Propaganda deluge

I read the transcript of another Gaslit Nation podcast episode, this one titled The Endgame. This podcast is put out weekly. I wait for the transcript of an episode to be available – and sometimes I wait a lot longer (and even miss episodes) because, while they’re important, reading about the attacks on democracy can be depressing and so are frequently avoided. To prove my point, this episode is from December 4.

The hosts of the podcast are Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior. Kendzior studies authoritarian regimes. In the first part of this episode Chalupa talked about her international travel in November. She wrote and produced the movie Mr. Jones about a journalist trying to document the genocidal famine Stalin caused in Ukraine. The movie will come to America sometime next year. In November it was shown at selected venues in Europe, one of those being Ukraine, and Chalupa attended many of the showings.

Through this recitation of her itinerary Chalupa makes an important point. This movie and documentaries of today’s unrest are critical. As regimes in Syria and Russia tighten control these films show the truth. They help prevent the tyrants from whitewashing events.

Kendzior added there is a danger that these films, and a lot of digital archives, will be lost because tyrants want them to be lost. Truth matters. One quality that can link us together is the pursuit of truth.

They wander down another side topic. Chalupa’s sister Alexandra back in 2016 tried telling everyone (and alas, few listened) that Paul Manafort (now in jail) was Putin’s operative. And if Manafort was running the nasty guy campaign, it meant the Kremlin was running the campaign.

Because of that, other Russian assets have been trying to discredit Alexandra. During the impeachment hearings Devin Nunes brought up her name a lot. He always referred to her as a Democratic operative (she was not) and tried to get various witnesses to support his attacks.

Andrea responded to the mess. She notes that journalism is shrinking. We have a smaller watchdog. The jobs that remain are predominantly white and male. So we get a lot of news through a privileged white male lens and that comes with an echo chamber. The attacks and threats against Alexandra (and on Andrea because journalists don’t bother to tell them apart) is being treated like entertainment. They don’t look at the facts. They simply report on the propaganda indirectly pumped out by the Kremlin. Once mentioned by one lazy while male journalist others repeat the propaganda. And then they refuse to correct it.

But even the GOP has looked into the hit pieces on Alexandra and found nothing there.

So, after more than half the transcript, on to the topic of the episode – the impeachment hearings and the various witnesses. This podcast came out well before the House approved articles of impeachment.

Alexander Vindman told a bit of his personal history. He is from Ukraine. His parents were born in refugee camps. They fled the Soviet Union when he was 3½. He understands what happens if the nasty guy steals another election. He knows he is targeted. He has testified at great risk to himself and his family. His testimony should carry that much more weight and power.

Chalupa says that if that second election is stolen the floodgates will be opened and it will be a horror. The defense against it is community. So get involved locally. Make your state as blue as possible.

Marie Yovanovitch is also from Ukraine. Both because of where she was born and also because of where she’s done her public service she’s seen how brutal authoritarian regimes can be. She also knows, once they gain power, how hard it is to get rid of them. Kendzior notes that the parents of Vindman and Yovanovich came to America for safety, only to have the horror follow them. And now there is nowhere in the world for her to be safe.

Kendzior adds:

Democratic leaders claim they want to limit the scope of impeachment proceedings to Trump's 2019 Ukraine shakedown, but that's both impossible and insulting. The 2019 Ukraine shakedown is a continuation of the 2016 election heist, which was a continuation of Trump's lifelong deference to the Kremlin and his schemes with corrupt actors from the former USSR. Limiting the impeachment scope does a grave disservice to people like Yovanovitch, whose lives are in danger by the unwillingness of officials to examine crimes in context, and the refusal of institutions to hold perpetrators accountable.

Telling the truth is important because the propaganda jeopardizes people’s lives.

Kendzior again:

We're up against a propaganda deluge, and we're up against just incredible abuse of power and an unwillingness still among the Democrats to admit how dire things are and how high the stakes are, and that there's just not room for error.

They cycle back to the way journalists have treated Alexandra, noting that journalists are not immune from the propaganda deluge. And because the GOP has cleared her it means when GOP members now talk about her it is because they’re reading from a list of talking points that likely originated in the Kremlin. And that means those GOP members are likely compromised by Russia. Which for Devin Nunes has been shown to be true.

Speaking of the nasty guy Kendzior said:

He also needs to be impeached for other crimes, like abuse of migrants at the border, abuse of the pardon power. These are very serious offenses, and they need to be stopped now, the abuse of migrants at the border, the separation of families needs to be stopped now, but we also need to set a precedent, because if we're ever going to get out of this, if there's going to be another president, they need to not have this ability to look back at this time and shrug and be like, "Well, Congress said it was okay," or, "This is an acceptable pattern of behavior."

Because what people are going to remember in decades from now is not going to be the minutiae of the Ukraine transcript of Trump's little conversation with Zelensky. What they're going to remember is that children died in cages on the border of Texas and Mexico. They're going to remember that breastfeeding infants were wrenched out of their mothers' arms and taken away, and then that parent was deported, and the people just sat back and they did nothing, and they let it happen and they said, "Oh, we don't want to get into a partisan dispute," or, "Oh, we need to just focus on one issue for impeachment."

Kendzior expands into the world situation:

We're guided by a transnational crime syndicate that has infiltrated multiple governments. You're seeing it in the UK, you're seeing it now in France where you see Macron basically capitulating to Putin over NATO. We saw in Poland, in Hungary, we see it in Turkey, we see it in longstanding authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, we see it in states like Israel where Netanyahu will simply not leave despite his indictments. It's this consolidation of corruption, and it has very real human consequences. As people go on about, "Oh, will Ukraine catch on with Americans?" Ukrainians are dying and have been for half a decade, since Russia invaded Crimea and then began to escalate its war because of the failure of the West to step in.

That failure of the West, it's the same in Syria, it's the same in Ukraine, and eventually it will be the same in the West as we get devoured from within by complicit actors. And that is one of the reasons it is so important for the propaganda and the narratives that are allowing these atrocities to take place to kind of go under the radar, even though that seems almost impossible because they're so horrific, you would think everyone would be watching them, they get glossed over. They become political talking points instead of crises that humanity should be addressing.

All of what Chalupa and Kendzior are doing it to prevent the nasty guy’s endgame.