Trump Threatens the future of human civilization
There is so much wrong with Donald Trump that one hardly knows where to start. He is a bully, braggart, narcicist, racist, mysogenist, habitual liar, and tax evader, in addition to being demonstrably ignorant. He has contempt for both domestic and international law, as well as for the US Constitution. However, it is Trump’s climate change denial, withdrawal from the Paris agreement, and sponsorship of fossil fuels that pose the greatest threats to the future of humans society and the biosphere. The general support of the Republican Party for the fossil fuel industry is the reason why Prof. Noam Chomsky has called the party “the most dangerous organization in history”.
Trump’s climate change denial
In a recent article, climate expert Dr. Andrew Glickson wrote: “The train has left the station and global heating is advancing toward +2 and then toward +4 degrees Celsius, as projected by the IPCC and in the words of Joachim Hans Schellnhuber, Germany’s chief climate scientist, signifies the breakdown of civilization. Largely ignored or watered down by much of the mainstream media , betrayed by most political parties, including those who used to regard climate change as ‘the greatest moral issue of our time’, the population continues to be distracted by other issues.
Why did Professor Noam Chomsky call the US Republican Party “The most dangerous organization in the history of the world”? In the primary that preceded the 2016 presidential election, every single Republican candidate with a chance of being nominated was a climate change denier. All received amazingly generous checks from giant fossil fuel organizations. When elected, Donald Trump not only pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement; he also sabotaged the Environmental Protection Agency to such an extent that the carefully collected facts on climate change that the agency had accumulated had to be secretly saved by scientists to prevent their destruction by the Trump administration. Furthermore, Donald Trump not only subsidizes giant coal corporations. He also has sabotages renewable energy initiatives in the United States. This is a major crime. It is a crime against humanity and a crime against the biosphere.
Trump’s botched COVID-19 response
Here are some relevant links:
https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/trumps-coronavirus-war-against-the-american-people
https://portside.org/2020-05-01/some-progressives-are-denial-about-trumps-fascist-momentum
Children in cages
Here are some excerpts from the written testimony of Clara Long, Deputy Washington Director (Acting) Senior Researcher, US Program Human Rights Watch. The testimony was submitted to the
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform for a hearing on July 19, 2019:
“Our in-depth interviews with children revealed that the US Border Patrol is holding many children, including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in jail – like border facilities for weeks at a time without contact with family members, or regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds. Many were sick. Many, including children as young as 2 or 3, were separated from adult caretakers without any provisions for their care besides that provided by unrelated older children also being held in detention…
“A 7-year-old girl I attempted to interview entered the room silently but burst into tears when we asked whom she traveled with to the US. “My aunt,” she said, with a keening cry. She was so upset we decided not to attempt to interview her, a situation that happened several times during our visit. A bracelet on her wrist had the words “US parent” and a phone number written in permanent marker. We called the number on the spot and found out that no one had informed her desperate parents where she was being held. Some of the most emotional moments of our visit came witnessing children speak for the first time with their parents on an attorney’s phone.”
Trump’s treatment of young children is a crime. It is a crime against human rights.
Threats of war
Donald Trump has frequently threatened foreign countries with war, even nuclear war. For example,
regarding the conflict with North Korea, Trump said “Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime. If [the US] is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”. Trump has also threatened Iran with war. Such threats are a crime under both the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter.
The disastrous 2016 election
When Senator Bernie Sanders began his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, few people believed that he could succeed. But as his campaign gained momentum, enormous crowds were attracted to his reformist speeches, and small individual donors supported his expenses. Although the crowds at Sanders’ speeches were at least four times the size of those attending the rallies of other candidates, they were not reported in the mass media. Sanders’ campaign was also sabotaged by the corporate-controlled Democratic National Committee. His huge popularity remains undimmed today, despite his loss in the 2016 and 2020 primaries.
He advocates a social system for the United States similar to these which have made the Scandinavian countries leaders in both human development and human happiness indices.
