Nina-Bytes: By Any Other Name

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

I must confess that recent ominous developments in Amerikkkan political life have forced me to write about Pig Empire fascism almost exclusively as a project of the larger political right in the West; including its violent street enforcers, the US Republican Party as a whole, and the reactionary billionaire muppets funding the fascist creep. These are important discussions in the near term, and it would be disingenuous to imply folks facing down fascist violence from the right are missing the bigger picture; these are questions of survival. By that same measure however, it is simply a historical fact that healthy societies don't birth politically empowered fascist movements; fascists don't create the conditions that allow fascists to topple a "liberal democracy."

Indeed, one of the reasons that America and the larger Pig Empire it influences has proven so vulnerable to fascist political techniques, is that our culture has wholly embrace numerous elements of fascist ideology because they are useful to capital; the carceral state, white supremacy, nationalism, and so forth. Take for example the fully bipartisan migrant carceral complex and America's objectively hyper-nationalist immigration policies. At the height of the Trump era, important voices in American media were willing to admit that we were running a concentration camp system; yet under Joe Biden, our society has done nothing to dismantle the camps, and in fact many influential voices have forgotten they exist.

Of course, not everyone has forgotten because not everyone treats human lives as political footballs; to examine this issue a little more closely lets turn to this November 21st, 2022 post by Jessica Corbett over on Common Dreams:

Rights Groups Demand Biden Close 'Inhumane' ICE Detention Centers

This relatively simple article is built around covering a letter by 114 rights organizations to U.S. President Joe Biden, demanding the dismantling of the migrant detention complex (those would be the concentration camps,) on the grounds that the practice is "inhumane, unjust, unnecessary, and fiscally irresponsible." While it would be nice to actually see the phrase "concentration camps" in this piece, it otherwise serves as a decent recap of three key issues surrounding the so-called "migrant crisis" under Biden; widespread human rights abuses in U.S. migrant detention facilities, the crass hypocrisy of a Biden administration that ran on ending "kids in cages" under Trump, and the existence of a lucrative industry built around warehousing asylum-seekers and refugees in private prison complexes.

As regular readers of my writing about America's fascist "border" politics will know, I consider that last point crucial to understanding why running concentration camps is a bipartisan position in American politics; it's definitely about the money, honey. Our focus here today however is less about the "whys" and more about the effects; specifically the ways in which our horrifying immigration policies feed racist, reactionary, and eliminationist ideology in our culture; ideas that have objectively paved the way for the rise of overtly fascist movements in the Pig Empire. It is after all very hard to stamp out fascism, when you're actively feeding into its component beliefs, as many folks quoted in this article noted:

"It is urgent for Biden to act boldly to rebuke white supremacy by protecting and welcoming immigrants in the next two years of his administration," Ghandehari argued. "Detention is inhumane, morally and financially costly, and completely unnecessary."

Andrea Carcamo, policy director at Freedom for Immigrants, similarly stressed that "immigration detention is animated by racism, xenophobia, and hate—the very forces President Biden vowed to fight against upon taking the White House."

"Instead, Biden has overseen a dramatic increase in the use of immigration detention since taking office," Carcamo said. "This administration has utterly failed our communities who continue to be subject to abhorrent human rights abuses inside detention. It's clear that immigration detention is beyond the reach of reform, which is why we demand Biden close detention centers and free people back to the love and safety of their communities."

Look folks, I'm not highlighting this article because I want to score "gotcha" points against a fake antifascist muppet like Joe Biden; this issue is about something much bigger than elections and political parties. The criminalization and incarceration for profit of (mostly) brown others, is simply another facet of America's long love affair with ultra-nationalism and white supremacy. This is gas for the fascist creep, because once you can de-person one group of people and toss them in concentration camp money machines, simply due the geographical randomness of their birth, you're well on the path to doing it to anyone else those in power don't like as well; a path we know ends in genocide.

