There used to be a song with the lyrics “before you accuse me take a look at yourself” which was popularized by the English singer and songwriter Eric Clapton. The ‘mass hysteria’ regarding the frenzied ‘proliferation’ of what they now brand as ‘fake news’ has enraged the ruling establishment and the media alike. But really, who is accusing who?
Just a few days back Reuters, the international news agency from London, has accused the Russian television network RT and the Russian news outlet Sputnik of spreading fake news against the accusation that the Russian government intervened in the very recent French presidential elections.
To begin with, Reuters quoted their usual anonymous “US officials” (who are therefore unaccountable) stating that the Russian government attempted to influence the outcome of the French elections in order to favor far right leader Marine Le Pen against Emmanuel Macron who favors a stronger stance against the Kremlin, and who’s political party also accused the Russians of meddling in their campaigns.
Macron has since taken the presidency in a definitive win against the softer, anti-NATO and reconciliatory Le Pen. He is widely believed to be pro-European Union, elitist, and staunchly anti-Russian who favors even more damaging sanctions. And although any evidence to back up their claims has not since surfaced (or ever will) the fake news accusations has since been mirrored by the mainstream media outlets in the other side of the Atlantic.
For instance CNN ran a story with the usual fear mongering tone with a headline declaring “Fears of Russian meddling as France prepares to go to the polls”. In the article, they quoted Richard Burr, head of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying “I think it’s safe by everybody’s judgement that the Russians are actively involved in the French elections…part of our responsibility is to educate the rest of the world.” And buried in between the paragraphs there is a link with the title “Read: How Russia hacks you”. To top it all off, not a single evidence has been presented regarding this fantastical claim of Moscow’s meddling and hacking.
Not too far ago the same stories were published across the mainstream news media regarding Russia’s ‘push’ to help Donald Trump win the American elections. Does anyone remember how the likes of CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and others have monitored ‘the polls’ showing that Hillary ‘the warmonger’ Clinton was leading, and we eventually knew how surprised and upset the news outlets were when ‘suddenly’ Trump won the race to the Oval Office.
In the past decade alone, the United States government together with its media tentacles have spewed false news in order to rally the public into taking destructive action abroad. This may be in the form of an outright military intervention, or it can be by means of economic and political war waged against America’s enemies.
Such was the case with Iraq when the whole American and British mainstream media establishments ran the unescapable fake news that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that the Iraqi leader had ties to Osama Bin Laden. Who could forget Colin Powel, then Secretary of State during George W. Bush’s presidency, presented the ‘physical evidence’ of Saddam’s WMDs to the United Nations Security Council. The world, but perhaps not Iraq, has since moved on with these fake news from the US government itself and the United States has since been bogged down in that country up to the present time.
Led by the American establishment the world has time and again been witness to various unfounded ‘facts’ (and therefore fake news) against Washington’s enemies, including the Syrian chemical attacks alleged to have been instigated by the Syrian government (no evidence has since been presented), to the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 that crashed over Ukraine and was attributed to “Putin’s missile” immediately (not even a day after the accident), to how Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are traitors and spies, that ISIS presented an “existential threat to the security of the United States of America”, that China aims to become the dominant military power in the next few decades, that foreigners are stealing American jobs, that the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia was plagued by “security concerns”, that the Cold War was over and NATO had no plans to expand to the East to Russia’s doorsteps, that Western Europe needed anti-ballistic missile installations near Russia’s borders are necessary to counter the “Iranian missile threat”, and so on and so forth. We all know by now that such emotion-stirring headlines and “worst case scenarios” didn’t happen to the benefit of the world.
Views From The East 