Magazine covers demonizing Vladimir Putin. [Source: exberliner.com]

More and More Are Seeing Through the Lies

As Amnesty International confirms the inconvenient truths, which many independent journalists and political observers already knew, about the Ukrainian army’s behavior in Donbass, it’s worth examining how manipulating the truth has become—not only an everyday occurrence but a central element of the West’s proxy war in Ukraine.

An increasing number of mainstream journalists, commentators and ordinary individuals who had rushed to “Stand with Ukraine ” are finding the inconvenient truths about the Zelensky regime and its Army harder and harder to ignore.

It was the icon of American democracy, President Abraham Lincoln that said “You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” Of course, even though Lincoln’s astute observation has been widely misquoted, it certainly has a particular resonance when we consider the recent misadventures and persistent foreign policy failures of his beloved United States.

Wall Quote Abraham Lincoln You Can Fool All the People | Etsy Denmark
Abraham Lincoln would probably be aghast at what has become of the American Republic today. [Source: etsy.com]

Most particularly are American efforts to maintain an increasingly skeptical public’s support for its faltering and hugely costly geopolitical ambitions in Ukraine.

So far it hasn’t been too difficult to package a message for general consumption, a drive-through narrative if you will, that is easily accessible and digestible by a trusting public, particularly when that same public has been globally denied key factual insights into the background of a long running complex conflict into which they have been seduced as blindfolded supporters.

The current crisis in Ukraine is however different; it has seen the pro-Western media machine cultivate and disseminate disinformation, propaganda and fake news on a previously unseen scale. While the U.S. and its NATO allies prosecute their proxy conflict on the ground, in the air, and at sea, another illicit battle is being fought on social media, TV and radio.

Of course, propaganda and the winning of “hearts and minds” is nothing new when it comes to conflict. As far back as the 19th century Governments were aware of how important the narrative was at home, they actively sought to suppress details which they thought may be offensive or unhelpful to the home audience.

In the second Boer war in South Africa (1899-1902), when the British Army’s colonial war was failing it resorted to imprisoning Boer Women and children in vast ill equipped concentration camps where a stunning 26,000 of them would die from starvation, ill treatment and disease. The British actively considered creating a publicity campaign to hide the true horror of the hellish camps, including false reports and newspaper stories.

Black woman in British concentration camp in the Boer War. Images like this were not publicized by the British media during the war. [Source: halifaxexaminer.ca]

Again, during World War I the gruesome details of mass casualties in the horrendous and inhumane trenches of the western front were also sterilized and minimized for the home audience. As far as the public were concerned the Kaiser was the killer, the Germans ate Belgian babies and the repulsive Teutonic octopus had to be stopped at all costs.

War propaganda depicting the Kaiser as the devil. [Source: bl.uk]

Of course, the fact that the entire conflict was about imperial power, commerce and competition between the three grandchildren of the British Queen Victoria was conveniently ignored. In July 1916 British newspaper reports on the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in human history, famously read “Our casualties are not heavy,” an utterly misleading headline which sounds disturbingly familiar today.

When we consider Americas most recent large-scale military misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya these ill-advised and bloody failures have yet again been portrayed as the “good guys against the bad guys”, it’s the Cowboys against the Indians, the dangerous and untrustworthy Muslim savages against the very existence of Western civilisation.

The immeasurable human suffering that these wars have visited on the innocent populations seldom features. American complicity and responsibility for creating the very problems they now seek to “solve” is bizarrely entirely ignored in its client media.

US Syria Relationship | Mind Over Media
[Source: propaganda.mediaeducationlab.com]

Today’s conflict in Ukraine is no exception, a similar narrative is peddled with the historical truths about where conflict grew from remaining unreported. Some of the most critical facts relating to Ukraine are routinely and conveniently rendered invisible by the mainstream media, such as when this civil war began and most crucially, who paid for and built the scaffolding on which it is now burning.