Against expectations, Donald Trump was elected in 2016. What happened? Disillusioned by the way in which the immensely popular Senator Bernie Sanders was sabotaged by the media and by the Democratic National Committee, and despising Hillaey Clinton for her involvement in US wars and Wall Street banks, many progressive voters stayed away from the polls. In their absence, Trump won narrowly. He lost the popular vote, but won the electoral vote. Today the White House is a morass of erratic decisions and lies. The voter figures for the 2016 presidential election are as follows: Trump voters, 63 million. Clinton voters, 66 million. Non-voters, 100 million. This must not happen again!
The DNC has given us another flawed candidate
To its shame, the corporate-controlled Democratic National Committee has again sabotaged Senator Sanders and other progressive candidates, and has given us a presumed presidential nominee closely analogous to Hillary Clinton. Like Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden has a record of supporting US foreign wars, and he has close ties to corporations. Thus there is a danger that the disaster of 2016 may be repeated in 2020. Progressive voters, filled with disgust and disillusionment, may stay away from the polls or may support third party candidates. This must not happen! The stakes are too high.
Elizabeth Warren
As of now (May 6), Joe Biden has not yet chosen his running mate. He has an opportunity to unite Democrats and create enthusiasm by choosing Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose solid gold progressive credentials have been established over many years. Let us fervently hope that he and his advisers will make this wise choice.
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Since 1990 he has been the Chairman of the Danish National Group of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Between 2004 and 2015 he also served as Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. He founded the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, and was for many years its Managing Editor. He also served as Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (19881997).
http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com. To know more about his works visit this link. http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/
One hundred years ago, representatives from a few powerful countries convened at San Remo, a sleepy town on the Italian Riviera. Together, they sealed the fate of the massive territories confiscated from the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in World War I.
It was on April 25, 1920, that the San Remo Conference Resolution was passed by the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council. Western Mandates were established over Palestine, Syria and ‘Mesopotamia’ – Iraq. The latter two were theoretically designated for provisional independence, while Palestine was granted to the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish homeland there.
“The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the (Balfour) declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” the Resolution read.
The Resolution gave greater international recognition to Britain’s unilateral decision, three years earlier, to grant Palestine to the Zionist Federation for the purpose of establishing a Jewish homeland, in exchange for Zionist support of Britain during the Great War.
And, like Britain’s Balfour Declaration, a cursory mention was made of the unfortunate inhabitants of Palestine, whose historic homeland was being unfairly confiscated and handed over to colonial settlers.
The establishment of that Jewish State, according to San Remo, hinged on some vague ‘understanding’ that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
The above addition merely served as a poor attempt at appearing politically balanced, while in reality no enforcement mechanism was ever put in place to ensure that the ‘understanding’ was ever respected or implemented.
In fact, one could argue that the West’s long engagement in the question of Israel and Palestine has followed the same San Remo prototype: where the Zionist movement (and eventually Israel) is granted its political objectives based on unenforceable conditions that are never respected or implemented.
Notice how the vast majority of United Nations Resolution pertaining to Palestinian rights are historically passed by the General Assembly, not by the Security Council, where the US is one of five veto-wielding powers, always ready to strike down any attempt at enforcing international law.
It is this historical dichotomy that led to the current political deadlock.
Palestinian leaderships, one after the other, have miserably failed at changing the stifling paradigm. Decades before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, countless delegations, comprised those claiming to represent the Palestinian people, traveled to Europe, appealing to one government or another, pleading the Palestinian case and demanding fairness.
What has changed since then?
On February 20, the Donald Trump administration issued its own version of the Balfour Declaration, termed the ‘Deal of the Century’.
The American decision which, again, flouted international law, paves the way for further Israeli colonial annexations of occupied Palestine. It brazenly threatens Palestinians that, if they do not cooperate, they will be punished severely. In fact, they already have been, when Washington cut all funding to the Palestinian Authority and to international institutions that provide critical aid to the Palestinians.
Like in the San Remo Conference, the Balfour Declaration, and numerous other documents, Israel was asked, ever so politely but without any plans to enforce such demands, to grant Palestinians some symbolic gestures of freedom and independence.
Some may argue, and rightly so, that the ‘Deal of the Century’ and the San Remo Conference Resolution are not identical in the sense that Trump’s decision was a unilateral one, while San Remo was the outcome of political consensus among various countries – Britain, France, Italy, and others.
