As the warnings about Russia grow louder, the public is being told to fear more, question less and prepare for war<\/p>\n
Great Britain is going through a war scare. Or to be precise, its combined political and media establishment is subjecting its people to a relentless propaganda (in up-to-date NATO-speak \u201ccognitive warfare\u201d) campaign to create a sense of impending war against Russia.\u00a0
\nAs you would expect, that war is, of course, framed as strictly defensive. In propaganda textbook manner, the message is both very simple and very repetitive: The UK is in great danger of a Russian attack, and its whole population must prepare itself to withstand and resist it. \u00a0
\nIt goes without saying that Moscow\u2019s repeated declarations of having no such intention make no difference.\u00a0
\nBritain is certainly not alone in its establishment-induced hysteria. Much of NATO-EU Europe is undergoing, in essence, the same treatment. In France, for instance, President Emmanuel Macron has called a theatrical all-manicured-hands-on-deck meeting to give what can only be called a national scare talk about \u201cRussian hybrid warfare\u201d; in Germany, Berlin and its mainstream media won\u2019t stop stirring the pot about the murky drone affair at Leipzig-Halle airport.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
\nYet, over the last weeks, within a crowded field of European panic-mongering, Britain has stuck out as especially virulent. The single most grotesque contribution was made by uber-Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg. Comfortably seated against a backdrop that screamed country-squire probity, Rees-Mogg held forth on war within the next few years, ancient Rome (he\u2019s been to Eton, he wants you to know) and, most importantly, \u201ccircumstances where people may have to die.\u201d Either that or \u2013 so Rees-Mogg\u2019s stern message \u2013 decline and fall, as happened to those Romans, who let mercenaries do their fighting and thus lost their empire.<\/p>\n
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The UK suspiciously reeks of the late-stage USSR<\/p>\n
So much to unpack. For one thing, the reference to paying others to fight \u2013 and die \u2013 must be a Freudian slip. Surely, Sir Jacob cannot have meant to refer to how the West, Britain very much included, has paid the Kiev regime to send its subjects \u2013 if need be, after kidnapping them \u2013 into the folly of a proxy war meatgrinder to demote Russia. And then, that Roman Empire analogy? Clearly, Rees-Mogg, true to type, is still struggling with the fact that Britain has its imperial collapse well behind it already.\u00a0
\nYet, sour oddball as he is, the arch-conservative \u2013 and multimillionaire \u2013 Rees-Mogg is perfectly representative of the current British establishment trend. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, for instance, has just used his first UN General Assembly address in New York to blame his country\u2019s misery not on, say, his predecessor and Labour Party comrade Keir Starmer, but on Russia.\u00a0
\nMeanwhile, at home, Sky News is rolling out \u2018The Wargame\u2019,\u00a0 a bizarre \u201cdocu\u201d-fantasy in four parts, built on the premise that the Russians are coming, no, they really, really ARE this time!\u00a0
\nPretending to be a sort of \u201crealistic\u201d account of what a British government would do in case of Moscow launching a series of escalating attacks, this production \u2013 from available reviews \u2013 is unusually awful shlock. It features has-been politicos doubling as un-reality TV stars, such as Michael Gove and Nicola Sturgeon, and living out their inner Tom Clancy by pretending to be serious, decisive, and, most of all, terribly important to the nation\u2019s survival.\u00a0
\nUnintentionally funny, though, as it may be, \u2018The Wargame\u2019 clearly has substantial political support and much hype around it. Propaganda can easily look ridiculous and be highly toxic at the same time. Because effective propaganda is, above all, one simple thing: the psychological manipulation of the many by the few. This is such a case. The viewers of \u2018The Wargame\u2019 are fed a silly but efficiently dramatized story, with the whole bag of well-worn but powerful tricks: suspense, shock, and, last but not least, a thrilling score.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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NATO 3.0 marches into Copenhagen<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no surprise that the attitude of those doing the manipulating is, at best, patronizing. And to be fair even to the unbearable, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who carefully tends his beyond-caricature English-toff image, is quite honest about his disdain for ordinary people and their expendable lives. From his always obstinately ill-fitting yet clearly expensively tailored suit to the diction of a terribly bored yet forbearing Eton headmaster, his performance oozes good old upper-class condescension.\u00a0
\nWhen Rees-Mogg tells you that you may have to die, you know he won\u2019t lose sleep over it, because you are you, and he \u2013 well, he is something entirely different and, really, much better (and, as it happens, richer, too), of course.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
\nIn a Sky News interview, the UK\u2019s Chief of the Defense Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, has revealed a less excentric as well as more insidious approach to the masses. Referring to a \u201cnational conversation on defense,\u201d both he and his interviewer took it for granted that the purpose of such a conversation is to remedy \u201cwhat the British public hasn\u2019t got, [\u2026] haven\u2019t understood.\u201d\u00a0
\nWhat a delicate way to start a \u201cconversation\u201d: let me tell you how damn slow you are and where you need to catch up. Not: Let\u2019s exchange views and respect each other as equal citizens. Indeed, it\u2019s not only very rude \u2013 what has happened to English manners? \u2013 but positively Orwellian to call such offensively complacent preaching a \u201cconversation.\u201d\u00a0
\nMarshal Knighton\u2019s idea of how the British can and must do better was no less revealing: In essence, be more like the Estonians or, at least, the Swedes. Because in Estonia \u201cthe threat from Russia\u201d is \u201cpart of normal daily conversation,\u201d and in Sweden, they are at least trying to achieve the same single-minded obsessiveness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Why the world\u2019s great powers are thinking about empire again<\/p>\n
There you have it, chums on the homefront: Make an effort, will you now? Learn from the worst, get a grip, and make your whole life turn around the fear we tell you to feel.\u00a0
\nAnd don\u2019t you dare notice that \u2013 how embarrassing, really \u2013 it is precisely the Estonian authorities who, notwithstanding their generally record-level Russophobia \u2013 have just called on everyone in NATO-EU Europe to cool it.\u00a0
\nBecause, those unpredictable Estonians tell us, the Russia-at-the-gates narrative \u201chas been blown completely out of proportion. For example, Russia makes some adjustments on the other side of the Narva River and now everyone across NATO is losing their heads and hyperventilating over it,\u201d while, in reality, \u201cthere is absolutely no reason to believe that Russia is imminently going to launch a military attack on NATO, Estonia, or the Baltic states.\u201d Oops.\u00a0
\nUnfortunately, war propaganda is almost immune to its own absurdities, inconsistencies, and plain silliness. Because it is designed to operate not by appealing to reason but to fear, stereotypes, and conformism. A conformism that some British establishment members already openly want to reinforce by locking up any dissenters.\u00a0
\nThe true weak spot of this warmongering may be its arrogance. There are signs on social media that many Brits do not appreciate their establishment\u2019s latest efforts to scare and mobilize them for senseless war. Let\u2019s hope that the mix of threats and condescension \u2013 displayed by a snob as gleefully aloof as Rees-Mogg, an officer-bureaucrat as clumsily tactless as Knighton, and the makers of something as slick as \u2018The Wargame\u2019 \u2013 rubs much of the country the wrong way. The \u201celites\u201d are insane and malevolent. Any hope for peace and a return to reason will have to come from below.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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