First, USSA stands for what has become of America over the past thirty years of leftist grooming of a new fourth – and most powerful – branch of government: the federal bureaucracy. United Socialist States of America: USSA. As we have witnessed over the past three weeks, its purpose seems totalitarian in nature. That purpose has become stark of late: resisting all expressed intentions of the electorate. In other words, acting as the avowed enemy of DEMOCRACY; all while projecting on its critics the title “threats to democracy.” USSA’s lapdog corporate media has degenerated into a cesspool of senseless, baseless, and ill-intended smears against the most high profile representatives of the people’s will to return the USSA to the United States of America.
What has this got to do with Elon Musk? He was advertised by President Trump to be his planned appointee to spearhead the dismantling of unconstitutional, national bankruptcy creating, populace stifling federal institutional power responsible for bringing America to its knees. In other words restoring the USSA to the USA. The populace overwhelmingly voted for just that. (taking into consideration the unprecedented levels of illegal alien ballot stuffing, the margin of victory for Trump in 2024 was also unprecedented).
You might have expected the media to promote that role and its agenda. After all, less than four years ago the corporate media characterized Elon Musk as literally a super hero, a messiah, a Midas, a prophet and the Edison of our times. Here that is in black and white:
“Elon Musk, the real-life Tony Stark, is not just building electric cars or reusable rockets; he’s engineering the future itself.” – Time Magazine, 2021
“The world’s richest man is also its most visionary, a genius who dreams of Mars while revolutionizing Earth.” – The New York Times, 2020
“Musk is the Edison of our time, a titan of industry whose innovations will save humanity.” – CNN, 2019
“From Tesla to SpaceX, Elon Musk is the golden child of tech, a Midas whose every touch turns to progress.” – Forbes, 2021
“He’s not just a CEO; he’s a messiah for the tech age, leading us to a sustainable, multi-planetary utopia.” – The Guardian, 2020
CNN: “Elon Musk is the Edison of our time, a titan of industry whose innovations will save humanity.” – 2019
Bloomberg: “Elon Musk, the billionaire dreamer, is reshaping industries from cars to space, a modern-day Icarus who soars ever closer to the sun.” – 2021
The Wall Street Journal: “Musk’s vision is nothing short of biblical: a man who builds arks for Earth and beyond, a prophet of profit and progress.” – 2020
While continuing to do all that Musk was hailed for, he also restored the First Amendment to America by purchasing (at a tremendous personal loss) the most important social media platform in the world. In taking control of that entity, he exposed the USSA’s propaganda and censorship efforts through that vehicle, and restored the 1st Amendment’s freedom of speech and press by reform of the platform. That is what soured the propaganda and censorship dependent USSA. From CNN to Washington Post, from New York Times to CBS, the corporate media started characterizing the greatest agent of restoration of democracy as a “threat to democracy.” Despite industrial scale, coordinated corporate media smearing – only ever surpassed by what they did to Trump – the American public voted in November to have Trump bring in Musk to reform the United States Government like he had with what he turned into the most important news vehicle on the planet (X, formerly known as Twitter).
Within a week, Musk had exposed literally trillions of dollars of taxpayer monies not only being wasted but also being used to fund programs inimical to the interests of those paying taxes. See e.g. USAID, CIA, and the Truman Show Revealed.
His mission was made pre-school simple and clarion clear pre-election and post-election. For example:
And yet now, corporate media has become one gigantic cacophony – from CBS to CNN, from Washington Post to New York Times, from Time Magazine to Bloomberg – claiming the man they tried to convince us was the actual second coming instead is worse than a Russian Oligarch, Hitler actually.
You cannot distrust the corporate media and its USSA masters enough. The closer their gig comes to ending the more violently insane they become.
More on USAID, the CIA black ops and DNC grift bank, that spends a great deal of your tax money on evil and waste. Yeah, the audit of which leading democrats are attempting to cause an insurrection over.
From Mike Benz, today’s foremost whistleblower/researcher on government corruption:
Before you look at the next one, reminder. Politico was the “news” outlet that Joe Biden’s people chose to release the phony-CIA-created story that the Hunter Biden laptop (documenting Biden’s multi million dollar grift in the pay of the Chinese and Ukrainians) was a creation of Russian intelligence:
Are you seeing much of these facts in your corporate media coverage of numbskull, corrupt politicians screaming that the end of the world is neigh because we are finally going to get a US government audit? Of course not, your taxpayer dollars are going toward paying corporate media NOT to show you the facts. Here is what corporate media is showing vs. what they didn’t show you during the last three major, mishandled natural disasters:
The deep-state, corporate media Cult is coming full-tilt-boogie for your mind. Their latest pearl-clutching, chicken-little, fear-mongering tantrum is over Musk’s alleged “end-of-democracy-causing” peek into the workings of the CIA’s primary, illegal front operation, USAID. It also happens to be one of the greatest evil drains upon your hard-won tax dollars. If you rely solely on the corporate media and its adherents – for your info on this matter, and other current affairs for that matter – your mind is not your own. It has been captured by a CULT. If you wish to remain comfortably numb and brainwashed you are a click away from your return to the Matrix. If you want to get a first dose of the waking up process, watch, listen to and read the following five items as a primer:
“There is no USAID project on God’s green earth that is honest.”
Former State Dept. official @mikebenzcyber exposes how the U.S. uses USAID to topple foreign governments and covertly influence other countries: pic.twitter.com/AaAd80G5j3
On January 20th the White House took the first step toward the restoration of the lost right to freedom of speech in America (the sole purpose of this blog during the entire year of 2024). Here is the exact text of the order:
FEDERAL CENSORSHIP
EXECUTIVE ORDER
January 20, 2025
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose.The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference. Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
(c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and
(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.
(b) The Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies, shall investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years that are inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings of the report.
Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 20, 2025.
Would you like to see a simple, graphic sum up of all you need to know about corporate media and their deep-security state bosses? Look no further than CNN’s headline response to the free speech executive order:
“Disinformation experts blast Trump’s executive order on government censorship as ‘direct assault on reality’“
No matter how much you distrust and dislike corporate media, you do not distrust or dislike them enough.