True, but two important points must be taken into account: firstly, the Balfour Declaration was also a unilateral decision. It took Britain’s allies three years to embrace and validate the illegal decision made by London to grant Palestine to the Zionists. The question now is, how long will it take for Europe to claim the ‘Deal of the Century’ as its own?
Secondly, the spirit of all of these declarations, promises, resolutions, and ‘deals’ is the same, where superpowers decide by virtue of their own massive influence to rearrange the historical rights of nations. In some way, the colonialism of old has never truly died.
The Palestinian Authority, like previous Palestinian leaderships, is presented with the proverbial carrot and stick. Last March, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, told Palestinians that if they did not return to the (non-existent) negotiations with Israel, the US would support Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.
For nearly three decades now and, certainly, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, the PA has chosen the carrot. Now that the US has decided to change the rules of the game altogether, Mahmoud Abbas’ Authority is facing its most serious existential threat yet: bowing down to Kushner or insisting on returning to a dead political paradigm that was constructed, then abandoned, by Washington.
The crisis within the Palestinian leadership is met with utter clarity on the part of Israel. The new Israeli coalition government, consisting of previous rivals Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, have tentatively agreed that annexing large parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley is just a matter of time. They are merely waiting for the American nod.
They are unlikely to wait for long, as Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said on April 22 that annexing Palestinian territories is “an Israeli decision.”
Frankly, it matters little. The 21st century Balfour Declaration has already been made; it is only a matter of making it the new uncontested reality.
Perhaps, it is time for the Palestinian leadership to understand that groveling at the feet of those who have inherited the San Remo Resolution, constructing and sustaining colonial Israel, is never and has never been the answer.
Perhaps, it is time for some serious rethink.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
“When we think of the repression of journalists, we automatically evoke foreign lands. We rarely, however, evoke or remember our own dissidents.”
Peter Oborne, Middle East Eye, May 5, 2020
It all spoke well of British justice, which meant poorly. As one correspondent from the Australian Associated Press put it in describing the latest case hearing for Julian Assange, “There are no lawyers here in person. Assange will not be present. There are 6 journalists here and there will be 6 members of the public.”
The icy District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had already relented last week on vacating May 18 as the date for Assange’s full extradition hearing. Facing several submissions about open justice, the impaired and frustrated channels of legal advice and the overall deprivation of a fair hearing being posed by the pandemic regulations, Baraitser accepted that the parties needed to be physically present. She had little time for much else.
This hearing had little to do with abstractions of justice or wise words on the merits of press freedom. It was all business, a game of logistics on when to have the full hearing. Who would be available and at what times? The only thing missing in these deliberations, apart from the protagonist himself, were the cucumber sandwiches and sherry.
Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Assange, chewed over two undesirable dates: “The November date is too late for us and the July date is perhaps unworkable for us.” James Lewis QC, representing the United States, had another slot in mind. “We would much prefer September if possible.” Clair Dobbin, also representing the US, has her hands full with the Child Abuse inquiry; US prosecutors needed to journey across the Atlantic, and this, given the conditions posed by COVID-19, would hard over summer. Lewis was similarly tied up, having to discharge various public duties towards the end of July.
Baraitser seemed wearied by it all, conceding that another venue, better suited to the hearing, might have to be found. “It’s going to take some negotiation to find a crown court that is open in September, in the current climate, and willing and able to take this hearing.”
Martin Silk, who has been covering the case with steely attentiveness, noted the symbolic, and practical aspects of sham justice that the Assange case is throwing up. “Three mainstream and four non-mainstream journalists have told me they were unable to listen in to Julian Assange’s hearing via conference this morning. Apparently just got hold music because the court clerk didn’t unmute the call… lucky I tweeted.”
It is suitably repugnant that this theatre continues even as British politicians sing the praises of press freedom. Last week, Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab added his name to those of the Dutch, French and German foreign ministers to “celebrate the crucial role journalists play around the world,” thereby doing their little, and inconsequential bit, to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. What was particularly repellent in the statement was the cap doffing to this year’s theme, being very WikiLeaks, as it were, and equally shunned in practice. “This year’s theme ‘Journalism without fear or favour’ emphasises the importance of taking action to secure independent journalism as a prerequisite for a functioning society.”
