Illustration by Rachael Bolton.

There’s a scene in Aaron Sorkin’s critically acclaimed political drama, The West Wing, where President Bartlet, (played by Martin Sheen) is in an argument with his communications director, Toby Ziegler, (played by Richard Schiff) over a speech he has to write condemning Hollywood for its gratuitous use of sex and violence in entertainment:

“…If I were an actor or a writer or uh, uh, uh, a producer in Hollywood and someone were to start coming at me with lists of things that were American and un-American I’d start to think that this was sounding eerily familiar.”

Bartlett replies: “Do I look like Joe McCarthy to you?”, to which Ziegler responds: “Nobody ever looks like Joe McCarthy, Mr President. How do you think they get in the door in the first place?”

Well, I’m afraid to say, Democracy 2.0 is having its own, new, modern-day McCarthy moment.

Some very disturbing things happened this week which I have been trying to high-road by ignoring and getting on with the job, but this has really stuck in my craw:

About a week ago, gazillionaire, George Soros, became a modern-day McCarthyist by publishing a report and accompanying excel document via European think tank “European Values” (which he funds, incidentally), listing hundreds of writers, journalists, celebrities, authors, academics, experts and ‘miscellaneous persons’ that have ever appeared on the Russia’s public broadcaster, Russia Today, tarring them as ‘useful idiots undermining Western democracy’. RT is often accused of acting as a propaganda mouthpiece for Putin and his ‘lackeys’. More on this shortly.

The report lists 2327 US and UK politicians, political figures, diplomats and military leaders that have appeared on the the channel including Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Ralph Nader, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkinson, US Representative and Deputy Chair of the DNC, Keith Ellison and US National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

British figures named include former Mayor of London, Ken Livingston, British MP, Vince Cable, former Deputy Labour Prime Minister John Prescott, former UKIP leader, Nigel Farage and Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

The many, many, names ‘gracing’ Soros’ excel spreadsheet include my colleague and mentor, economist Professor Steven Keen, Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, economist Professor Michael Hudson and feminist author and intellectual, Germaine Greer. Celebrities on the blacklist include SNL stars Fred Armison, Bill Hader and Alec Baldwin, Seinfeld star, Jason Alexander, and actresses Patricia Arquette and Christina Ricci. Fox News host Ann Coulter, journalist Seymour Hersh and MIT linguist Professor Noam Chomsky are also named, (at least I think he is named. Whoever compiled the document spelled his name wrong and referred to him as ‘Noah Chomsky’. I’m guessing it was some junior employ that helped build out the list because no seasoned researcher would misspell Chomsky’s name!). It even lists Virgin CEO, Richard Branson and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, along with tv show host, Piers Morgan. Even the Dalai Lama rates a mention. Download the full list for yourself here.

The blacklist is designed to discourage advertisers from doing business with RT, discourage broadcasters from hiring anyone that has ever appeared on the channel, and create an environment that discourages anyone and everyone from putting their careers at risk by associating themselves with the network. This is textbook McCarthyism. That this list even exists, and that it has barely rated a mention among the mainstream press should scare the living shit out of us. Historically, listing people as threats to the state has not ended well, and we certainly shouldn’t be encouraging it now. This leads nowhere good, fast.

Yesterday, Twitter announced it would ban RT and Sputnik from advertising on the social network, on the baseless grounds it was involved with disrupting the 2016 Presidential election, reserving media landscape dominance for publications who support and are sympathetic to our corporate ‘democracy’ such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters, the AP, CNN etc.

The decision to censor RT from its network follows in the wake of a 2016 Department of National Intelligence report that named RT and Sputnik as “implementing state-sponsored Russian efforts to interfere with and disrupt the 2016 Presidential election.”

Among its many accusations, the report said RT was guilty of airing two news shows critical of the US government, publishing reports on the vulnerabilities of US election machines, broadcasting, hosting and advertising debates between third party candidates, covering Occupy Wall Street, criticising the US surveillance state, economic system, Wall Street greed, currency policy and environmental degradation. The report also claimed RT alleged widespread US infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use. The nerve.

About a month ago, YouTube demonetised RT despite the fact that the channel reaches more viewers than any other on its platform.

Oh, and last year, NatWest closed all of RT’s bank accounts without explanation beyond that it would “no longer provide these facilities”.

It is not as though Soros is alone in these kind of anti-democratic activities. The corporate media has almost always been united in their efforts to omit key information from their reports and shame anyone who dare defy the dominant narrative.