It is of course unpopular in any instance to swim against the flow of the tide, to be the child suggesting the emperor has no clothes, and to challenge “realities” that have been broadly accepted by a trusting public. Despite the gross imbalance in the presentation of the facts, up to now at least dissent was something accepted as a privilege of western democratic society, that freedom of speech and opinion is however in grave danger, particularly if it is based on inconvenient truths.

The “Absolute Truth”

When it comes to Ukraine a new, dangerous and lavishly funded weapon in the counter truth war has been deployed by western governments and media, I call it “Absolute Truth”. The Absolute truth doesn’t tolerate any challenges, when its allegations are proven false those realities are suppressed and ignored.

It immediately and efficiently targets any dissent from the prescribed narrative and brands challengers as “enemies,” “foreign agents,” or “useful idiots.” Critically there is no room for debate of any kind, there is no analysis of facts, there is only their Absolute Truth.   

Should a journalist, State or individual question this Absolute Truth or merely suggest an objective analysis of the facts they are immediately and brutally marginalised and then targeted for retribution. This determined and choreographed punishment can range from the loss of a job to the isolation of an entire nation with threats of violence commonplace.

[Source: twitter.com]

The fact that the West’s “Absolute Truth” narrative relies implicitly on mass censorship and the wholesale destruction of freedom of speech is apparently irrelevant to its architects and disciples, if these pillars of liberal democracy must be abandoned in this war against the facts, so be it.

Absolute truth also has a selective attitude when it comes to the behavior of its idols, when Mr Zelensky’s election with the assistance, cash and muscle of a corrupt oligarch is highlighted this is ignored, when his antidemocratic banning of all opposition and the imprisonment of its leaders comes up, its fine. if the Absolute Truth requires the acceptance and deployment of brutal Nazi militias against civilians, (previously designated by the west as terrorists) that is again entirely acceptable.

Indeed, the Absolute truth brigade have a magical ability to erase history, assign hero status to mass murders (Stepan Bandera) and demonise those that defeated Nazism in Europe. The Absolute Truth now defines the narrative, the facts do not, facts and independent evidence will be selectively deployed if at all, those that challenge this are immediately designated as collaborators, war mongers and enemies of democracy.

Another sinister element of the cult of Absolute Truth is the reluctance to correct the record or admit when you get it wrong, from the “massacre” at Snake Island that never happened to the fake headlines about the Mariupol maternity hospital to name but a few, there is never any attempt to correct the record which begs the question how sincere were the allegations in the first place?

How the War in Ukraine Is Being Covered (Up) on Russian TV
[Source: theintercept.com]

Interestingly, when the internationally respected Amnesty international bravely countered the Absolute truth with indisputable facts, it was itself attacked by an increasingly paranoid Zelensky. There is now a distinct element of “the boy who cried wolf” about Zelensky’s persistent and now routine allegations of genocide, targeting of civilians and the apparent desire to “erase Ukraine from the map”.

Any cursory examination of the facts around the Ukrainian Army’s “counter terrorist” operation against its own people in 2014 in Donbas would suggest it was an increasingly radicalised Ukrainian military that first assaulted the ethnic Russian populations in the east in 2014.

As NATOs exceptionally costly and increasingly destructive proxy war against Russia grinds on, the prospect of any military victory for Ukraine fades almost hourly, the likelihood that Russia will seek settlement also fades by the day, any incentive to do so now strategically valueless.

Western support for Zelensky’s seemingly rudderless and incompetent regime is privately wavering as the impact of ham-fisted sanctions against Russia threatens social cohesion in Europe and America alongside a global energy crisis.

7 cartoons about Zelensky's bravery in standing up to Russia | The Week
Zelensky’s superhero image is unlikely to last much longer. [Source: theweek.com]

Promised counter offensives in the south have not materialized, the much vaunted “Million-man army” has failed to appear and yet again, the American and European press that presented this as fact have not rowed back on their outlandish claims.

The harsh reality of war is seemingly lost on the “absolute Truth” brigade who are happy to “stand with Ukraine” but will never stand in Ukraine.

