The June 21, 2022, Grayzone article,1
“British Security State Collaborator Paul Mason’s War on ‘Rogue
Academics’ Exposed,” shines a great big light on what the
“anti-disinformation” industry is really all about.
Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with protecting a gullible public
from information that might cause them to make bad or unhealthy
choices. No, it’s about creating and directing a narrative for the
purpose of controlling the population and hiding truths that might
overthrow the ruling cabal and its plans for a one world government.
Operation Mockingbird
Propaganda is as old as humanity itself, but the modern version of it
can be traced back to 1948, when the CIA’s Office of Special Projects2 launched Operation Mockingbird,3,4
a clandestine CIA media infiltration campaign that involved bribing
hundreds of journalists to publish fake stories at the CIA’s request.
The CIA reportedly spent $1 billion a year (about one-third of its entire budget5)
on this enterprise. CIA-recruited journalists worked in most major news
organizations, including CBS News, Time, Life, Newsweek and The New
York Times, just to name a few.6 Later on, the campaign expanded to include foreign media as well.7 As reported by the Free Press:8
“In 1976, Senator Frank Church’s investigation into
the CIA exposed their corruption of the media ... The tactic was
straightforward. False news reports or propaganda would be provided by
CIA writers to knowing and unknowing reporters who would simply repeat
the falsehoods over and over again.”
During the Cold War, CIA propaganda
disparaged communist ideologies. Today, it promotes radical ideas that
bring us closer to The Great Reset — which is based on a technocratic
economic system — instead.
Media Is More Controlled Than Ever
While Operation Mockingbird is said to have been officially
dismantled, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest it’s still in
operation. If anything, the system has only gotten more efficient and
effective, as the number of major media outlets has shrunk over these
past decades, and a vast majority of journalists and news anchors simply
parrot what’s reported by the three global news agencies.
What’s more, the CIA isn’t the only intelligence agency using the
media for its own propaganda purposes. The intelligence agencies in
other countries do it too.
For example, leaked documents9
reveal Reuters and BBC News received multimillion-dollar contracts to
advance a covert propaganda program by the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) aimed at weakening Russia’s influence over its
neighbors.10 You can learn more about this in “Reuters and BBC Caught Taking Money for Propaganda Campaign.”
One of the biggest changes we’re seeing right now is that most of the
world’s intelligence agencies are controlling media in the same
direction — toward The Great Reset and the technocratic control of the
global population. That’s why we’re seeing the same narratives playing
all over the world.
In 1977 Carl Bernstein wrote a 75-page article for Rolling Stone that
exposed the CIA’s involvement with the media in even greater detail.11
Those were the days when Rolling Stone actually did decent
investigative journalism. Today they are one of the largest spreaders of
government disinformation.
It’s the Opposite of What They Claim It Is
It’s no small irony that most of the organizations claiming to
promote truth and counter disinformation are in fact doing the exact
opposite. The latest and most blatant example of this was the Biden
administration’s “Ministry of Truth” — the Disinformation Governance
Board,12,13 set up by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
It didn’t quite go as planned though. It was announced and then
canceled just as quickly in the face of political and public backlash.
The Orwellian connotations were just so blatant, few were able to
dismiss them.
Perhaps they overestimated the level of brainwashing achieved over
the past two years. They probably thought they could get away with what
amounts to ripping up the U.S. Constitution in front of everyone’s face,
but the time was not yet ripe for that kind of frontal assault.
If anything, it worked against them because many have suspected
government uses media and Big Tech to censor and control narratives, and
the past two years have provided undeniable evidence of that reality.
So, the attempt to formalize this unlawful influence completely failed —
for now.
Covert Assault on Academics
Getting back to The Grayzone story, Paul Mason, “one of Britain’s
most prominent alleged left-wing journalists,” and other “covert
helpers,” were found to have targeted scholars and academics who spoke
out against the establishment narrative on the conflict between Russia
and Ukraine.
As explained by Jimmy Dore in the featured video, Mason is basically
pretending to be a left-leaning journalist but is working with the
intelligence community to destroy political opponents. Emails obtained
by The Grayzone and reviewed by Dore shows Mason is in favor of
“relentless deplatforming,” getting people kicked off PayPal,
demonetized by YouTube and so on. The Grayzone writes:14
“Amidst his campaign to neutralize the UK antiwar
left, Paul Mason declared in an email to several academics willing to
inform on and undermine their own colleagues: ‘the far left rogue
academics is who I’m after ... The important task is to quarantine their
‘soft’ influencers and expose/stigmatize the hard ideologists.’