The statement also rings hollow when considering the entire scope of Assange’s hearings, which have been poorly conducted, appallingly managed and meagrely rationed in terms of resources. Those covering the case have also been treated with mild contempt. The very fact that it has dragged on in purgatorial fashion for so long suggests a form of torment by prolongation, a macabre display of institutional corruption. The US imperium wants its man and Britain will deliver, but must be seen to be observing some due process, however shoddy.
Such a farce does not stop Raab from confidently fluting the notes of press freedom. “We must oppose all attempts by any state,” continues the statement, “to use the pandemic to adopt restrictions on press freedom, silence debate, abuse journalists or spread misinformation.”
Such fine sentiments that have tended to skip the deliberations of Judge Baraitser and for that matter the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other branches of the British government. Peter Oborne, sporting a keen nose for sniffing hypocrisy, spots a recent pattern. The Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has hectored the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, for the corporation’s Panorama programme which reported shortages of personal protective equipment and the mortal dangers posed to health workers by COVID-19. Raab had little to say about Egypt’s gruff expulsion of The Guardian reporter Ruth Michaelson in March, ostensibly for questioning official government figures on COVID-19 infections. Ditto on that country’s record on jailing contrarian journalists unhappy to march to the drum beat of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In such mattes, the FCO remains remote.
This ghastly record of indifference was topped, in Oborne’s mind, by the foreign secretary’s absence of interest in protecting Assange. “If there was an ounce of sincerity in the foreign secretary’s claim that he is a supporter of media freedom, he would be resisting the US attempt to get his hands on Assange with every bone in his body.” The WikiLeaks publisher had, after all, “done more than every other journalist in Britain put together to shed light on the way the world truly works.”
The interim period will be another one of charming hope against bitter experience. To avoid any serious risk of succumbing in prison to coronavirus, bail is being entertained though it is unlikely to move the glacial bench. As Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, has described with moving melancholy, the publisher’s life “is at severe risk. He is on remand at HMP Belmarsh, and COVID-19 is spreading within its walls.” Those in power remain deaf to such calls, much in keeping with the dictates of muted justice.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
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Co-Written by Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell
Ever since the Catholic Church gave the world propaganda in its Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) in the year 1622, propaganda has been with us. The triumph of populist propaganda has been shown in the USA with the election of Donald Trump. As in the USA, right-wing propaganda also works its magic in various European countries like Hungary and Poland. In Germany, the single most propagandistic party is called the AfD or Alternative for Germany. Some say “A F*** Disgrace”. Like many other countries, Germany is in danger of pop-populism turning democracy into a popcorn autocracy. Essentially, European policy advisor Johannes Hillje, for example, argues that Propaganda 4.0 needs to be differentiated from its three previous versions:
- Propaganda 1.0 which is the Catholic Church’s original propaganda of 1622;
- Propaganda 2.0 is Stalinism’s propaganda (1920 to 1953);
- Propaganda 3.0, the Nazis’ propaganda (1930 to 1945); and
- Propaganda 4.0 is the current right-wing propaganda relying on the Internet.
Propaganda 1.0 relied on preaching by Catholic priests in churches. Propaganda 2.0 and 3.0 relied on printed newspapers, radio and later TV. By contrast, Propaganda 4.0 uses mainstream media as support functions. More importantly, Propaganda 4.0 uses the Internet, such as websites, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp. It uses them in two ways. First, the Internet separates party supporters and voters from mainstream media. This traps them inside what has become known as echo chambers. In the context of the extreme radical right, these are virtual places reinforcing its ideology.
Second, Propaganda 4.0 works with mainstream media where corporate media are increasingly driven by attention-getting methods – every click means advertising revenue. For propagandists, this means creating attention granting right-wing populist parties disproportional importance. One might make two arguments. Firstly, right-wing or authoritarian populism is successful because it communicates successfully; and secondly, that right-wing extremists have established a new form of propaganda – Propaganda 4.0. Together with the imperatives of the attention economy, these two factors underwrite the electoral success of right-wing populists, catapulting their parties into many parliaments around the world and into various local and state parliaments wherever they put up candidates.