Do you think I'm being hyperbolic? Then ask yourself if Trump built the concentration camps the liberal establishment so readily admitted he was running back in 2019? The answer is of course, no; Trump was able to double down on the cruelty of the migrant carceral system because that system existed in the first place. Furthermore, liberal media muppets who'd like to pretend the problem wasn't the concentration camps, but the Trump administration's cruel family separation policy are still being disingenuous because Biden hasn't ended that practice either. To prove that point, let's take a look at this November 21st, 2022 article by John Washington and Anna Cathrine-Brigida in the Texas Observer:

Biden Is Still Separating Immigrant Kids From Their Families

The plain truth here is that this article should make you absolutely furious with bougie liberal influencers trying to equivocate about America's still incredibly fascist border enforcement operations under Biden. From pretending that posting motivational signs in a concentration camp for kids makes it less of a concentration camp, to blithely ignoring this administration's gutless embrace of the same Title 42 policies all of these folks admitted were authoritarian and racist, if not outright fascist under Trump, this entire shitshow has been a willful act of deception perpetrated by people who pretend to be "resisting" fascism. Personally, I don't think the word hypocrisy covers enough ground here; this is craven and outrageous.

Furthermore, this piece itself certainly isn't winger propaganda, or progressive invective; the authors are in fact staggeringly charitable about the Biden administrations intentions, and they're quick to point out the areas where Palooka Joe's team have marginally improved on Trump's worst ethno-nationalist adaptations of America's always white supremacist immigration policies. Ultimately however, we're left with the facts on the ground, and they point to broken promises and a staggering lack of appetite for conflict with a hyper-reactionary Border Patrol power structure still quite partial to fascism; as the article demonstrates in the two quoted sections below:

"In January 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) established select criteria under which children can in fact be separated from their families: Immigration authorities may only do so if they deem the parent unfit, if the parent is going to be prosecuted for a felony, if the parent is hospitalized, or other specific circumstances.

The incoming Biden administration promised to stop such separations for good and offer reparations for the previous administration’s harms.

But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.

“We said never again, but here we are,” said Kassandra Gonzalez, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project."

 

“We still have a system in which individual agents who have no background in child welfare are making these decisions without any sort of oversight,” said Jennifer Podkul, an attorney with Kids in Need of Defense. “There’s no check on their decisions at all.”

Franzblau of NIJC said that the problem goes much deeper. A lack of institutional overhaul—both among top-level decision-makers and the bottom-level CBP officials who encounter families at the border—means that the overall mentality toward immigration policy has not changed.

“As long as they have this deterrence approach of trying to scare families from seeking refuge in the U.S. through punitive programs, they’re going to have separation,” Franzblau said."

 

If I sound frustrated my friends, it's because after two years of this nonsense, I'm getting pretty tired of make-believe antifascism in American political life. At this point I don't have the first bloody clue what Joe Biden thinks "semi-fascism" really is, except a way to lose an election less badly than expected. What I do know is that you don't fight fascism by agreeing with and empowering it. I know that you can't defeat fascism by throwing money at fascists cops and the carceral state. And I know that you don't drive white supremacy out of mainstream American politics by extending white supremacist immigration policies.

The fact is that antifascism isn't about intentions; it's about results. This administration wasn't elected to mitigate the horrors of Trumpian fascism, they were elected to end them. Can anyone reading this say they're even trying? I doubt it; at least not with a straight face. Given the choice between striking a blow against fascism and keeping the prison industrial complex happy, Biden has picked the path of the collaborator once again; and that choice is likely to have grave consequences for us all going forward. The bottom line here is that the liberal establishment either needs to start dismantling American fascism, or get out of the way; you can't stop the birth of the permanent Pork Reich with vibes.

 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: It Pays to Be an Insider

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Burr’s Brother-in-Law Called Stock Broker, One Minute After Getting Off Phone With Senator

After what has certainly been an exhausting month, I thought we'd close off October with an old fashioned story about corruption in American politics. Do you remember the coronavirus insider trading in government scandal from back in the spring of 2020? In March of that year, we learned that several U.S. Senators dumped millions in stock on Wall Street right before the virus became an inescapable fact and Wall Street melted down. The scandal involved members of both major American political parties, but the actions of two Republican Senators who downplayed the severity of the virus threat at the time, stood out most; Kelly Loeffler and Richard Burr. 

You can read more about it by clicking the links in this article, but the short version is summed up well by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

"Given the disconnect between what they knew and the public’s understanding, Burr and Loeffler had an opportunity to sound the alarm. They could have broken ranks with other congressional Republicans and told the country to take the situation more seriously. They could have criticized Trump for not doing more. Such criticism, coming from Trump’s own party, would have received major attention. It would have had the potential to alter Trump administration policy and, by extension, the course the disease took.