If you saw Mark Zuckerberg on The Joe Rogan Experience last week you would know that he blew the whistle on the Biden administration’s extreme propaganda/censorship enforcement measures taken against Facebook. (Joe Rogan Experience). Zuckerberg gave a very detailed account on how the administration and its agencies cajoled, bullied and threatened Facebook into becoming essentially a house organ of the Deep State and its current party of choice, the Democratic National Committee. Tens of millions of listeners (far more than the audiences of all cable network stations combined) were so educated. Many sighs of relief were issued when Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook was terminating the services of “fact checking” organizations through whom the Biden regime carried out its propaganda and censorship activity.
Some were not so sanguine. The news was received like an earthquake at the Poynter Institute of Media Studies in St. Petersburg Florida (see, Meet the Censors). Its International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) head, Angie Holon, called an “emergency meeting” of the network to discuss the implications of Zuckerberg’s bombshell. Holon told Business Insider that Zuckerberg had created a somber and frustrated mood among IFCN fact checkers. No surprise since IFCN had previously reported that Facebook was its “predominant revenue stream.” Holon told BI, “This is bad news for the financial sustainability of fact-checking journalism. (read censorship)”
The news and IFCN’s reaction demonstrates that but for government strong arming, there is no market for censorship services. The corporate media, with the immediate sharp precision of a Nazi soldier jackknife spin move, turned on Zuckerberg like a pack of jackals. Take Mikey Bloomberg’s state propaganda rag. Less than a month ago Bloomberg devoted huge amounts of space to promote the alleged brilliance, power and humanity of Zuckerberg. See e.g. the video homage that was centerpiece of the promotion: Bloomberg on Zuckerberg. Yet, three weeks later on the day after Zuckerberg’s Rogan interview, Bloomberg proclaimed the following:
One of the things that makes Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg something of a comic figure in the tech world is that there’s no one in Silicon Valley—and maybe no other domain, save Hollywood—who’s as invested in conveying authenticity while also being so nakedly inauthentic.
With the snap of a censorship-dependent oligarch’s fingers, one promoted as a God-like figure is condemned as a disciple of Satan. Upon Elon Musk purchasing of Twitter and turning it into the last bastion of free speech, Bloomberg set up a podcast “Elon Inc” and commenced to smear him literally on a daily basis. So, the second one reveals oneself as supportive of the United States Bill of Rights one becomes targeted for vicious treatment as a non-person by state-controlled corporate media. Remember this lesson, for your own well-being and integrity. It also sets up the moral of the coming multi-part series: Scientology and the Deep State.
If you relied solely upon corporate media for your information, you would most likely be shocked and terrified to the core by last week’s election result. After all, you would have been plied for many months with hoax after hoax claiming Trump is Hitler literally and Harris is Joy literally. You would have bought into the narrative that Harris leads a ‘razor close’ race. You would have ‘known’ that if somehow Trump squeaked out a win, he would handily lose the popular vote, justifying all manner of quasi-legal and illegal resistance to his administration. Like the J 6 committee persecutor Jamie Raskin’s decertification promise, Raskin Revolt. You think that punk has got the balls to try that stunt now?
So, what does a landslide popular vote mandate for Trump tell you about what the media has been telling you for the past eight years? I guarantee you this: if you have a sliver of a conscience and a hair of intellectual honesty your learning will be at PHD levels compared to the corporate media.
One of the most amazing facts of the past eight years has been corporate media’s (including its left leaning government sponsors) complete lack of self-inspection. A very well researched book by one of America’s premiere investigative journalists released in early 2017 graphically demonstrated the need for such reflection (See, Enemy of the People) Matt Taibbi, the author of Insane Ass Clown President, was known then as a left-leaning muckracker. Taibbi ably demonstrated that Trump won in 2016 primarily because he unapologetically declared corporate media as the enemy of the people because of its unswerving allegiance to preserving the American autocracy and attacking any dissent like a pack of starving wolves. Seven years have passed and Taibbi’s hoped-for media self-examination (despite much nudging by Taibbi himself) never came. Instead of examining what the losers and the media got wrong in 2016, they stepped up the demonization of their perceived enemies and idealization of their own losing political agenda.
Corporate media became so censorship/propaganda directed during the 2016-2024 election cycles that an increasing public thirst for facts and truth led to the rise of a grassroots online citizen media. By 2024 that alternative media far eclipsed corporate media’s reach. For example, former Fox host Tucker Carlson (fired for his increasingly populist oriented shows) opened shop online and soon was netting over 50 million viewers for premiere interviews – some reaching super bowl-like figures – numbers the networks are lucky to get even for a presidential debate. Joe Rogan regularly attracts tens of millions of listeners to his interviews. CNN by comparison is lucky to hit ½ a million in any given evening prime time.
Libertarian political commentator Dave Smith recently summed up the feelings of regular Americans toward corporate media on the Joe Rogan Experience.
After the election, conservative pundit Matt Walsh declared: “Legacy media is officially dead. Their ability to set the narrative has been destroyed. Trump declared war on the media in 2016. Tonight he vanquished them completely. They will never be relevant again.”
Is Walsh right? If the media were capable of the self-examination and correction that Matt Taibbi encouraged seven years ago, perhaps Walsh overestimates.
Scott Jennings, the one counterbalancing conservative voice at CNN, put the question to the beast directly to its face:
"This election is something of an indictment on the political information complex. The story that was portrayed was not true. We were just ignoring the fundamentals."
Scott Jennings does a flawless job taking down an entire panel of woke CNN hosts. pic.twitter.com/w2eBJeTi6E
On the immediate heels of the election there was but one indication I could find, and I looked, that the corporate media might have learned a lesson. Here is a violently anti-Trump propagandist having a three-minute Freudian slip of sorts:
After getting absolutely dominated last night in the election, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough admits that wokeness and pushing the trans agenda killed the Democrats electorally. pic.twitter.com/Iss0li59VM
But Joe couldn’t even make it through the same show without reverting to the race-bait grift, now blaming the alleged “misogyny” of Black and Latino men for the Democrat party woes:
"Latinos are racist, blacks are sexist"
I'm starting to think Democrats want people to fight each other based on race, gender, religion, intact genitals — anything, really 🤔 https://t.co/ZN7dAIhsgJ
Think about that one for a second. America’s number one race-baiting grifter Al Sharpton calling Black and Latino men misogynist by their very nature. It doesn’t get any more patently racist than that. And, yet the cognitive dissonance factory keeps on spewing its intellectually toxic waste.
