Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump rushed from rally after gunfire rings out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania. Photo: REUTERS PIC.
By Caitlin Johnstone – Jul 14, 2024
The western political-media class hasn’t been this sympathetic and supportive toward Trump since he bombed Damascus.
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Donald Trump is now on the receiving end of a deluge of sympathy and support throughout the western world after surviving an assassination attempt, despite the fact that he himself is an open and unapologetic perpetrator of assassination.
Seems like everyone’s got a theory about what happened and why right now. As of this writing I’m content to just sit back and not know until more information comes in.
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That was a close one. America came an inch from having two presidential candidates with no brain.
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Now the same US officials who are responsible for overseeing the single most murderous power structure on the face of this planet are standing united in saying “There is no place for violence in America!”
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The western political-media class hasn’t been this sympathetic and supportive toward Trump since he bombed Damascus.
Both you and Trump are notorious perpetrators of assassination. https://t.co/o6BQiGIhWT
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 14, 2024
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I can’t wait til Trump is president so Democrats can remember that genocide is an inexcusable evil.
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Facebook has auto-blocked a Substack article of mine, which has never happened to me in the years I’ve been posting my Substacks there. The post was critical of Israel, while three subsequent articles I’ve successfully shared on Facebook thereafter made no mention of Israel. The reason given by Facebook’s censorship AI is listed as “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.”
I find this information worth sharing because it comes immediately after Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it will begin censoring criticism of Zionism as hate speech whenever it can be construed as such. People are already reporting a marked uptick in censorship on the platform when making posts critical of Israel.
Damn, Facebook really is cracking down hard on anti-Israel speech. I didn't even say the word "Zionist" in that post. pic.twitter.com/ACsTQEkrym
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 11, 2024
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The imperial narrative managers of the mass media have successfully paced the ongoing Gaza genocide from a front page story at the center of attention to something bad we just hear the occasional story about, like global warming or poverty. It’s still happening as ferociously as ever, but if you’re getting your information about the world from mainstream sources you are now only peripherally aware of this while your attention is directed to far less consequential things.
The picture the mass media paint of the world is night and day different from life as it actually is. It’s as different from reality as any other work of fiction, not so much because it directly denies reality or makes up whole cloth lies about it, but because it so drastically misrepresents what’s going on through the manipulation of public attention.
The Media Skew Public Perception by Manipulating People’s Attention
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Democrats have been babbling about what a decent and honest person Biden is while defending the decision for him to stay in the presidential race. This is ridiculous. Biden is not and has never been a decent person; he’s easily one of the worst human beings on this planet. And what’s funny is that his dementia has probably made him a softer, gentler person than he used to be. The world might be even uglier than it is now if he had his old brain.
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There’s a quote by Noam Chomsky which you absolutely must understand if you want to be able to make sense of political discourse in the west:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Regardless of your feelings about Chomsky, nothing about our information ecosystem will make sense to you without understanding and appreciating this quote. Until you get this and hold it at the forefront of your awareness, you won’t understand western politics, punditry or political debates.
Caitlin Johnstone
Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.