But Burr and Loeffler did virtually nothing to protect the health and safety of their constituents or of Americans in other states. (Burr went so far as to co-write an article for FoxNews.com bragging about the country’s readiness.) Here’s what the two senators did instead: They sold large amounts of their personal stock holdings, cashing in before the market sharply declined, as the severity of the virus became apparent to everyone."

 

Frankly, this should have been a huge story; this kind of pandemic profiteering by elected officials is beyond outrageous. It's not even remotely a stretch to say that people literally died so rich public officials could bank a profit here. Unfortunately we live in an environment of pervasive corruption and zero accountability, so most of the Senators were eventually cleared by the Department of Justice and the whole scandal just melted away.

As this October 28th report on ProPublica from Robert Faturechi reminds us however, most is not all; former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and soon to be retiring North Carolina Senator Richard Burr remains in the SEC's crosshairs. Turns out there's still an ongoing insider trading investigation into trades made by both Burr and his crooked brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth. And if the Securities and Exchange Commission filing about it is any indication, things are not going well for the Senator. From Faturechi's article:

"After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

They talked for 50 seconds.

Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus.

The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.”

Well sheeit; how's that for getting your hand caught in the cookie jar? In an environment of legalized bribery where it's almost impossible to prove a give corruption case against powerful public officials, I think Burr might have just found a way to get there. So, presumably arrest warrants for Burr and Fauth (who Biden inexplicably reappointed to the National Mediation Board despite most of this already being in the public sphere) will be forthcoming, right? Don't bet on it sparky. We are after all, talking about a country that just recently realized there's an ethics problem with senior Federal Reserve staff owning and trading stock while controlling much of the American economy. 

No, my money is on Richard Burr riding off into the sunset like none of this ever happened; much the same way Loeffler did. Burr's retirement from the Senate will quell public outrage, and there is no appetite for prosecuting this sort of corruption in Washington. Opening up that can of worms might threaten all the other corrupt Senators in office, and that's a club too numerous and too powerful for even a motivated Department of Justice to challenge. Membership does after all, have its privileges.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Bolivian Stroke: WaPo's Imperialist Memory Games

 

Editor's note: if you're wondering where I've been the past couple of weeks, you can find an update here. Please also note that this blog post is part of the "Leftist Theory" and the "New Old Forever War" collections on ninaillingworth.com.

"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."  -  Noam Chomsky

Imperial Fantasies with Deadly Consequences

Over the past five or so years of writing, I've spent a lot of time studying the Chomsky-Herman "Propaganda Model" as well as the historical (and quite deliberate) role of for-profit media in disseminating, and reinforcing reactionary, ruling class, or state propaganda in the public discourse. Unfortunately, these discussions about mainstream Pig Empire propaganda can often trend towards the abstract or conceptual, which is why I've also tried to explore concrete, or everyday examples of this propaganda machine in action wherever possible. 

One specific such example might be American propaganda operation surrounding the 2019 (and still ongoing at the time) fundie fascist coup in Bolivia that my co-host Nick Galea and I broke down as part of a March 2020 episode of The No Fugazi Podcast. Of course, that story eventually took a happier turn, at least for the moment; after a year of violent, reactionary tyranny under a U.S. backed post-coup dictatorship lead by Jeanine Áñez, and despite numerous pro-Western attempts to interfere with another election in the country, the people of Bolivia reasserted their control over their own destiny democratically and once again elected a Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Party candidate, Luis Arce. Unsurprisingly, this newly-elected Bolivian government subsequently undertook efforts to investigate, charge, and detain Áñez for her role in the violent, anti-democratic coup to oust then-rightfully elected MAS president Evo Morales; as all victims of a violent fascist coup attempt would be advised to do with self-appointed dictators - whether that coup is temporarily successful or not.

So all's well that ends well, right? Not so fast sparky; the Pig Empire doesn't exactly have a long history of tolerating left-leaning Latin American countries exerting their sovereignty against the wishes of American capital. Recent rumblings out of the always-loyal Western corporate media strongly suggest that the United States isn't finished with MAS and Bolivia's natural resources yet; and Uncle Sam isn't known to let petty details like elections and investigative reporting get in the way of attempts to manufacture consent for imperial aggression against anyone who might oppose American efforts to loot their country for corporate profits.

