{"id":1106784,"date":"2023-06-27T05:41:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T05:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/?p=13065"},"modified":"2023-06-27T05:41:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T05:41:52","slug":"liberals-are-tyrannical-imperialists-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/06\/27\/liberals-are-tyrannical-imperialists-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals Are Tyrannical Imperialists: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix"},"content":{"rendered":"Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley)<\/em><\/a>:<\/p> <\/iframe><\/div><\/div> <\/figure>\u2756<\/p>In just a few years Democrats flipped from freaking out about Nazis, shrieking that Trump was going to start a nuclear war, and denying US election results to cheering for Nazis, demanding more nuclear brinkmanship, and accusing anyone who denies election results of treason.<\/p>\u2756<\/p>Putin\u2019s just lucky he didn\u2019t suffer a\u00a0real<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0coup attempt, like several wingnuts wandering around a government building for a few hours.<\/p> <\/iframe><\/div><\/div> <\/figure>\u2756<\/p>The powerful haven\u2019t been promoting the idea that control of speech is needed because they want to stop viruses, protect marginalized groups, fight foreign influence and curb domestic extremism. They\u2019ve been pushing for control of speech because they want to control speech.<\/p>It\u2019s a well-established fact at this point that western government bodies have been doing everything they can to infiltrate and influence Silicon Valley platforms where people gather to share ideas and information, because they understand that narrative control is real power.<\/p>Speech hasn\u2019t gotten any more dangerous lately, yet control of speech by government and government-adjacent bodies has gotten more and more normalized in recent years. Every excuse to expand this control has been seized upon by those in power, from Russian bots to January 6 to Covid. The window of what constitutes \u201cshouting fire in a crowded theater\u201d keeps getting deliberately broadened in mainstream liberal consciousness, which liberals accept because it\u2019s framed by empire propagandists as a weapon that can be used against the political enemies of liberals.<\/p>Western liberals are in effect being offered a political bribe by the empire: support the restrictions on political speech we are constantly pushing for, and it will undermine the interests of your political rivals. This bribery has made \u201cliberals\u201d far more tyrannical. Liberals play along because they\u2019ve been convinced at every opportunity that restricting speech is the best way to fight hate, right wing extremism, health misinformation and malign foreign influence, but in so doing they\u2019re supporting the most tyrannical regime on earth.<\/p>So now we\u2019re in this bizarre situation where being \u201cliberal\u201d effectively means supporting censorship to silence your political enemies for the benefit of the most murderous and tyrannical people on this planet.<\/p>\u2756<\/p>I often see people who are skeptical of power calling this or that news story a \u201cdistraction\u201d and implying that the powerful orchestrate entire events to draw public attention away from more inconvenient stories. From what I can tell that\u2019s not quite how it works though; in practice we see distraction used more as a general mundane distortion that\u2019s always happening, rather than grand conspiratorial plots involving the orchestration of specific individual news stories to manipulate public attention. Certainly government officials may sometimes release stories at specific times for their political convenience, but that\u2019s generally about the extent of it.<\/p>We see the political\/media class using distraction primarily in the form of\u00a0agenda-setting<\/a>, where emphasis is placed on some issues instead of others in ways that benefit the powerful. This can take the form of keeping people focused on domestic politics so they don\u2019t pay attention to their government\u2019s foreign interventions, or keeping people focused on culture war issues so they don\u2019t focus on class war issues. As we\u2019ve\u00a0discussed previously<\/a>, the employees of the mass media are all too happy to facilitate these distortions because they facilitate their own career and class interests as well as the interests of their employers.<\/p>\u2756<\/p>I respect leftist commentators who despise both the US empire and Putin and yet still do honest commentary on brinkmanship with Russia infinitely more than I respect those who act like it\u2019s fine to mostly ignore this extremely dangerous conflict just because \u201cboth sides are bad\u201d. It\u2019s like, okay, fine, let\u2019s say both sides are bad; let\u2019s even say both sides are\u00a0equally<\/em>\u00a0bad for the sake of argument. That\u2019s still not a legitimate reason for a leftist to ignore their own government\u2019s role in starting and perpetuating this increasingly dangerous standoff.<\/p>Only baby-brained morons break down conflicts into \u201cGood Guys vs Bad Guys\u201d frameworks. The fact that you don\u2019t subscribe to that infantile framing doesn\u2019t give you an excuse to just check out. Just because there\u2019s no Good Guy doesn\u2019t mean it doesn\u2019t urgently need our attention.<\/p>\u2756<\/p>It\u2019s okay if you haven\u2019t found a political faction or leader who you can throw your support behind. At this point in time humanity is very lost and confused, so its political movements \u2014 even the better ones \u2014 will frequently get lost and confused too. In a world that is ruled by evil tyrants who manipulate politics and media to make everyone crazy and keep us all focused on issues which don\u2019t threaten the powerful, confusion is to be expected in every facet of political engagement.<\/p>Speaking for myself I feel perfectly fine about mostly standing on my own and just throwing my weight behind any specific effort or movement I support on its own merit without joining up with any particular faction or party. I\u2019ve found that having loyalty to political factions can cause one to fail to see the errors in their own faction, and in humanity\u2019s current state of confusion there will necessarily be a lot of errors.<\/p>So I\u2019m comfortable standing on my own for the time being to make sure my vision stays clear, with the understanding that that hopefully won\u2019t be necessary one day.<\/p>_______________<\/p>All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is\u00a0<\/em>entirely reader-supported<\/em><\/a>, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on\u00a0<\/em>Patreon<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Paypal<\/em><\/a>, or\u00a0<\/em>Substack<\/em><\/a>, buying an issue of my\u00a0<\/em>monthly zine<\/em><\/a>, and following me on\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Soundcloud<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a>. If you want to read more you can\u00a0<\/em>buy my books<\/em><\/a>. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list\u00a0<\/em>on Substack<\/em><\/a>, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I\u2019m trying to do with this platform,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/em><\/a>. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.<\/em><\/p> <\/picture><\/div> <\/figure>Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2<\/p> \n

This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): \u2756 In just a few years Democrats flipped from freaking out about Nazis, shrieking that Trump was going to start a nuclear war, and denying US election results to cheering for Nazis, demanding more [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1775,92,133,1849,14,1779,6155],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/557"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}