Are we sure we want these Neo-Nazi troopers as friends?
Yes the Russian invasion of Ukraine is morally reprehensible and if war crimes are being committed then those responsible should be held to account.
But in any genuinely moral discussion about Ukraine, the context of Western sins in Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria should be included also. But since nearly all of the mainstream media portals (the world over) act as stenographers for power, that ain’t gonna happen.
Western might and military expertise is currently supporting war crimes in Yemen, Syria and Palestine. The illegal war in Afghanistan caused 50,000 civilian deaths. 20 years of pointless bloody carnage that delivered the country back into the hands of the Taliban anyway.
Moral norms must have logical integrity, be properly universal and their application grounded in truth seeking – otherwise they become tools of manipulation in a power play.
If I’m told I must ignore western war crimes and focus solely on Russian war crimes then the faux moral outrage of the Guardian / BBC is nothing more than an abuse of journalism, a bullying of morality.
I believe very little The Kremlin says, but that doesn’t make press releases from the U.S State Department any more trustworthy. Proper journalists ought to try to shield people from deceitful, manipulative one sided propaganda and supply needed context .
Sadly the western media is (once again) amplifying the attack lines of the usual suspects, burying all geopolitical and moral context under a bombardment of deliberately myopic reportage.
The invasion of Ukraine has given NATO an opportunity to hide its past and ongoing sins, a chance to rationalise its very existence – it is for NATO a very useful war indeed.
It also affords the mainstream media a way to further extend its power. People comfortably sheltered in offices in London, Moscow and New York will decide who are deserving victims of which war and indeed what constitutes a war. As recently as yesterday The Guardian was breezily calling the western backed war crimes of Saudi Arabia in Yemen an ‘intervention’ and continues to censor all criticism of Israel.
In support of these power plays a storm of blind anti-Russian sentiment has been whipped up and that is deeply worrying.
Calling for death to Russians and praising the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is now acceptable if users are deemed current (or potential) victims of Russian aggression or are the enemies of our enemy. But the victims of Israeli aggression will not be able to call for the death of Israeli soldiers because that would be racist and wrong. Morality should not be decided in the boardrooms of corporate America nor pivoted around the geopolitical expediencies of The West.
Cardiff Philharmonic has deemed a performance of Tchaikovsky to be ‘inappropriate’. Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea face ruin after his assets were frozen in a much demanded attack on ‘Russian oligarchs’. I am no lover of Abramovich – but he has not been charged with any crime except being wealthy and Russian.
Shall we seize the assets of all Russians? Will we impound the assets of the oligarchs from the United Arab Emirates (where arbitrary arrest and torture are commonplace) who own Manchester City? Shall we kick out the Saudi oligarchs that own Newcastle United or indeed the American oligarchs that own Manchester United? What of the Israeli oligarchs that fund war crimes in Palestine? Since when was the West bothered by the morality of oligarchs and elite power?
Such questions will not be asked because they would illuminate the grotesque hypocrisy of the western media ‘coverage’ of war and the utter bankruptcy of its morals. All that matters is that we get some righteous payback, that we see ourselves as defenders of all that is good, holy and intelligent and in Russia all that is evil and stupid.
Well I’m sorry but I don’t think that any righteous payback is at all likely. All I see is suffering and death on an industrial scale continuing in Syria, Yemen, Palestine and now Ukraine.
The corporate media are not merely complicit in this suffering, they are uniquely responsible for its continuance. By selectively focusing on some truths while ignoring and hiding others, they appoint themselves as judges and gatekeepers of what constitutes a war and whether victims deserve our attention.
The war in Ukraine highlights starkly how the news factories proactively manufacture consent for the status quo and prevent the development of any genuinely enlightened movement towards real justice and peace.
Worse still the precedents set by this zealous orgy of Russia bashing might very well come back to haunt us – because burning Russian books today is a very short step from a new strain of fascism tomorrow.
To try and introduce any element of intelligent critique or context about this war is actually quite dangerous at the moment – you risk your livelihood and pariah status if you even attempt it.
But where is this taking us? We need to ask ourselves what we might be giving up in our rush to see ourselves as the only good guys in a black and white moral world and what the chilling end game of the people encouraging us to do that might be.
Since 2013 I have worked on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and speaking simple truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.
If you find this website useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
More Stories
Ukraine pays the price for the West’s addiction to propaganda over reality
Radical Friendship 2: Healing the divisive human need for certainty
Nobody should be surprised that Fascism is on the march across Europe.