Let's get deep into the weeds here for a moment, shall we?

(False) Narratives of Convenience 

Continuing in the tradition of combining the theoretical study of propaganda with practical examples of a propaganda system in action, today I'd like to return to a few concepts I originally discussed in a December 2018 essay called "Lying Without Lying: the Manipulation of Framing, Context & Depth in Corporate Media" and examine how they pertain to a highly revealing Opinion item shared by the Washington Post Editorial Board on March 18th, 2021. In particular, I'd like to look at a current example of the ways western corporate media uses the repetition of false narratives and techniques like lying, misrepresenting, and omitting key facts, to manufacture consent for imperialist foreign policy across the larger Pig Empire - and as you might have guessed; to really see how the sausage is made, we're going to return to the topic of American interference in Bolivia. 

Alright then, let's start by ignoring Jeff Bezos' annoying and self-defeating paywall, to look at WaPo's effectively anonymous little blog post in all of its five hundred word glory:

"Opinion: The Bolivian government is on a lawless course. Its democracy must be preserved.

Opinion by Editorial Board

March 18, 2021 at 3:58 p.m. EDT

ONLY A FEW months ago, the Andean nation of Bolivia seemed to be on its way to healing, after a year that had thrown its political future into jeopardy. Luis Arce, a candidate of the country’s socialist party, had won the Oct. 18 presidential elections. His opponents — Carlos Mesa, who ran against him on a centrist platform, and the conservative then-interim president, Jeanine Áñez — had accepted the result. And Mr. Arce had pledged to govern on the basis of unity and conciliation. Thus did Bolivia appear to exit a crisis that the leader of Mr. Arce’s party, former president Evo Morales, precipitated by attempting to steal a fourth term through election fraud in 2019, leading to often-violent demonstrations, the military’s abandonment of the Morales-led government — and Mr. Morales’s departure to exile.

Now, unfortunately, Mr. Arce appears to have reverted to a more one-sided and vengeful leadership style characteristic of Mr. Morales, who has returned to Bolivia and still wields considerable power. On March 13, the government jailed Ms. Áñez and two former members of her cabinet, threatening them with prosecution and long prison terms; warrants are out for several other former top officials. These actions follow an amnesty for Mr. Morales’s supporters accused of human rights violations while Ms. Áñez was in power, as well as the institution of de facto political loyalty tests for key government employees.

Mr. Arce’s government claims that it is merely enforcing laws against sedition that Ms. Áñez purportedly broke by fomenting a “coup” against Mr. Morales. Ms. Áñez is certainly not blameless in Bolivia’s problems, having governed high-handedly, including by trying, shortly after she took office, to shield security forces from punishment for sometimes deadly violence against pro-Morales protesters.

Yet Ms. Áñez, facing pressure from human rights advocates, withdrew that decree; and the accusation at the core of her arrest now — that she plotted with the Bolivian military and others to overthrow Mr. Morales — is at odds with historical reality. Mr. Morales lost power because of his own attempt to subvert the 2019 election — which Organization of American States (OAS) observers confirmed at the time — and the Bolivian people’s massive rejection of it in the streets. Ms. Áñez succeeded to the presidency under a tenuous but constitutionally prescribed emergency process; and, to her credit, she peacefully ceded power to Mr. Arce when he won last year.

Tens of thousands of Bolivians have taken to the streets in opposition to what Mr. Arce is now doing. Bolivia’s Catholic bishops have issued a statement against what they called an attempt to turn the justice system into a partisan weapon and to “create a false account of history, inventing the truth and manipulating the conscience of Bolivians.” The OAS secretariat also decried the arrest of Ms. Áñez, prompting Mr. Arce’s minister of justice to threaten OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro with prosecution.

The Bolivian government’s lawless course threatens further chaos, if not civil war and outright dictatorship, at a time when the country, among the hardest hit by covid-19 in the world, should be fighting the pandemic. The Biden administration should lead a regional effort to preserve democratic stability in this long-suffering country, lest crisis turn into catastrophe."