The western public are a fickle audience, given the lack of initial scrutiny generally applied to the mainstream narrative on Ukraine it’s likely that as more of the inconvenient truths about Zelensky, his junta and the realities of this conflict appear, more and more westerns will be creeping into their yards in the dead of night to take down their hastily hoisted Ukrainian flags.

Contrary to the best efforts of those that have funded, molded and justified this proxy war the truth has a habit of resurfacing. It will be impossible to “manage” the oncoming tide of reality that will gush out of Ukraine as the western powers refocus on their self-inflicted domestic troubles this winter, Zelensky himself may become the fall guy for the failed NATO escapade in Ukraine.

That’s the thing about those inconvenient facts, they keep persisting under the surface, the truth doesn’t have a sell by date, and it is patient, the memory of the countless dead demands it to be.

And of course, as good old Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”


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About the Author

47 COMMENTS

  1. The woke world has ignored the millions murdered by the death injection & FDA/CDC/NIH protocol and they will also ignore the truth about our proxy war until all of the Ukrainians are dead. Americans are not alone in their lockstep march to death by following the dictates of thier government rulers. We live in a zombie world. I revel in my status as a minority thinker and will stay apart from the mob mentality.

    • And after all of the Ukrainians are dead, who do you suppose has plans to move in ? Could it be the same persons who control the PRESSE ? Could it be descendants of the Khazarian Mafia that was kicked out in 967 A.D. by Kievan Rus Prince Svyatoslav the Great ? Isn’t it those descendants who control the Press, and the Federal Reserve, and the City of London, and Palestine ? You all should Google up “The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia”, and the pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into place.

    • You are absolutely correct. Let the “woke” be triple vaxed, or even quadruple and quintuple if they want. The more the better. You reap what you sow. Adios.

  2. A pathetic attempt at whitewashing a bloody and inhuman invasion. So many half-truths it’s difficult to read but the inclusion of a fake Russian propaganda tweet tops it all. Shame on you.

    • I agree with you. Hopefully the management of Covert Action Magazine will implement some changes and have a better standard of journalism in the future.

    • Who are you, Igor ? One from the AZOV Battalion who has been shelling unarmed civilians of Russian Heritage, because they voted 97% to stay with Russia ? You are being brainwashed snd used by the Khazars. They want all you Ukrainians dead so they can move in. MILLIONS of them from Palestine !!!
      Just look at who owns and operates your AZOV BATTALLION !!!

    • Do you deny the existence of bio warfare labs in Ukraine funded by the USA, the coup d’etat engineered by the CIA in 2014, the human / child trafficking, or money laundering taking place in Ukraine? Are you a madman?

  3. The anti Russian propaganda is so transparent, as for example in Yahoo, that it is becoming laughable. Clearly some writers are considering their readers as gullible idiots and are writing for payments from CIA and similar organisations.

  4. On the Amnesty International Web Site there are 117 articles that are critical of Russia and one article that is critical of Ukraine. According to a high ranking official in the Russian Government the article about Ukraine is true and all the other articles are false.

  5. Deschutes, you make some excellent points.

    What I will add is that we have seen this propaganda blitz before and very recently. Think about covid and how we were all told the dire things that would happen to us if we didn’t swallow Fauci’s narrative whole. What wasn’t told to the public is that hospitals were giving covid patients absolutely no treatment, allowing their conditions to worsen, then telling us that covid was utterly deadly. Dr Brownstein in the Detroit area treated 751 people, only a few of whom had to go to the hospital, and all survived. Of his patients who got the vaccine, one died and a few others had serious effects.

    The second propaganda blitz has been around transgenderism, spinning a narrative that this is all about accepting people “who were born in the wrong body” rather than the men’s rights movement it truly is. Thought up by the elite, funded by the elite, and shoved down everyone’s throats by the elite. A great distraction from the extremely serious repercussions facing all of us due to our overshoot of our environment.

