to have readers/subscribers believe that there is consensus and agreement about it – eg that JC threw ‘good comrades’ under the bus.
    .
    The thing is this, that any genuine left-winger KNOWS how totally corrupt the Establishment and their MSM propaganda machine is (in the US, UK, Australia, Canada etc), and they will of course tune into the likes of John Pilger and Glenn Greenwald and Max Blumenthal and Jonathan Cook and Caitlin Johnstone etc, etc, etc to get a real perspective of and about what is actually happening.

    1. Stop the War Coalition statement from Feb 14th:
      .

      Stop the War believes that Russia and Ukraine should reach a diplomatic settlement of the tensions between them, on the basis of the Minsk-2 agreement already signed by both states.
      .

      It believes NATO should call a halt to its eastward expansion and commit to a new security deal for Europe which meets the needs of all states and peoples.
      .

      We refute the idea that NATO is a defensive alliance, and believe its record in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Libya over the last generation, not to mention the US-British attack on Iraq, clearly proves otherwise.
      .
      https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/
      .

      Needless to say, the reason SWC is attacked and vilified is precisely because it enlightens people AND, as such, exposes the Big Lies and falsehoods and deceptions and deceit and mendacity of the Ruling psychopathic Elite.

      1. A Statement from U.S. Organizations on the Ukraine Crisis
        .

        [ February 1, 2022 ]
        .

        As organizations representing millions of people [over 100 national and regional U.S. organizations] in the United States, we call upon President Biden to end the U.S. role in escalating the extremely dangerous tensions with Russia over Ukraine. It is gravely irresponsible for the president to participate in brinkmanship between two nations that possess 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
        .

        For the United States and Russia, the only sane course of action now is a commitment to genuine diplomacy with serious negotiations, not military escalation – which could easily spiral out of control to the point of pushing the world to the precipice of nuclear war.
        .

        While both sides are to blame for causing this crisis, its roots are entangled in the failure of the U.S. government to live up to its promise made in 1990 by then-Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would expand not “one inch to the East.” Since 1999, NATO has expanded to include numerous countries, including some that border Russia. Rather than dismissing out of hand the Russian government’s current insistence on a written guarantee that Ukraine will not become part of NATO, the U.S. government should agree to a long-term moratorium on any NATO expansion.
        .
        https://www.veteransforpeace.org/pressroom/news/2022/02/01/100-us-organizations-release-statement-urging-biden-end-us-r

  6. Everyone should read this article. It sound exactly like a US false flag botched by the Russians.

  7. Johnny Conspiranoid Avatar
    Johnny Conspiranoid

    ” liberals who once protested the Iraq invasion now supporting US proxy warfare in Ukraine is broadly true,”
    How do we know that individuals who protested the Iraq invasion are now supporting US proxy war in Ukraine? Has a survey been conducted to find individuals that meet this description or is it just an assumption based on the words of public figures? The media is not a reliable indicator of public opinion. I was and am against both.

  8. Closed vs Open System Thinking Avatar
    Closed vs Open System Thinking

    If you do not support having a robust public sector, you are not on the left. Supporting the increasingly privatized military makes you an anachronistic thinker, a ball-n-chain member of humankind, too fearful to face real progress, in fact, flailing wildly to hold back consciousness evolution. The west has become like Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham, trying to relive the feudal order of the past. Propaganda is the compost of the dying brain, giving life to those who seed new thoughts and inventions, ever expanding what it means to be alive.

  9. zbigniew dzwonkowski Avatar
    zbigniew dzwonkowski

    Americans have the unique form of Communism which works for them well worldwide , as described by the Polish proverb : ” What is yours, that is mine, but what is mine , do not touch it “….