Okay so before we get to a sort of line by line refutation of what's going on here, let me start by noting that the above WaPo piece is by no means a legitimate news item, but it's certainly an impressive piece of Pig Empire propaganda; even if only for its crass dishonesty and cynical assumptions about the reading public in general. Given the outrageous omissions, misrepresentations, and outright lies covered in this concise little smear job, it's really not a surprise the always pro-empire Washington Post is hiding behind both its editorial board byline, and the "Opinion" tag here either. Despite this however - words do actually mean things, and when you state falsehoods as facts, it's got absolutely nothing to do with subjective analysis or a right to express unpopular ideas.

So what exactly do I mean by falsehoods? Well for starters, Bolivia didn't experience a generic political "crisis," it was a U.S. backed right wing fundamentalist coup. Additionally, then-rightfully elected Bolivian President Evo Morales didn't precipitate the coup, a phony report by the Organization of American States (OAS) built around disingenuous math games did; and furthermore, the OAS analysis was so thoroughly and publicly refuted, even in the Washington Post itself, that claiming Morales is guilty of attempted election fraud (an accusation repeated twice in this 531 word article) at this late a date, borders on Orwellian. In common parlance, we call printing things like this "lying."

Turning our attention towards WaPo's mere misrepresentations doesn't really improve the picture either. Bolivian military officials didn't just "abandon" the elected government; they actively pressured President Morales to step down, and he didn't "depart to exile" so much as flee for his life in the face of right wing violence and terrorism targeting his home, members of his party, and his supporters. Furthermore, Jeanine Áñez didn't succeed to the Presidency "under a tenuous but constitutionally prescribed emergency process;" she appointed herself interim president in front of a rump Congress that lacked quorum, with the backing of the military in a coup d’état that was anything but constitutional - as noted by award-winning journalist and author Stephen Kinzer during a December 2019 forum organized by Mass. Peace Action and other groups at the Community Church of Boston:

 

“William Kaliman, former Commander in Chief of the Bolivian armed forces, forced President Evo Morales to resign,” Kinzer noted. “A week later he moved to the United States.”

“Evo’s term runs through January 2020. Even if you don’t accept the election of October 20th, Morales’ term as president that he won five years ago should still be ongoing. The succession laws that are supposed to be followed after a president resigns were completely flouted. Several members of the MAS were passed over and power was passed unconstitutionally to Añez.”

Please keep in mind that this is not a matter of opinion or interpretation; there's photographic evidence this was an unconstitutional military coup:

Let's stick with misrepresentation for a moment here. While I'm forced to admit that the WaPo editorial board is welcome to its opinion that Áñez deserves "credit" for "peacefully ceding" an election she'd already dropped out of after running a distant fourth in the polls; given the fact that she barred the rightfully elected President Evo Morales from running again, and delayed the new election three times to help the real far right candidate (more on him below,) no reasonable person is obliged to agree with them. Equally absurd are the suggestions that Ms. Áñez's reign of violent, even murderous terror over Bolivian socialists can be dismissed as "having governed high-handedly," or that the reactionary, unlawful government she presided over are mere run-of-the-mill "conservatives." Of course, these unsupportable opinions might also explain why the new Bolivian government's charges of terrorism against Áñez never even made it into the story at all.

All of which then leaves us with the WaPo editorial board's lies by omission; of which there are many. Since I assume you're starting to get a sense of just how full of crap this piece is already, I'll wrap this portion of our examination up by discussing only the three most glaring and dishonest omissions in this article.

First up; citing a statement by the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States to buttress this Pig Empire propaganda narrative against Arce, Morales, and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Party, without mentioning that the OAS actively lied about the 2019 election to trigger the coup, is obviously dishonest. As is completely ignoring the fact that the American government gleefully supported the coup, and Uncle Sam picks up 60% of the tab to fund the OAS expressly for the purposes of using it to support Pig Empire imperialism - as reported in this November 11th, 2019 article on one of my favorite websites, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

"No mainstream outlet warned its readers that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments. In 1962, for example, it passed an official resolution claiming that the Cuban government was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system.” Furthermore, the organization is bankrolled by the US government; indeed, in justifying its continued funding, US AID argued that the OAS is a crucial tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” like Bolivia."