Looking inward was by far the exception and not the rule for the corporate media.
Upon declaring Trump the winner of the 2024 election the New York Times immediately regressed to chaos and terror peddling to its now confirmed minority following.
The Times gravely announced “AMERICA HIRES A STRONGMAN: This was the conquering of the nation not by force but by permission. Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style or governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”
The Times then recorded its “top” opinion columnists to vent their Ivy league, grotesquely detached opinions that Trump winning = the “end of democracy.” (Note, kudos to the inimitable Walter Kirn for his witty, ironic commentary in the X post):
Feels like a pharma ad for a timed-release sedative, Editex Long-Acting. Helps adjust the brain to life indoors, muting the dopamine & adrenal surges that sometimes cause an urge to open a window or spin around wildly in one's desk chair
The Times cannot lie straight in bed. The experts in gaslighting tell you that never in America’s 250-year history have we face the coming autocratic rule; neatly omitting the very “autocrat” they rail against was President less than four years ago. The pearl-clutching character of the Times’ top talent is embarrassing.
NBC’s Insane-asylum bait Rachel Madcow was front and center for her deep-state sponsors, using the exact same coordinated term declaring that a democratic mandate of the electorate was a determination of a new form of government: “STRONGMAN AUTHORITARIAN” rule:
Maddow: "Americans just voted to end our multi-racial pluralistic democracy." pic.twitter.com/xyyaYn4dgY
After the leftist honchos at New York Time and NBC pushed out the “Strongman” deep state talking points, the rest began screaming in unison for CENSORSHIP. State sponsored PROPAGANDA marched lockstep to promote CENSORSHIP.
The witches at The View were back to attempting to terrorize women, while demanding censorship:
Biden’s White House spokesperson Psaki demanded we turn full blown East Germany:
We saw this exact same thing in 2016. When Democrats lose, they immediately start creating lists of people to blame for their loss, and it always includes everyone other than themselves and their own ideology.
CNN laments the Rogan and Musk efforts to restore the 1st Amendment:
These people are the most self-deluded, pompous and ignorant on the planet, and fully deserve all the hatred and distrust they've earned.
They're going to sit there and pretend that there's no pro-Dem part of the media the way the right has — when everyone knows they are it. https://t.co/IoVyxDlB8t
Joes Scarborough loses his mind ranting about censoring “disinformation”, while spewing bucket loads himself:
It would appear that corporate media has decided it will not or perhaps cannot change. They are acting like the financial slaves of oligarchic forces much more powerful than themselves. However, those forces face a financial conundrum. A definite majority of the country voted in defiance of corporate media’s narratives and dictates. Clearly more than half the country doesn’t give a whit what corporate media broadcasts day in and day out. To the degree that that majority sustains itself and increases, so too increases the necessity for financial sponsors to redirect their financials resources to channels that reach that majority.
As long as we live in a somewhat free market economy, the oligarchs holding the most chips are going to have to be the first to have a change of heart. And it will be financial reasons that force them to, not ideological . There have been glimmerings of shifts in views of oligarchs like Bezos and Zuckerberg lately – but only after others cleared the way and helped remove potential financial disincentives. If the government cannot nationalize social media and its citizen independent media and thereby control our minds directly with censorship and propaganda the money cannot sustainably continue to flow in the direction of censorship/propaganda outlets.
The free market financial incentive above is diametrically opposed by the big government gravy train D.C. blob (that is millions of federal employees, Military-Industrial-complex, vast non-government organizations (NGO) taxpayer-funded networks). It is utterly dependent upon the Censorship/propaganda industrial complex for its continued existence. It will be a Godzilla vs. King Kong colossal knock-down, drag-out struggle between the two with Trump in office. The government-state economy vs. the free-market economy. If the former wins there will be increasing censorship/propaganda from here on out. Should the latter prevail, the Bill of Rights has a chance.
The ultimate answer to the original question “is corporate media dead?” will be determined by a single factor. It is highlighted by an exchange Scientology’s leader once had with a couple of corporate news reporters. They asked him to define power. He replied that power is determined solely on the basis of whether folks listen to whoever it is that attempts to control affairs. So it will go with corporate media. It is dead to the degree the exodus of erstwhile viewers continues to grow. So far, so good: see. Exodus from Corporate Media post election.
The purpose of this blog since March was to advocate making restoration of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, particularly its free speech and press provisions, a central issue in the 2024 Presidential election. (see e.g. Keeping It Simple In 2024)
Hopefully, we have made a step forward. In the meantime, with corporate media’s death-throes-like desperate appeals for censorship measures, it will do us good to recall from whence we came. America’s premiere censorship/propaganda expert/whistleblower/educator Mike Benz sums it up best. In the course of doing so, he answers a question lingering for many today: how on earth were so many votes cast in 2020 for a party that did not even bother to hit the campaign trail, as compared to four years later when virtually every celebrity on the planet pimped non-stop for its candidate?
Brace yourselves for 'TOO BIG TO RIG,' where we don't just expose; we name names. We reveal how the unelected, deep state bureaucrats, hidden behind the veil of NGOs, rigged the 2020 election, with the mainstream media acting as their mouthpiece. Wake up, America! It's time to… pic.twitter.com/baCPsqHn68
In the spring of 1959 Edward Hunter, an intelligence agent posing as a journalist, described to a Senate committee the discovery of a then-unknown technique called “mind attack” – a method for changing people’s minds to make them love things they once hated and/or hate things they once loved. Mind attack (or mind control) tactics were further exposed in the 1970’s by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology and a former U.S. naval office familiar with intelligence techniques. He published an essay in the 1970s that warned of a dastardly government intelligence trick of thought control through censorship and propaganda. He suggested the Intelligence Community (IC) had been utilizing this method for years and that unchecked it could have detrimental effects on society. The technique was propaganda execution by way of redefining words (Orwellian Newspeak if you will). At that very time, Scientology was a recognized religion and was in the process of being redefined by Big Pharma and the IC as a ‘cult’. With that label comes suspension of civil rights and human liberties. Because it wasn’t other folks’ ox being obviously gored, few paid attention to the process but accepted the result. If you look you will learn that such techniques are being applied far more broadly today. Unless the level of state media and internet control is reversed, some of our most important societal leaders will ultimately be dismissed as quacks and cult members. Central to the operation is propaganda by redefinition of words.
