Narrative Control Failure

Big Brother is losing his grip...

Over the past decade, Governments in North America have invested a huge amount of energy in suppressing any voices which challenge the official government narrative on important issues, including the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the true state of the US economy. While most of this effort has focused on sterilizing the mainstream media, there have also been significant attempts to control what is allowed on social media, plus attempts to suppress dissident voices on the internet through search engine manipulation.

Over the next few weeks I’d like to look at a number of areas where public opinion polls indicate that Big Brother’s attempts at narrative control have failed. I would also like to share my take on why those failures are happening.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the US Government and mainstream North American media have relentlessly claimed that brave Ukraine is winning the war, and incompetent, demoralized Russia is losing. After nine months of non-stop propaganda, you’d think they’d have the American people on side. They don’t. A recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that only 26% of Americans believe that Ukraine is winning the war.

How do we explain this huge failure in the propaganda war? Here’s my short list why most Americans aren’t buying what the MSM is selling:

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Loss of Trust: Americans’ trust in mainstream media is at a record low.

I suspect that a great many American can’t hear about Ukraine ‘winning’ the war without remembering what they were told about the war in Afghanistan.

For 20 years, Americans were told the U.S. was working to create a "functioning, secular democracy" with a "modern, well-equipped military" in Afghanistan. (They even had women’s basketball!) Year after year, Americans were told the new Afghan government and army were ‘almost ready’ to take over.

Then, in August of 2021, that sunny narrative collapsed in a mere twelve days. To add insult to injury, the Taliban inherited seven billion dollars in abandoned US military hardware. After spending two trillion or more in Afghanistan…

I suspect every reader of this blog has their own story of when their trust in mainstream media disappeared. (Feel free to share them in the comments section below.)

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The Persistence of Memory: The mainstream media develops a collective amnesia for any past information that doesn’t fit the new official narrative. But their audiences remember.

Every month since last March we’ve been told Russia is almost out of artillery shells. Again and again, the same story. Though the media develops a convenient amnesia for the fact they’ve prematurely announced that Russia is running out of ammo several times, their audiences remember.

When Russia starts destroying the electrical grid in Ukraine, it is held up as a terrible war crime. Do they really expect that Americans have forgotten the US military’s ‘shock and awe’ campaign to destroy the Iraqi electrical grid in the first days of the Iraq war?

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Independent Bloggers: Though the mainstream media has cleansed itself of contrary voices, the internet is full of independent bloggers willing to speak truth to power. Eventually those who have lost trust in MSM will find them. Here’s four of my favourites:

Bernard - at moonofalabama.org - is focusing a lot on Ukraine at this time but is a well-informed and insightful commentator on many issues of politics and geopolitics.

Larry Johnson - at sonar21.com is a US veteran with intelligence experience and a very sharp mind.

Andrei - at thesaker.is is a Russian-American able to offer a very clear and nuanced picture of the minefield of Russian-American relationships.

Yalensis at awfulavalanche.wordpress.com offers interesting background stories, often focusing on Russian or Ukrainian culture.

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Twitter: Twitter has been less censorious of alternate viewpoints on the war than it has been on other issues. A lot of people follow twitter.com/GeromanAT, twitter.com/azgeopolitics, twitter.com/trollstoy88 to get daily updates on the war.

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Youtube: Dima at the Military Summary Channel provides an excellent daily summary of the war. Brian Berletic, a US Vet living in Thailand, provides lots of insightful analysis at The New Atlas. For those who have time for longer videos, The Duran, Alexander Mercouris, Danny Haiphong, Scott Ritter, Douglas MacGregor, Jackson Hinkle, Emil Cosman, Clayton Morris, and Gonzalo Lira have all provided excellent in-depth coverage of both the war and the larger geopolitical issues surrounding it. (You can find them by going to youtube and doing a search on their names.)

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Occasional Commentators: Sometimes bloggers with large following comment on the war and that gets whole new groups of people thinking differently about the war. I’m thinking of several bloggers here, including Michael Snyder at TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com, Yves at NakedCapitalism.com, Caitlin at CaitlinJohnstone.com, Chris at PeakProsperity.com and Tom at TomLuongo.me.

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Independent Media from India: WION, Hindustan Times, and Firstpost all will say things that Western media is not allowed to.

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Substack: Substack provides a hosting venue for journalists unwilling to be silenced, as well as for a great range of alternate voices, including mine. Askeptic.substack.com provides good daily summaries of the war news. Bigserge.substack.com and julianmacfarlane.substack.com also provide insightful commentary on Ukraine from time to time.

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Bits of Fox: One of the things I appreciate about Foxnews is that it allows a range of viewpoints. Though many of those at Fox support the war, Tucker Carlson has been eloquent in opposing it, as has his frequent guest, former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Andrew Neopolitano’s Judging Freedom also features guests who challenge the official narrative. (His show can be found on youtube.)

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Crap Detector: I know there are lots of Americans who couldn’t even find Ukraine on a map, and blindly believe whatever they hear on the news. I also know there’s no shortage of American who are well-informed and very capable of identifying bullsh*t.

Such people can also do math, and use logic. They know there are 144 million Russians. Ukraine started the war with a population of about 40 million people. Five million are now refugees in Russia. Another 7 million are refugees in Europe. A few million more are living in Russian-occupied Ukraine. That leaves only about 25 million Ukrainians against 144 million Russians: not good odds. (Russia is also aided by all those former Ukrainians in the Luhansk and Donetsk Armies.)

Logic tells them there’s no home court advantage in war. The war is taking place almost entirely on Ukrainian territory. If every day more of your electrical grid is destroyed, and what’s left of your armaments industry is blown up, it’s pretty hard to win a war.

I suspect a lot of Americans have figured out that if Ukraine were actually winning the war, they wouldn’t constantly be begging for more money and more weapons.

War always includes some victories on both sides. If you talk up one side’s successes and ignore or downplay those of the other side it is quite possible for a period of time to pretend that the losing side is winning. But eventually the truth will come out - and then there’s a big price to be paid for being caught in an extended lie.

US media and the US Government both lost a lot of credibility when their sunny Afghan narrative collapsed. They will lose even more as the blatant fiction of an impending Ukrainian victory unravels.