  10. Thank you Caitlin, I do wonder why it is that “liberals” and the “left” are such pathetic victims of gaslighting and propaganda, and that it is the parties of the “right” which have objected to the more or less open power grab of the Western fascists over the last few years. Perhaps idealism and a focus on principle blinds the lib-left to the crimes. They trust anyone who claims to be acting on principle because they themselves are motivated by principle and so they are very easily suckered into righteous indignation, which degenerates into unthinking howling mob rule. (I say this as someone who has proudly supported the most left wing parties I could find in the UK all my adult life, and who now has nowhere to run).

    Off topic, but I wonder if you would mention the UK persecution of Graham Phillips again, (as you know, a UK reporter in Ukraine). I think his case would appeal to you in its open an monstrous Orwellianism. For example, to support their case for freezing all his assets and bank accounts they say

    “Evidence: Guardian article which offers a profile on Graham PHILLIPS. It notes that PHILLIPS has claimed that ‘Ukraine is run by Nazis and the massacre of Ukrainians in Bucha was staged’. The Guardian is a highly credible source.”

    https://thesaker.is/the-persecution-of-graham-phillips-by-the-uk-government/

    1. “They trust anyone who claims to be acting on principle because they themselves are motivated by principle and so they are very easily suckered into righteous indignation”.
      This is the very definition of useful idiots and the bull’s eye of the propaganda target.

      1. The most unbearable being of course their self-righteousness, like that of the Crusaders who used to go and slaughter people – including Christians of a different persuasion – in the name of Jesus.

  11. And, our military/industrial complex doesn’t even serve the military let alone the nation, because all it produces is grossly over priced junk; a recurring theme here in the US. Here is a short snippet of of what Russia thought of one our best armored personal carriers;

    The American M113 armored personnel carriers, put into service with the Ukrainian army just a few weeks ago, turned out to be completely useless armored combat vehicles. Initially, it was assumed that such an armored personnel carrier would be able to protect crews and infantry from shots from tanks and fragments of field artillery, however, just one direct hit from the T-72 tank was enough for the armored personnel carrier to literally be torn to pieces.

    The article goes on to say that it would only take a matter of a few minutes to destroy an entire battalion of these vehicles. And, I read our own military websites, bragging about their new toys, as though they never learned a thing from WW1 and 2; you don’t want to be the biggest object on the battle field, time and time again it has been proven that large lumbering tanks are sitting ducks. But, that’s us and our egos. If we ever get into a real war, our military will most likely be crushed within a matter of weeks. And, which according to this website will be all our own fault. And, quite frankly that has been the narrative for many centuries now, with many other nations, that’s how these cretin operate.

    1. It looks like the US military is largely at work in Ukraine, albeit not in US military clothes, especially operating the newly delivered weapons like the HIMARS and providing satellite intelligence and that it is getting crushed already. Especially the two attempts at disembarking in Enerhodar (the so-called Zaporozhye power plant which is in fact 60 kms south of that town) have been crushed by the Russians, the soldiers killed or captured and the barges sunk – as could be predicted if you send sitting ducks over a straight of water with heavy artillery on the other side – and this was apparently masterminded by the Pentagon.

    2. Uh-huh! And let’s not forget that Amerikkka hasn’t won a war since WWII and then, only against the Japanese, since it was Russia who defeated Hitler.
      Daddy Bush’s slaughter of Iraqis attempting to surrender doesn’t count.

      1. That “won” a war against little itys-bitys-teenie-weenie Grenada a britsh colony. After the bully’s attack reagan phoned thatcher and apologized for doing so without her permission.

  12. The IAEA’s refusal to say who is shelling Zaporozhye on Ukraine has the taste of vinegar for those looking for a multipolar world order based in laws. The UN is hijacked. Antonio Guterres is the worst UN secretary to sit there since the creation of the UN. Apathy Guterres looks like more concerned about his incoming in retirement than anything else.
    Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union pumped up the European and American economy with cheap gas and oil among other things. It will take some years if not decades to show what really looks like Europe and America without Russia providing richness. Russia is the one to blame for having high hopes from corrupt leaders and institutions.