The Neo Liberal Orders’ Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex (CPIC) is playing out George Orwell’s 1984 by implementing Newspeak. In 1984 Newspeak sums up as WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Today we add to the lexicon, PLUTOCRACY IS DEMOCRACY, CENSORSHIP IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH, VIOLENCE/VANDALISM IS LAW/ORDER.
Many are seeing this, including heads of the sovereign states remaining defiant against the Neo Liberal Order push for global autocratic rule. Here is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban alerting to it earlier this year:
“In the past the communists employed a five-step procedure to subjugate us by stealth. Now the progressives are emulating them. With these five steps they are turning the organs of the state into tools of oppression.
First, they reformulate norms. George Orwell saw this, and described it thus: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” The first step in the progressive liberals’ program of oppression is to take a norm and give it the precisely opposite meaning. “War is peace” is something that progressives also say today. “Peace facility”: this is the name of the Brussels financial fund from which they send the most destructive weapons to the front. “Migration is a resource”, they say—while crime rises, the threat of terrorism increases, and trust is drained from our societies.”
A lot of this sinister word play is already firmly entrenched in the corporate media and organized education in America. For example, a couple years ago we were overwhelmed with scare tactics to drop objections to the Biden Administration’s INFLATION REDUCTION ACT. Yet, since its shotgun passage, inflation has continued to be a scourge to all but the top .1 %. To those in the know, the result was obvious since the bill accelerated already out of control government spending. Recently a former Federal Reserve Bank governor was asked what can we possibly do to scale back runaway inflation. His only answer was to reign in the INFLATION REDUCTION ACT. I other words, what the establishment serves to us as the solution, in fact is the problem Propaganda by redefinition of words at work. You see government stooges (from New Times columnists to all network talking head “experts”) scolding the masses that they can’t get it through their thick skulls “Bidenomics is killing it”, while increasing portions of the population go under to rising inflation and fewer job advancement opportunities.
Today Big Brother, through its CPIC, is literally peddling STUPIDITY IS LITERACY. And they are coming for your children. The government is doing it through Orwellian titled “media literacy” programs. They are designed to inculcate school children with the idea that the only true information is Big Brother authorized information. In other words, discouraging curiosity, exploration, research, and critical thinking. They are trying to force kids to accept information only from the folks who tell them that they must agree to the INFLATION REDUCTION ACT while its implementation eats away their paychecks with more spiraling inflation. They are telling them that the only truth is what they are fed through government agencies, or their fully controlled news organs, to wit, Wikipedia, and the “legacy” or “mainstream” corporate media.
It is spreading like a cancer. Preeminent CPIC expert Mike Benz explains:
Hence, Ignorance is Literacy.
Remember the NLO (New Liberal Order) intelligentsia’s constant lament a few years ago: “how are we ever going to progress if we don’t agree on the facts?” (as they see them of course). Thus, the rise of the CPIC. Censorship and Propaganda in unprecedented quantities notwithstanding, the NLO still can’t control minds sufficiently to stay in power. Thus, the need to reprogram our minds by rewriting the very language we’ve slowly and surely developed and become accustomed to over the past 10,000 years. At what point does enough become enough?
The other 4 Steps of modern-day mind control that Prime Minister Orban refers to above are also instructive:
The second step is to use the instruments of the state to start spreading this inverted normality. Anyone who thinks otherwise is problematic: there is something wrong with them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either ignorant or insane. The perception must be created that listening to them would lead to some fatal catastrophe.
Then comes the third step, when they spread the word that because you hold dangerous views, you are also a security risk. They set some sort of fact-checker or democracy watchdog on you, and it is established that you do not share the views of normality that they preach, and that therefore you are a radical whose freedom of speech they need not hesitate to restrict.
Then, in the fourth step, they incite the liberal press to attack you. Activists are mobilized, and then you are silenced through litigation. This leads to the sphere of fake depictions of you on the internet, denunciation on social media, and a horde of civil society entities bombarding the courts and state bodies with accusations against you.
And if you survive all that, the fifth step is for state bodies to spring into action. They have received so many complaints and accusations that they are obliged to investigate you. This is how public bodies become the private institutions of the progressives. They find that the accusations in the media and the concerns of the watchdogs are well founded, they indict you, and in the end state bodies are used to silence you. This is what they do to Hungary in Brussels, and this is what they do to conservatives in progressive liberal European capitals. The same thing is happening in the United States, where court proceedings are being used to try to remove President Donald Trump from the ballot. This is what happened in the European Union when they tried to use administrative procedures to impose a travel ban on Tucker Carlson. It is happening in Germany, where political parties are being monitored by the intelligence services. And it happened in Finland, when they wanted to prosecute a politician and a bishop for quoting Scripture.
As it happens Orban turns out to be pretty accurate. What he did not predict was what comes next when all of the above doesn’t work. Well, we have now seen that too.
After the United States government (with its compliant corporate media) applied steps 1-5 above toward front-running candidate, former-president Donald Trump, they tried to murder him in cold blood on national television:
Two months later, with virtually no accountability assumed for its abject failures during the first assassination attempt, they tried again:
The first assassin had unexplained connections to the FBI: First Assassin .
The second assassin had unexplained connections to the CIA:
One could call these connections ‘conspiracy theories’, but that would be incorrect. They are far more concrete and factual than any explanation (or lack thereof) that government agencies have provided on the assassination attempts to date.
Acting like a third world banana republic dictatorship, the United States government and its lapdog corporate media has all but buried the stories of back to back assassination attempts on President Trump, while they continue to promote further attempts.
On the eve of perhaps the most hotly contested Presidential election in United States history, what is next?
