Russiagate Is Like 9/11, Except It’s Made of Pure Narrative
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The last few
days have been truly amazing. I didn’t even write an article yesterday;
I’ve just been staring transfixed by my social media feeds watching
liberal Americans completely lose their minds. I can’t look away. It’s
like watching a slow motion train wreck, and everyone on the train is being
really homophobic.
I’ve been writing about
Russiagate since it started, and I can honestly say this is the worst
it’s ever been, by far. The most hysterical, the most shrill, the most
emotional, the most cartoonishly over-the-top and hyperbolic. The fact
that Trump met with Putin in private and then publicly expressed doubt
about the establishment Russia narrative has sent some political
factions of America into an emotional state that is indistinguishable
from what you’d expect if Russia had bombed New York City. This despite
the fact that the establishment Russia narrative consists of no actual,
visible events whatsoever. It is made of pure narrative.
I don’t even know
where to start. Everyone has been completely mad across the entire
spectrum of what passes for America’s political “left” today, from the
usual suspects like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and their indistinguishable Never-Trump Republican allies, all the way to supposedly progressive commentators like Cenk Uygur and Shaun King.
Comparing this pure narrative non-event to Pearl Harbor is now
commonplace and mainstream. I just watched a United States Senator named
Richard Blumenthal stare right into the camera refer to the hypothetical possibility of future Russian cyber intrusions as “this 9/11 moment.”
“We are in a 9/11 national emergency because our country is under attack, literally,” Blumenthal told CNN while demanding a record of Trump’s meeting with Putin at the Helsinki summit. “That attack is ongoing and pervasive, verified by objective and verifiable evidence. Those words are, again, from the director of National Security. And this 9/11 moment demands that we do come together.”
Nothing about the
establishment Russia narrative is in any way verifiable, and the only
thing it has in common with 9/11 is the media coverage and widespread
emotional response.
September 11 had actual
video footage of falling towers. You could go visit New York City, look
at the spot where those towers used to be, and see them not being there
anymore. You could learn the names of the people who died and visit
their graves and talk to their family members. Exactly how
it happened is a matter of some debate in many circles, but there is no
question that it happened. There was an actual event that did happen in
the real world, completely independent of any stories people tell about
that event.
Russiagate is like 9/11,
but with none of those things. It’s like if 9/11 had all the same
widespread emotional responses, all the same nonstop mass media
coverage, all the same punditry screaming war, war, war, except no
actual event occurred. The towers were still there, everyone was still
alive, and nothing actually happened apart from the narrative and the
emotional responses to that narrative.
Russiagate is 9/11 minus 9/11.
This is what I’m talking about when I say that whoever controls the narrative controls the world.
Whoever controls the stories that westerners are telling each other has
the power to advance concrete agendas which reshape global geopolitics
without any actual thing even happening. Simply by getting a few hand-picked intelligence agents
to say something happened in a relatively confident way, you can get
the entire media and political body advancing that narrative as
unquestionable fact, and from there advance sanctions, new military
operations, a far more aggressive Nuclear Posture Review, the casting
out of diplomats, the arming of Ukraine, and ultimately shove Russia
further and further off the world stage.
As we discussed last time,
the current administration has actually been far more aggressive
against Russia than the previous administration was, and has worked
against Russian interests to a far greater extent. If they wanted to,
the international alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense
agencies could just as easily use their near-total control of the
narrative to advance the story that Trump is a dangerous Russia hawk who
is imperiling the entire world by inflicting insane escalations against
a nuclear superpower. They could elicit the exact same panicked
emotional response that they are eliciting right now using the exact
same media and the exact same factual situation. They wouldn’t have to
change a single thing except where they place their emphasis in telling
the story. The known facts would all remain exactly as they are; all
that would have to change is the narrative.
Public support for
Russiagate depends on the fact that most people don’t recognize how
pervasively their day-to-day experience is dominated by narrative. If
you are intellectually honest with yourself, you will acknowledge that
you think about Russia a lot more now than you did in 2015. Russia
hasn’t changed any since 2015; all that has changed is the narrative
that is being told about it. And yet now the mass media and a huge chunk
of rank-and-file America now view it as a major threat and think about
it constantly. All they had to do was talk about Russia constantly in a
fearful and urgent way, and now US liberals are convinced that Vladimir
Putin is an omnipotent world-dominating supervillain who has infiltrated
the highest levels of the US government.
If humanity is to
pull up and away from its current path toward either ecological
disaster, nuclear armageddon or Orwellian dystopia, we are necessarily
going to have to change our relationship with narrative. As long as the
way we think, vote and organize can be controlled by the mere verbiage
of the servants of power, our species will never be able to begin
operating in a sane and wholesome way. If
all it takes to make us act against our own interest is a few
establishment lackeys speaking a few words in a confident tone of voice,
if mere authoritative language can hypnotize us like a sorcerer casting
spells, we are doomed to slavery and destruction.
So stop staring
transfixed by the narratives, and begin looking at the behavior and
motives of the people advancing them instead. Stop staring at the movie
screen they’re constantly drawing your attention to, turn around in your
theater seat, and look at the people who are running the projector. The
way out of this mess is to begin ignoring the stories we’re being
hypnotized with and start critically examining the people who are
conducting the hypnosis. Ignore the stories and stare with piercing eyes
at the storytellers. The difference between the official narrative and
the actual reality of this world is the difference between fiction and
fact. Evolve beyond.
*
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper.
The original source of this article is Medium
Copyright © Caitlin Johnstone, Medium, 2018
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