    1. Guttieres, Barroso, Juncker, von der Leyen, Lagarde, Macron, Scholz, Rutte, Sanchez… All these guys take their orders from the US deep state. What can we expect?

  13. Ask your legislators to provide potassium iodide pills so they know there are still some KoolAid refusers who take the American push toward nuclear war seriously.

    Too many Americans, mostly Democrats, now look to be playing the role of (power-) drunk celebrating passengers on the Titanic.

    The celebrations won’t survive the cold bucket of ice water of a radioactive cloud over their evacuated homes.

    Perhaps a (relatively) small nuclear cloud from a reactor meltdown will push diplomacy to the fore, so as to foreclose a move to an all out MAD.

    An immunization of sorts

    I have a very personal reason for this threat to seem more real to me than it seems to most.

    Choose diplomacy.

  14. In the passage from the Atlantic Caitlin quotes it says the following:
    .
    He addressed the Glastonbury music festival, in the U.K., where the revelers chanted his name to the tune of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”
    .

    Yes, Jeremy Corbyn eat your heart out (irony alert!):
    .

    https://twitter.com/kayaburgess/status/1540310862308802566?s=20&t=DVlgpHQMLU8u30uabbgI3Q

  15. In the passage from the Atlantic Caitlin quotes it says the following:
    .
    He addressed the Glastonbury music festival, in the U.K., where the revelers chanted his name to the tune of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”

    Yes, Jeremy Corbyn eat your heart out (irony alert!):

    https://twitter.com/kayaburgess/status/1540310862308802566?s=20&t=DVlgpHQMLU8u30uabbgI3Q

  16. I refer to this as the Hilary/Maddow syndrome. It certainly didn’t start with them but they brought the propaganda front and center for the willing left. Hilary was beating the war drums with Russia throughout her 2016 campaign – one of many reasons that I refused to vote for her. Upon her loss, Rachel Maddow took up the drumbeat in earnest, constantly sighting Russia’s “massive influence” in Hilary’s loss via their supposed disinformation campaign. Nightly for months, she loudly beat the war drums. More than any other broadcast media figure she put the fear of god into her listeners shouting beware, beware the evils of Putin’s Russia. Joe McCarthy would be proud.

    Many on the left love and worship MSNBC (the FAUX News of the left) — seemly oblivious to the fact that it is owned by the largest media conglomerate in the world.

    1. One could sum up this and a great many comments thus – The West has won The Propaganda War. But you win wars by winning The Real War, thereafter the Propaganda War collapses and so goes public confidence. This slow motion US-NATO-UK Ukrainian Proxy War to weaken Russia over Ukrainian lives is lost.

      Now a matter of desperation and doubling down – in the Western Centres of Planning. Examined here . . . https://les7eb.substack.com/p/great-game-ukraine-long-proxy-war

      The shipping of heavier armaments to The Ukraine, under the belief of a limited or meek Russian response has the appearances of a trap, as indeed was their earlier “assault” on Kyiv an obvious feint. They made it look convincing. Tendentiously written up as a Russian loss.
      One can almost see it in The Stars – those Western leaders who spoke to tipping out the Russian Government and leader will themselves be gone soon enough. The Russian leadership remains.

      Judgment shall be by outcomes.

  17. I’m through with going to the dentist! At least until the Ukraine war is over. Hearing her rehash what she’s heard from the Spanish media with an open mouth that stops me from objecting anything is too damn painful!

    So here’s the picture according to this otherwise clever and kind-hearted lady: Putin is a goddamn power freak who invaded Ukraine to reconstitute the Russian Empire but he’s on his last leg because he’s got terminal cancer and has lost the use of one arm. It’s bad enough that he’s killing good people in Ukraine for no reason at all but he’s also now burning the gas that he won’t sell to Europe, which is the ultimate insult because that gas belongs to us, the people of the Earth and so he’s wasting the resources of the planet.

