The desperate efforts of the Western neoliberal establishment to build a new propaganda machine

globinfo freexchange

The UK government and other Western governments and the US in recent years have had increasing difficulties persuading enough of their populations as to the legitimacy of the foreign policies that they have been pursuing.

And at the same time, Western countries have been going through a period of political crisis and economic crisis.

Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, further explains:

I think a lot of this drive is as much about trying to shore up shaky official narratives and trying to shore up political systems in a situation of political crisis, as it is actually about countering Russian propaganda.

I would suspect that that's a little bit of an excuse here to really what's going on of problems much closer to home.

This is not just to do to UK, this is Europe-wide. And there are also indications from the documents that they are intending to start to have some kind of impact within the United States. So, it's a very wide-ranging network that seems to be established.

The reason why it needs to be covert, of course, is that if a media organization, or if a journalist is to let on that he, or she, is involved in a program, which quite clearly is pushing a particular agenda, then the credibility of that journalist will be damaged.

And this is really what is very deceptive about the Integrity Initiative. It's about co-opting journalists and academics into, essentially, a campaign, which appears to be a propaganda campaign, in order to manipulate opinions.

And the only way that can really work effectively, is if readers and viewers don't know that what they're reading is something which has emerged from a particular political agenda.

Recall  that, leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists. Politicians and academics have reacted with fury to news a covert Government-funded unit had been attacking the official opposition in Parliament.

So, it's not accidental that the organized and systematic propaganda campaign against labour party has actually started under Corbyn's leadership. And that the campaign contains a lot of personal attacks against the leader of the Labour party. That's because, of course, Jeremy Corbyn is driving the party out of the neoliberal machine that has been dominating the UK politics for decades.

But it seems that the agents of the neoliberal establishment are really desperate as they see that the new narratives are not particularly successful.

It would not be exaggerating to suggest that the attacks against Leftist leaders like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders essentially bring the opposite effect. That's because especially the younger generations have turned their back to the mainstream media. 

And they understand that the more the media attack Corbyn and Sanders, the stronger the indication that these leaders are not part of the neoliberal establishment that ruined their lives becomes.