The story moved from 1400 robo-sites believed run by the Trump campaign, servers located in Macedonia quickly to the podcast “alternative press.” Here is very readable and listenable end to end story, no sources, nothing verified, entirely made up, found a new life and up to 100 million Americans now not only believe it, they attack and even boycott news sources that refuse to repeat it.
We have now opened the door to issues that may well overwhelm us. It has long been apparent that news media and entertainment around the world, with some exceptions, the “paid press” and “corporate news” are under not only control but purposefully disinform, uninform and outright lie.
Were one to site examples, one need only turn to the Washington Post and their weekly unsourced pieces falsely attributed to Pentagon, State Department and White House sources, that invariably turn out to be false. Such sources not only don’t exist but if they did, the types of stories the Post specialized in, typically things like announcements of “no fly zones” or military operations that never materialize, would lead to massive investigations and arrests. They never do just as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame has never been charged with any crime in the US though WikiLeaks has published thousands of stolen classified US documents, particularly State Department cables. All are classified, stealing them is certainly a crime yet nothing is said.
There is no evidence Assange is under any US travel restriction though Snowden faces not just arrest but potential assassination as a security risk. The reality of this is simple, WikiLeaks is a vehicle for mixing fake news into the media narrative, shrouded in a false narrative.
Thus when we look at the long history of media darlings, all gift wrapped for us, be they Glen Greenwald, or names like Pilger or Assange, we peek behind the curtain for handlers and may well safely assume they are all “CIA thugs” of one type or another. If their narrative is featured for public consumption, assuming they are not prepackaged disinformation agents is carelessness of the worst type.
Today we look at the trail “Pizzagate” has opened. Here, the issues begin to overwhelm us and we can dig out the old reliable bullet points.
- Of the 100 million who believe in “Pizzagate,” even after recent publicity exposing the story as “fake news,” after weeks only one person actually showed up there and this one was armed to do something about it. If this one man is a hero or fool or both what do we say about the rest of the 100 million?
- “Pizzagate” is being used to attack General Michael Flynn, nominated as National Security Advisor to probable president elect Trump. Flynn bought in on the Pizzagate tale, without a shred of evidence, he has been taken in too many times frankly, but his son and trusted advisor was stupid enough to make an issue of it and fight back very much at the wrong time. Now this is being used against Flynn, yes misinformed and a bit nutty, but the sanest person in Washington as well? Who wants Flynn gone, the lone VT supporter among Trump’s inner circle?
Here we see a planted fake news story created for one purpose take on a new life. Turn on a dime, Pizzagate may well change world events by killing off the real force behind US Russia detente, General Flynn.
We can also say something about the alternative media here. Not all alternative media is equal. First let’s establish a bit of irony. Back when “W” was president and America was tearing the world apart seeking imaginary WMD’s and “cardboard lothario” phony terrorist leaders responsible for the physics experiment known as “9/11” we are told, the alternative media was entirely progressive, liberal and anti-government. It supported open societies, it opposed war and it warned of the ties between the fascist right and big business.
When America finally elected a liberal progressive president, the only member of the US Senate to oppose the Iraq War, suddenly a new and extremely well financed alternative media appeared. Some were new sites, new radio hosts but others “spun on their ear” to go after Obama. They quickly turned “right” and became pro-business, pro war, bleating about “global warming conspiracies” and how the poor and downtrodden were feeding off the rich and deserving.
So when progressive liberal political leaders enacted strong economic controls on the banks that looted the world economy in 2008, that process became a strong “negative,” threatening the freedoms of the wealthy and powerful. Similarly, big oil, the pharmaceutical lobby, big coal and the “nutty religion” lobby became the heroes of a new right wing and decidedly fascist “alternative media” that soon turned to totally inventing stories, always to serve the needs of the powerful whose voice they became.
Thus, so many years later, with Europe and America awash with “white nationalists” now increasingly being referred to under the older term of “Nazi,” the alternative media is primarily not just in line with the mainstream media and “outlying them,” but they are no more than two noses on the same face, and an ugly face at that.
In almost all cases the difference between the left and right has disappeared with at first dozens and now hundreds of news or as it is called now, “fake news” websites appearing each month, all tied to proxy servers, without writers or editors but most having that “PayPal” button, always willing to accept cash, though for whom and what reason, no one will ever know.
What we have created here is more than just disinformation but something worse. We have encouraged intellectual gluttony, a hunger for satisfaction by feeding base fears, class envy, race hatred, sexual inadequacy and victimization fantasy, where the narrative is reality, whether real or not, truth or lies.
There is a developing macroeconomic model here as well, a dangerous one. What is encouraged is clownishness, always popular in America as PT Barnum so often pointed out, but with a more sinister spin than even before. Where serious media may have existed, challenging the corporate narrative, the national appetite for fake news fiction, narratives carefully crafted to drive to the heard of man’s “reptile brain,” has led advertising dollars to follow the “news fantasy” industry. Popular radio guests are now those that invent stories, usually improbable slanderous smears as these marginal types have nothing to lose and work for public attention only.