During the last decade, the anti-democratic forces of Propaganda 4.0 have grown stronger, enabling it to propagate and broadcast lies systematically. Today, right-wing party conventions are carefully choreographed for maximum impact. The process works by eliminating the many right-wing party conventions with open forums for discussion, debate, and critique and replaced it with Propaganda 4.0 conventions of multi-media shows. The show always begins with the entrance of the heroic leader [the Führer]. This is followed by short, sharp and polemic speeches with no debate or discussion. After that, well-dressed politicians deliver a group photo for the press with smiling faces.
Gone is outright militarism, Nazi uniforms, and bold gorillas called Neo-Nazis. Then comes a lengthy press conference where right-wing ideology is rolled out. All this is rounded up with a dinner for the selected few. This formula demonstrates that Propaganda 4.0 also works well at the European level and elsewhere. At the European level, Propaganda 4.0 shows four key commonalities:
- Authoritarian populism has established a successful trans-national network of resources;
- There is a Euro-wide commonality of ideologies (anti-Muslim, anti-EU, law-&-order, etc.);
- European populists exchange marketing methods (conspiracy theories); and
- Right-wing parties have set up Internet TV channels propagating right-wing ideology.
These strategic arrangements allow European right-wing extremists and populists to learn from each other. By connecting with each other, right-wing populists can intensify the broadcasting of their ideology using the methods of populism and Propaganda 4.0. Populism is understood as setting the pure white Volk (the people) against the corrupt elite. The people are moral while the elite is immoral. The elite is not a clearly defined entity in right-wing propaganda. Instead, the idea of the elite is deliberately kept nebulous. What remains significant in Propaganda 4.0 is that some “hazy” elite wants to eliminate the Volk.
It is imperative to understand that Propaganda 4.0 – like most previous forms of propaganda – operates through fear. This sets an in-group against an out-group. Many crypto-neo-Nazi parties call the dividing line between the in- and out-group ethno-pluralism, which is more politically correct term word for racism – setting those of Aryan blood against anyone of non-white stock.
In short, ethno-pluralism signifies a plurality of ethnicities. These ethnicities are to be separated – we here and you over there. Defining the nebulous but infamous “we”, German right-wing extremists suggest one must be of German stock [the Aryan Abstammungsprinzip], e.g. being of German blood. The in- vs out-group ideology also defines the foreigner as the enemy. Then, the populists are the only true representatives of the pure Volk, representing the uncontaminated will of an anti-pluralist, illiberal, and anti-democratic Volk. For right-wing populists, a contaminated will is represented by democratic parties, trade unions, the churches, and the elite as such. In other words, authoritarian populism is deeply undemocratic. It is neither pluralist nor liberal.
Since a decade or more, we have seen somewhat of a run to the right with election after election won by right-wing populists. Generously, supported by corporate mass media, right-wing populists use Propaganda 4.0 to move the public debate further and further towards the right. Many recent elections from Trump to Duterte to Modi to Bolsonaro to Johnson (the list continues) show how their election campaigns can be seen as perfect examples of Propaganda 4.0. Their success in applying Propaganda 4.0 means nothing good for democracy. Propaganda 4.0 engineers a digital counter-revolution.
In true Orwellian style, Propaganda 4.0’s digital counter-revolution often reverse the meaning of words. Truth becomes fake news, just as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was a propaganda machine while the Ministry of Love and Peace was the place for torture. Historically, this is not new. Already Germany’s Nazis of the 1930s hardly ever expressed truth and reality. Instead, the Nazi’s Propaganda 3.0 created a Nazi version of reality. Nazi propaganda did this through specific words and phrases they used. But the Nazis also gave established words a new meaning. The key rests on a propaganda technique called political framing.