The grand inquisitor of the infamous congressional J6 committee (Jamie Raskin) promises to deny the will of the people should they favor Trump on election day. Consequently, he contends the D.C. oligarchy is preparing for “Civil War conditions” (by the way difficult to find on Youtube or Bing videos):
Never mind that Raskin promises to do what he and the corporate media falsely tried and convicted Trump of in the J6 show trials. All of this hypocritical hocus pocus is possible only in an Orwellian world where the very definitions of words are fungible, depending on one’s political beliefs or affiliation. Should the left lose and CIA rent-a-riot squads take to the streets (ala summer of 2020, BLM/Antifa) extreme property destruction and violence will be called “mostly peaceful demonstrations.” Should the left lose, if there is any completely peaceable conservative acts of protest the corporate media will call them “violent insurrection.” In the official D.C. vernacular Insurrection will become Law and Order and vice versa depending on which train of thought prevails.
To ensure that both sides of the aisle are equally incensed come election day, corporate media has come up with a far-fetched, pearl-clutching theory. On the eve of the election the New York Times (flanked by the Washington Post) issued a heavily promoted “story” that declared that conservatives expressing doubt of the fairness of the 2020 election undermines public confidence in the 2024 election. They conclude such views should have been censored by YouTube and because they were not, the 2024 election has somehow been compromised.
No matter what side you are on, brace yourself. Big Brother’s colossal mismanagement of affairs guarantees that whichever side loses will believe and behave as if it were cheated.
Alex Gibney sets his sights on bringing down Elon Musk
Alex Gibney seems to be fond of rushing to comply with oligarchy-friendly deadlines. He is reported to be feverishly attempting to get a major smear on Elon Musk released before the November election. Musk is the last bastion of free speech and press in America and believes President Trump is particularly motivated to restore those rights. Musk’s support might be Trump’s strongest chance of success. Thus, the oligarchy has clear motivation for taking Musk out of the running. Gibney has a history of delivering October surprises against Trump in particular; populists being anathema to continued oligarchy rule. If Gibney doesn’t make the deadline you can count on him leading the First-Amendment-burning pack post election.
In October 2020 Gibney rushed out his hit piece on Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic. After it helped serve the oligarchy’s purpose of defeating Trump, virtually all of its major premises were proven utterly false (see Whistleblower Character Assassin). Gibney as much as admitted his motivations in a “progressive” love fest with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: “It [Trump Pandemic hit] was intended to come out just before the election of 2020 as a referendum on Trump’s handling of the COVID crisis.”
Gibney’s documentary series Enemies: The President, Justice and the FBI came out (November 2018) a few months before Special Prosecutor Muller’s report on the Russia Hoax (April 2019). In context, Gibney’s work looks like a patent attempt to influence the outcome of the investigation. It is a four-episode series. Gibney had some lackies at his production company direct the first three episodes. Those segments view like an FBI recruitment film. They are thoroughly left-leaning propaganda pieces exalting the FBI as a democracy-saving institution time and again. Gibney has his boys position the FBI as superior to the office to which its charter makes it serve at the pleasure of: the Presidency. It is pure autocratic propaganda (in the East German and Soviet traditions) in that it elevates the bureaucracy (read politburo) over the will of the people. Even elected Presidents must bow at the altar of the unelected deep state. Gibney gives a new meaning to shallow in using the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals to serve as narratives for his conclusion: FBI career men equal good, elected Republican Presidents equal evil. All the while he continually – almost by subliminal deception – associates Trump to the alleged sins of Nixon and Reagan (as if they are the same corrupt being occupying three separate bodies). By this technique Gibney murders history, turning scoundrels into saints and turning populists into satans.
Once this us vs. them, cowboys vs. indians simplistic look at history is established, Gibney takes over the reins to personally direct the final segment: a no-holds-barred WWE-like attempted take down of President Trump.
Gibney ham-fistedly pounds on his designated enemy while genuflecting at the feet of his deep state benefactors. Perhaps even worse than former communist bloc propaganda, within months of its release the events it reports as inevitable turns of history prove to be 180 degree opposite to reality (some of the commie prop took decades to discredit). Eventually, virtually every major thesis of Gibney’s propaganda is found to be erroneous in one definitive, authoritative report (see REPORT ON MATTERS RELATED TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS ARISING OUT OF THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS). This 100% discreditation of the foundation of the documentary is precisely what occurred with Gibney’s COVID-19 character assassination attempt, see Big Brother Storyteller II.
Enemies liberally uses a now well-worn propaganda technique that Gibney apparently stole from a couple of rookie filmmakers when going after Scientology. See Gibney Propaganda Technique). That is, Gibney’s cast consists of media people who narrate and comment, merrily mixing opinion and spin with ‘fact.’ Gibney compensates for the lack of evidence to support the official narrative by having his media hacks characterize the “evidence” he does submit. One recurring talking head is Garrett Graff known for many gigs as the smooth talking ‘expert’ on cheesy cable channel documentaries. Media analyst Howard Kurtz exposed how Graff wound up with that role, “Garrett Graff spent enough time as a campaign flack to learn the art of the politically adept reply.” That was precisely the skill Gibney called on, having Graff backfill evidentiary holes with slippery characterizations.
The amateur-hour like opening frames are instructive of Gibney’s motives and methods:
Faceless, unattributed voice from nowhere (whiningly and ominously):
“The idea that the President would fire an FBI Director in the middle of the Russian investigation is unthinkable!”
Garret Graff (dramatically and incredulously):
“This was the target of an investigation trying to choose the person who is investigating him.”
Gibney himself (with pearl-clutching concern):
“And what kind of constitutional problem is that to him?”
Graff (literally chuckling and guffawing like a junior high school punk giving someone a wedgie):
“A HUGE one, hardy, har, har, har!”
Let’s break that passage down.
The film’s first premise is false. It was very “thinkable” that a president would fire an FBI director who was actively leaking privileged communications to corporate media in an attempt to smear and harm the President with false charges, which is precisely what proved to be the case.
The second premise of the film was false. The President was not the target of the investigation, and he was not being investigated according to public statements then-recently made by that very FBI director who was fired.
The third premise of the film was a complete invention by Alex Gibney; there was no constitutional issue whatsoever. The FBI director serves at the pleasure of the President. End of story. But, Gibney goes on for another hour desperately trying to stick it to Trump.
And that is just the intro, before the opening credits are even through rolling across the screen.
The very first frames of the body of the film show that traitorous FBI director James Comey literally yucking it up a year later with Stephen Colbert while sipping wine on television. Gibney then spends an hour trashing Trump on the innuendo (no facts, pure smear by association and demonization) of a documented liar. The ‘victim’ of Gibney’s piece turned out to be perhaps the most infamous prima donna drama queen of the 21st Century.
