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 ยจ
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:
โGeorge you should have seen that documentary on Zelensky last night. Jeez that Putin is a fucking evil nutter!โ
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 โThe Zelensky Storyโ 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:
โA true believer in a cause greater than himself โฆ you can feel the humanity radiating from the Ukrainian president.... the one-time comedianโs astonishing journey to statesmanship is to feel that youโre witnessing the birth of a hero...โ
A bit of sly โtruth in plain sightโ humour:
โItโs such an astonishing story that you wouldnโt dare make it up. And yet someone already had, which is part of what makes the story so astonishing.โ
And here we see a now familiar device: the scripting of a news event in fictional form which then โastonishinglyโ becomes โtrueโ:
โFrom 2015 to 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a popular comic film and TV actor, starred in Servant of the People โ 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.โ
Note how the open confession of this โcoincidenceโ precludes any dismissal of the oddity. โOh you think youโre so smart to point out this parallel but they already admitted it!โ
Along with this โremarkableโ tale of the rising unlikely hero, โ(i)n the background, always, is Putinโs career and โ not inadvertently โ the difference between the two men.โ
โnot inadvertentlyโ indeed! (Another sly โtruth in plain sightโ moment!)
And there are more confessions of the technique:
โOnly film can capture the blank-eyed soullessness of the Russian president and the ineffable sense of wrongness he carries with him โ 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, Zelenskiyโs love for his country and his people versus Putinโs hate for anything but power.โ
See? They admit what theyโre 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 wifeโs approval. Yeah I wonder what the true story behind that is!
But then comes another device: the programming of the viewerโs reaction by simply predicting it:
โWhatever we make of this move, it is hard to watch the next few years of Zelenskiyโs life unfold without coming to the conclusion that you are watching the evolution of a hero: clear-sighted, intelligent, a master of the media โ vital today โ and a true believer in a cause greater than himself.โ
And more โfact meets fictionโ blather:
โThat 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.โ
The teasing self-confessional propaganda continues when we hear about the film maker Michael Waldman:
โWaldman has put together a detailed portrait of an extraordinary man at an extraordinary time in his countryโs 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.โ
A Putin victory! Jeez! Just imagine! And notice that โunobtrusively filling inโ tease!
Then another thigh slapper:
โ....Waldman manages to sidestep hagiography while still acknowledging the astonishing nature of the man and his time.โ
And the close:
โZelenskiy 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.โ
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!
Iโm sorry I couldnโt make it for this one but my health wasnโt good. Itโs now 8 pm here and Iโm feeling well enough to watch and respond.
(Iโm 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/
โWe 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?โ
And thereโs not a hint of that restraining fear of nuclear Armageddon that the media at least had the decency to acknowledge back in the โcold warโ.
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 itโs crap but what is disarming is the blasรฉ perfunctory rolling out of the old stuff โ the old โCold Warโ blather e.g. about โthe international world order โ the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperityโ which apparently โis under threat in a way we havenโt 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 โLet me marry my non-binary partnerโ. To which Linehan responds: โWhat do they think they're not allowed to do? Never has a movement fought so hard for rights they already haveโ.
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. Iโd say this Groundhog Day resides somewhere in the 1970s. Which reminded me of a quote which I canโt seem to find and which possibly came from Marx: That for the bourgeoisie, time has passed but can pass no longer.
I wasnโt aware that Russell Brandโs โfellow worshipperโ was Tucker Carlson. Iโm guessing it was Brandโs idea. As Dennis said, I donโt care if folk are religious but itโs 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 โon the Leftโ who you feel let down by, Simon Elmer, who still resides behind his paranoid defensive shield, has now committed himself to delivering poetry. Iโm guessing that thatโs the end of that chapter!
(One of the most interesting โnon-Left Leftistsโ 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 โ 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 โsheepโ and โshrewsโ 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 itโs imminent communism we face. If theyโre not fretting about the approaching global Caliphate!