Propaganda 4.0 means the packaging of reality that is relevant to a specific audience and channelling it to deliver right-wing propaganda and ideology. Like natural catastrophes, the arrival of refugees, ef1 is framed as migration tornado and as a refugee flood. The so-called refugee flood came to Germany in the year 2015 when 890,000 people entered Germany. Given Germany’s population of around 82 million, the flood of refugees numbered around 1%. It was a 1% flood! Germany does not appear to have been overwhelmed by refugees and migrants. Historically, a significant number of immigrants have been living and working in Germany since the 1950s – the so-called guest workers enriching Germany’s culture. Perhaps one of the key mottos of all versions of propaganda is the well-known slogan: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
In any case, Propaganda 4.0 is not facts but about framing. Anyone who is an ethnic-national and not of white makeup is framed as a danger. Non-nationals and non-whites are presented to be a threat to a nation’s racial hygiene – a Nazi word conjuring up the worst excesses of Nazism’s racial madness. Not surprisingly, right-wing extremists called those not belonging to their pathological hallucination of a Volksgemeinschaft, a cancerous tumour. This is the language of Nazism.
Anyone disagreeing with such viewpoints or challenging such hallucinations and conspiracy theories (i.e. pathological mythologies) is abused. The right-wing sees them as being part of the Lying Press. This is yet another Nazi term. With Propaganda 4.0, many Nazi words made a comeback. Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels used the term lying press [Lügenpresse]. Nonetheless, lying press became increasingly used. The l’idée fixe of a lying press was used just under 1,000 times in 2014; this increased to 4,396 times in 2015 and to 6,212 times in the year 2016. This adoption of straight Nazi language marks the triumph of Propaganda 4.0.
Already Nazi demagogue Alfred Rosenberg saw in the lying press the enemy of the people. Donald Trump and many other right-wing populists also use the expression lying press. In any case, Trump and others are right-wing populists. They are not necessarily Nazis. However, in the case of Trump there is a borderline comment. Trump called Nazis that killed an anti-Nazi protestor in Charlottesville in 2017, very fine people. Still, it was Germany that created Auschwitz – not the USA. And it was a particular German policy of being of pure Aryan race the led to a particular and unique outcome – Auschwitz.
The success of Propaganda 4.0 in Germany was also seen, for example, when a journalist questioned right-wing AfD-politician Beatrix von Storch. The journalist asked, do refugees commit more crimes than Germans, I mean, bio-Germans?. AfD politicians in Germany do not need to use racist terms any longer; others do it for them. This marks the triumph of Propaganda 4.0. The term bio-German indicates being biologically and racially German. What is crucial for Propaganda 4.0 is not the fact that all of this is pure nonsense. What is important is that mainstream journalists have adopted the Nazi language.
Propaganda 4.0 works particularly well when it defines the debate in Nazi terms. This happens whenever the media deal with populism, asylum, migration, terrorism and crime in an ideological way that is underwritten by Propaganda 4.0. It creates the impression that these right-wing issues are pressing issues and that only the populists address them. In such debates, the Propaganda 4.0 trained populists use provocation as a communication technique. Just as Propaganda 4.0 predicts, right-wing populists break taboos, e.g. using Nazi language. Mainstream media reports such provocations. They are newsworthy. They create attention. They create Internet clicks. They create revenue.
In an attention-based economy where news and reporting depend increasingly on advertising revenue, every look at a billboard and a TV screen, every click and every Internet search is relevant because it creates income for corporate media. Perhaps one might speculate that Hitler’s regime was based on a new propaganda medium, the radio [Volksempfänger]. Many post-war regimes were based on another new medium – TV. The success of right-wing populists is based yet on another new medium – the Internet and social media.
What Propaganda 4.0 has achieved is twofold. It has prevented the de-masking of right-wing propaganda, and it has led to a normalisation of NS language. This is what has been called, the mainstreaming of fascism. Right-wing populists call its increasing use of Nazi language a fight against political correctness. The goal of Propaganda 4.0 is to shift the public debate towards right-wing agendas, i.e. anti-refugee politics, racism, etc. In other words, the right-wing has started a run towards the right, and many are running with it. The current success of Propaganda 4.0 even encouraged some right-wing populists to admit to using aggressive NS rhetoric freely. That these things do not stop at the use of NS terminology can be seen by the fact that journalists reporting on right-wing rallies prefer to wear helmets. As the old saying goes first, they burn books; then they burn people. Propaganda is never just propaganda; it always has a political, and often violent goal.