  6. The statement the author attributes to Lincoln was probably never said by him.

    “‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time’.

    “This is probably the most famous of apparently apocryphal remarks attributed to Lincoln. Despite it being cited variously as from an 1856 speech, or a September 1858 speech in Clinton, Illinois, there are no known contemporary records or accounts substantiating that he ever made the statement”.

    https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

  7. Not a penny for you while you support the Russian invasion. Iraq was wrong. Ukraine is wrong. You are supporting a right wing antidemocratic kleptocratic Bilionaire. Targeted bombings of hospitals schools and apartment buildings seem ok by you.

    • Your comment is puzzling, Mike. Who is this “right wing antidemocratic kleptocratic Bilionaire [sic]” of whom you speak? You should make yourself clear.

      Your reference to “Targeted bombings of hospitals schools and apartment buildings” actually helps to make the author’s point: such things are being deliberately done by the Ukrainian army with systematic, methodical help from NATO (satellite tragetting information, radio intercepts, etc.)

      As part of the classic Western disinformation campaign, those atrocities are committed by Ukraine and blamed on Russia. The Russians have been using very small forces and minimal violence, directed only against Ukrainian forces. It’s difficult and slow going, as the Ukrainians deliberately and systematically place their troops, weapons, radars, etc. right in the centre of civilian areas such as cities.

      Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka, just a few miles from Donetsk city centre, have been bombarding the city ever since 2014 and continue to do so. The Russian could, with the greatest of ease, remove Avdiivka from the map and end the atrocities. But they don’t because the Ukrainians have taken pains to make sure all the civilian inhabitants of Avdiivka remain in their homes where they serve as human shields. If they try to leave, they are restrained by force or killed.

      • Excellent reply. And Excellent article. Thank you for the very well argued point about Ukraine. Zelenski is a war ciminal of the lowest order. His order to bomb his own POWs who were revealing his crimes-against humanity-dictates to his nazi forces, adds to the docket powerfully. I donated and will stay in touch with your analysis. Again thank you.

        • @VJC…Here it is past Christmas 2022. Just before Christmas or so, a video was making its rounds around the net. It showed freezing Ukranian soldiers promising to hang Zelensky in Kiev. EVEN HIS OWN TROOPS HATE HIS GUTS. He will end up like Mussolini if they get their hands on him. He wants all Christians dead and gone, just like Stalin with the HOLODOMERS.

      • Finally, someone willing to write the truth. If we follow the money I’d bet dollars to donuts that the trail leads back to the USA deep state.

  8. The author is spot-on about how mainstream media coverage of this war has been weaponized to an extreme never before seen. As he says, if you dare to question the Washington narrative–you are immediately viciously attacked! You are seen as with the enemy in this ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mentality which does not allow for patient fact checking or objective analysis. Dare to mention that the Ukraine war started in 2014 with the U.S. instigated Maidan coup, and that 14,000 ethnic Russian Ukrainians have died since then at the hands of Ukraine army soldiers who have been shelling Luhansk and Donbass nonstop? Better run for cover as the brainwashed recipient of these inconvenient truths will probably punch you in the face/ unfriend you for life/ fire you from your job/ snitch to the boss that a treasonous Putin lover is lurking by the office water cooler. I think what is happening is the CIA and corporate media who serve them have decided to completely do away with facts, honesty or truthful news reporting and replace it with an avalanche of fictional, made up “news” stories in NY Times, CNN, WaPo, Newsweek, CBS, NPR et al which suit their ongoing narrative. Like Karl Rove once said-

    ““We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

    This is how it will be from here on out. Worse than Orwellian.

    • @Deschutes…Rove wasn’t necessarily speaking about all Americans being an Empire that controls its own reality. He is talking about the Khazarian Mafia, of which he is one. THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE INCREDIBLY EVIL KHAZARIAN MAFIA tells you what has been going on since before 600 A.D.
      Google it up and read it. It isn’t that long, maybe a half hour.

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