With the death of the daily paper, few notice that the New York Times (NYT) still maintains its censorious stamp of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” at the top left corner of the front page. One can’t help but notice the stories deemed unworthy of the NYT’ blessing of “news that’s fit to print.”
In two weeks, Julian Assange will have what may be his last chance to oppose his extradition to the United States, where he faces over 100 years in prison for publishing verified evidence of American war crimes. The most effective journalist in the English-speaking world faces life imprisonment for uncovering government corruption, but the NYT, CNN, and Fox News have not run a story on his case in the last month.
Assange is a political prisoner who the global security apparatus has worked to kill through ten years of confinement. During his seven-year detention in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, the CIA plotted his assassination, intelligence agencies spied on his conversations with his attorneys, and Western governments denied him due process. He has spent nearly five years at HMP Belmarsh, “the Guantanamo Bay of Britain,” but our media establishments evidently do not consider his impending fate worthy of reporting.
The conspicuous lack of curiosity extends to any stories that challenge pre-ordained narratives. Exactly one year ago, Seymour Hersh reported that President Biden and the United States are responsible for destroying Nord Stream 1 and 2, Russian natural gas pipelines, in what amounted to the greatest eco-terrorism attack in world history. If true, it would mean American forces deliberately sabotaged the primary source for our European allies’ energy dependence.
But there’s been very little follow-up in the West. The NYT offered an editorial shrug, with its latest report coming from 10 months ago noting the “sabotage remains unsolved.” “Green” advocacy groups have not thrown food at Davos leaders or poured soup on NATO officers for their alleged role in polluting the Baltic Sea.
Government agencies appear similarly incurious regarding an overt act of war. Hersh writes:
There is no evidence that President Biden, in the sixteen months since the pipelines were destroyed, has ‘tasked’—a word of art in the American intelligence community—its experts to conduct an all-source investigation into the explosions. And no senior German leader, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is known to be close to President Biden, has made any significant push to determine who did what.
Recently, we learned that media blackouts extend to our most pressing domestic issues.
National outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, and PBS responded with silence last week as the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War unfolded at the Southern border. No major outlet covered how the Governor of Texas dismissed the President of the United States, defied the Supreme Court, and accused political opponents of facilitating a national invasion.
Jailing journalists. International sabotage. Domestic standoffs. These topics are not just important; they are riveting. A media outlet determined to expand its market share would be sure to cover these events and capture the chasmic void left by their competitors’ dereliction.
But, as Jeffrey Tucker wrote in response to the blackout on the border crisis: “We are talking here about something more sinister than bias, and more than the incompetence of this venue or that. It looks highly coordinated.” Stifling unapproved stories is a central feature, not an error, of the system. “The manufacturing of consent is not spontaneous but rather has a manufacturer, a real engineer working behind the scenes (such as the Trusted News Initiative).”
The establishment does not hide these topics from you for the tranquility of your mind; rather, it is an ongoing pattern of deception, distracting you from the usurpation of your most cherished rights through mind-numbing blather.
But there is hope. We are learning in real time why the establishment holds such hatred for Elon Musk. Right now, he is the sole force resisting the cultural orthodoxy spearheaded by the US Security State, the same hegemon responsible for the silence surrounding Assange and the Nord Stream attack.
Despite the deliberate misrepresentations surrounding the “border security bill” coming from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and cable news, the free flow of information on X (formerly known as Twitter) has stopped a bill that would codify the entry of over 1.5 million illegal immigrants per year.
Two years into the war in Ukraine, Americans will finally hear an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, again on X, from Tucker Carlson.
Just one source of dissent – a minuscule force compared to the hegemony of cable news, legacy media, Meta, the US Security State, NGOs, academia, and their international allies – was powerful enough to stop our leaders from codifying the invasion at the Southern border into law.
Musk’s enemies have responded with scorn. Just as they weaponized the legal system to silence and jail Assange, international forces seek to abolish X’s stand against informational tyranny. The EU hopes to sanction Tucker Carlson for interviewing Putin and impose speech codes on X through the Digital Services Act. The Biden Administration has leveraged the power of the Department of Justice to attack Musk and his corporate interests for his disobedience to the regime.
It will be up to individuals and decentralized groups like Brownstone to fight the struggle against the attempted tyranny over the minds of men. It will be our obligation to shine light on the news that the establishment deems not fit to print.
This is the path toward change. The driving force of history is not impersonal but rather comes down to the actions of people informed by the beliefs they hold. This is why governments throughout history have placed such a high priority on controlling the public mind.
Right now, we have a real chance – perhaps a brief window of opportunity – to make a real difference that can secure a future of freedom. We must seize the moment.
Read Article on Brownstone.org
Brownstone Institute is a nonprofit organization conceived of in May 2021 in support of a society that minimizes the role of violence in public life.
