American Press
Beating Familiar War Drums
We didn’t have to look far to find the
opening quote for this article. It was right
there on my AOL News. Check it out:
They are a distinct minority in their own party
and, for that matter, their country: Republican holdouts amid an ever-widening
consensus that Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine poses a mortal threat to
American interests.
A far right wing
of the Republican Party tightly bound to former President Donald Trump is
fighting to push the GOP toward the “America First” isolationism that
underpinned his 2016 presidential bid.
For the first time since Trump’s rise, his
party is pushing back.
These are the first three paragraphs for a
pro-war-participation propaganda piece that AOL has picked up from NBC News
entitled “Trump-aligned
‘America-first’ holdouts don’t follow GOP in backing Ukraine.”
That sort of logrolling for all-out
American involvement in the extremely dangerous conflict on Russia’s doorstep
in Ukraine is everywhere you turn, right across the political spectrum, in
America’s news media.
For a good antidote to what we are being
force fed by our propagandists you might want to set aside four and a half
minutes to listen to mainstream news media defector, Lara Logan. For a good, brief primer on the conflict,
read “Facing Unpleasant
Facts: What You Aren’t Supposed to Say about the War in Ukraine,” by Joseph
Solis-Mullen. “Zelensky’s
Reckless Gamble”
by Vasko Kohlmayer provides
some more clear-headed analysis of the situation.
Such
sensible and sober voices are not being heard by the great majority of the
public, though. The situation is not new
in our recent experience. After all, our
press, led by The New York Times, sold the “weapons of mass destruction”
line harder than anyone to justify our naked
aggression in Iraq. Before that, they led the vilification of
Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević to justify the bombing of his country and the wrenching away of the region of Kosovo by military
force to form a new separate country. More recently, we
have seen our media demonize first Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and then Syria’s
Bashar al-Assad for the purpose, successful in the first instance and
unsuccessful in the second, of effecting violent regime change in their
respective countries.
World
War I, World War II...
That
the media should be our nation’s greatest warmongers is not just a phenomenon
that has been experienced by the majority of American’s alive today. For a reminder of that fact we turn to the
opening passages in Chapter 7, on the First World War, of War, War, War!,
written in 1940 by the anonymous “Cincinnatus,” in a desperate attempt to
prevent the United States from joining the new European war that had begun with
the German and Soviet attack on Poland in September of 1939. I am quoting from the 1984 revised edition,
which has a foreword by Eustace Mullins and an afterword by William
Anderson. All italics and parenthetical observations
are in the original:
(begin War,War, War! quote)
Only
in recent years has the vast amount of evidence been disclosed showing that the
United States was drawn into the World War by a plot—or rather, a series of
plots. The merits of the opposing sides
of the War had little or nothing to do with our participation in it.
“You
fool me once shame on you; you fool me twice shame on me.”
Watch
each and every sleight of hand as hereafter disclosed. See how the same old shell-game, that bled us
in 1917 and in 1918, is being worked again in 1940 to trick you into giving your
sons’ blood, your savings, your freedom in another war for so-called democracy.
A
motley crew long served the plotters:
1.
The habitual Tories who
have always sided with England, even against their own country ever since
Revolutionary days.
2.
The political Anglophiles,
of whom Robert Lansing, Walter Hines Page, Col. Edward Mandel House, Theodore
Roosevelt, Elihu Root, etc. were the greatest offenders.
3.
The munitions manufacturers
and the international banking houses, hot for blood-money.
4.
The international and
metropolitan press, because of the nature of their ownership, the influence of
advertisers and their increased circulation from shrieking headlines and
atrocity stories.
5.
Some rich and fashionable
Christian pulpits, especially those subject to the all-powerful New York
influence, with their deceptive sermons about humanity and defense of Christian
civilization.
6.
War-mongering Presidents
and Professors of opulent Tory colleges, who rushed to give England and France
the lives of the student lads entrusted to them for education and guidance.
7.
Ultimately and
successfully—at least in the latter part of 1916 tipping the scales for
America’s entrance into Europe’s war—the Zionist Jews, who switched to England
the allegiance of World Jewry.
“It
is quite often said that Americans entered the war with the greatest
enthusiasm, but this is not true. The
Eastern newspaper people, ministers, professors, and the upper classes
throughout the country were, of course, strongly in favor of the move. But they had been partisan from the outset. On the other hand, among the common people
who would have to fight the war, there was no rejoicing...” Propaganda for War, by H.C. Peterson, p. 322 (It
is the same today.)
“Another...factor
to be considered was that American newspapers are primarily commercial
undertakings. They exist largely for
profits.... Consequently, newspapers do
not express the opinions or ideas of their editors or reporters, but of those
who control the purse strings.” Ibid. pp. 7-8. (It is the same today.)
“The
problem of gaining the sympathy and support of the American public turned on the
attitude of American newspapers.” Ibid. p. 6. (It is the same today.)
“...the
British did all in their power to enlist Americans as propagandists to overcome
the resistance of Americans.” Ibid. p. 25. (It is the same today.)
“The
immediate task of the British propagandists was to make an ordinary political
power struggle appear to be a fight between the forces of good and evil.” Ibid.
p. 33. (It is the same today.)
The
immediate problem for the British propagandists...was to obtain the support of
the leaders of American life. In this
regard they were very fortunate. The
American aristocracy was distinctly Anglophile.
To assume a pro-British attitude was the ‘thing to do’.... Nearly all foreign banking was handled
through the English capital. One of the
Morgan partners stated: ‘Like most of our contemporaries and friends and
neighbors, we wanted the Allies to win....
We were pro-Ally by inheritance, by instinct, by opinion.’“ Ibid. pp. 8-9.
(It is the same today.)
“The
problem of winning the support of the political leaders of the United States
appeared...even less difficult than...gaining the adherence of the social,
economic and intellectual leaders. Primarily
politicians are reflectors of opinion, and the opinions they reflect are
usually those given in the press.” Ibid., p. 9. (It is the same today.)
(end War, War, War! quote)
Peterson,
writing in 1939, might have gotten things right about what was going on in
1916, but Cincinnatus, writing in 1940, hardly knew the half of what was going
on behind the scenes at that time. The
scheming was actually a lot worse than he thought it was. For information about at least some of that
shocking scheming, we now have Thomas E. Mahl’s 2000 book,
Desperate Deception:
British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44. We find there that rather than the government being
influenced by what the war-mongering press was putting out, in many instances
it was the other way around, at least if by “government” we mean what has come
to be called in recent years the Deep State:
“Was
[British] Special Operations Executive officer Bill Morrell planting twenty
items a day in the media? The CIA planted eighty....
“The
fronts run by British Security Coordination—Friends of Democracy, Fight for
Freedom, etc.—had several distinct advantages over open attempts by the British
government to affect American opinion and influence congressional action. These fronts allowed the tendentious messages
of the British to come from ostensibly disinterested American mouths.” pp. 182-183
As the years have gone
by, the notion that our prevailing press might be independent from the Deep
State is looking quainter and more old-fashioned. That goes double for the Big Tech companies
like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Speaking of such companies, Wikipedia would like us to believe that the
CIA’s Operation Mockingbird
is something that should be referred to in the past tense, but even a casual
observer should be able to see that that is not the case. So, as we look back at the scheming that went
on to involve the U.S. in the first great European war of the 20th
century as described by the author Peterson and speculate about what’s going on
to get us embroiled in the current one, rather than inserting afterwards, “It
is the same today,” it is probably more appropriate to say, “It is worse
today.”
David Martin
March 23, 2022