It appears as if Propaganda 4.0 works best when it broadcasts its ideology in a new medium – social media and the Internet. Many right-wing populists have learned this from other populists. Some right-wing populists have already created their own ideological infrastructure. Still, the main ideological infrastructure of the right remains Facebook with millions of followers. Not many democratic parties come even close to such numbers. This is Propaganda 4.0’s counter-offensive against mainstream media. Beyond Facebook, the second most crucial network is YouTube. Armed with these social media platforms, right-wing propaganda reaches millions of people. This allows right-wing populists to match viewing numbers of many popular TV news programmes.
Inside such right-wing echo chambers, it is no longer truth and facts that make it to the top. Now, algorithms define what gets to the top of the news cycle. These algorithms push catchy issues, provocations, insults, etc. These are pushed through the Internet on a daily basis, reaching millions of supporters. Not surprisingly, voting for right-wing populists parties strongly correlates with heavy Internet users.
Just as the concept of Propaganda 4.0 predicts, right-wing populists support by websites that carry their ideology forward. Increasingly separated from mainstream media, right-wing populist supporters believe that these echo chambers deliver an objective picture of politics. The fact that these supporters are confined to a form of intellectual isolation escapes the notice of those trapped by Propaganda 4.0’s effects. Much of this is supported by what became known as confirmation bias, the favouring of news that supports one’s own worldview. A confirmation bias eliminates contradictions. Worse, it gives the supporters of authoritarian populism two misleading ideas:
- Firstly, it aids the impression that they are against the elite; and
- Secondly, it supports the misconception that we are many.
At least partly, the electoral success of many right-wing populists comes on top of the fact that mainstream media also broadcasts their ideologies. Mainstream media are used by right-wing populists to separate itself from their perceived political enemy. In semi-Nazi fashion, the enemies are those to be eliminated. This is the future of democracy under the authoritarian populism. To infiltrate and destroy democracy, Propaganda 4.0 issues four demands:
- Propaganda should provoke the political enemy;
- Propaganda should maximise attention;
- Propaganda should polarise society; and
- Propaganda should mobilise right-wing support.
Beyond that, Propaganda 4.0 pursues Democracy 4.0. For authoritarian populism, Democracy 4.0 is simply “one” vehicle to gain power. In any case, real democracy has to be converted into Democracy 4.0. By early 2020, Hungary had become a prime example for this. How an illiberal Democracy 4.0 can be achieved is also shown in Poland and a few other places. In both countries, right-wing governments have restructured the central institutions of democracy, such as the system of justice and the media. In both countries, the parliament is already downgraded to being merely the propaganda podium used to mobilise support for the ruling party. The entire structure is reinforced through echo chambers. In both countries, populism and anti-democratic – if not outright antisemitic – ideologies hold sway. The remaining journalists have been downgraded into a mere delivery system for Propaganda 4.0. In Hungary and Poland, populist parties have been successful in creating the hallucination of representing the silent majority.
Propaganda 4.0 also issues a dire warning. The key to understanding Propaganda 4.0 lies in comprehending its use of mainstream media and echo chambers to strengthen anti-democratic forces. Both are used to reduce and perhaps eliminate democracy. To this end, Propaganda 4.0 relies heavily on a parallel sphere – the Internet as it is capable of isolating party supporters so that the ideologues and demagogues of authoritarian populism can dominate democracy until they have made democracy obsolete.
Thomas Klikauer is the author of The AfD– Germany’s New Nazis or another Populist Party?
Nadine Campbell is the founder of Abydos Academy.
Cuban Doctors, photo Cubadebate
Cuba has carried out more than 600,000 internationalist missions in 164 countries. Cuba has been at the forefront when it comes to fraternally assisting other countries in need, without ever interfering in the internal affairs of any of these countries. With more than 1.7 billion medical examinations, 12.5 million surgical interventions and just as many vaccinations *, this small country has saved the lives of more than 6,253,000 people. In 2018 alone, 36,000 professionals, including 18,000 doctors, were on duty worldwide. In 2019, 29,000 Cuban doctors worked in 59 countries. **
39 Cuban doctors arrive in Madrid on March 29 to travel to Andorra. Photo: EmbaCubaItaly
“All these sacrifices are worth making in order to save a human life,” any Cuban would state.
52 Cuban doctors arriving in Lombardy on March 22, 2020. Photo: Consulate of Cuba in Milan
After Italy, 20 other countries have asked Cuba’s support against Covid-19. 1455 professionals (April 26th, 2020) have left their families in Cuba to assist patients around the world.
