SOCIAL MEDIA AND PROPAGANDA ARE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORDS

Propaganda is a double-edged sword. With propaganda, there is a risk that you go on believing your own message. Though wishful thinking about the New World Order is on both sides of the ongoing war in Ukraine, one wonders if the western world media can wish away the Russians from the face of the earth? Let's start with the roughest example of all time: Adolf Hitler. Before the war against the Soviet Union in 1941, he promised: “We just need to kick in the door and the whole rotten building will collapse”.

Sorry, it was a misjudgment that cost over thirty million lives, including the Führer himself. The Nazis had swallowed their own pride and myths about sub-humans and super humans. The strategy was adapted for the indoctrination of the masses of people, no matter how delusional it was.

Since February 24, 2022, the United States has been reiterating that Russia is internationally isolated. The Biden administration insists on this so frequently that they have begun to believe it themselves. Unfortunately, the situation in the world today is different. The Western World media propaganda cannot just wish away the Russians from the face of the earth. However, the disturbing possible unintended consequence is that America and her NATO allies may push the world into another war of attrition as it happened in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where nuclear bombs were dropped with dire consequences.

Clearly, today’s political situation is not like the one during the Second World War when Nazis German propaganda was effective but was easily recognizable. However, today the internet and social media continuously feed us with lies and heavy disinformation. And the public delightfully consumes them and continuously asks for more. Slyly, the online algorithms are like a siren which attracts and leads users further and further into a fantasy world. At the same time the western world follows the tradition of mistaking its own values to be universal. Most of the world's population has refrained from taking a partisan stand in this ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.

In America, since the deadly riot on Jan 6th, 2021, both Democrats and Republicans have differed sharply on such event, suggesting that the political system is about to break down. The Republican Party exhibits a behavior resembling a religious hysteria with former President Donald Trump as its high priest. Without the internet and social media, such a thing would not have been possible.

Most recently, at the UN General Assembly, votes were cast on a resolution to condemn Russian aggression against Ukraine. Although 141 countries voted yes, giant countries such as China and India and other states like South Africa, Vietnam and Iraq did not support the resolution to condemn Russia. Together, the no votes represented significantly more people than the people in the anti-Putin alliance in the World body. In short, in Asia, many countries are looking up to China, whose support is indispensable for Moscow.

This war is putting the current world order to a test. Much will depend on whether the Ukrainians can continue to defend themselves. After all, despite the high-sounding words and pledges of support from western countries, the United States' failed wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria do not inspire confidence in its credibility.

We read about massive demands from the Western World media for what appears to be a one-sided concern for the ICC to investigate alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Sadly, the same Western media have never demanded the ICC to investigate war crimes they are alleged to have committed in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. The United Stats’s call for an ICC investigation of war crimes in Ukraine sounds dishonest. After all, the USA is not even a signatory to the Rome Convention that created the ICC.

The big question is whether the urgent call to investigate Human Rights Abuses and War Crimes is a matter of skin color? If so, it means that most of the noise about the ongoing political tragedies in Ukraine may be perceived as nothing but hypocrisy. The disturbing thing is that it is the Western media which are mostly the source of information. They, ad nauseam, report to us what they want us to hear often quoting their so-called intelligence sources.

Meanwhile, Western media bring out many of their retired generals to explain whatever they want their public to hear. At the end of the day, those retired military generals are not raising issues of arming of civilians by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his cahoots to fight Russian troops with Molotov cocktail improvised incendiary firebombs. Unfortunately, that makes them become combatants. Let us be clear. War is not a picnic, and it will never be!