John Pilger, “Why the Rise of Fascism is Again the Issue”, JohnPilger.com (26 February 2015)
Australia’s conscience comes with a real name: this is John Pilger and true to form, he has written an excellent essay on the resurgence of fascism in Europe and the rest of the world, to the extent that we all now stand on the brink of another major world war and the possibility that nuclear weapons will be used to wipe out whole nations – as if in the form of DU-enhanced ammunition they weren’t already slowly annihilating countries like Iraq – becomes greater every day. This fascism has a distinctly American face: its roots are in the American belief in Manifest Destiny and the notion that the United States is unique because it was founded on the principles of freedom and democracy, and therefore its civilisation is superior to others. This American fascism relies extensively on propaganda in the form of news media, Hollywood film and television output, and other cultural product, and is reinforced by pervasive surveillance through digital technologies, the manipulation of financial markets, the collusion of academics and so-called experts, and widespread censorship and misrepresentation and manipulation of facts working hand in velvet glove with global media and cultural exports.
Pilger ranges widely through examples of US warmongering and violence throughout the world, and how governments and corporate news media have consistently lied about American psychopathic behaviour, in the event demonising impoverished people or people standing up for their rights and convincing the Western public that such people are the villains. He brings his readers up to the present day where in Ukraine the criminal regime of President Petro Poroshenko has ferociously prosecuted a war in the country’s eastern Donbass region (which sits over considerable Yuzovka shale oil deposits, for which the company Burisma Holdings – and guess which US politician’s son sits on that company’s board as a director?) that has resulted in the deaths of thousands and displaced 2 million people, many of whom have fled to other countries. This conflict serves to help demonise Russia and its president Vladimir Putin who are frequently portrayed in the Western news media as aggressive and intent on fashioning a new post-Soviet empire encompassing currently independent nations like Armenia, Estonia and Kazakhstan. Pilger correctly identifies the aim of war against Russia: it is to grab that nation’s considerable energy and other natural resources for commercial exploitation that benefits a small global elite at the expense of the rest of us. In this context, Vladimir Putin and Russia have to be treated as Global Enemy No 1 for committing the unpardonable sin of following an independent course.
Pilger comes to the point of his article which is for the rest of us to wake up and learn the truth, and refuse to follow or co-operate with those individuals, organisations and governments pursuing the path of fascism. Knowing the truth, we must awaken others as well.
The article can be read at this link.