    Mind you, I can’t blame her too much on this last point because it’s true that this gas doesn’t belong to the Russians. Like the Iraqi, Libyan and Syrian oil and also, even though it hasn’t been claimed out loud since 1953 the Iranian oil, it belongs to the Americans.

    And what about American gas? Is that OUR gas too?

    Err… no… That’s different… It’s their gas but they’re the good guys (TM), so they manage it in the general interest. They send missionaries around the world to deliver it to the poor dying of starvation in the Third World because of US sanctions. It’s the solace of their last days.

    But Putin is a thug and doesn’t know what he’s doing. Proof? Six Russian oligarchs have died since the beginning of the Ukraine war and they were opposed to it. So it is clear that Putin bumped them off. He was even in the hospital where Gorbachev died the other day to pay his last respect when the chairman of Russia’s largest private oil company who was in another room jumped out the window. What better proof do you want that Putin pushed him? It’s not like if the oil and gas business in Russia had been in the hands of conflicting mafias on the war path since 1991 which have killed hundreds of people over the years! You can take for certain that if Putin is in any way connected to someone who dies, it’s sufficient evidence that he’s the murderer.

    An Euronews article even says, “Yet, it is Ravil Maganov’s demise that caught the attention of the press, having been the latest in a string of accidental self-defenestrations and other suspicious deaths of those who either profited from good relations with Putin or were a thorn in his side – or both”.

    Can’t win! Whether you’re a friend or foe of Putin – or both -, he’ll push you out the window!

    It reminds me of the joke of the guy walking around a manhole muttering “23… 23… 23…” A passer-by, intrigued, goes up to him to ask what he’s doing. The guy grabs him by his collar, throws him into the hole and resumes his walk muttering “24…24…24”.

    1. Bang on message, glad you got the memo 🙂 And nice joke ;-P

      Sorry if I am being dumb , but who is “her” in “”Hearing her rehash what she’s heard from the Spanish media…” ?

      1. My dentist. Even though I never asked her for her pronouns, the fact that she’s wearing a skirt and has protuberant lungs has always made me think that the odds are she’s a female :o)

        1. Never argue with anyone sticking a needle into your jaw, Pascal
          Maybe time for a new dental provider…

  18. My friend of course knows the needle state about this beautiful freelance technique. (Eg ~246) Sure, I’ve tried the f9 Associate title, I’m currently being paid $26000 monthly, at the same time I’m not paying an excessive amount of time to Associate in Nursing. In addition, you will do this. ==== http://simplework244.blogspot.com/

  19. I really hate riding on bandwagons. They get so crowded. And you just can’t keep the riffraff off. (Like Nancy Pelosi)

    Please, listen to Phil Ochs’ “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” on YouTube.

    1. Susan, I discovered ‘Love me Im a Liberal’ a few months ago and have been pushing it whenever possible. There are also updated versions, as some of the pop culture references in the original wouldn’t mean much to a modern audience, but the song is very easy to update (swapping Humphrey for Biden, for example).

      Strong recommendation to take Susan’s advice.

  20. Slime Mold Can Solve Exponentially Complicated Problems in Linear Time

    Slime molds don’t have brains, but yet appear to be much more intelligent than most people in America, why is that?

    https://www.sci.news/biology/slime-mold-problems-linear-time-06759.html

    1. They introduced “noise” to affect Plasmodium’s responses.
      Possibly there’s so much “noise” affecting humans that our responses are dulled, too?

  21. The public’s enthusiasm for foreign interventionism isn’t going to last through the winter. There was never the slightest chance Ukraine would prevail against Russia in any conflict remotely resembling a conventional war, any more than Bush Jr. was going to stomp vassal democracy into Afghanistan or Iraq. I’m persistently amazed at how far removed the mass of humanity is from large scale reality. And FWIW Putin isn’t antigay, at least to hear him tell it. Identity politics is actually a kind of group narcissism, de facto bigotry masquerading as self interest. I was thinking yesterday I want a rainbow flag in shades of grey. I’m not sure what it would mean.

