{"id":64566,"date":"2015-10-05T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=64566"},"modified":"2015-10-01T19:16:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T18:16:46","slug":"the-power-of-false-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/10\/the-power-of-false-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of False Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cStrategic communications\u201d or Stratcom, a propaganda\/psy-op technique that treats information as a \u201csoft power\u201d weapon to wield against adversaries, is a new catch phrase in an Official Washington obsessed with the clout\u00a0that comes from spinning false narratives.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"media<\/a>28 Sep 2015 – <\/em>In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.<\/p>\n

So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies,\u00a0rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is \u201cstrategic communications\u201d<\/a> or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.<\/p>\n

I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override \u201cthe Vietnam Syndrome,\u201d a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to \u201ckick\u201d this syndrome, Reagan\u2019s team developed \u201cthemes\u201d<\/a> about overseas events that would push American \u201chot buttons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tapping into the Central Intelligence Agency\u2019s experience in psy-ops targeted at foreign audiences, President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William J. Casey assembled a skilled team inside the White House led by CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr.<\/p>\n

From his new perch on the National Security Council staff, Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces to sell interventionist policies in Central America and other trouble spots. The game, as Raymond explained it in numerous memos to his underlings, was to glue black hats on adversaries and white hats on allies, whatever the truth really was.<\/p>\n

The fact that many of the U.S.-backed forces \u2013 from the Nicaraguan Contras to the Guatemalan military \u2013 were little more than corrupt death squads couldn\u2019t be true, at least according to\u00a0psy-ops doctrine. They had to be presented to the American public as wearing white hats. Thus, the Contras became the \u201cmoral equals of our Founding Fathers\u201d<\/a> and Guatemala\u2019s murderous leader Efrain Rios Montt was getting a \u201cbum rap\u201d on human rights<\/a>, according to the words scripted for President Reagan.<\/p>\n

The scheme also required that anyone \u2013 say, a journalist, a human rights activist or a congressional investigator \u2013 who contradicted this white-hat mandate must be discredited, marginalized or destroyed, a routine of killing any honest messenger.<\/p>\n

But it turned out that the most effective part of this propaganda strategy was to glue black hats on adversaries. Since nearly all foreign leaders have serious flaws, it proved much easier to demonize them \u2013 and work the American people into war frenzies \u2013 than it was to persuade the public that Washington\u2019s favored foreign leaders were actually paragons of virtue.\"media<\/a><\/p>\n

An Unflattering Hat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once the black hat was jammed on a foreign leader\u2019s head, you could say whatever you wanted about him and\u00a0disparage any American who questioned the extreme depiction as a \u201cfill-in-the-blank apologist\u201d or a \u201cstooge\u201d or some\u00a0other ugly identifier that would either silence the dissenter or place him or her outside the bounds of acceptable debate.<\/p>\n

Given the careerist conformity of Washington, nearly everyone fell into line, including news outlets and human rights groups. If you wanted to retain your \u201crespectability\u201d and \u201cinfluence,\u201d you agreed with the conventional wisdom. So, with every foreign controversy, we got a new \u201cgroup think\u201d about the new \u201cenemy.\u201d The permissible boundary of each debate was\u00a0set mostly by the neoconservatives and their \u201cliberal interventionist\u201d sidekicks.<\/p>\n

That this conformity has not served American national interests is obvious. Take, for example, the disastrous Iraq War, which has cost the U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion, led to the deaths of some 4,500 American soldiers, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and unleashed chaos across the strategic Middle East and now into Europe.<\/p>\n

Most Americans\u00a0now agree that the Iraq War \u201cwasn\u2019t worth it.\u201d But it turns out that Official Washington\u2019s catastrophic \u201cgroup thinks\u201d don\u2019t just die well-deserved deaths. Like a mutating virus, they alter shape as the outside conditions change and survive in a new form.<\/p>\n

So, when the public caught on to the Iraq War deceptions, the neocon\/liberal-hawk pundits just came up with a new theme to justify their catastrophic Iraq strategy, i.e., \u201cthe successful surge,\u201d the dispatch of 30,000 more U.S. troops to the war zone. This theme was as bogus as the WMD lies but the upbeat storyline was embraced as the new \u201cgroup think\u201d in 2007-2008.<\/p>\n