Gibney follows with a virtual dog and pony show of deep state hacks and corporate media shills dramatically laying down every lie of the greatest hoax of the 21st Century; that is the big Russia Scare (see, A Guide To Understanding the Hoax of the Century). Perhaps the biggest and most important whopper of them all was the Big Lie that was repeated over and over again by Comey, a plethora of FBI lackies, and the corporate media: The Russians hacked the DNC and provided the info to the Trump campaign. That served as the foundation for the bigger lie of a broad, verified Russian infiltration campaign to control the 2016 election outcome.
Gibney went into propaganda overdrive on this one. He provided a heap of special effects cyberworld graphics to dramatize the hack, while his talking heads filled in the gaps to implant the lie visually in viewers’ minds. He presented as if this was the official hands-on work of his revered G men. Gibney then goes into a retrospective likening the matter to Watergate, but far worse because with Trump, it had the added sex appeal of a foreign-enemy actor: “The Russians Are Coming!”. So unanimous and uncritical have the state sponsored corporate media become, they continued to hammer these themes home over the next several years.
It turned out that the Federal government never even made that connection Gibney portrays it as making, despite the Department of Justice’s (including the FBI) all hands on deck attempt to smear Trump. Instead, it was the cybersecurity firm hired by the Democrat National Committee (DNC) itself, Crowdstrike. Despite several years of effort, the DNC prevented the FBI from examining the DNC servers – the only way to potentially determine the source of a hack. When Crowdstrike’s CEO Shawn Henry was finally put under oath in a non-public Congressional Oversight Committee meeting, he had to admit that they had no evidence of a Russian connection to the hack, let alone a channel leading to the Trump campaign. Despite this, Committee Chairman, representative Adam Schiff of California, kept this admission secret during his serial MSNBC and CNN appearances to infer there was in fact secret evidence before the committee linking Russia to the hack and Russia to Trump. Let that sink in for a moment. Schiff, the ranking Committee member misinformed the public continually for several years while keeping the contrary evidence, Crowdstrike CEO’s testimony, under Congressional seal.
By the time other congress members managed to unseal the Crowdstrike testimony – 2 years after Gibney’s documentary – the damage had been done. And of course, the corporate media never bothered to correct the record. Nor did Muller. Nor did Comey. Nor did the Department of Justice. Nor did the FBI. And of course, nor did Gibney; he just sat like the grinning cat who ate the canary, while he continued collecting royalty checks.
Gibney assisted deep state spooks like James Clapper, James Comey, Bob Muller, and the state-controlled corporate media to smear Trump solely on the basis of Crowdstrike’s (DNC’s) Shawn Henry’s slippery, evasive innuendo. Gibney did this by not making it clear that Comey’s FBI and Muller never inspected the DNC servers; making it appear that Comey and Muller were Johnnies on the spot saving the republic with their own elbow grease. And of course Gibney abetted the obstruction of justice by burying the incestuous relationships that enabled the fraudulent narrative to hold water. In particular, Shawn Henry’s pre-Crowdstrike gig was this: Executive Assistant to the Director of the FBI (Robert Muller). Henry was hired by DNC lawyers Perkins Coie, the same firm that hired the author of the phony ‘British Intelligence’ dossier, Chistopher Steele; which served as justification to wiretap the Trump campaign and smear him with invented lies pre and post-election. (See REPORT ON MATTERS RELATED TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS ARISING OUT OF THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS)
It doesn’t get any more incestuous than this. Yet, Gibney actively suppresses the real sources and their relationships for his unadulterated smear piece. He covers for the inbreeders with this type of icon worshipping: “Bob Muller was the symbol of a non-partisan individual who keeps his head down, follows the facts wherever they lead and doesn’t care about making a name for himself.”
If you doubt any of the counter evidence presented, do your mind a favor and take a few minutes to study up on the matter here, NO PROOF OF RUSSIAN HACK, and here, Durham Report.
Even though the revered Muller struck out as far as making any significant connection between the Trump campaign and Russia, let alone Russian hacking, Gibney’s blatant attempt to pressure Muller seems to have had the intended result. Muller did what Muller always does. In the face of no evidence and no indictment, he still managed to smear his target (Trump) with a plethora of subjunctive hearsay (would, could, might have, probably, etc.); a dis-barrable offense were he not the darling of the deep state and its lapdog corporate media. Once again the Scientology canary-in-the-coalmine connection arises. Muller did the very same thing to the Scientologists in the late eighties and in the 2000’s: pursued them noisily and at great taxpayer expense, only to wind up smearing them with no indictment to show for it. Award winning journalist Peter Lance wrote a series of books exposing the negligent and corrupt nature of the Department of Justice in its mishandling of the war on terror from the early nineties leading all the way up to 9/11. Lance pulls the Wizard-of-Oz curtain on Muller demonstrating the 2010s corporate media worship of him was as phony as a three-dollar bill. (see Peter Lance)
Just as he did in his hatchet job on Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, Gibney could not resist accusing Trump of sex crimes by highlighting the never confirmed, since thoroughly debunked, DNC-purchased accusations:
“Unusual sexual activities with prostitutes in Russia…filmed by Russian intelligence for possible use as blackmail.”
Once again (see Whistleblower Character Assassin) Gibney betrays his sociopathic characteristic of “projection”; accusing others of his own intentions. His alter-ego Weiner says “Trump is the kind of guy who likes to make his own reality”, while Gibney weaves a literally created deep state narrative about Trump.
Ironically, the one minor critique mentioned by a talking head about Comey is an indictment against Gibney’s documentary itself: “There is something really horrible about having a senior law enforcement official evaluating the conduct of somebody in public whom he is not going to charge; and I have a sort of civil liberties anxiety about that.” (in reference to Comey’s 2016 press conference about not filing charges against Hillary Clinton)
News alert! That is the entire basis and subject of Gibney’s documentary against Trump. Simple and plain. But it is worse. In Clinton’s case there was a boatload of evidence warranting prosecution. Comey’s justification for not indicting was that a jury might acquit her. As covered, in Trump’s case there was zero evidence.