       

Additionally; citing a statement by the Bolivian Bishops’ Conference to protect a blood-soaked dictator installed via a US-backed military coup, without revealing that same body previously supported the coup, or discussing the Bolivian Catholic Church's longstanding opposition to Morales' socialist, and pro-Indigenous land return policies, is also obviously dishonest. This is to say nothing of quietly concealing the ultra-conservative Catholicism and disdain for Bolivian Indigenous people Áñez herself shares with the Bishops - as explained in these articles by The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Jacobin Magazine respectively:

"The coup regime is now led by Jeanine Áñez, a Christian-fundamentalist senator and opponent of Morales, who in 2013 tweeted (translation): “I dream of a Bolivia free of indigenous satanic rites, the city is not for ‘Indians,’ they better go to the highlands or El Chaco.” On claiming the presidency after the army “asked” Morales to step down (he fled to Mexico following threats to his life and has since moved to Argentina), Áñez declared, “Thank God the Bible has returned to the Bolivian government.” About two-thirds of Bolivia’s population is Indigenous, forming a major part of Morales’s support base. Before the coup, MAS held majorities in both the Bolivian chamber of deputies and the senate."

"An ultraconservative Catholic senator, Áñez hails from the thinly populated Amazonian department of Beni, a region whose indigenous peoples first made the demand for a constituent assembly in the 1990s. But Áñez is no ally of indigenous Bolivians. She believes indigenous spirituality to be a sign of Satan, and upon seizing power in the days after November 10, she declared the national government to be “at last” free of paganism. Her partisans trampled upon and burned the Wiphala — the banner of indigenous unity — prompting tens of thousands of indigenous people to pour into the streets in protest."

Finally; I must admit that I'm not quite sure how to classify writing a quasi-anonymous editorial about the political fallout from a right wing coup in Bolivia without once mentioning the name of admitted coup plotter and noted Bolivian fascist, Luis Fernando Camacho. Given however that the facts surrounding Camacho's political involvement with both the uprising and the Áñez regime speak directly to the reality that it was an organized, anti-democratic, illegal fascist coup, it seems like the WaPo editors really should have found a place to work at least a few lines about a key player like Camacho in there; even if only as a matter of journalistic integrity.

Please also note that while I chose to focus on this Washington Post editorial board post because of its artless execution and owner Jeff Bezos' business ties to the American imperial state, they are by no means alone in the Pig Empire establishment's efforts to undermine the socialist government of Bolivia. Indeed, as relentlessly documented by the folks at FAIR, you can find equally disingenuous articles clearly designed to distort public opinions about Bolivian politics in outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, the Associated Press, and many others; articles published both during, and long after the unlawful 2019 right wing coup in Bolivia. If one were feeling a little conspiratorial, you might even be inclined to suggest that the almost unbroken ideological conformity of the Pig Empire media's coverage of events in Bolivia, was in and of itself, clear evidence of the Propaganda Model at work.

Drawing the Strings Together

Okay, so we've successfully demonstrated that western corporate media outlets as a whole are more than happy to repeat false narratives about our "enemies" in Bolivia, even when those narratives have already been debunked in their own publications. Furthermore, I think we've conclusively proven that the editorial board at the Washington Post in particular has an almost preternatural ability to pack a staggering amount of festering bullcrap into a few paragraphs of authoritatively-worded pearl clutching. Finally, we can say with certainty that it's hardly a secret that reactionary Pig Empire billionaires, the Trump Administration, and our western allies, all supported the original right wing coup in Bolivia and the pack of lies that sold it, quite enthusiastically. 

What however does all of this really mean? Well, if you throw in the reality that the WaPo editorial board explicitly called on the Biden administration to interfere in Bolivian politics to protect Áñez, and that U.S. state-controlled outlet Voice of America echoed the same false narrative about her arrest as the private sector media did, what we're looking at here is the reasonably strong outline of a Pig Empire propaganda operation to manufacture consent for imperialist policy in action. All we're really missing to expose how the magic happens is the kind of "smoking gun" connection to a sitting American official that not even Biden's failson minions over at State would be dumb enough to give us; right? 

Oh you poor, sweet, summer child - I feel like I'm telling an orphan there's no Santa Claus:

Well damn Tony; given the Biden administration's rhetoric about cleansing the legacy of Trump's foreign policy, that's pretty awkward, ain't it my dude? So much for build back better, I guess.

And still, the beat goes marching on...

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”