    1. But I thought that the safe and sane leaders of the Free World don’t want Ukraine to prevail.

    2. Once the power turns off this winter in Europe all hell will break loose. 2023 will be the beginning of the end for the Euro and the European Union. Britian will self destruct on their own.

  22. I’ve never read so much bullshit as this article by Johnstone writing about the article by that hack Tierney. What Tierney’s article is actually doing is projecting a false narrative onto the Left, i.e. that it is eager for war and to support Ukraine. More psy-op propaganda, nothing more. It is entirely false. It is only the pseudo-left who supports the drive to war with Russia in Ukraine: for example that asshole Bernie Sanders, CounterPunch, German Green Party and Alena Baerbock, etc. Both Tierney and Johnstone are totally wrong. This blog is way overrated and has a tendency to repeat the same things over and over and over again.

    1. On the bright side, you don’t even have to read it. Added bonus: you won’t waste people’s time with silly comments.

    2. Sometimes the truth has to be repeated over and over again before it penetrates the corporate media propaganda concrete block that encases liberal brains.

      I remember exactly where I was and the rage I felt when on NPR I heard warmonger HW Bush called “Vietnam syndrome” dead.

      Thanks, Caitlin.

    3. WHAT? WHAT the hell planet did you just step off of? LOL, yeah you’re one of them aren’t you? An American lefty. That’s what they do in India; sit with their legs crossed for days just to prove that thier biological wastes don’t offended anyone sinus wise. Such crock, I’d be ashamed to spread such filthy lies, but then I’ve seen full grown men masturbate on city buses, so there’s no telling what people will think, do or say.

    4. Doesn’t say much then for the left these days then, does it, if they can simply turn a blind eye to the wilful murder of more than 12 thousand Innocents over 8 years does it. Clearly, the so called left have lost the plot entirely.

    5. Not sure who the true left is anymore. Never hear a peep from them. Guess they are the new silent minority.

      1. The word ‘left” originally meant “weak”‘, because what we know as the left arm was the weak arm.

        So the weak (left) will always be with us (past performance is no guarantee of future performance).

        The US has been assassinating and incarcerating leaders of left (weak), people, such as was Fred Hampton, etc.who could organize cross race, culture, etc..

        So now all the disorganized weak (left) people have been turned against each other ( by provocative communications written by the FBI to fracture any possible organized left (weak)).

        The powerful (vicious) sit at the right hand of the most powerful (most vicious).

          1. c. 1200, “opposite of right,” probably from Kentish and northern English forms of Old English *lyft “weak; foolish” (in lyft-adl “lameness, paralysis”). Compare East Frisian luf, Dutch dialectal loof “weak, worthless”).

            Left predates French Revolution.

    6. You know, I’m really sorry, I must have been totally exhausted when I read your comment yesterday morning. Yeah, no, you are totally right, them and many others, I argued this point years ago, that the facsist we’re coming from the left, while the other debator insisted that the dictionary couldn’t be wrong that facsism always comes from the right. By withdrawaling from the International Treaty on Human Rights Trump essentially took away all our rights, and there were no objections from the left.

    7. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo

    8. I think Caitlin Johnstone is quite clear and would agree with you regarding the pseudo-left. One is not a leftist if one supports capitalism, militarism, and imperialism, which liberals and progressives do wholeheartedly. As for the German Green Party, I liked one blogger’s description of them: THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE COLLECTIVE.

  23. So true, the political system in the US names the blue party as ‘the left’. Hillary calls herself a progressive. If the progressives who rallied behind Sanders choose a new name, then she will adopt that. First rule of American politics is you don’t talk about anything left of the party. The GOP doesn’t want the Dems horning in on their right wing action, so their flex is to shout ‘communist’ at extreme right wingers like Biden and Pelosi. Do you notice how irrelevant Sanders and Cortez have become? They are caricatures of socialists. Jimmy Dore has been saying Jimmy that America has two right wing war parties for years which is ignored because there are no torches and pitchforks backing it up, it’s comedy after all. Most Americans I know are not warmonger maniacs, they are plugged into the matrix of the economy and fear the disapproval of their peers. We didn’t predict the Berlin wall coming down and probably won’t be ready when the empire collapses. It might be energy prices or water. The US Constitution has had a remarkable run.