Ultimately, the entire foundation of the Russia Hoax and Gibney’s film was found to be without merit. In November 2019, after Muller struck out, the Department of Justice appointed a new Special Prosecutor, Robert Durham, to investigate what all the ‘Russians are Coming’ alarms were about. Durham found that not only was collusion never proven, there was not even a legal basis for beginning the Russia Hoax investigation in the first instance:
“Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Even a short passage in the film that shows Congressman Devin Nunes rightfully challenging Comey’s hole-filled narrative, is met with a former Obama apparatchik condemning any consideration of absence of guilt (in a case investigated for many years rending zero evidence of guilt):
“If you think about the antics of Devin Nunes there is some deep, deep worries that there are people in Congress who don’t care about the law, who don’t care about the Constitution.”
In Gibney’s Orwellian deep state, a defense is categorized as a thought crime.
Over dramatic music and a slew of Nixon and Reagan shots subliminally blaming their alleged crimes on Trump, Gibney winds up the film with voice overs warning of the dissolution of the Republic if Trump is not taken out. In this macabre denouement Gibney’s alter-ego reveals his motivation and purposes. Weiner closes with “If we are going to make it (as a Republic)…we have to get through this in a way that our institutions and our rule of law are strengthened.”
And so, the Empire’s storyteller continues the attack on the will of the electorate and the Constitution with the authority of the politburo and its partisan dispensation of injustice on anyone who dares not to think in lockstep with it.
When asked about Alex Gibney’s in-progress documentary on himself, Elon Musk replied, “It’s a hit piece.” Gibney’s reaction to that was, “How would you know?”
The answer is more than apparent on this blog. Musk has done more than any other person to date to dismantle the burgeoning Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex. The very industry Gibney sucks the hind tit of for a living. Look no further than what Gibney did to Julian Assange and Wikileaks when they were at the forefront of restoring transparency and accountability to Big Brother.
When Wikileaks founder Assange exposed the sinister side of American empire in 2010, the national security state came unglued. Perhaps no one more accurately represented the security state (also known as IC “intelligence community”) at that time than Michael Hayden. Between 1998 and 2009 he had served on the three top spy positions on the planet, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Director of the CIA and as the 1st Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Under his guidance the national security state was formed, including the passage of the Patriot Act and its systematic stripping of our civil rights. Incidentally, he remains atop the Big Brother console to this day as head of the Atlantic Council’s Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex.
Who did Hayden and company call upon when Assange and Wikileaks were awakening the world to the atrocities of the unbridled security state/IC? The documentarian who would give the head of the security state the platform from which to justify the horrendous conduct revealed by Wikileaks, while also viciously assassinating the character of Assange. The same guy who did principal Big Brother propaganda work for the COVID-19 roll out: Alex Gibney.
Nothing more graphically represented the importance of the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures than the following video. It captures US military personnel gunning down several innocent civilians, including a Reuter’s news agency employee a rescue worker and his two children. See,
The nation was shocked. And Gibney gave it his all to get the masses to cool their jets with his documentary “We Steal Secrets.” He featured Michael Hayden himself to tell us how to view this very leaked film. Haydn said he could understand how such abuses of imperial power bothers some people but not someone in the know like himself: “You’ve got this scene, some are evidently troubled by the scene – frankly, I’m not.” Gibney then invites Hayden to explain how Assange put so many more lives at risk than were wiped out in the video, that there really is nothing to see here folks. Clearly, Gibney wholeheartedly agrees with his master as he fails to even once push back on the single person most responsible for the conduct Wikileaks exposed.
And as is Gibney’s wont (see Big Brother Storyteller), he is so anxious to be the first to get the deep state’s spin released he doesn’t bother to examine any harm that Hayden alleges Assange’s releases will certainly do. In the final analysis, no one ever produced a single sliver of evidence that a single hair on a single head was harmed as a result of Wikileaks’ exposes. To the contrary one could easily imagine tens of thousands of lives being saved by the disclosures, by having its intended reform effect on the offenders.
Thus self-blinded, Gibney sets out to destroy the reputation of Assange. He strings together a chorus of clips from his favorite politicians toeing the CIA/NSA/Hayden line literally calling for Assange to be hung to death or assassinated.
The film largely consists of Gibney belittling and condemning Assange as a sociopath who might well be entitled to such treatment. In doing so, he also does a number on Chelsea (aka Bradley) Manning who was the military whistleblower who forwarded the leaked material to Wikileaks for publication. Gibney is a proud woke mind virus carrier. Nonetheless, he hypocritically devotes a great deal of time trying to smear Manning with his struggle over gender identity. Gibney ruthlessly paints Manning – a genuine American hero on the order of Daniel Ellsberg – as a psychotic sexual deviant. Gibney does so in order to create the invented picture that Assange took advantage of Manning and set him up to take the rap for the leak while hogging all the glory to himself. In doing so, Gibney kills two Ellsbergs with one stone.
Through outright sleaze and cheesy propaganda techniques Gibney invents the narrative that Assange baited Manning into releasing the material to Wikileaks. In reality, the New York Times and the Washington Post (the “liberal” fronts for Empire fuckery) turned down approaches from Manning before he turned to Wikileaks. Yet, Gibney’s expert use of the dark arts makes it appear as though if not for Assange’s fraudulent preying upon a weak, perverted mind, Manning never would be in the deep trouble he was by then in (in solitary confinement awaiting trial for Treason and worse before a US military tribunal).
The same techniques used to assassinate Manning’s character are applied by Gibney in pursuing Assange as prey. He ruthlessly explores Assange’s private sex life and goes to great length to indict and convict him for the alleged crime of intentionally breaking his condom during sex with more than willing partners (perhaps even sexual predators pursuing Assange). If you are wondering how that might constitute a prosecutable crime, Gibney’s invents the speculation that it would be a crime if Assange happened to knowingly be carrying around the AIDS virus. While the entire premise of Gibney’s prosecution (justification for the Swedish government pursuing Assange) hinged on that one invented possibility, Gibney (and no one else in the 14 years since) never presented a scintilla of evidence such was the actual case. Yet, through master use of the dark arts of cinematographic deception Gibney presents the picture of an AIDs ravaged madman travelling the world seeking to kill through sex.
