{"id":218836,"date":"2022-09-05T12:01:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T11:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=218836"},"modified":"2022-09-05T11:17:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T10:17:56","slug":"free-speech-doesnt-matter-if-propagandists-determine-what-people-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/09\/free-speech-doesnt-matter-if-propagandists-determine-what-people-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Speech Doesn\u2019t Matter if Propagandists Determine What People Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

29 Aug 2022 – <\/em>None are\u00a0more\u00a0hopelessly enslaved\u00a0than those who falsely believe they are free.<\/p>\n

None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they\u2019re informed.<\/p>\n

None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don\u2019t know they are propagandized.<\/p>\n

Living in a liberal western democracy means having the freedom to criticize the tyranny of your government, but instead spending your time criticizing the tyranny of foreign governments who your government doesn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

Free speech in a liberal western democracy means you have the freedom to say whatever you want about the abuses of your government, and the press has the freedom to hammer you with propaganda to ensure that you never do.<\/p>\n

In a liberal western democracy you are free to criticize your government, but instead you are propagandized into criticizing the impotent puppets who get rotated in and out of office while your government continues doing all the same evil things regardless of who gets elected.<\/p>\n

In liberal western democracies you are free to call the president \u201cDrumpf\u201d or \u201cBrandon\u201d, but you are not free to know who\u2019s actually calling the shots in your country underneath the official government.<\/p>\n

In liberal western democracies people say,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m so glad I don\u2019t live in a country like Russia or China where people are forbidden to criticize their government. I live in the west, where I\u2019m free to criticize Russia and China all I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter if you have freedom of speech if those in power can control what you will say. And in liberal western democracies, this is exactly what happens.<\/p>\n

We grow up saturated with US empire propaganda in the west. We marinate in it. It pervades our consciousness. But because it\u2019s all we\u2019ve ever known, most of us don\u2019t even notice it.<\/p>\n

We think it\u2019s normal that we\u2019re always told our government is on the good and righteous side of every international conflict. We think it\u2019s normal that we hear constantly about the tyranny of foreign governments while only occasionally hearing about bad things our own government did years ago (but it was an innocent mistake and it\u2019ll never happen again).<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were being propagandized, I\u2019m sure we\u2019d have heard about it in the news,\u201d we tell ourselves.<\/p>\n

But the news is the propaganda. And it will never report on that bombshell story.<\/p>\n

Propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society. In controls how the public thinks, acts, votes and behaves, but hardly anyone ever talks about it. Because the sources they\u2019ve been trained to look to for information never say anything about it.<\/p>\n

So people say what\u2019s on their mind, after what\u2019s on their mind has been carefully curated by the imperial narrative managers who are responsible for controlling what information goes into their mind.<\/p>\n

And they say it with complete freedom. Sure if what they\u2019re saying goes against the interests of the western empire they won\u2019t be allowed to speak on any large platforms where they might infect the mainstream herd with wrongthink, and sure if what they\u2019re saying is really<\/em> inconvenient they might get banned from even speaking on any of the major online platforms, but they still get to speak. Alone, where no one can hear them. Preferably into a hole in the ground.<\/p>\n

And everyone else gets to ingest the mainstream swill. The authorized narratives that get amplified on traditional media and by the algorithms of Silicon Valley. The authorized narratives which mask the abuses of their own government \u2014 foreign and domestic \u2014 while magnifying and exaggerating the abuses of empire-targeted governments.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why when some people hear my objections to the empire, they say \u201cWell at least where I live we\u2019re allowed to criticize our government!\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why I reply to them, \u201cOkay. But you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

If speech wasn\u2019t free people would realize they\u2019re being oppressed, but if people started using their speech to voice real grievances about real power, they would swiftly discover that their speech is being ignored and power is doing as it likes. So inconvenient speech is curtailed by propaganda, by censorship, by algorithm manipulation and by media marginalization.<\/p>\n

People are kept hopelessly enslaved by giving them the illusion that they are free, and any voice which interrupts that illusion is silenced by whatever means necessary.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what free speech means in a liberal western democracy. You can say whatever you like, as long as it\u2019s what they like.<\/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":"

29 Aug 2022 – None are\u00a0more\u00a0hopelessly enslaved\u00a0than those who falsely believe they are free. None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they\u2019re informed. None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don\u2019t know they are propagandized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":218837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[276,2376,125,2625,2571,372],"class_list":["post-218836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-democracy","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-manufacturing-consent","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-propaganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218836","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=218836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}