The \u201csuccessful surge\u201d was a myth, in part, because many of its alleged \u201caccomplishments\u201d actually predated the \u201csurge.\u201d The program to pay off Sunnis to stop shooting at Americans and the killing of \u201cAl Qaeda in Iraq\u201d leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi both occurred in 2006, before the surge even began. And its principal goal of resolving sectarian grievances between Sunni and Shiite was never accomplished.<\/p>\n

But Official Washington wrapped the \u201csurge\u201d in the bloody flag of \u201chonoring the troops,\u201d who were credited with eventually reducing the level of Iraqi violence by carrying out the \u201cheroic\u201d surge strategy as ordered\u00a0by President Bush and devised by the neocons. Anyone who noted the holes in this story was dismissed as disrespecting \u201cthe troops.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cruel irony was that the neocon pundits, who had promoted the Iraq War and then covered their failure by hailing the \u201csurge,\u201d had little or no regard for \u201cthe troops\u201d who mostly came from lower socio-economic classes and were largely abstractions to the well-dressed, well-schooled and well-paid\u00a0talking heads who populate\u00a0the think tanks and op-ed pages.<\/p>\n

Safely ensconced behind the \u201csuccessful surge\u201d myth, the Iraq War devotees largely escaped any accountability for the chaos and bloodshed they helped cause. Thus, the same \u201csmart people\u201d were in place for the Obama presidency and just as ready to buy into new interventionist \u201cgroup thinks\u201d \u2013 gluing black hats on old and new adversaries, such as Libya\u2019s Muammar Gaddafi, Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad and, most significantly, Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

Causing Chaos<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2011, led this time by the liberal interventionists \u2013 the likes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and White House aide Samantha Power \u2013 the U.S. military and some NATO allies took aim at Libya, scoffing at Gaddafi\u2019s claim that his country was threatened by Islamic terrorists. It was not until Gaddafi\u2019s military was destroyed by Western airstrikes (and he was tortured and murdered) that it became clear that he wasn\u2019t entirely wrong about the Islamic extremists.<\/p>\n

The jihadists seized large swaths of Libyan territory, killed the U.S. ambassador and three other diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, and forced the closing of U.S. and other Western embassies in Tripoli. For good measure, Islamic State terrorists forced captured Coptic Christians to kneel on a Libyan beach before beheading them.<\/p>\n

Amid this state of anarchy, Libya has been the source of hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe by boat. Thousands have drowned in the Mediterranean. But, again, the leading U.S. interventionists faced no accountability. Clinton is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Power is now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Also, in 2011, a similar uprising occurred in Syria against the secular regime headed by President Assad, with nearly identical one-sided reporting about the \u201cwhite-hatted\u201d opposition and the \u201cblack-hatted\u201d government. Though many protesters indeed appear to have been well-meaning opponents of Assad, Sunni terrorists penetrated the opposition from the beginning.<\/p>\n

This gray reality was almost completely ignored in the Western press, which almost universally denounced the government when it retaliated against opposition forces for killing police and soldiers. The West depicted the government response as unprovoked attacks on \u201cpeaceful protesters.\u201d [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cHidden Origins of Syria\u2019s Civil War.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

This one-sided narrative nearly brought the U.S. military to the point of another intervention after Aug. 21, 2013, when a mysterious sarin gas attack killed hundreds in a suburb of Damascus. Official Washington\u2019s neocons and the pro-interventionists in the State Department immediately blamed Assad\u2019s forces for the atrocity and demanded a bombing campaign.<\/p>\n

But some U.S. intelligence analysts suspected a \u201cfalse-flag\u201d provocation by Islamic terrorists seeking to get the U.S. air force to destroy Assad\u2019s army for them. At the last minute, President Obama steered away from that cliff and \u2013 with the help of President Putin \u2013 got Assad to surrender Syria\u2019s chemical arsenal, while Assad continued to deny a role in the sarin attack. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cThe Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

Upset over Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n

Putin also assisted Obama on another front with another demonized \u201cenemy,\u201d Iran. In late 2013, the two leaders collaborated in getting Iran to make significant concessions on its nuclear program, clearing the way for negotiations that eventually led to stringent international controls.<\/p>\n