What had once been an audience of only a few thousand nationally, an “elect” of informed types sometimes called “conspiracy theorists,” we now have a mass of semi-illiterate humanity, dragging their demographics and dollars into an economic sector that is now an endless cycle of smears, fabrication, fear porn and toadying up to those of power.
Underwriting it all are phony cancer cures, products said to overcome male “performance” issues and endless supplies for the continually reported “just around the corner” end of the world.
There is a bigger threat and this one is easy to understand. When you report a totally fictional Satanic pedophile ring and then make a public point of humiliating those who “bought in” on it, you then might ask yourself, do such things exist in the real world and might this process serve the purpose of protecting genuine wrongdoers?
There is more than minor evidence that such groups do exist. Fr. Malachi Martin wrote about such groups operating at the Vatican in his semi-fictional work, Windswept House. The Kubrick film, Eyes Wide Shut, depicts rituals of the Bilderberg/Hubertus societies while the endless scandals out of London and Washington, almost all tied exclusively to both right wing and Freemason organizations, contain some aspects of theistic Satanism or neo-volkism. In actuality, the Temple of Set, the largest satanic religious group in the United States, was founded by the heads of the US Army Psychological Warfare Group at The Presidio during the late 1970s. A simple search of “Michael Aquino” or “Paul Vallely” will lead to some interesting paths of research.
More serious still is the threat the narrative of unreality has made possible as far as events go. Let’s take a quick look at a couple of events for what we call “red herrings.” Let us, for arguments sake, assume some events are real and others not real but by “not real” we don’t mean they didn’t happen, just that they are entirely different than the “paid narrative” purports.
- During the Sandy Hook “event,” there were many issues in question and literally thousands of “red herrings,” mostly false, put to the public. However, real issues such as an arrested suspect who simply disappeared, a car towed from the scene owned by a crime figure which also disappeared and notable witness discrepancies that, to any reasonable person, would give rise to serious questions. Instead, when questions began, they were buried in insane conspiracy theories and never answered. This was no accident.
- The Detroit “Christmas Bombing” of 2009 was another such case. Highly credible witnesses came forward after not only watching the event being staged by intelligence agents but seeing the “after event” cleanup as well including a second arrested suspect, seen by dozens, who simply disappear same as with Sandy Hook.
- When Congresswoman Gabbie Giffords was shot in 2011, the perpetrator, Jared Longhner, had been under treatment by a psychiatrist working for the US Department of Defense for over two years as part of a program that never existed. This “real fact” which might have pointed to a “real conspiracy” was quickly buried in absurd conspiracies and as is now always the case, nothing is done.
- In 2009, Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, killed 13 at Fort Hood. Hasan, while stationed at Walter Reed in Washington, was a prominent member of the Bush Administration transition team, which met at George Washington University. There Hasan worked directly with National Security Advisor Richard Allen, former FBI Director William Webster, former CIA director James Woosley, former Attorney General Edwin Meese, former US Army Chief of Staff Edward Meyer and others, who he could have easily shot at any time but didn’t. Instead, this affiliation was covered up and only exists where VT has retained records.
What we have created, it seems, is the ability to create a capability of hiding real acts of terror or assassination “in plain sight” by burying them in a veritable flood of conspiracy theories and fake news.
For an operational intelligence planner, this is a standard “deception and cover” phase which, at one time, took real planning and made the idea of a government staging large scale terror attacks on itself to justify military adventurism risky.
In a similar vein, fake news stories “inoculate” the public from real stories of corruption or wrongdoing. Let’s say one political candidate has developed a capability of rigging an election. He or she would then accuse the other side but do so in a careless and clownish manner, drawing harsh criticism on the very idea of such an accusation.
A properly informed public with critical thinking skills would automatically assume such behaviors were intended for such purpose the same way lawyers have their clients admit to potential downsides or wrongdoing under friendly examination rather than being caught by the other side.
At one time such plots were considered primitive, at a time when real and “not so real” were different things and actually mattered. But then we must also take into account the Washington Post and other such publications that have always played that game and have gotten away with it until outdone by those who knew what the public really wanted.
It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that as television violence may have numbed the public to war and death, social media and internet anonymity have created a level of boorish bad manners and personal unaccountability where ideas are never tested. Where at one time those who communicated in short phrases were criticized for using “sound bites” or “bumper sticker logic,” the same snippets of what is too often mindless vitriolic can be “tweeted” with impunity.
There is a very nasty place where this all goes, of course. What it means is that “the public” or at least a powerful and easily influenced sector of that public, simply doesn’t care what happens unit it happens to them, and then it’s too late to do anything about it.
Then, of course, there’s always someone who can be blamed to keep the cycle going.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
