Scary Russians coming to take away our way of life, eh?

Try to get establishment loyalists to explain exactly why we’re all meant to be terrified of this “Russian propaganda” thing they keep carrying on about. What is the threat, specifically? That it makes the public less willing to go to war with Russia and its allies? That it makes us less trusting of lying, torturing, and coup-staging intelligence agencies? It makes us lose trust in our institutions,” is the most common reply.

We should be skeptical of claims made by governments, intelligence agencies and mass media. How specifically is that skepticism dangerous? When you try to get to the foundation of the argument being made and demand specific details about the specific threats we’re meant to be worried about, there aren’t any to be found. Nowhere do I see what is so dangerous about ‘consumers’ being exposed to the Russian side of international debates, or of Russians giving a platform to one or both sides of an American domestic debate. Even if every single one of the allegations about Russian bots and disinformation are true, where’s the actual clear and present danger? No one can say.

Mainstream media outlets have been going out of their minds churning out attack editorials on anyone who questions the ‘official story’. All day, every day, western mass media are pummeling the public with stories about how awful and scary Russians are and how everything they say is a lie. This is because western mass media outlets are owned by tycoons who have built their empires upon a status quo that they have a vested interest in preserving, often to the point where they will form alliances with defense and intelligence agencies to do so. They hire executives and editors who subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, who in turn hire journalists who subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, and in that way they ensure that all their media outlets are advancing their agendas. We’re being propagandized constantly by the people who really rule us.

All this panic about Russian propaganda doesn’t exist because our dear leaders have a problem with propaganda, it exists because they believe only they should be allowed to propagandize us. Using mass media to manipulate the ways we think and vote, our true rulers can persuade us to consent to crushing austerity measures and political impotence while the oligarchs grow richer and medicine money is spent on bombs. When we should all be revolting against an oppressive Orwellian oligarchy, we’re instead lulled to sleep by those same oligarchs and their hired talking heads lying to us about freedom and democracy.