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.