Remember the pages of ink and column inches devoted to convincing the world of the existence of weapons of mass destruction? The op-eds from even the most liberal publications calling out anyone against the Iraq war as traitors? Or more recently, the continuous coverage of alleged Russian election hacking, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting claims of interference, and the fact that several intelligence veterans have meticulously and publicly debunked the claims, revealing that data was not hacked — but leaked — by a person with physical access to DNC computers and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

Luke Rudkowski, a journalist tarred with the ‘alt-news’ brush for simply reporting on the status-quo had hundreds of his videos censored and demonetised by YouTube with no explanation or warning. He is not the first and he will not be the last.

The Australian, beloved newspaper of a one Rupert Murdoch, ran a headline last week that New Zealand had ‘elected a commie’, referring to the swearing in of new Labor Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, who ran on a platform of government that — radically — supports the financial and economic needs of the people who elected it. But don’t go getting any ideas, unless you want to be tarred with the Commie brush.

In Britain, journalists can go to jail for seven years for receiving documents from whistleblowers. Australians can go to prison for 10 years for reporting on issues of national security. And while Americans have whistleblower protection laws, they have been circumvented so many times that the three key whistleblowers of the past decade: Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have had to flee their countries to avoid lengthy jail terms, and in the case of Chelsea Manning she spent seven years in the slammer for having the audacity to reveal just how brazen her government is in violating international law, rigging elections, and assassinating civilians in the Middle East.

Between locking up journalists for reporting on matters of state pertaining to the public interest, social-media and internet that is heavily censored while amplifying sympathetic publications and voices that convey a narrative that most conveniently suits the needs of the ruling class and publicly shaming and or defunding those who haven’t already been silenced, corporate liberalism has the game all locked up.

If censorship by algorithm wasn’t bad enough, PayPal and commercial banks have the power to pull merchant and banking facilities at any time, demonstrating the collusion of government, the private sector and technology. The US and UK governments, with the support of their private sector allies, have way too much power to control which media publications succeed and which ones fail.

The game has been rigged from the start, and what’s worse: too few seem to notice, or even care. Far too many people believe the system has always worked this way, all evidence to the contrary.

The betrayal of democratic liberalism

It is a disturbing new trend in democratic liberalism that once fought against segregation, censorship and civil-rights violations but now embraces as weapons the very same evils it once opposed, in order to preserve its grip on power.

And while there has been some outcry against the disturbing attempts by both financial institutions and social platforms to shut down access to networks airing content critical of the US government narrative, this disturbing turn of events has not been given the attention or significance it deserves.

This is the digital equivalent of burning books. That censorship is their only refuge should demonstrate to the public just how broken the system is: It proves their arguments do not pass muster, confident there are no words that could justify the virtues of the global economy, it has no choice but to stifle those who present alternatives. With no credible defence against those who oppose late-stage capitalism, it has no choice but to censor those whose ideas pose an existential threat to the status-quo.

America censors foreign public broadcaster

The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

But conveniently, the Constitution does not apply in Russia and America apparently has no problem dictating what should and should not air on the public broadcaster of a foreign nation.

It’s worth adding, that if the situation happened in reverse and YouTube, PayPal, Twitter and Facebook were Russian companies conspiring with the Kremlin to decide what could and could-not be broadcast on American television networks, the government would lose its damned mind. The US has no right to decide what ought to be broadcast on foreign news channels. (But it’ll try its darnedest anyhow).

The Corporate news media is so desperate for survival they have allied themselves with the very powers they’re meant to be objectively reporting on.

The Fourth Estate has largely become a mouthpiece for state media and corporate welfare.

And anyone who dares disagree with the mainstream is branded as some kind of enemy of the state.

Well I’m here to tell you: We are not the enemies of democracy but of late-stage capitalism. Soros and his liberal allies ought to be afraid. The jig is up. Besides, it is not democracy Soros and his ilk are fighting for — it’s capitalism — but most of us cannot afford the system Soros and Co claim to be fighting for: a world of more debt and more lies, more deregulation and disinformation, of private media controlled by the state, of wealth that trickles only upwards, and blacklists of those of us who try to point this out.

This is not the social contract we signed up for.

Liberalism has completely given up on social justice, and the social contract implicit in all democratic societies.

Corporate media cannot save us. And its campaign of censorship and content control is only further proof of an establishment fast losing control of the narrative.

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