These two diplomatic initiatives alarmed the neocons and their right-wing Israeli friends. Since the mid-1990s, the neocons had worked closely with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in plotting a \u201cregime change\u201d strategy<\/a> for countries that were viewed as troublesome to Israel, with Iraq, Syria and Iran topping the list.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s interference with that agenda \u2013 by preventing U.S. bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran \u2013 was viewed as a threat to this longstanding Israeli\/neocon strategy. There was also fear that the Obama-Putin teamwork could lead to renewed pressure on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state. So, that relationship had to be blown up.<\/a><\/p>\n

The detonation occurred in early 2014 when a neocon-orchestrated coup overthrew elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a fiercely anti-Russian regime which included neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist elements as well as free-market extremists.<\/p>\n

Ukraine had been on the neocon radar at least since September 2013, just after Putin undercut plans for bombing Syria. Neocon Carl Gershman, president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, wrote a\u00a0Washington Post op-ed<\/a>\u00a0deeming Ukraine \u201cthe biggest prize\u201d and a key steppingstone toward another regime change in Moscow, removing the troublesome Putin.<\/p>\n

Gershman\u2019s op-ed was followed by prominent neocons, such as Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, urging on violent protests that involved firebombing the police. But\u00a0the State Department and the\u00a0mainstream media glued white hats on the Maidan protesters and black hats on the police and the government.<\/p>\n

Then, on Feb. 20, 2014, a mysterious sniper attack killed both police and demonstrators, leading to more clashes and the deaths of scores of people. The U.S. government and press corps blamed Yanukovych and \u2013 despite his signing an agreement for early elections on Feb. 21 \u2013 the Maidan \u201cself-defense forces,\u201d spearheaded by neo-Nazi goons, overran government buildings on Feb. 22 and\u00a0installed a coup regime, quickly recognized by the State Department as \u201clegitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the fault for the Feb. 20 sniper attack was never resolved \u2013 the new Ukrainian regime showed little interest in getting to the bottom of it \u2013 other independent investigations pointed toward a provocation by right-wing gunmen who targeted police and protesters with the goal of deepening the crisis and blaming Yanukovych, which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

These field reports, including one from the\u00a0BBC<\/a>, indicated that the snipers likely were associated with the Maidan uprising, not the Yanukovych government. [Another worthwhile documentary on this mystery is \u201cMaidan Massacre<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

One-Sided Reporting<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, during the Ukrainian coup, The New York Times and most other mainstream media outlets played a role similar to what they had done prior to the Iraq War when they hyped false and misleading stories about WMD. By 2014, the U.S. press corps no longer seemed to even pause before undertaking its expected propaganda role.<\/p>\n

So, after Yanukovych\u2019s ouster, when ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine rose up against the new anti-Russian order in Kiev, the only acceptable frame for the U.S. media was to blame the resistance on Putin. It must be \u201cRussian aggression\u201d or a \u201cRussian invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a referendum in Crimea overwhelmingly favored secession from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, the U.S. media denounced the 96 percent vote as a \u201csham\u201d imposed by Russian guns. Similarly, resistance in eastern Ukraine could not have reflected popular sentiment unless it\u00a0came from\u00a0mass delusions induced by \u201cRussian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, evidence of a U.S.-backed coup, such as the intercepted phone call<\/a> of a pre-coup discussion between Assistant Secretary Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on how \u201cto midwife this thing\u201d and who to install in the new government (\u201cYats is the guy\u201d), disappeared into the memory hole, not helpful for the desired narrative. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cNYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the blame machine immediately roared into gear again, accusing Putin and the ethnic Russian rebels. But some U.S. intelligence analysts reportedly saw the evidence going in a different direction, implicating a rogue element of the Ukrainian regime.<\/p>\n

Again, the mainstream media showed little skepticism toward the official story blaming Putin, even though the U.S. government and other Western nations refused to make public any hard evidence supporting the Putin-did-it case, even now more than a year later. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cMH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

The pattern that we have seen over and over is that once a propaganda point is scored against one of the neocon\/liberal-hawk \u201cenemies,\u201d the failure to actually prove the allegation is not seen as suspicious, at least not inside the mainstream media, which usually just repeats the old narrative again and again, whether its casting blame on Putin for MH-17, or on Yanukovych for the sniper attack, or on Assad for the sarin gas attack.<\/p>\n

