Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
It is entirely possible for the surging anti-genocide protest movement and its accompanying zeitgeist in the general public to push the empire to retreat on Gaza. The imperial murder machine has many strengths, but it also has weaknesses.
The globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around Washington has invested in perception management more heavily than any other empire in history — that’s what you’re seeing with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, oligarch-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood. By using mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated perception management system that has ever existed, the US-centralized empire is able to manufacture support for its agendas at home and abroad while dissuading the public from protest and revolution.
This is an immense strength, but it’s also a weakness. Its so-called “soft power” narrative manipulation systems allow for an immense amount of control while still creating the illusion of freedom and democracy, thereby suppressing public desire to overthrow what would otherwise be perceived as a murderous and exploitative oppressor, but its heavy reliance on perception management means it can’t afford to be seen in too negative a light without causing widespread distrust in its propaganda machine.
If too many people realize that their government is psychopathic and their news media and other indoctrination systems have been lying to them about it all their lives, the empire will lose the ability to propagandize them, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. If too many people wake up from the propaganda matrix it won’t have any effect any longer, and without their propaganda our rulers cannot rule, because that’s the entire control system upon which their rule is premised.
The empire therefore needs to tread very carefully when public opinion starts to turn against it, and retreat whenever public trust in imperial institutions would be compromised too severely for the empire to continue on a given path. It simply cannot afford to wake the public up from the propaganda-induced coma it has spent generations lulling them into.
What this means is that the empire can be pressured into retreat simply by spreading enough awareness and sowing enough opposition to its depraved actions. If enough eyes open to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, there’s no amount of geostrategic middle east agendas or Israel lobby funding that can outweigh the empire’s existential need to prevent a mass-scale awakening from the mainstream imperial worldview and a transition into widespread revolutionary consciousness. The empire would necessarily need to step back before things reached that point, because its very existence depends on it.
The empire has been walking that line this entire time. Whenever you see it doing things like stepping back from regime change invasions of Cuba or Syria or refraining from going as authoritarian as it could go on a given issue, it isn’t because the empire suddenly evolved a conscience. It’s because it hasn’t yet succeeded in manufacturing public consent for such agendas, and imposing them before the public has been manipulated into accepting them would snap them out of the matrix of psychological control. They work so hard to manufacture public consent because they absolutely need it.
So the empire can be pressured on Gaza and on every other issue if enough people put enough energy into spreading awareness of the truth. That’s why the empire managers are freaking out about this new protest movement right now; they understand the absolutely fundamental role that narrative control plays in the existence of imperial power structures, and how much they stand to lose if it is taken away.
And hopefully it will be. Hopefully one day, maybe even soon, we will see people begin unplugging their brains from the matrix of imperial mind control at so widespread a scale that no amount of retreating and backpedaling can save the empire from the people collectively deciding they’ll have none of its murderous tyranny anymore. From there it will lose its allies and assets abroad, it will succumb to revolutionary sentiments at home, and the people can start working toward building a healthy world together.
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Caitlin Johnstone 