Mason’s fishing expedition was conducted in apparent
coordination with Andy Pryce, a senior British intelligence official
involved in a series of malign information warfare and censorship
initiatives.
The journalist’s key academic enabler, self-styled
counter-disinformation researcher Emma Briant, not only helped further
his campaign to target antiwar figures, but furnished bogus claims about
one individual which appears to have inspired a BBC smear piece ...
Many of those she snitched on considered her a colleague and even a
comrade.”
The Grayzone details how Briant introduced Mason with two individuals
who would be able to furnish a meme-tracing tool to determine their
source. Mason specifically wanted to find out “who in Britain denies the
Bucha massacre” (thinks it’s a false flag) and/or believes Russia’s
justifications for the invasion of Ukraine.
Ironically, the people Mason was most eager to trap weren’t falling
into it, as they weren’t publicly discussing their views. Briant then
offered to provide Mason with the names of the main organizers of an
academic mailing list called “Organized Persuasive Communication,” run
by Piers Robinson, described by Grayzone as “a dissident academic who
has been relentlessly targeted in UK mainstream media.”
“Robinson was shocked to learn that a participant on
his listserv was ratting out fellow members to a security state
collaborator,” The Grayzone writes.15 “‘I’m
dismayed that a former colleague whom I have supported over the years
appears to have abused an academic listserv,’ Robinson told The
Grayzone.
‘Rather than engaging in open debate and critique,
which would have been the scholarly and ethical thing to do, Briant has
instead sought to support what seems to be underhand and nefarious
attempts to damage reputations and silence critics.’”
In the featured Jimmy Dore Show video, Dore interviews Max
Blumenthal, a Grayzone contributor, about this and related stories
they’ve written about Mason and his covert relationship with the British
government. Blumenthal details how The Grayzone was censored by
YouTube, for the first time ever, after they started exposing Mason, and
it seems clear YouTube was responding to demands by Mason himself.
This suggests he is indeed working for or with British intelligence.
We’ve seen the same kind of censoring at the request of the U.S.
government.
A Case of the Pot Calling the Kettle Black
One of the people singled out by Briant as a Russian collaborator was
Greg Simons, “a communications researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala
University specializing in Russian mass media,” whose only crime was
filling out and circulating a survey relating to conflicts and war on
the behalf of a Russian academic who was working on a research paper.
Not even the Russian academic could be rightly accused of being a
threat to democracy, as he’d “played a key role in Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization agenda, freeing political prisoners,
ending regulations on foreign travel, and enshrining fundamental rights
in the country’s new constitution,” The Grayzone writes. Commenting on
Briant’s betrayal, Simons told The Grayzone:16
“This puts a big spotlight on the professional
integrity and knowledge of Briant, who spreads propaganda and
misinformation on people, something claims on her Twitter profile to
fight. It also demonstrates a clear lack of personal integrity and
deficiency in knowledge on topics that she claims to be an expert in.”
The Spook Behind It All
Behind Mason’s and Briant’s pet project to “neutralize the U.K.’s
grassroots antiwar left” is Andy Pryce, founding director of the Counter
Disinformation and Media Development (CDMD) program at the British
Foreign Office. In 2018, Pryce was also “exposed as a key player in the
scandalous MI6/military intelligence project known as the Integrity
Initiative.” The Grayzone writes:
“A January 2020 European Commission event listing
identifies Pryce as the head of public diplomacy at UKREP, London’s
diplomatic mission to the EU.
However, the same month Pryce appeared at the EU
event, UKREP was replaced with a new office, the UK Mission to Europe,
and Pryce has not been publicly mentioned in any official capacity
since. So where did he go?
In his communications with Mason, Pryce mentions his
personal involvement in activities placing him at the forefront of
London’s public relations strategy on the Ukraine crisis, which is
delivered by the recently formed Government Information Cell (GIC) and
Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU).
Staffed by spies and charged with disseminating
intelligence through the media and other forums for the purpose of
information warfare, both the units have operated in highly clandestine
fashion. Largely unknown to the public, they have played a pivotal part
in NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.”
‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Is a Propaganda Smear
Over the past two years, the terms “conspiracy theory” and
“conspiracy theorist” have become household terms for anything and
everyone who doesn’t agree with whatever crazy story the media claim to
be fact. Few seem to realize that in using these terms, they’ve fallen
for the oldest propaganda methods there is: When you can’t argue with
the facts, just attack the person delivering them.