Instead of skepticism, it\u2019s always the same sort of \u201cgroup think,\u201d with nothing learned from the disaster of the Iraq War because there was virtually no accountability for those responsible.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s Repression<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, while the U.S. press corps deserves a great deal of blame for this failure to investigate important controversies independently, President Obama and his administration have been the driving force in this manipulation of public opinion over the past six-plus years. Instead of the transparent government that Obama promised, he has run one of the most opaque, if not the most secretive, administrations in American history.<\/p>\n

Besides refusing to release the U.S. government\u2019s evidence on pivotal events in these international crises, Obama has prosecuted more national security whistleblowers than all past presidents combined.<\/p>\n

That repression, including a 35-year prison term for Pvt. Bradley\/Chelsea Manning and the forced exile of indicted National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, has intimidated current intelligence analysts who know about the manipulation of public opinion but don\u2019t dare tell the truth to reporters for fear of imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Most of the \u201cleaked\u201d information that you still see in the mainstream media is what\u2019s approved by Obama or his top aides to serve their interests. In other words, the \u201cleaks\u201d are part of the propaganda, made to seem more trustworthy because they\u2019re coming from an unidentified \u201csource\u201d rather than a named government spokesman.<\/p>\n

At this late stage in Obama\u2019s presidency, his administration seems drunk on the power of \u201cperception management\u201d with the new hot phrase, \u201cstrategic communications\u201d which boils psychological operations, propaganda and P.R.\u00a0into one intoxicating brew.<\/p>\n

From NATO\u2019s Gen. Philip Breedlove to the State Department\u2019s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel, the manipulation of information is viewed as a potent \u201csoft power\u201d weapon. It\u2019s a way to isolate and damage an \u201cenemy,\u201d especially Russia and Putin.<\/p>\n

This demonization of Putin makes cooperation between him and Obama difficult, such as Russia\u2019s recent military buildup in Syria as part of a commitment to prevent a victory by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Though one might think that Russian help in fighting terrorism would be welcomed, Nuland\u2019s State Department office responded with a bizarre and futile attempt to build an aerial blockade<\/a> of Russian aid flying to Syria across eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

Nuland and other neocons apparently would prefer having the black flag of Sunni terrorism flying over Damascus than to work with Putin to block such a catastrophe. The hysteria over Russia\u2019s assistance in Syria is a textbook example of how people can begin believing their own propaganda and letting it dictate misguided actions.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Obama\u2019s White House sank to a new low<\/a> by having Press Secretary Josh Earnest depict Putin as \u201cdesperate\u201d to land\u00a0a meeting with Obama. Earnest\u00a0then demeaned Putin\u2019s appearance during an earlier\u00a0sit-down session with Netanyahu in Moscow. \u201cPresident Putin was striking a now-familiar pose of less-than-perfect posture and unbuttoned jacket and, you know, knees spread far apart to convey a particular image,\u2019 Earnest said.<\/p>\n

But the meeting photos actually showed both men with their suit coats open and both sitting with their legs apart at least for part of the time. Responding to Earnest\u2019s insults, the Russians denied that Putin was \u201cdesperate\u201d for a meeting with Obama and added that the Obama administration had proposed the meeting to coincide with Putin\u2019s appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not refuse contacts that are proposed,\u201d\u00a0said Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin. \u201cWe support maintaining constant dialogue at the highest level.\u201d The Kremlin also included no insults about Obama\u2019s appearance in the statement.<\/p>\n

However, inside Official Washington, there appears to be little thought that the endless spinning, lying and ridiculing might dangerously corrode American democracy and erode any remaining trust the world\u2019s public has in the word of the U.S. government. Instead, there seems to be great confidence that skilled propagandists can discredit anyone who dares note that the naked empire has wrapped itself in the sheerest of see-through deceptions.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for <\/em>The Associated Press and<\/em> Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, <\/em>America\u2019s Stolen Narrative,<\/em> either in\u00a0<\/em>print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>). <\/em><\/p>\n

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

28 Sep 2015 – In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64566","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=64566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}