There is history worth remembering as Trump is lauded in certain circles on the so-called “right” and “left” as a peacemaker with Russia over the US/NATO proxy war against Russia via Ukraine: President Richard Nixon, who ran as the peace candidate in 1968 with a “secret plan” for peace in Vietnam that was actually a plan for more war, visited China in February 1972 in a move to exploit the Soviet-China split, and yet the US war against Vietnam went on until April 30, 1975 when the U.S. was driven out of Vietnam.

I think extreme caution is advised when it comes to Trump’s plans to end the U.S. proxy war against Russia, which, following the Nixon-Kissinger script, seems to be aimed at splitting the Russian-Chinese partnership now threatening U.S. world domination.

Trump, like his predecessor Joseph Biden who presided over the proxy war against Russia and the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, is no man of peace. He is fully in support of the extinction of the Palestinians and behind Israel’s war aims in the Middle-East. So when it comes to his recent overtures to Russia and a resolution to the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia, one needs to reflect on history and Trump’s inclination to make “a deal.”  The man, after all, was a reality-television star and has long reveled in radical reversals of previous statements and intentions. For example, in his first term, he often talked of withdrawing from NATO but never did; NATO, in fact, expanded under his watch. He talked about ending the U.S./NATO support for Ukraine’s bombing of Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine, only to withdraw from the Minsk Accords and send military equipment to Ukraine to bomb those areas.

Those who are praising him now say he is a changed man after time “in the wilderness” these last four years (one is reminded of Nixon’s wandering wilderness days from 1960-1968). Would a changed man have Elon Musk as his right-hand man or have as Vice President JD Vance whose career has been backed by Palantir Technology’s Peter Thiel?

Investigator journalist Whitney Webb has reported extensively on Thiel and Vance’s ties and the interconnections between them and other supporters of the surveillance state tied to the Democrats, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. If you assume the surface war between Trump and the Democrats is the real deal, Webb’s work will have you wondering. They have their differences, of course, but a reading of history would suggest both fully back the surveillance panopticon that has stolen American’s freedom and privacy in the name of what else – freedom and privacy.

Now Trump-Musk-Vance are touting their dedication to free speech and their opposition to censorship, which are clearly admirable goals. But one needs to remember Marshall McLuhan’s adage that the medium is the message, and that the medium touted by Trump – front and center – is represented by the omnipresence of Elon Musk, whose face symbolizes the smirking machine and the use of digital technology to accumulate and exert power. In a digital age, technological technique is King Propaganda, and technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.

As in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the brothers Tweedledee Democrat and Tweedledum Republican fight over their rattle as the audience focuses on their battle while their joint racket goes unattended.

‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ Tweedledum; ‘but it isn’t so, no how.’

‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

‘I was thinking, Alice said very politely, ‘which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me please?’

It is dark. Of course, the way out is to stop reacting and do what the press is obligated to do: be skeptical, question authority, and don’t be cheerleaders for anyone in power, whether they be Biden or Trump or someone else.

The opposite of such skepticism has been happening, and many in the alternative press, who [including me] have correctly accused Biden and the Democrats of war crimes, lies, censorship, Russiagate propaganda, etc., are now awash with grandiose praise for Trump, many calling him a revolutionary in a good sense. This is absurd.

Such hyperbole is quite naïve, as has been the calling of Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech historic and Ciceronian. It was a good speech [text here] in many ways, but . . . .

He rightly ripped the Europeans for their censorship of dissidents and their repression of alternative voices, although his examples were weak and narrowly focused.

His statement, while surely partisan, was true that “I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.”

His defense of democratic mandates was strong when he said:

You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.

When he criticized European leaders for allowing mass migration into their countries, his hypocrisy stood out. As any fair person should recognize, immigration policies have long been an issue in need of reform. But the mass creation of people fleeing their countries for safe havens in Europe are the direct result of US/NATO war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, etc., policies supported by Republicans and Democrats alike and seconded by their lapdogs in Europe.