Belittling people and making them look silly, stupid, ignorant,
gullible or incompetent are classic attack strategies by propagandists
who don’t really have a leg to stand on otherwise. It’s all about firing
up people’s negative emotions, which makes them less likely to sit back
and evaluate both sides.
So, calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” is a strategy aimed at
silencing dissent in general and truth in particular, plain and simple.
In terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media
manipulation to brand new heights, eclipsing just about all previous
propaganda efforts. They don’t even hide the bias anymore.
Many believe that the term “conspiracy theory” was actually created
by the CIA in 1967 to disqualify those who questioned the official
version of John F Kennedy’s assassination and doubted that his killer,
Lee Harvey Oswald, had acted alone. It makes perfect sense since Oliver
Stone has shared credible evidence that the CIA was behind the JFK
assassination.
When it comes to the COVID jab, for example, we know the U.S.
government spent $1 billion on a media campaign to build public
confidence in, and uptake of, the injections using mainstream news
outlets.17
In return for that paycheck, media rabidly lashed out at anyone who
questioned the unsupported claim that the shots were “safe and
effective” as either a crazy conspiracy theorist, an ignorant
science-denier, a dangerous misinformation agent with a personal profit
motive, a domestic terrorist hell-bent on maximizing the death toll, or
all four. All the while, media never actually countered the data showing
the narrative was riddled with holes and contradictory at its face.
How to Identify True Journalism
An example of how these kinds of smears have been, and continue to
be, used by media, consider the June 19, 2022, Guardian article18 by Mark Townsend. He wrote:
“A network of more than two dozen conspiracy
theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign, sent
thousands of disinformation tweets to distort the reality of the Syrian
conflict and deter intervention by the international community, new
analysis reveals.”
As reported by The Hill (video above), Townsend identified Grayzone
journalist Aaron Maté as “the most prolific spreader of disinformation”
about the Syrian conflict “among the 28 conspiracy theorists
identified.”
In a tweet, Maté responded to the article, stating Townsend had
failed to contact him for comment, failed to provide any example of his
alleged “disinformation” on the Syrian conflict, and failed to disclose
the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank responsible for
the “analysis” is funded by the U.S. and U.K. governments and allied
nations.
According to The Hill, Townsend was on vacation and not available for
comment, but Katie Halper, who cohosts the “Useful Idiots” podcast with
Maté came on to discuss Townsend’s attempted hack job. “Perhaps this
can be a teachable moment for Townsend,” she said.
Not only did Townsend violate three basic standards of journalism,
but the article’s main premise is also based on a lie, Halper says. The
Guardian actually corrected the initial headline, which read
“Russia-Backed Network of Syria Conspiracy Theorists Identified.” Since
there’s no evidence of Russia backing any of these individuals, the
headline was changed to the slightly less libelous “Network of Syria
Conspiracy Theorists Identified.”
Townsend’s piece appears to be nothing more than a government-backed
“Mockingbird”-style counterattack aimed at silencing Maté, who has been
challenging the official narrative about the alleged chemical attack in
Douma, Syria,19 and even delivered remarks to the United Nations Security Council on the matter.20
Considering he’s implicating both the U.S. and U.K., it seems rather
obvious that Townsend’s article is an intentional propaganda piece aimed
at chipping away Maté’s credibility. It can be helpful to always
remember that we are, in fact, at war. It’s an information war, and the
ruling powers whose aim it is to usher us into a new system of
technocracy have many secrets.
They’ve rigged the game of life in a thousand different ways, and if
people understood just how we’ve been robbed and enslaved, they’d become
uncontrollable. Hence, the propaganda machine is in full swing, trying
to control all aspects and shut down all truth tellers, lest the
populace get wise to their games.
Truly, this now applies to just about every part of life. Politics,
election integrity, the economy, the food system, energy, health and
medicine, wars and conflicts — you name it — it’s all been rigged and
it’s all falling apart.
The old guard is shooting for a controlled demolition of the old so
they can transition to the new — which will be even more enslaving — but
in order for that sleight of hand to work, pesky truth tellers must be
silenced and the populace kept intellectually sedated. Don’t fall into
that trap. One way to avoid it, is to interpret smears for what they are
— attempts to silence. And ask yourself what the propagandists don’t
want you to know.