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 in 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 Americans 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 side 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 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 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 opnions 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 by 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 happening behind the scenes as he was writing.  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 more deeply 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