How To Silence RT Forever

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via CaitlinJohnstone.com,

Loyalists of the western empire have been growing increasingly honest about their desire to use censorship and propaganda in order to win an “information war” against Russia.

The other day we saw a Guardian article arguing for the necessity of a coordinated campaign by western governments to “combat Russian disinformation” due to Russia’s disinterest in “cooperating to reach a common understanding of the truth”, i.e. agree with unproven western accusations and capitulate to the longstanding western agendas those accusations are meant to advance.

Before that, we saw a Defense One article authored by an Atlantic Council official arguing in favor of the creation of a “NATO for Infowar” to propagandize westerners against Russian interests for their own good. The author of this article went so far as to suggest that the Kremlin-backed television channel RT ought to be forbidden to air in western nations.

It always comes back to RT.

Because of the network’s relatively high profile in comparison to other Russian media, it has been made into an ideal Emmanuel Goldstein for the empire’s daily Two Minutes Hate.

RT is now so completely reviled by establishment loyalists that citing it in an online debate will be taken as an instant debunk of not just the point you were trying to make but of your entire position (and often your humanity itself by getting you labeled a “Russian bot”), even if your citation is comprised entirely of independently verifiable facts.

Luckily for the screaming hysterical Big Brother devotees, there is a very easy and 100 percent guaranteed way to get RT removed from western airwaves forever.

Are you ready? Here it is:

Allow leftist and antiwar perspectives to be voiced on western mainstream media.

That’s it. That’s the whole entire recipe for RT’s destruction. If western media simply ceased deliberately excluding leftist and antiwar voices from mainstream discourse, there would no longer be any demand for RT’s output, since the only reason anyone outside of Russia watches RT is to get perspectives they can’t get anywhere else.

A few leftist, antiwar and activism-oriented programs on stations like BBC and MSNBC is all it would take to kill any interest in RT’s programming and steal their entire audience. They wouldn’t ever have to have a single Russian on their programs; there is an abundance of home-grown talent with clear antiwar, anti-capitalism, pro-environment perspectives to keep reliably churning out fresh content on a daily basis, and there is simply no way RT’s feeble budget would be able to keep up.

And of course they wouldn’t just be stealing RT’s audience, they’d be stealing their talent as well. Redacted Tonight‘s Lee Camp has gone on record saying the only reason he’s on RT is because his leftist antiwar perspective got doors slammed in his face everywhere else. He went to RT, and they make no attempts to influence him to say or not say anything other than what he wants. Talent wouldn’t have to rely on RT if it could share the same ideas with bigger audiences for better pay.

That’s actually RT America’s entire schtick: people like Chris Hedges and Jesse Ventura get de-platformed by western mass media due to their anti-establishment views, so they go to RT where they are given a platform. There are Americans who are drawn to those perspectives, so their eyeballs go to RT programming. If CNN had some programming that allowed for such perspectives this would steal all the demand for RT, but they don’t. The closest they ever get is having Jill Stein on once in a blue moon so Chris Cuomo can admonish her for not participating correctly in the information war against Russia.

This is a surefire way to get rid of RT without violating the US Constitution, committing unprecedented acts of government censorship, or having anything whatsoever to do with the Kremlin. But of course, we all know that it will never happen.

It will never happen because RT is not the real enemy. Leftists and antiwar activists are the real enemy.

Indeed, the fact that RT America gives a platform to Americans who oppose war, ecocide and plutocracy is the US establishment’s primary grievance against it. In January of last year the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its hotly anticipated report on Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. The disappointing report provided no proof whatsoever of those allegations, and instead spent much of its space accusing RT of covering stories which are inconvenient to US plutocrats. According to the report, RT America’s offenses included the following:

• Airing two new shows that were critical of the US government.

• Running reports on the vulnerabilities of US election machines.

• Broadcasting, hosting and advertising debates between third-party candidates.

• Covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.

• Criticizing the US surveillance state and alleging widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.

• Criticizing “the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt” and comparing the United States to Imperial Rome.

• Running anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health.

• Opposing Western intervention in the Syrian conflict and blaming the West for waging “information wars” against the Syrian Government.

• Trying to expand RT America in the US.

Which, of course, are all reflective of the interests and concerns of millions of rank-and-file Americans. They are also subjects which are rarely if ever covered my mainstream western media.

The fact that there is a very easy way to eliminate RT, and yet establishment loyalists continue fearmongering about it instead of solving the problem they claim to have, should be taken as a tacit admission that they have no real problem with RT. The only people the plutocrat-owned media corporations have ever had a problem with are those who oppose plutocratic interests, be they oligarchy or war profiteering or ecocidal fossil fuel agendas.

So remember that the next time you hear some empire loyalist whining about RT. They have no problem with RT. They have a problem with you.

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