People Overestimate The US War Machine And Underestimate The US Propaganda Machine (2022-03-20)
By CAITLIN JOHNSTONE - March 20, 2022
Twitter's algorithm has promoted a Ukrainian news channel called the
"The Kyiv Independent", which has allowed it to gain
two million followers since it was formed in November 2021 by the European Endowment for Democracy, a spin-off of a CIA-front organization called the
National Endowment for Democracy.
The co-founder of NED, Allen Weinstein, famously said,
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA".
The channel promotes highly biased content in favor of Zelensky and the western powers that want to escalate the war between Russia and Ukraine to include NATO and U.S. forces.
The outlet is being so loudly amplified by Twitter that one of its reporters (who calls the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion his “brothers in arms“) has gained a million followers since the start of the Russian invasion.
Do you see how sophisticated just that one tiny component of the US-centralized empire‘s propaganda campaign is?
How many seemingly disparate and unrelated elements it has?
Multiple countries, NGOs, an ostensibly independent social media platform, an ostensibly independent news outlet.
Truly, one of the most under-appreciated and overwhelmingly powerful forces on this earth is the US propaganda machine.
The ability to manipulate public thought, not just within the United States but across vast swaths of nations, has allowed it to manufacture international consensus for whatever agendas it wishes to advance in a way that eclipses the collective organizing power of official international bodies like the United Nations.
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THE AUDIO VERSION - SOUNDCLOUD:
People Overestimate The US War Machine And Underestimate The US Propaganda Machine (2022-03-20)
https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue%2Fpeople-overestimate-the-us-war-machine-and-underestimate-the-us-propaganda-machine
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SEE ALSO:
THE FOG OF INFORMATION WAR IN UKRAINE
By
Pedro L. Gonzalez | March 15, 2022
The Western intelligence apparatus has been busy in Ukraine. With financing and collaboration through various non-governmental organizations, it won the information war with the help of Ukrainian media before Russia ever fired a shot in February. Even the country’s newest publications, like the Kyiv Independent, have received support and funding from institutions associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.
'CIA sidekick' gives £2.6m to UK media groups
By MATT KENNARD AND
| DECLASSIFIED UK - 2022-01-17
A US government-funded agency that claims to promote democracy but which helps undermine governments independent of Washington has moved decisively into Britain’s media space since 2016.
•
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funded groups such as Bellingcat, Index on Censorship, Article 19, Finance Uncovered, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation
•
Former CIA officer tells Declassified the NED is a “vehicle” for US government “propaganda”
Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy – William Blum
How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate – the Church committee of the Senate, the Pike committee of the House, and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment.
Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name – The National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.
It was a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations, and of cynicism.
