FBI’s Role in Fake News
ISIS plots that are 100% ISIS-free, fake Venezuelan “atomic bomb” plots, fake terror alerts, smear campaigns and attacks on freedom of speech.
There's an organization responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and ISIS combined: The FBI”.
-Trevor Aaronson, investigative journalist.
Are you a mentally challenged, confused, non-white teenager with a grudge? Or even better, are you schizophrenic? Don’t worry, the FBI will give you guns, explosives and a team of specialists to support, train and radicalize you so you can fulfill your fantasies of violence!
Jokes aside, you were probably subjected to most of this FBI scaremongering and censorship tactics, but mainstream media complicity made sure they passed mostly unnoticed for what they really are: the tactics of a political police ensuring status quo.
An opinion on Fake news:
When originated in small-time blogs and disseminated through social media, the "fake news" issue is only relevant because it fools people, disinform them and distract them from anything real. Mainstream media "fake news", on the other hand, are an instrument of war, msm is complicit in basically all past wars. I'm sure they will be held accountable in the future, when more people understand its subsirvient nature.
Perhaps most of us already heard about COINTELPRO, the secret program carried out by the FBI during the 60's to repress and subvert -or outright eliminate- whatever they deemed “radical” political opposition groups, mostly black. Although its name stands for Counter-Intelligence Program, these groups were not foreign intelligence organizations. Most of the times, they were perfectly legal, civil-rights, anti-war or feminist-oriented movements, struggling for recognition.
Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world”.
Brian Glick, War at Home
The sixties were marked by an “excess of democracy” in the words of Samuel Huntington, political scientist and member of the Trilateral Commission. There was a need to control formerly passive members of society that sought to enter the political arena, traditionally monopolized by rich, conservative white people.
This sense of a “crisis” was felt by many social scientists working for the U.S. government in psychological warfare, like Ithiel de Sola Pool, who stated that:
…in the Congo, in Vietnam, in the Dominican Republic it is somehow clear that order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism from which they have recently been aroused by the process of modernization”. (Gilman, Nils. Mandarins of the Future… page 250)
The same mentality finds its way to impose itself through time and throughout the world, under different names and agencies, the NSA, FBI, CIA, KGB, MI-6, MOSSAD… Being part of the same establishment of powerful interests, the mainstream media is willingly used to spread fear and propaganda. So let’s examine more recent events focusing on how mainstream media propaganda works.
Creating Terrorist Plots
Trevor Aaronson wrote an excellent article on this subject for The Intercept. In his TEDtalk (below), Aaronson explains how the FBI entrapped a 25 y.o. man later described by the lead officer as a…
(min: 4.20)“…retarded fool without a pot to piss in… ”
According to a New York Times columnist:
Some targets have previous involvement in more than idle talk: for example, Waad Ramadan Alwan, an Iraqi in Kentucky, whose fingerprints were found on an unexploded roadside bomb near Bayji, Iraq, and Raja Khan of Chicago, who had sent funds to an Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
But others seem ambivalent, incompetent and adrift, like hapless wannabes looking for a cause that the informer or undercover agent skillfully helps them find”. source
The propaganda perspective:
This is the fun part (at least for me). What happens with stories of "terrorist plots", among other sorts, is that they fulfill their “propagandistic role”. Meaning that, articles analyzing the plot and FBI’s role in detail are not to be found until some time has passed, only after the public has been scared and presented with a misleading picture concocted between a gullible, subservient press that falls into the same mistake of taking what authority says without asking questions or verifying nothing, once and again. This is how wars are peddled using the mainstream media. Most people don't go beyond front pages and headlines. The shock takes place and effect, corrections and analysis come later, in smaller articles in the corresponding section of the newspaper, many times to be forgotten. An honest media would learn from past frauds and unmask the propagandists like many independent media actually do.
The day of the incident you will see something like this:
In the first report the New York Times made on the same case, they stated the suspects where Arabs...
This happens every time. The “agenda-friendly” pseudo-facts and a set of premises, in this case “we are under attack from outside forces”, or “Isis terrorist live next door” have a tendency to magically appear when they are needed. The result: more money to the FBI, more militarization of the police, more illegal surveillance.
Fake Warnings: More Scaremongering
FAIR.org made a list of “Terror Warnings”, except…
(The complete list is much longer, but you get the idea).
Venezuelan “Nuclear Bomb” Plot:
What Mascheroni was convicted of was telling undercover FBI agents, who were pretending to work for Venezuela, that he could give them nuclear weapons secrets. In real life, Venezuela had nothing to do with it”. source
But would you think Venezuela was NOT involved by reading these headlines?
Written by Daniel Espinosa for his Steemit.com blog, 2017.
My past article on Propaganda and InformationWar:
remember that one time police pretended to be anarchists and did a fuck-ton of terrorist attacks?
