We often hear that official media provide us with objective information, while independent social media are full of all types of materials, but much of it is disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech.
This is sometimes true, but there’s another side to the coin. While often critical of governments on matters of domestic policy, mainstream media, faithfully, even blindly, follow them when it comes to international politics. There is a lot of investigative journalism on political, social and administrative issues, but very little on geopolitics. In the U.S.-Russia conflict in Ukraine, for example, we do not know of many active Western journalists (reporters, editorialists, columnists) from the mainstream media who have sounded a very different note from that of the official discourse of the NATO member states and their agreed talking points : unprovoked Russian aggression, Putin’s megalomania, various illnesses with which he is said to be afflicted (multiple cancers, pneumonia, Alzheimer’s and what not), Russia’s weakness and incompetence, Zelensky the fearless and blameless hero, Ukraine free of Nazis, Ukraine’s uninterrupted victories (“Ukraine is winning”), silence on the sad plight of Russian speakers in Ukraine, etc.
We did not often hear that this could be a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia, or even a war made inevitable and desired by the United States. From reading these media, one would never know that the US had teamed up with a clique of far-right and sometimes neo-Nazi leaders (responsible for the Maidan coup, Russophobic laws and a civil war against the Donbass) who committed the entire Ukrainian people against its will (Ukrainians voted for peace in the May 2019 presidential election) in a NATO operation to threaten Russia. These media quickly gloss over the fact that Russia’s promised collapse dissipated early in 2022 in the mists of the infosphere, that Russia’s proclaimed shortages have in reality translated into a limitless arsenal, that the trumpeted victories of Kiev’s forces have left an army bled dry and crushed in the Russian “meat grinder”, that Russia has destroyed all the vaunted miracle weapons delivered to Kiev by the West, that the economies of the European “allies” are in a tailspin due to anti-Russian “sanctions”, and so on. Yet this is what many independent intellectuals and journalists know and explain, while the Western media, living in a “parallel universe”, mumble the stories fabricated by their governments.
In the current context of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, reserve seems to be the watchword among our press, as well as among Western political leaders. They repeat the mantra used for decades when Israel attacks its neighbors (“Israel has the right to defend itself”), while being embarrassed to bear the odiousness of a real-time, large-scale massacre of civilians. So there’s less unanimity in the official media, and even an apparent neutrality that allows for a certain plurality of views. Keeping a low profile on the martyrdom of Gaza, these media are outspoken about vandalism, hate speech and violent acts in local communities, especially against the Jewish community. These are certainly reprehensible acts, but the denunciation of these individual offenses contrasts with the restraint on mass crimes committed in Gaza. The overall effect is to bolster Netanyahu’s genocidal policy. He can continue his ethnic cleansing with impunity; the media look the other way.
A different perspective
From the point of view of many independent researchers, journalists and columnists, the official media air is polluted and the public stunned by incessant pro-US propaganda, excluding all non-conforming thought. No effort is spared to get public opinion to surrender its mental faculties, and to run solely on emotion and the stimuli applied by the right-thinking media. From the point of view of these independent intellectuals and journalists, heaps of nonsense are poured out all day long on the public in an effort to treat it like a child and to transform it into matter malleable at will. Conditioning, formatting, brainwashing (or rather sullying) – the operation is not even concealed. The aim is clear: to get the public to accept war, and to put them on a war footing.
The conflict in Ukraine has proved to be an unprecedented testing ground for methods of imposing one-track thinking, stimulating Pavlovian reflexes and creating mob reactions. This is a serious development, likely to be repeated as the global struggle intensifies for or against American hegemony, for or against a unipolar, American-centric world. Hence the importance of having credible sources of information.
Formulated in Washington, the official line is retransmitted by “allied” governments and repeated ad nauseam by the institutional (or commercial) media, assisted by hand-picked, ideologically orthodox “experts” and “analysts”. Only in times of war do we witness such media and political unanimity, and such all-round regimentation. The mainstream media’s alignment with the “narrative” concocted by those in power is complete. How people who are capable of thinking can renounce doing so when it comes to loyalty to American supremacy is an aberration that should interest science. One can only smile when hearing virtuous defenses of freedom of the press, when this same press is partisan, allowing only conventional views and ruling out their questioning.