    1. Buckle up buttercup, this storm will collapse the west. Glibalization is dying fast. Living standards will fall accordingly.

    2. Sanders was a false flag. The money that I gave to him, he gave to Hillary, and he did that when he was supposedly trying real hard to win the nomination. Fake garbage American politicians the whole lot of them, no wonder so many actors go into politics, because here in America, it’s all a sham.

  24. Not to be a know-it-all, but the greens and the DNC are centrists (so is Putin) and there isn’t a democrat alive who hates Russians more than Liz Cheney. The farther left you go, the less support you’ll find for NATO expansion.

  25. It seems the US government terrorist policies to keep terrorism on Syria is about to change drastically. Russia, Ira and Turkey might drive away the US troops stealing oil and wheat from the Syrian people.
    https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/1566919123514294277?s=20&t=2bp3yfjgnkuAHajL9dug_g

    1. Yeah, Russia just sent an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean to be stationed near Syria. Israel has been bombing Syria’s civilian airport almost every other day for quite some time now. I wonder what Americans would think if someone did that to our biggest civilian airports, just shrug it off?

  26. America has been consistent about its own discourse.
    Take a look at George H Bush speaking about the reasons to justify the Kuwait war.
    Take a look at Bill Clinton speaking about the reasons to bomb Yugoslavia.
    Take a look at George W Bush speaking about the 9/11 https://youtu.be/WA8-KEnfWbQ.
    Take a look at George W Bush speaking about the justifications for the Afghanistan and Iraq war.
    Take a look at Barack Obama speaking about the justifications for the Libya War.
    Take a look at Barack Obama speaking about the justifications for the Syria War.
    Take a look at Barack Obama addressing the Yemen war not official till today.
    Take a look at Barack Obama speaking about the Somalia and Ethiopia war.
    We all know today that these justifications were lies. In all of these wars CIA had a heavy hand provoking it according to the people living on these countries and America denying it on MSM calling these same people liars, friends of terrorists.
    Take a look at the Ukrainian war. We have on the internet tons of videos with Biden fueling the Euro maidan on Ukraine back in 2014 among many American government representatives paying visits for years there. It is not just America but almost all European leaders since then have synchronized their narratives about the Ukraine war – “unprovoked”. Russia acted “unilaterally, brutally, aggressively.”
    We have seem America walking away from their own terrorism worldwide without any punishment, consequences to suffer. We cannot fix the past but we have the power to prevent this monsters to walk away one more time at the expense of millions of europeans and asian people who will die in following years due to the terrorist policies of the US enabled by CIA and partners. We owe to the dead to avenge them about all lies.

  27. I think that what is most annoying, with regard of support for the Russia/Ukrainian war, is that the supporters of the Ukraine blindly accept our government’s nonsensical propaganda and do not bother to do even a whit of research on their own.
    Even a brief venture into the truth of history would tell them that the Minsk agreement of 2015 was never fully implemented and that, in the interlude, the Ukraine has slaughtered some 14,000 Russians forced to live in the Ukraine, but who still considered themselves to be Russian, as many in the Donetsk region still do. What makes it worse is that much of the slaughter has been mainly done by a segment of the Ukrainian military comprised, in part, by violent Nazi extremists who, though comprising a minority in the area of 15%, are so violent that to look at them sideways might bring one reprisals ranging from severe beatings to outright slaughter.
    I am anti all war and all killing, but I totally understand that the war is real. However, those professing to want its end simply refuse to learn that by supporting (with their tax dollars) the government’s sending of armaments, supplies and equipment, they are only serving to prolong the war and that the money used to pay for these things is going into the war-industry hands of the very people who are lying to us and who control the press and other media, the politicians and our not-so-supreme court.
    A woman I know, who is otherwise quite intelligent, has hung a Ukraine flag on her porch and plastered a sticky-back facsimile onto the metal rear of her car. She has done no research whatsoever and will never discuss the topic with anyone, so absolutely sure that she is in the right, though totally oblivious to her ignorance.