The same is true for immigration here in the U.S.A. where immigration policy has long been in need of reform that neither party would undertake, but the main contingent of immigrants entering this country comes here to escape horrendous conditions in their home countries due in great part to U.S. foreign policies in support of repressive regimes and economic policies favoring the rich amid U.S. efforts to control Latin America. Without those immigrants, the U.S. economy would collapse.

But Vance’s speech is a minor part of my argument here.

The real issue is Trump and the question of whether or not he is for real in his efforts for peace in Ukraine. I am very skeptical and think it is justified.

I am convinced that the US/NATO war against Russia will not be ending unless NATO is dissolved, which Trump is not proposing. He only wishes to strengthen NATO with European money, not that of the U.S. NATO’s only raison d’être is to destroy Russia as an independent country and create regime change there through multiple means. This has always been so. This is why NATO has existed for so long and has expanded. Open warfare in Ukraine is just one means among many they have used over the years. You can end the overt war and continue the covert.

If NATO is not dissolved, the undermining of Russia will continue under Trump, who seems to recognize that the proxy war is lost on the battlefield, a fact obvious for years despite U.S. government and mainstream media propaganda to the contrary – propaganda so blatantly false that it raises questions about people’s gullibility. How many foreign leaders does such media need to call the new Hitlers before people wise up?

Trump’s theatrical antics will persist, however, and Trump and Putin will probably eventually meet and some deal may be struck on Russia’s terms, but if Russia doesn’t want to be tricked again, it should beware the possibility of a Trump Trojan horse.

Apropos today, in 1964 and then in 1965, the great French sociologist Jacques Ellul published his classic studies. First came The Technological Society to be quickly followed by Propaganda, linked books in which he brilliantly shed an early light on what we now find everywhere – a digital world where propaganda is vital for the state’s functioning and where words like democracy, truth, and fact yield to the technologue’s magic wand.

Another French social thinker, Paul Virilio, spoke of the information bomb, the glut of information produced by digital media and the Internet. One key aspect of this marriage is speed, Virilio’s specialty being dromology, the study of speed. It is worth noting how fast Trump has acted in his first month in office. This is no doubt aided and abetted by his right-hand man Elon Musk, Mr. X., Mr. Space Shot, Mr. Digital World himself, who is prominently displayed by Trump’s side at every photo op. Unlike the Biden warmongers who presented themselves in a more circumspect manner while propagandizing the American public, Trump makes it very clear that digital technology is his key to rule. And flooding the information superhighway with a rapid-fire series of orders and pronouncements is presented as government efficiency at its finest. But things happen so fast one can’t keep pace with them.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are two technological billionaires who should be considered crucial to Trump’s plans. As Ellul’s work makes clear, such men are key to effective propaganda. How can anyone consider such men benign supporters of democracy and justice?

I think the talk of a Trump revolution in favor of peace and democracy is hyperbolically irresponsible. It is unworthy of good journalism that requires prudence and patience when the powerful pitch their deals. The propaganda from the Biden administration and their mainstream media accomplices should have taught everyone that. But the appeal of a savior is very powerful.

You know, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s website, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Trump introduces Pfizer CEO—is he friggin’ kidding?

JON RAPPOPORT FEB 22 ∙ PREVIEW

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Is Trump setting up Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla for a fall?

I’ll believe that only with stone cold evidence.

Like I’ve been saying, I’m reporting the good, bad, and ugly of Trump. This one is bad and ugly.

At a White House reception on Feb. 20, Trump introduced Bourla as “one of the great people, one of the great businessmen.”

Sure, if killing people far and wide with an RNA vaccine is great.

If Trump, swallowing the bullshit from Fauci about COVID, without ever checking with independent medical minds, was great.

If Trump, launching Warp Speed, the untested experimental technology that produced the kill shot, was great.

If Trump, allowing the lockdowns which destroyed untold numbers of lives and businesses and torpedoed the economy—the effects still being felt—if that was great.

Trump and CEO Albert Bourla are pals.

Are you rich? Are you very rich? Are you in business in America? You’re one of Trump’s pals.

The President still won’t admit a shred of culpability in the COVID shot and the lockdowns.

He glides past it.

This sets up a triangle I’ve been writing about for some time now: Trump, the vaccine, and Kennedy…

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