The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists.
By Caitlin Johnstone, December 1, 2025
Every fu**ing time. The mass media do this every fu**ing time the US empire gets war-horny. And the Murdoch press are always the most egregious offenders.
Reminds me of an old tweet by a man named Malcolm Price:
“I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’.”
Price’s friend had been swept up in the imperial war propaganda campaign that had recently begun, just like countless millions of others. Month after month after month western consciousness was hammered with false narratives about weapons of mass destruction, forced associations of Saddam Hussein with 9/11, and stories about how much better things will be for the people of Iraq once that evil tyrant is gone.
Normally it never would have occurred to the average westerner that a country on the other side of the planet should be invaded and its leader replaced with a puppet regime. That’s not the sort of thing that would have organically entered someone’s mind. It needed to be placed there.
So it was.
The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists. All the west’s most influential and far-reaching news media publications are here not to report factual stories about current events, but to manufacture consent for the pre-existing agendas of the US-centralized western empire.
They report many true things, to be sure, and if you acquire some media literacy you can actually learn how to glean a lot of useful information from the imperial press without losing your mind to the spin machine. But reporting true things is not their purpose. Their purpose is to manipulate public psychology at mass scale for the benefit of the empire they serve.
This doesn’t happen through some kind of centralized Ministry of Truth where sinister social engineers secretly conspire to deceive people. It happens because all mainstream press is controlled either by plutocrats or by western governments in the form of state broadcasters like the BBC, both of which have a vested interest in maintaining the imperial status quo. They control who the executives and lead editors of these outlets are, and those leaders shape the hiring and editing processes of the publication or broadcaster. Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.
If people had a clear understanding of everything that’s really going on in our world, they would tear the empire apart brick by brick. If they could truly see how much evil is being done in their name and really wrap their minds around it, and if they could understand how much wealth the plutocrats are getting out of the imperial status quo compared to how little they themselves benefit from it, there would be immediate revolution. So the oligarchs and empire managers shore up narrative control in the form of media ownership, think tanks, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and now increasingly through billionaire-owned AI chatbots to ensure that this never happens.
The entire empire is built on a foundation of lies. The whole power structure is held together by nonstop manipulation of the way westerners think, speak, act, shop, work, and vote. If truth ever finds a way to get a word in edgewise, the entire thing would collapse.
We know this is true because the oligarchs and empire managers pour so much wealth and energy into manipulating our minds. They’re not doing this for fun, they’re doing it because they need to. If they didn’t need to, it wouldn’t be happening.
So what they are doing is intensely creepy and destructive, but it’s also empowering, because it shows us right where their weak spot is. They’re pouring all this energy into controlling the dominant narrative because that’s the weakest point in the armor of the imperial machine.
What we need, then, is a grassroots effort to help truth get a word in. Help people understand that they’ve been propagandized and deceived about the world by western media and by their power-serving education systems every day of their lives, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. Sow distrust in the imperial media and institutions. Open people’s eyes to the fact that they’re being lied to, and help them learn to see the truth. Anywhere the empire is sowing lies and distortions — whether that’s in Venezuela or Gaza or somewhere else — use that opportunity to help more people unplug their minds from the propaganda matrix.
A better world is possible. The first step in moving toward it is snapping people out of the propaganda-induced coma which dupes them into settling for this dystopian nightmare instead.
DEMOCRACY NOW! December 3, 2025
Today’s DN! Updates the ceasefire in Gaza that isn’t as Israel continues its deadly genocide, explaining about the attacks by groups of Israeli’s who are then just observed or are joined by Israeli military. These raids in the West Bank and Gazans are often by Israeli settlers who stole their homes and olive groves in thr first place. They also cover the exiting of Gazans from Palestine and whether or not they have the right to return.
Amy and Juan then interview Ralph Nader who has been a watchdog of the Democratic Party and of Congress for 60-odd years. To cut to the chase he recommends Impeachment as the most effective way to render Trump’s dictatorship, which is blatantly unconstitutional as seen in so many of his actions. Another of Nader’s points is that America is not as divided on the issues as it seems. The consistent “blame the Democrats” knee-jerk reaction of Trump is designed to divide the American people because to divide them serves his propagandized platform and also a greedy mainstream corporate media they loves all conflict.
Nader discusses his new book Civic Self-Respect and then stays around to comment on the next segment about a new film that documents the WTO demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. This was a nonviolent demonstration of at least 40,000 people from around the county. Larry Weiss, representing local labor groups, called a meeting (I was there) explaining the demonstration against corporate power and recruiting people to attend. And a contingency of Minnesotans did go to Seattle.
Another segment focused on Minneapolis/St. Paul and the attack by racist bully Trump on sending ICE against the large Somali population. Most of the Somali’s are here legally. Besides being small business and shop owners, many of the men are truck and taxi drivers. They are contributing to the economy. I see them often in various places, both men and women. I seriously question Trump’s statement that 88% are on welfare. We know he lies all the time to convince people to follow his cruel and barbarian policies.
Here the Nader interview:
For more information view on video (available on YouTube) or listen to the podcast of Dec. 3, 2025 of Democracy Now!
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