    1. Correction: “Your tax dollars” don’t fund spending at the Federal level. And they haven’t since Richard Nixon took us off the last of the gold standard in 1971.
      We now have a fiat currency, which means that Congress creates the currency to spend on whatever cock-a-doodle notion they take into their heads, every time they pass an appropriations bill. It’s all new money, every time.
      Therefore, refusing to pay your taxes isn’t an effective protest any longer.
      Please learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). It explains how this whole thing works.

  28. Liberalism isn’t socialism.

    Liberalism has always been an ideology that supports capitalism.

    Historical proponents of liberalism are individuals such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Locke, Malthus, Ricardo. Not Proudhon, Bakunin or Karl Marx.

    Liberalism paints itself as socialism to steer the masses away from socialism.

    The left (wing of parliaments) has always been liberal.

    Socialists do not participate in plutocratic institutions such as parliaments.

    Representative democracy is an oxymoron.

    Except for switzerland to an extent, there is no democracy in the so-called west and there has never been. From the very beginning.

    1. Funny, most of those supporters of liberalism that you listed are also known as Malthusian. Of course that isn’t by coincidence; consider it the 200 year set-up for the situation that we have today.

    2. Mary Midgley dynamites philosophical Liberalism in ‘Utopias & Dolphins’. The Liberal rational individual actor (acting in his own self interest) is a fiction, conjured into existence by Locke, Hobbes et al, wealthy landowners whose lives were the apex of a pyramid, below whom laboured wives, maids, servants, indentures, wage slaves and slaves. They construct a ‘Rational Actor / Individual’ as the peak of their worldview, but this Individual is a parasite, whose life exists vampirically on the exploited beneath him. The liberal project over 200+ years has been to expand the circle of people who can enjoy the life of the parasite / vampire, but no matter how big the circle of ‘inclusion’, there is no Liberal Utopia in which everyone is inside the circle. Someone must clean the toilets, someone must mine the Coltan, someone must die of cancer, and it’s not going to be Messrs Locke & Hobbes or Smith or their descendants.

      Midgley: “LIBERALISM PRETENDED TO BE UNIVERSAL WHEN IT WAS NOT”.

      In start contrast to Marxism/socialism/communism, which (I think the last 100 years have shown this) either are International/universal, or simply cannot exist at all.

      Chances of Marxism/Socialism might be one in a thousand at this point, but I’ll take that over the Liberal Utopia, as the chance of that are ZERO.

  29. When liberals cannot distinguish themselves from Nazis, civil war and dictatorship are not far off. “They have sown the wind, and shall reap the whirlwind.”

  30. Nothing is really ours until we share it.

    C. S. Lewis

  31. One of the most outrageous actions by prominent Liberals (i.e. of the synthetic left) is comedian Jon Stewart, who is Jewish, giving an award to member of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, Ihor Halushka, for his war efforts!

    Years ago Mad Magazine had satiric items on how the Gestapo was giving chocolate to Jewish children, and the U.S. apologizing to the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor because exploding US ships gave them headaches.

    Stewart’s actions made Mad look conservative.

    1. Not outrageous at all, sure the Nazis committed some crimes, but who were the Nazis? Hardly anyone ever looks beyond that. Germans? Yes, maybe, but there were also Polish Nazis. So, were they Poles? Besides nationality, just who were these Nazis? If you don’t know that, then nothing should seem outrageous at all.