Platforms, websites and independent intellectuals
In this deplorable context, it is useful, even necessary, to get information from alternative media and high-caliber intellectuals. They exist. And fortunately so, because they salvage our honor, while sparing the general public from the mental sclerosis in which official propaganda traps it. Information can be gleaned from the following sources (non-exhaustive and unranked list):
John Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago, on the Substack platform,
Seymour Hersh, a leading American journalist, on Substack,
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who made public Edward Snowden’s discoveries about the NSA, and his show System update on the Rumble platform,
Brianhna Joy Gray on Bad Faith and Rising on The Hill,
Chris Hedges, an intellectual journalist with long experience in the field, who worked for the New York Times and is now on Substack,
Martin Lukacks on The Breach,
Rania Khalek on Breakthrough News,
Richard Medhurst on Rumble,
Robin Philpot and his show Le Pied à Papineau,
Katie Halper, host of The Katie Halper Show,
Garland Nixon, political analyst and his show on the Rokfin platform,
Jimmy Dore, host of The Jimmy Dore Show,
Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou, hosts of The Duran show on several platforms, including Rokfin,
Brian Berletic, former U.S. soldier and host of The New Atlas,
Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal on The Grayzone,
Michel Collon on Investig’action,
Richard Wolf and Brian Becker on Democracy at Work.
One can also access a wide range of information by following the Consortium News or Moon of Alabama websites. Keep an eye out for contributions from journalists, intellectuals, politicians and other independent contributors, particularly: Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, former “dissident” CIA employees; journalist Dimitri Lascaris; journalist John Pilger; political scientist Mark Sleboda; intellectual Carl Zha; Université du Québec à Montréal political scientist Yves Couture; Monde diplomatique journalist Hélène Richard; politician George Galloway; MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace; journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko; professor Tarik Cyril Amar; diplomat Katya Kopylova; journalist Andrew Korybko; Université de Montréal history professors Michael Carley, Yakov Rabkin and Claude Morin; author Andrei Martyanov; former British diplomats Craig Murray and Alastair Crooke; geopolitologist David Teurtrie; Jacques Baud, former member of Swiss strategic intelligence; political scientist Benjamin Abelow; Caitlin Johnstone, a frequent contributor to Consortium News; Arnold August, contributor to Canada Files; Martin Forgues, columnist on the Pivot platform; intellectual activist Medea Benjamin; author and activist Yves Engler; journalist Patrick Lancaster; Michel Roche, professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi; director of the French think tank Geopragma Caroline Galacteros; Ivan Katchanovski, lecturer at the University of Ottawa; intellectual Vijay Prashad; filmmaker Oliver Stone; Aut’Journal director Pierre Dubuc; politician Sahra Wagenknecht; economist Jacques Sapir; journalist Danny Haiphong; jurist Régis de Castelnau and his Vu du droit website; Raymond Legault of the Collectif Échec à la guerre; Xavier Moreau, director of Stratpol; journalist Matt Taibbi; musician Roger Waters; Pierre Jasmin, president of Artists for Peace; journalist Peter Lavelle; Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University; Noam Chomsky, retired MIT professor; Scott Ritter, retired U.S. Army, who worked for the reduction of nuclear weapons; Douglas Macgregor, former U.S. Army colonel; Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University economist; demographer Emmanuel Todd, interviewed on the Elucid website.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributions from Abby Martin, Norman Finkelstein, Noura Erakat, Ofer Cassif, Yanis Varoufakis, Judith Butler, Josh Paul, Craig Mokhiber, Mads Gilbert, Ilan Pappé, Shlomo Sand, Rashida Tlaib, Miko Peled, Gideon Levy and Raz Segal, as well as those of Edwy Plenel on Mediapart and information from The Electronic Intifada, Novara Media and Democracy Now are particularly useful.
Conclusion
Against a backdrop of dismal poverty in the mainstream media, and the danger of widespread ignorance, these sources of information have an indispensable social role to play. They provide an incentive to think outside the box, to reflect, to weigh the facts and not to be led by the nose by flashy, big-budget propaganda. Open-mindedness and a critical attitude must prevail at all times.
Contrary to what the makers of the official narratives tell us, there are no “conspiracy theories”, disinformation or “hate” on these independent platforms, sites and interventions. Such slander is freely hurled at anything that breaks free from mainstream thinking. On the contrary, the information that can be gathered there very often leads to a much more complete view of situations, one that is sometimes in total opposition to the official line that mainstream media harps upon.
