This article was originally posted on Twitter.
The New York Times article “How Russian Propaganda is Reaching Beyond English Speakers,” is an unintentional but no less devastating self-exposure of government and corporate media efforts to suppress public access to all information and analysis that contradicts US-NATO propagandized accounts of its proxy war in Ukraine.
The Times, whose war coverage conforms to Washington's “Good vs. Evil” narrative, writes: “When Russia’s war in Ukraine began, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants moved to block or limit the reach of the accounts of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine in the West.” The Times complains that Washington's efforts to censor Russian accounts of the war “do not yet include coverage by media in Latin America and the Middle East.”
Without full global censorship, writes the Times, “The result has been a geographical and cultural asymmetry in the information war over Ukraine that has helped undercut American- and European-led efforts to put broad international pressure on Mr. Putin to call off his war.”
The Times article sheds light on the intense involvement of social media outlets Facebook and Twitter in the suppression of news and analysis, particularly from RT, that provide access to Russian reports. But efforts to impose global censorship must be stepped up.
The Times declares: “The failure to go after Russian posts in Spanish, Arabic and other languages has left open the door for the Kremlin to win over audiences in parts of the world where the United States, its main villain, is viewed with greater ambivalence.”
Among the main lessons drawn by the US government from the Vietnam debacle was that media accounts of wars must be totally propagandized. The age of “embedded” reporters, who took dictation from the Pentagon and CIA, began. Present-day war coverage by the Times and the entire corporate media exemplify the outcome of this decades-long process of corruption. The Times is the most egregious example, habitually referring in a declamatory manner, to all Russian statements as “lies.”
This “news” article, for example, flatly denounces “President Vladimir V. Putin’s unprovoked invasion, demonizing Ukraine and obfuscating responsibility for Russian atrocities that have killed thousands of civilians.” Is it really a fact that the invasion is “unprovoked.” In the long distant past, the pretense of objective journalism would have been observed by writing: Putin's invasion, “which Washington alleges to be unprovoked...” All such essential modifiers are now dispensed with.
The Times article concludes with the following quote from an Argentine political scientist: “Part of RT’s success probably is due not so much on promoting the Russian version of events, but rather on questioning the Western narrative.” This self-damning statement exposes the far-reaching aim of US censorship, which is not only to block access to unfavorable information, but also to prevent the “questioning of the Western narrative.”
This objective cannot be achieved only by blocking access to RT. It demands the suppression of news and analysis and any public expression of critical thought. The conclusion: US and NATO imperialism requires dictatorship within the borders of their own countries.