Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Newsweek Expose: NATO’s Vast Cyber Troll Brigades Unleashed

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Newsweek Expose: NATO’s Vast Cyber Troll Brigades Unleashed

Click here to access article by Phil Butler from New Eastern Outlook.

First of all, I would like to express my total dislike of the writing style of this author. The otherwise excellent exposé of corporate media spreading propaganda from a prime Empire organization is degraded by a writing style that drips with cynicism and appears to be motivated by the need to appear very clever to those "in the know" about such things. But let me salvage what is excellent in this article.

Butler correctly alludes to the fact that the Atlantic Council is a prime ruling class organization that serves the US-led Empire. The Atlantic Council is, at the very least, a key organizational branch as NATO is a key military agency of the Empire. As current evidence he cites the recent Obama appointment of the former chairman of the Council to serve as his National Security Advisor.

Then he reports that a major news corporation, Newsweek, picks up a propaganda piece from the Atlantic Council entitled "Vilify and Amplify: How the Kremlin’s Disinformation Machine is Attacking the MH17 Probe" and runs it in their publication. This latter article argues that Putin's government is using trolls to spread disinformation about the downing of MH17 over Ukraine in 2014. Hence the Newsweek article is spreading information from what Butler alleges is a troll source, the Atlantic Council, that is projecting onto the Russians what the Council is in fact doing.

This method of projection is becoming a common strategy used by Empire media to distract their subject populations from the Empire's own crimes. Butler's revelation also serves as an excellent illustration of how corporate media is so thoroughly integrated into Empire operations; and that they function not as news organizations anymore, but propaganda organs to support the Empire's imperial operations.