caitlinjohnstone | Learning to distinguish between empowered parties and disempowered
parties can be a little tricky, even for relatively awake people,
because nobody likes to think of themselves as siding with the powerful
against the weak. It’s something we all know intuitively to be wrong, so
we’ll often find clever ways of using an incomplete analysis of the
power dynamics at play which allows us to feel as though we’re fighting
the power when we’re really doing the exact opposite.
And propagandists are of course all too eager to help us do this.
Israel
is a perfect example. You can squint at it in such a way that lets you
feel as though you’re defending a disempowered religious minority with
an extensive history of persecution that is surrounded by enemies, but
really it has nuclear weapons and the full might of the US empire on its
side. In reality the Palestinians are the down-power ones, but people
who want to believe the Israeli government is a poor widdle victim will
do mental gymnastics to contort the power dynamics.
These
compartmentalizations ignore where the actual power is at on a global
scale and just zoom in to a local analysis which ignores all else.
Whenever
you see the western mass media and their propagandized followers
talking about “The people of [insert targeted nation here]”, they’re
cheerleading a US empire-backed movement against a weaker government
which has resisted absorption into that empire. But they’re posing as
supporters of the little guy.
- Juan Guaido is the brave rebel fighting the powerful Maduro regime! No, he’s backed by the US-centralized empire which is trying to stage a coup in the nation with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.
- Yay, the freedom fighters in Syria are fighting the tyranny of their oppressive ruler! No they’re not, they’re jihadist extremists who were backed by the US and its allies with the goal of toppling Damascus in order to seize control of a crucial geostrategic region.
- Yay, the brave people of Hong Kong are liberating themselves from the tyranny of Beijing! Well really China is far less powerful than the US-centralized power alliance and the US government is unquestionably intervening in the HK protests. But people make believe it’s just the people vs the big bad Chinese government.
This
impulse to pretend you’re fighting the power instead of fighting for
power is so pervasive I’ve seen people do ridiculous things like say
Julian Assange is actually the power because WikiLeaks is influential.
He’s one guy!
That’s
also what you’re seeing when people try to spin these US protests as a
Deep State color revolution backed by George Soros and “the Chicoms”. No
it’s not, you just don’t want to admit that you support the government
and its armed goon squad against people who are sick of the brutal US
police state, so you’re doing ridiculous mental gymnastics to make it
feel like you’re actually punching up.
Online
forums are full of self-described “anarchists” who constantly wind up
on the same side as the CIA and the US State Department on foreign
policy because they act like every “revolution” in every nation is the
people vs power while ignoring a global-scale analysis of real power. If
your “anti-authoritarian” worldview frequently leads you to supporting
agendas which make the biggest power structure on the planet more
powerful, then you’re not anti-authoritarian, you just want to feel like
you are. You’re no different than any other MSM-brainwashed tool.
Learn
to see clearly where the power is, and refuse to side with it. Expunge
the “What did you expect?” mind virus from your system and you’ll be
doing all of humanity a big favor.