Photo: Ruben C. Herrera, collaborator of International Medical Brigade Henry Reeve of Cuba.
The Fribourg section of the Swiss friendship Association Switzerland-Cuba reiterates the request addressed on March 16, 2020 to Mr. Alain Berset, member of the Swiss Federal Council, regarding the possibility of importing a drug produced in Cuba for treatment of Covid-19 and requesting the assistance of Cuban medical personel (here or google: “Suisse Cuba Berset). We also urge our government to do everything in its power to end the criminal and genocidal blockade imposed on Cuba by the US-government in which our country is complicitly participating.
Andrea Duffour, President of the Fribourg Section of the Association Switzerland-Cuba
Sources :
1 Unidad Central de Cooperacion Medical del Ministerio de Salud Publica de Cuba (UCCM) Central Unity for medical cooperation of the Cuban Ministry of Health.
2 Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX)
Français: www.cuba-si.ch/fr et sur infomeduse
Deutsch: www.cuba-si.ch/de
Espanol : www.cuba-si.ch/es
italiano su www.cuba-si/it
English :
Photo by John Epic taken outside Kansas’ 1st District Congress member @RogerMarshallMD’s office in Salina, Kansas, May 4
Yesterday, May 4, marked the 50th Anniversary of the Kent State University Massacre in Ohio, when the U.S. National Guard showered bullets into young anti-Vietnam war protestors killing four and wounding nine.
According to David Paul Kuhn, author of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution, “If there’s an era when the tribalization of the trump era began, it’s this time,” and that “between Kent State and the hardhat riot you have the best microcosm that there is of the beginning of the polarization that haunts America today.”
Fifty years later, in pandemic-time, when more than 70,000 Americans officially have died so far, (the actual number is much, much higher) our politicians are too busy playing status quo politics in D.C. and to varying degrees all across the 50 states. But within the midst of these status quo shenanigans one thing is as clear as this vast, contrail-free Kansas heartland sky above the Sidewalk of Museum of Congress (SMoC) protest today: the core of the tragedy is the same, only the surface layers have changed.
The tragedy that was the Kent State massacre and that was captured in the iconic photo of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller—a 20-year-old man whose anti-war voice had just been silenced by a shot through his protesting mouth by superpower state machinery—speaks to us in ways that only those paying attention can hear.
The Guardian points out that the atrocity of Kent State was bookended by two other atrocities: the South Carolina State College massacre of 1968 and the Jackson State College massacre ten days after Kent State. Together, those two state-sanctioned shootings killed five young Black men — Samuel Hammond Jr., Henry Smith, Delano Middleton, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, and James Earl Green, and wounded 39 other Black students. “Kent State is a story that people know, people can learn from, whereas Orangeburg and Jackson, because they happened on black college campuses, are stories that go untold,” said Bakari Sellers, son of student rights leader Cleveland Sellers who was convicted of rioting and was “the only person to go to prison over what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre.”
Today, the silencing of justice and cries for accountability continues. Only the circumstances have changed. And through the fifty years, we can hear echoes of Crosby, Stills, and Nash:
Health Workers and Democracy’s dyin’
Left strugglin’ on their own
This summer I hear the silencin’
A thousand dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
The government’s letting us down
Should have been gone long ago
What if you knew a Latina,
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you lie when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Administration’s mowing us down
Shoulda been gone long ago
If you saw a Black Man
Lyin’ dead on the ground?
How can you lie when you know?
Meat workers and Democracy’s dyin’
Left strugglin’ on their own
This fall I’ll hear the silencin’
More dead in Ohio
More dead in Florida
More dead in Iowa
More dead in Michigan (How many?)
More dead in Illinois (How many more?)
More dead in Delaware (Why?)
More dead in Arkansas (No!)
More dead in Maryland (No more!)
More dead in Tennessee (No more!)
More dead in …
Priti Gulati Cox (@PritiGCox) is an artist and the creator of the Sidewalk Museum of Congress located outside the office of Kansas’ 1st District Congress member @RogerMarshallMD in Salina, Kansas. Please go here to see her work.
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