{"id":210370,"date":"2022-05-02T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=210370"},"modified":"2022-04-28T09:20:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T08:20:45","slug":"everyones-anti-war-until-the-war-propaganda-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/05\/everyones-anti-war-until-the-war-propaganda-starts\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone\u2019s Anti-War until the War Propaganda Starts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

27 Apr 2022 –\u00a0<\/em>Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they\u2019re spouting the slogans they\u2019ve been programmed to spout, waving the flags they\u2019ve been programmed to wave, and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.<\/p>\n

Virtually everyone will tell you they love peace and hate war when asked; war is the very worst thing in the world, and no healthy person relishes the thought of it. But when the rubber meets the road and it\u2019s time to oppose war and push for peace, those who\u2019d previously proclaimed themselves \u201canti-war\u201d are on the other side screaming for more weapons to be poured into a proxy war that their government deliberately provoked.<\/p>\n

This is because the theory<\/em> of being anti-war is very different from the practice<\/em>. In theory people are just opposed to the idea of exploding other people for no good reason. In practice they\u2019re always hit with a very intense barrage of media messaging giving them what look like very good reasons why those people need exploding.<\/p>\n

Being truly anti-war isn\u2019t easy. It doesn\u2019t look like people picture in their imaginations. It looks like getting smashed with a deluge of information designed to manipulate and confuse and working through it while getting screamed at by those who\u2019ve fallen for the brainwashing.\u00a0It\u2019s not cute. It\u2019s not fun. It\u2019s not the feel-good flower power time that people intuit it is when they look at the part of themselves that seeks peace. It\u2019s standing up against the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed while being offered every reason not to.<\/p>\n

When people think of themselves as \u201canti-war\u201d, they\u2019re usually imagining themselves as anti- another Iraq war, or anti- some theoretical Hitler-like president starting a war because he likes killing people. They\u2019re not picturing the reality of what being anti-war actually is in practice.<\/p>\n

Because selling the war to the public is a built-in component of all war strategy, the war will always look necessary from the mainstream perspective, and it won\u2019t look like those other wars which we now know in retrospect were mistakes. It\u2019s always designed to look appealing.\u00a0There\u2019s never not<\/em><\/strong> going to be atrocity propaganda. There\u2019s never not<\/em><\/strong> going to be reasons fed to you selling this military intervention as special and completely necessary. That will be the case every single time, because that\u2019s how modern wars are packaged and presented.<\/p>\n

This is why you\u2019ll always see a number of self-described leftists and anti-imperialists cheering for the latest US war project. They are ideologically opposed to the idea of war in theory, but the way it actually shows up in practice is always different from what they pictured.<\/p>\n

Our entire civilization is shaped by domestic propaganda, but the only time you ever hear that word in mainstream discourse is when it\u2019s used to discuss the comparatively almost nonexistent influence of Russian propaganda on our society.\u00a0All the mainstream alarm ringing about Russian propaganda gives the impression that it comprises close to 100 percent of the total propaganda that westerners consume, when in reality it\u2019s a tiny fraction of one percent of the total propaganda that westerners consume. Almost all of it comes from western sources.<\/p>\n

Propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society. It has far more influence over how the public thinks, acts and votes than any of our official mechanisms for doing so, yet it\u2019s barely discussed, it isn\u2019t taught in schools, and even the best political ideologies barely touch on it relative to their other areas of focus.<\/p>\n

All the fretting about Russian propaganda from establishment narrative managers comes so close<\/em> to giving away their secret: that they know it\u2019s possible to manipulate the way the public thinks, acts and votes using media. They just don\u2019t admit that they\u2019re the ones who are doing this.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually the weirdest thing in the world that there\u2019s something that has been directly affecting our minds our entire lives, and which directly affects the way our entire society is organized, but we don\u2019t talk about it constantly. It should be at the front and center of our attention.<\/p>\n

But of course that\u2019s the whole idea. Propaganda only works on those who don\u2019t know they\u2019re being propagandized. The US-centralized empire\u2019s ability to hide its propaganda machine is a foundational element of its brilliance.<\/p>\n

Being truly anti-war is necessarily a commitment to finding out not just what\u2019s true about all the war narratives currently promulgated by the imperial war machine, but all the narratives you\u2019ve been fed about the world since you were young. It\u2019s a commitment to truth that takes on an almost spiritual quality in the way it informs every aspect of your life when truly espoused.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to research and learn new things about the world, but what\u2019s equally important and which doesn\u2019t get emphasized nearly enough is the practice of examining the beliefs you already hold about your society, your government, your nation and your world. Inquiring as to whether they\u2019re really true, and who might benefit from your believing them.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t make the error of assuming you\u2019ll be aware and informed enough to spot all the lies right away. You\u2019re dealing with the single most advanced and powerful propaganda machine that has ever existed, and you\u2019ve been marinating in its effects your entire life. It takes some time.\u00a0Even the most aware among us were indoctrinated into the mainstream worldview to some extent earlier in their lives, and to this day most of the information they get about the world has some of its roots and branches in parts of the propaganda matrix.<\/p>\n

It takes work to see things clearly enough to form a really truth-based worldview. But unless you do this it\u2019s impossible to be truly anti-war, because you can\u2019t skillfully oppose something you don\u2019t understand. To fight the imperial war machine is to fight the imperial propaganda machine.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly\u00a0at <\/a><\/em>Medium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Apr 2022 – Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they\u2019re spouting the slogans they\u2019ve been programmed to spout, waving the flags they\u2019ve been programmed to wave, and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":136189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[867,2642,1817,2009,1161,1104,2314,1035,1268,1138,1748,1126,1050,1855,2625,2462,91,2571,112,372,278,961,124,2200,70,1594,1365,481],"class_list":["post-210370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-anglo-america","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-anti-militarism","tag-anti-war","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-trade","tag-corporate-media","tag-eastern-europe","tag-european-union","tag-fake-news","tag-fake-report","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-manufacturing-consent","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-nato","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pentagon","tag-propaganda","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-united-nations","tag-us-empire","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-war-journalism","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}