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{"source_url": "https://medium.com", "url": "https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-make-sense-of-foreign-protests-conflicts-and-uprisings-1ecb7fa42ba4", "title": "How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings", "top_image": "https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC", "meta_img": "https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC", "images": ["https://miro.medium.com/max/60/0*fDHbApPhOcF8jTAc?q=20", "https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/160/160/1*ucqcyIYV2jAR_7FLr5wl-w.png", "https://miro.medium.com/max/2880/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC", "https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/96/96/1*ucqcyIYV2jAR_7FLr5wl-w.png", "https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC", "https://miro.medium.com/max/60/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC?q=20", "https://miro.medium.com/max/1142/0*fDHbApPhOcF8jTAc"], "movies": [], "text": "How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings Caitlin Johnstone Follow Aug 27 \u00b7 6 min read\n\nThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our government-funded media outlet, has published an article titled \u201cAustralian expat living in Hong Kong throws off business suit to join protest movement\u201d. The entire story is in the headline: some random guy, who ABC keeps anonymous but for the name \u201cDaniel\u201d, has joined the protests in Hong Kong. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s the whole entire bombshell newsworthy news story.\n\n\u201cIn Australia we have proper democracy but in Hong Kong, democracy is being slowly eroded away and I\u2019ll try to do whatever I can to try and help the cause,\u201d the anonymous guy told ABC.\n\nThis sort of enthusiastic empty non-story cheerleading is typical for western media coverage of the Hong Kong protests so far, while these same media outlets consistently ignore or downplay protests against the government of France, Israel, Honduras, India, Indonesia and any other region that happens to fall within the US-centralized power alliance. It\u2019s an amazingly reliable pattern: the entire western political/media class finds protests and uprisings endlessly fascinating when they are in opposition to governments which haven\u2019t yet been absorbed into the imperial blob like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, pre-collapse Libya, or then-Moscow-aligned Ukraine, but any protests or uprisings within that empire are ignored at best or demonized at worst.\n\nIf dissidents in the United States began donning yellow vests and holding aggressive demonstrations in the current media environment, you could safely bet your bottom dollar that they would be ignored for as long as possible and then smeared as fascists, antisemites and/or Russian pawns thereafter. This would happen with absolute certainty.\n\nThis very reliable trend in the western media is very interesting, because it also happens to be the known position of the US State Department.\n\nIn 2017 a memo was leaked to Politico in which the sniveling John Bolton lackey Brian Hook explained to DC neophyte Rex Tillerson how to perform his job as Secretary of State with regard to human rights violations. Hook explained that the US government must downplay and ignore the human rights violations of US allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Philippines while aggressively targeting unabsorbed governments like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea for any allegations of human rights violations on their part.\n\n\u201cIn the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights,\u201d Hook explained in the memo.\n\n\u201cOne useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently \u2014 and better \u2014 than adversaries,\u201d Hook wrote. \u201cOtherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies. The classic dilemma of balancing ideals and interests is with regard to America\u2019s allies. In relation to our competitors, there is far less of a dilemma. We do not look to bolster America\u2019s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.\u201d\n\nThis State Department memo is really all you need to understand what\u2019s going on whenever there\u2019s any kind of uprising or conflict in a foreign nation. Hell, it\u2019s almost all you need to understand the dynamics of empire in general. And, combined with the consistent pattern we\u2019ve seen in coverage of protests and uprisings against empire-absorbed governments versus unabsorbed ones, it certainly tells you all you need to know about the state of the western media.\n\nIn theory the US Department of State was meant to serve as a counterpart to what was then called the Department of War (later falsely re-titled the \u201cDepartment of Defense\u201d). In theory the State Department was meant to specialize in peace and diplomacy in the same way the War Department specialized in war. In practice the warmongers just got two war departments.\n\nUnderstand this one basic concept and you can understand all the hot topic foreign policy issues of any given day: there is an alliance of nations, centralized around US military and economic power, which effectively functions as a single empire. This empire works tirelessly to either absorb unabsorbed governments into its blob, or at least to undermine and marginalize them so they can\u2019t impede the empire\u2019s growth. The goal of the empire is total global domination without causing a nuclear war and without the public noticing that they\u2019re living in an empire. In this sense it\u2019s essentially a silent, slow motion third world war.