The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal has published the first part of an investigative series on how so-called non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) are being used to manipulate the narrative about what's going on in Syria by posing as impartial
investigative bodies and circulating pro-imperialist disinformation to the western political/media class as objective
fact. Part one is titled "Behind the Syrian Network for Human Rights: How an opposition front group became Western media’s go-to monitor", and it documents a mountain of evidence that one of these "NGOs" is in fact very much state-funded and highly biased
in favor of anti-Assad forces, yet still gets cited as an independent source by western mass media outlets in a way that
just so happens to help make the case for western interventionism in Syria.
"Citing the Syrian Network for Human Rights as an independent and credible source is the journalistic equivalent of
sourcing statistics on head trauma to a research front created by the National Football League, or turning to tobacco
industry lobbyists for information on the connection between smoking and lung cancer. And yet this has been standard
practice among correspondents covering the Syrian conflict," Blumenthal writes. "Indeed, Western press has engaged for
years in an insidious sleight of hand, basing reams of shock journalism around claims by a single, highly suspect source
that is deeply embedded within the Syrian opposition – and hoped that no one would notice."
I've taken to calling such things "narrative management operations" lately, because that's a much clearer illustration
of their function than simply labeling them propaganda constructs and psyops (though those labels are certainly accurate
as well). Countless operations have been set up both inside and outside of Syria to control the narrative about what's
happening there, and now if a casual observer decides to find out more about the Syrian conflict they'll almost
certainly be consuming information that has been filtered through narrative management ops that have been funded by
governments within the US-centralized power alliance.
It's like trying to figure out what's going on at the other end of a large room that's been filled with smoke and
mirrors.
As Blumenthal notes, the Syrian government has "been the target of one of the most expensive and sophisticated
disinformation campaigns in recent history." I would call this a charitable understatement. People who think it's
impossible that we're being lied to about what's going on in Syria are simply ignorant of, and/or uninterested in, the
extensively documented fact that the whole country is encased in a thick veil of high-level, high-budget narrative
management operations. They see Fox News, MSNBC, The Guardian, the BBC, the British Foreign Office and the US State Department saying the same things, so they assume it must be
true, even though they're all reporting information that has been filtered through the same narrative management lens.
But narrative management is in no way limited to Syria. You see all sorts of organizations used to manipulate public
narratives all the time, like the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike for example, whose highly suspicious analysis of the DNC's servers formed the foundation of the official Russian
hacking narrative, and whose CEO is now a billionaire. Whether it's longstanding foreign policy agendas like shoving
Russia off the world stage, or longstanding domestic agendas like preserving the dominance of the plutocratic class and
expanding surveillance and police militarization, our understanding of what's going on in the world is constantly being
messed with.
Narrative is how we form our understanding of the world. It's the mental stories we tell about ourselves, our
surroundings, our community and our world that allow us to orient ourselves in relation to abstract concepts: "My name
is Steve." "I work at Rusty's over there on Mulberry Street." "I currently have about a thousand dollars in my checking
account." "That person is my friend." "That other person is my enemy." Our entire day-to-day experience of the world is
filtered through these mental narratives as we use thought to navigate our way from morning coffee to bedtime.
Narrative dominates our experience of reality and our ability to act within it. You can understand, then, how powerful
someone would be if they found a way to control a large portion of it.
Narrative is so powerful that just captioning a picture with a certain story can cause people to see a photograph
completely different than they otherwise would. This Daily Mail smear piece on Julian Assange, for example, was published after his arrest and is titled "Assange inside his fetid lair: Revealed,
the full squalid horror that drove embassy staff to finally kick him out." As proof of this "fetid", "squalid" "horror",
the Daily Mail provided photographs like this one of a clean, normal looking bathroom and this one of the WikiLeaks founder using a dish that is dirty because he's still using in the photo.
These are obviously photographs of perfectly normal and innocuous things, but the forceful language used combined with
human suggestibility saw the article shared by propagandized individuals on social media with expressions of shock at what a filthy, disgusting man Assange is, including this Sky News Australia reporter who tweeted the ridiculous article with the caption, "This is why I would rather live alone than have random
housemates. Wash your plates, mate."
They were looking at the same photos you just looked at, but because they were perceiving them through a different
narrative filter, they saw something completely different from what you saw.
In the movie The Matrix, the film's hero is plugged into a digital simulation and asks his guide, "This... this isn't real?"
"What is real?" the guide replies. "How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can
smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
In exactly the same way, what we take to be "real" about world events is information that we have taken into our senses
and assessed as true. We'll often put as much faith in these beliefs as we do in what we've seen, heard and touched for
ourselves, but understandings of world events are made of narrative, and narrative can be manipulated in the interests
of the powerful.
Those who engage in narrative management are not merely guilty of diddling with a few stories; they are actively
controlling people's experience of reality. As far as human experience is concerned, perception is reality. The most talented manipulators among us are fully aware of this and understand that, by controlling people's
perceptions, can in a very real way control their reality.
What happens when you can control people's experience of reality? Well, in a world of social creatures who build their
society based on dominant consensuses about circumstances and events, you can to an extent control reality itself. You
can create a reality where all resources are funneled toward you, your allies and your lackeys. You can create a reality
where war and economic sanctions are inflicted upon any government which acts against your interests. You can create a
reality where you are functionally a king, without the inconvenience of having the unwashed masses realize that that's what you are.
The media-owning plutocratic class and its allies in opaque and unaccountable government agencies are in this way able
to control reality, both in the way we experience it in our minds and in the way it expresses concretely. The ability to
reach into people's minds on a mass scale and interfere with their ability to understand what's happening on their own
planet and in their own society is a power so immense it's hard to appreciate, and so staggeringly creepy it's hard to
comprehend. It's a violation of a part of us that is so intimate and so sacred it could almost be said to border on the
metaphysical.
If we could truly see what grave intercessions into every human's mental sovereignty these manipulators are getting away
with, it would look not unlike the British Empire of old as it slaughtered, stole, raped and enslaved its way across the
planet. These same colonialist actions are occurring today, largely from the descendants of these same groups of people,
but stories are being fed to us day after day to keep it hidden from us.
The stories don't just keep us docile and unquestioning, they keep our energy and output enslaved to the story-masters.
Just as an example, if people could really see how hard they work compared to how lazy the plutocrats they work for are,
they would down tools in a hot second, but we don't because we get told over and over how you get money if you work
hard, so our perception is that the billionaires are the hardest workers of all. There are all these layers of story
which prevent us from seeing what's really going on, and those stories are hammered into our brains by the people who
they benefit. Another example is how none of these wars ever benefited a single one of us plebs, but you see plenty of
us disseminating, cheerleading and volunteering to help with these barbaric power grabs for the rich because "freedom",
because "democracy", because "humanitarian", etc.
Set your intention right now to strip the veils from your eyes and let the world reveal itself as it really is, in all
its jarring, horrific ugliness. Only when we're truly committed to seeing things as they are will we be able to allow
the wisdom of our whole guide us back to safety and sanity, and the good news is that it doesn't have to be every single
one of us. Just enough of us seeing and speaking the truth about the Emperor's new clothes will stir the rest of them
from their slumber.
Be the tipping point.
_____________________________
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing
list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I'm trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2