Podcast #127
John Steppling, Max Parry, Hiroyuki Hamada, Dennis Riches, and Shaenah Batterson,
https://steigan.no/2024/09/en-gestapo-liknende-politistat-vokser-fram/
https://youtu.be/ydXkZ_hDztc?si=WJB9i7ciE75mpl8y
https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/130741
https://steigan.no/2024/09/forfolgelsen-av-dr-reiner-fuellmich/
what hell is going to be like (h/t vc) https://x.com/VincentCrypt46/status/1833131690580939120 ¨
Not sure if this got past your CAPTCHA so I'll post it here too.
Off topic rant:
So I awoke this morning to this sound:
“George you should have seen that documentary on Zelensky last night. Jeez that Putin is a fucking evil nutter!”
The smell of ferocious bullshit assailed me and so I just knew I was going to have to investigate further.
This is a film in three parts called “The Zelensky Story” filmed by the BBC. A little search brought up this Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/sep/04/the-zelensky-story-review-you-can-feel-the-humanity-radiating-from-the-ukrainian-president
The rhetoric was depressingly open and obvious:
“A true believer in a cause greater than himself … you can feel the humanity radiating from the Ukrainian president.... the one-time comedian’s astonishing journey to statesmanship is to feel that you’re witnessing the birth of a hero...”
A bit of sly “truth in plain sight” humour:
“It’s such an astonishing story that you wouldn’t dare make it up. And yet someone already had, which is part of what makes the story so astonishing.”
And here we see a now familiar device: the scripting of a news event in fictional form which then “astonishingly” becomes “true”:
“From 2015 to 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a popular comic film and TV actor, starred in Servant of the People – a political satire about an ordinary man suddenly made president of Ukraine who gradually proves himself to be the incorruptible leader the country needed. In 2019, Zelenskiy began serving as president in real life; barely three years after that, he found himself president in a time of war, when Vladimir Putin did what he had long wanted to do and invaded the country.”
Note how the open confession of this “coincidence” precludes any dismissal of the oddity. “Oh you think you’re so smart to point out this parallel but they already admitted it!”
Along with this “remarkable” tale of the rising unlikely hero, “(i)n the background, always, is Putin’s career and – not inadvertently – the difference between the two men.”
“not inadvertently” indeed! (Another sly “truth in plain sight” moment!)
And there are more confessions of the technique:
“Only film can capture the blank-eyed soullessness of the Russian president and the ineffable sense of wrongness he carries with him – even if you knew nothing of him or his history; only film can capture the warmth, charm and humanity radiating from his Ukrainian counterpart, brimful of soul. By the end of the three episodes, it is hard not to let their intertwined fates take on mythic proportions: good versus evil, darkness versus light, Zelenskiy’s love for his country and his people versus Putin’s hate for anything but power.”
See? They admit what they’re doing at every turn! And they still get away with it!
Then there is a curious tale of how our Z-Man folksy hero made the bold decision to go into politics apparently without his wife’s approval. Yeah I wonder what the true story behind that is!
But then comes another device: the programming of the viewer’s reaction by simply predicting it:
“Whatever we make of this move, it is hard to watch the next few years of Zelenskiy’s life unfold without coming to the conclusion that you are watching the evolution of a hero: clear-sighted, intelligent, a master of the media – vital today – and a true believer in a cause greater than himself.”
And more “fact meets fiction” blather:
“That he had the savvy to retain scriptwriters from his Servant of the People days to write his speeches, and to design them to move electorates when it became clear that world leaders were reluctant to help without pressure, is another kind of marvel.”
The teasing self-confessional propaganda continues when we hear about the film maker Michael Waldman:
“Waldman has put together a detailed portrait of an extraordinary man at an extraordinary time in his country’s history (and that of the world, if you think what a Putin victory would mean for western democracy), while unobtrusively filling in any gaps in geopolitical knowledge a viewer might have.”
A Putin victory! Jeez! Just imagine! And notice that “unobtrusively filling in” tease!
Then another thigh slapper:
“....Waldman manages to sidestep hagiography while still acknowledging the astonishing nature of the man and his time.”
And the close:
“Zelenskiy is a study in how passion paired with performance skills is one of the greatest advantages a modern leader can have. Whether it is enough to drive back the Russian army we will have to wait and see.”
To fix that:
Zelenskiy is a study in how sly and arrogant a collapsing propaganda system becomes. Whether it is enough to shore up an increasingly obvious bullshit story we will have to wait and see.
However, going by the easy swallowing of this crap in my own household, perhaps this propaganda has a long way to go yet!
I’m sorry I couldn’t make it for this one but my health wasn’t good. It’s now 8 pm here and I’m feeling well enough to watch and respond.
(I’m quite happy with the routine of you starting without me and me catching up later if you are OK with keeping to that.)
One thing I wanted to bring up was the now ludicrously anachronistic rhetoric coming from some quarters of the media. Like this bit of sabre rattling from the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/08/young-people-will-not-save-a-country-been-taught-to-hate/
“We must all hope that we are not called upon again to fight a total war against a vicious enemy posing an existentialist threat to us and our way of life. But when one notes the malevolence and proximity of Vladimir Putin, the interference of Iran across the Middle East, the opportunism of China in imposing its values on much of the world, and our signal inability to prepare for it by increasing our defence budget to a sensible level, who would like to put money on our people not being called upon again, as twice in the 20th century, to save our country?”
And there’s not a hint of that restraining fear of nuclear Armageddon that the media at least had the decency to acknowledge back in the “cold war”.
Speaking of which, this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gz4re394o
This is from the heads of the CIA and MI6 so no surprise that it’s crap but what is disarming is the blasé perfunctory rolling out of the old stuff – the old “Cold War” blather e.g. about “the international world order – the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperity” which apparently “is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War."
This is also echoed by a matter brought up by Graham Linehan, the comic writer, who posted pictures of LGBT protesters bearing placards saying stuff like “Let me marry my non-binary partner”. To which Linehan responds: “What do they think they're not allowed to do? Never has a movement fought so hard for rights they already have”.
And so the whole protest theatre as presented by the media seems to be locked into the same time loop as the CIA, MI6 and The Telegraph. I’d say this Groundhog Day resides somewhere in the 1970s. Which reminded me of a quote which I can’t seem to find and which possibly came from Marx: That for the bourgeoisie, time has passed but can pass no longer.
I wasn’t aware that Russell Brand’s “fellow worshipper” was Tucker Carlson. I’m guessing it was Brand’s idea. As Dennis said, I don’t care if folk are religious but it’s the clear awareness of social performance that repels me. I feel similarly about Naomi Wolf giving Bible readings on her twitter account.
Speaking of folk “on the Left” who you feel let down by, Simon Elmer, who still resides behind his paranoid defensive shield, has now committed himself to delivering poetry. I’m guessing that that’s the end of that chapter!
(One of the most interesting “non-Left Leftists” G G Preparata seems to be devoting himself to teaching guitar lessons now. Another chapter over!)
Off-Guardian seem to be winding down to an increasingly small circle of contributors – most prominently John and Nisha Whitehead, founders of something called The Rutherford Institute, a libertarian outlet. And then we have Todd Hayen, a Canadian psychologist who bleats about “sheep” and “shrews” with a Nietzschean swagger that invariably finds juvenile echoes below the line. And if any article voices objection to capitalism, the comments below are anxious to point out that it’s imminent communism we face. If they’re not fretting about the approaching global Caliphate!