With those false premises established, Gibney then virtually lobbies for the criminal punishment of Julian Assange. He accuses Assange of paranoia for suggesting that the U.S. government has Assange in its sights for the same treatment they were meting out to Chelsea Manning. Gibney appears to want Assange to take the punishment Manning is taking; all the while calling Assange paranoid for sensing that is exactly the intent of Gibney and his deep state sponsors.
The utter falsity of Gibney’s “paranoia” claims were more than proven over the next several years as the US ruthlessly pursued Assange through extradition (while its CIA director called for Assange’s assassination). Completely contrary to the entire premise of Gibney’s invented outrage, Assange would wind up spending more time in confinement than Manning did (without ever being convicted of a single crime). Of course, Gibney helped accomplish this feat by virtue of other state-controlled media parroting Gibney’s deep-state smear for years.
There is a pattern of Gibney’s over-anxious, impatient attack-dog work on behalf of the deep state. He did the very same thing concerning the COVID-19 pandemic panic (see Big Brother Storyteller). A rush to release the definitive government/big pharma COVID 19 narrative, followed by several years of the truth unfolding proving all his major premises to be wrong. He did the same with the Scientologists, tirelessly using his ‘documentary’ on them to lobby for removal of their IRS tax exemption, only for time to tell his invented premises for such draconian measures were fabrications. I have described before the fraud perpetuated and promoted by Larry Wright and Alex Gibney on that subject. (see blog posts between June 6 2017 through June 19 2017 and from July 16 2017 and August 8 2017).
As we shall later see, Gibney did the same with the Russia Hoax. The technique is, when chaos hits be the first to create a “documentary” to “prove” the deep state’s propaganda lines. Make the big lies look like truth through overboard dramatization in the guise of documentary film making. Use the ‘fact’ of the documentary to take designated targets down hard. While the facts begin to arise demonstrating the falsity of your work, dive into the next deep state crisis and rinse and repeat.
To demonstrate the 100% love, devotion and surrender nature of the deep state suck up, consider these facts. If the Manning/Assange leak were as expansive and potentially destructive as Gibney’s film claims, and Gibney is the flag-waving patriot he purports to be, then why did Gibney not investigate how two allegedly mentally ill, sex deviants managed to put the entire free world at risk all on their little lonesomes? That is, how could such alleged supermen as Michael Hayden be capable of such incompetent, treasonous insecurity? That, Gibney does not investigate. Instead, he only covers deep-state ass. Again, he turns to his master Hayden to explain away the pesky matter of how on earth such a massive breach could occur. Hayden blames reforms imposed in response to the deep state’s colossal incompetence (at best) demonstrated during the events leading to 911.
Hayden:
“After 9/11 we were accused of not being willing to share information rapidly and facilely enough and we’ve pushed that very far forward. In terms of our focus the default option in a practical sense has been to share it, rather than caging in information and making it more difficult to flow.”
In other words, “any attempt to point out an error on the Intelligence Community will be met with glue meeting rubber. That is, your catching us out on a mistake will result in you being guilty of our next crime.”
Remarkably, not only does Gibney not push back on such haughty arrogance, he lets Hayden shore up alleged CIA infallibility with this:
“When they catch us making a mistake, we admit it. When they have a valid point—even when it’s buried deep below a heap of not-so-valid points—we try to pull it out, brush it off, and address it.”
With that Gibney enters the Orwellian ranks, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”
State-controlled media would of course cloyingly go along for the ride as per usual.
And that of course buried any dissent to Gibney’s propaganda work. But, at the time of its release many credible sources expressed outrage at Gibney’s servile cowardice.
The Nation had the following to say of “We Steal Secrets”:
“Unfortunately, just as today’s debate is already being diluted by focusing on Snowden’s psychology and motives, We Steal Secrets gets sidetracked by character issues… The debate that the film has stirred up consists mainly of an exchange of invective between Gibney and Assange, in which Gibney and his allies compare the WikiLeaks creator to a cult leader, while Assange and his allies accuse the director of mounting a smear campaign that benefits the US government. The upshot is that we have gotten neither the film nor the debate we need.”
Award winning researcher and journalist Alexa O’Brien wrote:
“What was Gibney relying on for his costly ‘string of pearls’ reportage, beyond his hackneyed entourage of unexamined glory-boats, bearing witness on the silver screen to their privileged punditry—that is, talking about themselves amongst themselves for their own benefit– certainly not the public’s—or future generations?”
“Gibney’s exercise discovers nothing, and reveals nothing. His tabloid motion graphic is a regurgitation of stock footage, unsubstantiated innuendo, and unexamined allegation.”
“What Gibney has done here is not art; it is a cheap trick.”
And veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote the following:
“Alex Gibney’s new film, “We Steal Secrets,” is about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It dutifully peddles the state’s contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Bradley Manning, who allegedly passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower. It interprets acts of conscience and heroism by Assange and Manning as misguided or criminal. It holds up the powerful—who are responsible for the plethora of war crimes Manning and Assange exposed–as, by comparison, trustworthy and reasonable.”
“The film at many points is a trashy exercise in tabloid journalism. Gibney panders to popular culture’s taste for cheap pop psychology and obsession with sex, salacious gossip and trivia.”
Finally, Hedges recognizes the illness underlying the propaganda techniques employed:
“The vast structural sin Assange and Manning fought is ignored. The primacy of personal piety over justice is the inversion of morality. It is the sickness of our age.”
Remarkably, on this rare occasion when Gibney was held to account for his demonstration of the sickness of our age he petulantly defended his tabloid appetites. Unfortunately for him he protested too much and as much as admitted to the truth of what the Nation, O’Brien and Hedges pointed out:
“Just because someone tries to right a wrong or just because somebody tries to hold powerful people to account, it doesn’t mean that person is above the law.” – Alex Gibney
Under that ‘rationale’, Gibney is free to pursue whistleblowers into their prison cells and beyond.
Given how Gibney approached whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, what are the odds he’ll take a deep dive into Elon Musk’s sex life? One thing is certain, Gibney will make the gullible afraid of Mr. Musk, very afraid.
I have seen up close and personal how deftly Gibney wields the art of cinematography to create realities that do no exist, and to dramatize them to the point of creating revulsion and terror in viewers. For a short lesson on Gibney’s trickery, see what he did to the Scientologists; creating a “guttural, deep emotional fear and terror of something that does not exist”, Going Clear Movie.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 