\n\nI see some of my readers voicing confusion about the protests in Hong Kong, but if you understand the basic dynamic I just described you\u2019ll see that this is really no different from the protests and uprisings we\u2019ve seen in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Libya and Ukraine: the western political/media class are backing an uprising which benefits the imperial blob and undermines an unabsorbed government. This doesn\u2019t mean that the protesters don\u2019t have grievances or that none of those grievances are legitimate, it just means that you\u2019re being told to cheerlead for an agenda by empire narrative managers solely because your doing so benefits that empire.\n\nSo don\u2019t. Refuse to be a pro bono CIA propagandist. This doesn\u2019t mean you need to oppose the protesters in Hong Kong, Venezuela or anywhere else, it just means that the only people who benefit from westerners cheerleading a CIA-approved uprising against an unabsorbed government are your rulers, who work endlessly to manufacture support for pro-empire agendas.\n\nPeople who don\u2019t get this sometimes tell me that we should \u201csupport\u201d the protesters in a given unabsorbed region, but they\u2019re always very reluctant to say what they mean by \u201csupport\u201d. Do they mean simply joining the western mass media in uncritically cheerleading for an uprising which benefits western power structures? Do they mean send them money? Weapons? An emotional thumbs-up? Prayers? Getting someone to say what they mean when they say we should \u201csupport\u201d the Hong Kong protesters or whomever is like pulling teeth, because it would bring up a lot of cognitive dissonance to actually turn and examine what\u2019s behind the impulse they\u2019re following: narrative management. They\u2019re promoting pro-empire narrative management, and nothing more. And they\u2019re doing this because the empire narrative managers trained them to.\n\n\u201cCentrist\u201d empire loyalists tend to ignore the protests in places like France while amplifying and cheerleading the protests in places like Hong Kong. Right-wing empire loyalists sometimes do it a little differently, actively conflating the Yellow Vests protests with protests in places like Hong Kong despite the very different forces that are at play in those two situations. But in both cases they\u2019re effectively mirroring the same State Department posture that Brian Hook tried to educate into Rex Tillerson in 2017.\n\nDon\u2019t subject yourself to such indignities. If the political/media class is going to propagandize the masses into supporting the advancement of the agendas of the empire, at least make them do it without your help.\n\n___________________________\n\nThe best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I\u2019m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I\u2019ve written) in any way they like free of charge.\n\nBitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": [""], "tags": ["Media Criticism", "News", "Hong Kong", "Politics", "Propaganda"], "authors": ["Caitlin Johnstone"], "publish_date": "Tue Aug 27 01:39:39 2019", "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our government-funded media outlet, has published an article titled \u201cAustralian expat living in Hong Kong throws off business suit to join protest movement\u201d\u2026", "meta_lang": "en", "meta_favicon": "https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/fit/c/152/152/1*8I-HPL0bfoIzGied-dzOvA.png", "meta_data": {"viewport": "width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1", "theme-color": "#000000", "twitter": {"app": {"name": {"iphone": "Medium"}, "id": {"iphone": 828256236}, "url": {"iphone": "medium://p/1ecb7fa42ba4"}}, "title": "How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings", "site": "@Medium", "description": "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our government-funded media outlet, has published an article titled \u201cAustralian expat living in\u2026", "image": {"src": "https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC"}, "card": "summary_large_image", "label1": "Reading time", "data1": "6 min read"}, "al": {"ios": {"app_name": "Medium", "app_store_id": 828256236, "url": "medium://p/1ecb7fa42ba4"}, "android": {"package": "com.medium.reader", "url": "medium://p/1ecb7fa42ba4", "app_name": "Medium"}, "web": {"url": "https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-make-sense-of-foreign-protests-conflicts-and-uprisings-1ecb7fa42ba4"}}, "fb": {"app_id": 542599432471018}, "og": {"site_name": "Medium", "type": "article", "title": "How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings", "description": "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our government-funded media outlet, has published an article titled \u201cAustralian expat living in\u2026", "url": "https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-make-sense-of-foreign-protests-conflicts-and-uprisings-1ecb7fa42ba4", "image": "https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/0*2Cvh1LJzkcjxIETC"}, "article": {"published_time": "2019-08-27T01:39:39.390Z", "author": "https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone"}, "title": "How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings", "apple-itunes-app": "app-id=828256236,app-argument=medium://p/1ecb7fa42ba4", "description": "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our government-funded media outlet, has published an article titled \u201cAustralian expat living in Hong Kong throws off business suit to join protest movement\u201d\u2026", "author": "Caitlin Johnstone", "robots": "index,follow", "referrer": "unsafe-url", "parsely-post-id": "1ecb7fa42ba4"}, "canonical_link": "https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-make-sense-of-foreign-protests-conflicts-and-uprisings-1ecb7fa42ba4"}