The wall-to-wall propaganda we are being subjected to on the death of a royal may look exceptional but is in fact entirely routine. It is simply that in normal times the propaganda is better masked, wrapped in the illusion of choice and variety.

The wall-to-wall propaganda we are being subjected to on the death of a royal may look exceptional but is in fact entirely routine. It is simply that in normal times the propaganda is better masked, wrapped in the illusion of choice and variety.
Just as free speech is being shut down on the grounds that we must not offend, so the right to protest is being shut down on the grounds that we must not disturb.
Every moment of Mos-Shogbamimu’s five-minute attack on Piers Morgan on his own show is being stage-managed. View it as a sophisticated lullaby, masquerading as fearless honesty, singing us deeper into sleep.
We are presented with a false binary choice. Either we cheer on the Royal Family and implicitly condone their racism; or we cheer on Meghan and implicitly support her battle to better veil the feudal ugliness of the British monarchy.
Bullying people to take the Covid vaccine – whether through incentives or punishments – is not social solidarity or social responsibility. It is a smug liberal conceit masquerading as those things.
The majority of doctors, like the majority of journalists, politicians and academics, have been captured by corporate interests. They are in thrall to ‘guild’ interests designed by Big Pharma to benefit not patients but patents and profits.
Politicians and their scientist enablers poured huge sums into labs, into test-tubes and into man-made magic bullets while they contemptuously ignored sunlight because it is free, everywhere and the magic of the stars.
In sacking a columnist for a tweet criticising Israel, the Guardian didn’t stop antisemitism. It policed leftwing speech highlighting the continuing imperialist, colonial nature of western societies
The left cannot echo the rhetoric of the west’s warmongering power-elite and not also take responsibility for the wars that result from that warmongering.
Trump is not the enemy. That target is far too small and limited. The class he belongs to is our enemy, as is the system of privilege he has spent the past four years upholding.
The solution is not to crack down on political speech, even extreme and irresponsible speech, if it does not break the law. Trump is not the cause of US political woes, he is one obnoxious symptom.
The left not only faces character assassination from the establishment, as was always the case, but nowadays is manipulated into colluding in its own character assassination.
Even if Assange’s death is not the goal of the US and UK, they have recklessly ensured that possibility grows ever more likely, and will continue to do so until they swiftly bring his incarceration and torture to an end.
The last decade has been about discrediting, disgracing and demonising Assange. This ruling should very much be seen as a continuation of that process.
The perverse secular priorities of European culture now place the sanctity of a militarised state, Israel, above the sanctity of a religion with a billion followers.
Now Robert Fisk cannot answer back, his corporate colleagues are feasting on his corpse like the vultures they are – until there is nothing left to remind them that they sold out while he told uncomfortable truths to the very end.
After four years of Trump, the West’s war machine once again desperately needs a makeover. A strong dose of identity politics – with a woman or black man heading the Pentagon – may prove just the solution