Great times, although the "terrorist" attacks seem to always be actually justified when real anarchists do them
I know that is a little off topic, but I think that's a good topic for you to cover in one of your posts
I could write about that indeed! But give me a place or date, I'm not sure I know which incidents you mean. thanks for the upvote...
I forgot where they are exactly, but they are talked about somewhere in this book
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays
I feel that this is a naive characterization of these movements while true it also leaves out other characteristics such as seditious, terroristic and criminal.
David Horowitz's story of his time with the Black Panthers is illustrative.Bobby Seale’s Confession: David Horowitz Was Right On
Agent provocateur's are indeed used by Law Enforcement, governments both your own and foreign and also by ideological movements.
Such as Trevor Aaronson an employee of foreign based (Quatari) propaganda organization.
I suppose that the point I want to make is that while people's government are indeed the most immediate threat anyone faces a far more dangerous threat is the one posed by external and internal actors who seek the complete downfall of our societies.
I agree with you on that one, any generalization that states something as "all of them were legal, etc..." or even "most of them..." is surely wrong.
Regarding Aaronson, well, let's say he is an employee of a propaganda organization. You can still take whatever he says and investigate for yourself, no need to believe in him or his personal opinion on the subjects he investigates. Perhaps you are implying that there is an intention of attacking the U.S. government (or society) by accusing its agencies of corruption. I'm not sure if that's what you mean. One could say that the opposite is true: if I want a legitimate government, respectful of democracy for my country or any country, I'd expose its corruption.
I tend to disagree with your final point. There are, for sure, external and internal actors with subversive and destructive agendas, but why would anyone "seek the complete downfall of our societies"? There are for sure some forces with such aims but, are they powerful enough to even consider them?
In my perspective the US government is basically, a reactionary force that aims at status quo, which means that those in power remain in power at all costs. The difference between the USG and other actors is that the USG is the dominant power, with force and means way superior to its competitors and without any respect for democracy or human life, but in discourse. But don't get me wrong, that is exactly how power conducts itself, particularly under the degenerative process of empire building.
I don't doubt trevor aaronson(in this video anyways) I really only wanted to point out how media outlets such as RT and Aljazeera's content offer liberal Chomsky-like critiques of America meanwhile they are funded by governments who are authoritarian and in Qatar's case still practices slavery.
Your second point has turned into a post I'll let you know when its finished.
Your third point lets me know what you think of the USG and my question to you is if it was your choice which other government would you replace them with as the worlds Hegemon? Who has done a better job of "Empire". I fully realize you would want to say nobody should do that but when critiquing a system of governance or indeed hegemony we should always ask ourselves who has done this better or has what we want to replace it ever worked in the real world?
Else wise you can fall victim to the "Dragons of Expectation"(a good book for perspective even if its examples are somewhat naive its premise is entirely relevant to our times)
Yeah, that's a totally valid point: a totalitarian country funding journalism... Something interesting about RT and such, is that people don't tend to think the same about BBC, for example, UK gov. funding is ok, I guess. For me propaganda is clearly a weapon or toll both sides use. But there's something else here, in my opinion, what RT is doing is basically using historical truths commonly suppresed by Western media. Think about it, why make propaganda with lies when you can use the truth and nobody can call you a liar.
I look forward to your post!
I'll try to read something about that book or even the book if I can find it (Dragons...). What I think is that concentration of power will lead to our situation, there should be a way, hopefully in the future, to make people more conscious of this fact, so what we call democracies today could probably focus on concentrated power (political or otherwise) and redistribute in some way.
What former empires did was also criminal, look at the Spanish empire or the British... but today's technology, which obviously includes mass media, the reach is many times wider and more pervasive. Also the instruments of domination are more inhumane and destructive.
But in short, without a radical change in mentality, there's no way out. Any other Hegemon will do what is in its hands to dominate and remain in power.
Here is an example of one of the forces and their detailed program seeking to cause the downfall of our society with lots of power behind them then and now.
https://steemit.com/informationwar/@openparadigm/profile-of-a-prominent-information-warrior-yuri-bezmenov
These networks of destabilization used to be backed by the full power of the Soviet Union now George Soros is their sponsor.
Yes, I'm very familiar to Soros work... he funds many MANY ngo's in Latin America, but I think there's a whole deeper "thing" into this (for example, how come Soros promotes the "left", being a millionaire (billionaire?) who made its money by speculation. I'll give a look to that link now. Thanks for all your very interesting comments!
I would describe what Soros as doing (with many others I'm sure) is promoting Ideologies of enslavement. Just like when William the Conqueror imposed Catholicism on Ireland while denying the Pope's authority over England itself.
"promoting Ideologies of enslavement" I agree 100% with this...
I will profile someone who elaborates on this subject with great knowledge you might find him interesting his first language is spanish.
Excellent!
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