  32. It is cognitively dissonant to see liberals beating the war drums, but they are, very vigorously, just as hard, if not harder, than the right wing fanatics.

  33. Yeah, our next 9/11. It may be right around the corner.
    Prediction number 112 (for pope Francis) that was published in 1595:

    In psecutione. extrema S.R.E. sedebit. —-
    He will reign in the final persecution. of the Holy Roman Church.

    If that unlikely prophecy is fulfilled, then watch out . . . . . .

    1. I seriously always thought that was a nuke on the Vatican.

    2. No, it’s pretty much right on, but then one must remember that the Vatican was never really Christian. Anybody can become a pope as long as long as they can get enough votes, being a Christian is not a prerequisite, in fact there have been many non Christians in the past who have served as popes. I personally like Francis, but I suspect that he’s a virtual prisoner in his own Church

  34. I have to disagree with the title of your piece, not the content so much. My position is that there is no winning of a propaganda war. Once you engage with propaganda, you immediately lose. The only counter to propaganda is truth, and that way one can deconstruct lies, but notice that the Russians do not, to the disappointment of many in the West, engage in the same below-the-belt tactics. Why should they? For now, they have right on their side.

    The Russians are said to be bad at PR or even losing the “PR war”, but I beg to differ.

    Those who rely on spin and lies, the speciality of the Ukrainians, the CIA and the western MSM are merely exposing their weak points, so why would anyone want to be good at that? As analysts have said of the SMO, the NATO hardware is faulty, not up to the job, breaks easily and is expensive. The Russian ones are tough, capable and battle tested and have less pork fat involved in their making. But what we hear from the western media is that Russia is about to crumble, to run out of missiles and ammunition and so forth. When we lie, we expose a weak point. Only the weak have to lie, because they have nothing else, so in the end all the media operations, psy-ops, clever tricks, brazening it out counts for nothing if they have nothing to back it up. They lie because they have nothing else. They are paper tigers. They cannot hope to win.

    1. Thank you, Colin. The real world trumps the virtual world every time. EXCEPT when you try to fight for reality IN the virtual world; i.e., the media. Is this not Caitlin’s futile but noble war?

    2. Sort of like focusing on body count during the Vietnam War instead of what was actually happening.

      1. Great period cartoon, those kids grow up into good liberals, something the artist couldn’t have comprehended mayhap.

        http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s57ISZAyJXI/RoDvbjpbesI/AAAAAAAAAM0/5Rxeoxa0A3Q/s1600-h/Edward+Koren+23+Dec+1967+war+mania+children.jpg

  35. Thank you for another courageous article. I agree how disgusting it is that the synthetic left backs the U.S.-provoked conflict in Ukraine. I also wonder how much the proportions are Tierney lies. Many people I know are for Ukrainians not suffering and but do blame US/NATO for provoking the conflict.

    1. Hear, hear!

  36. The fact is that in the West, whether they be Liberals, so called socialists or, conservatives they all dance to the tune of the unseen orchestra, like lemmings they jump from the cliffs simply because they lack the mind to think for themselves,and to see beyond the bullshit that they gratefully swallow, who would have thought that at a music festival people would be shouting the name of a pentagon puppet, perhaps the poor little snowflakes spend too long with their i-phones glued to their ears to notice reality around them or perhaps the radiation has fried their tiny little minds, who knows? but one thing is for certain that with morons like those one seems to encounter in the west today we are in the deepest shit.

    1. Well said, almost poetic, in fact.

      1. My friend of course knows the needle state about this beautiful freelance technique. (Eg ~232) Sure, I’ve tried the f9 Associate title, I’m currently being paid $26000 monthly, at the same time I’m not paying an excessive amount of time to Associate in Nursing. In addition, you will do this. ==== http://simplework244.blogspot.com/

        1. A needle and the damage’s done, as Dr Fauci likes to say…

          1. Or is it Neil Young?

        2. “…I’m currently being paid $26000 monthly…” and still too cheap to pay for an ad.

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