Free Speech Is Under Assault in the West - It's Up to Us to Fight Back

By Paul Craig Roberts ( Paul Craig Roberts ) on Saturday, June 9, 2018 - 11:25

The author is an economist who served as assistant Treasury secretary in the Reagan administration, was associate editor at the Wall Street Journal, and is a former professor at Georgetown University. (Full bio).

Now retired, he is a prolific columnist for his personal site, with a very large following on the internet. He writes frequently about Russia.

For the last 3 or 4 years I have been invited to speak at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. I have never accepted, not from lack of interest or lack of something to say, but because the demonization of Russia has curtailed my freedom to travel and to speak. Unless I pay my own travel expenses, I would be accused of being compromised by an expense-paid trip.

This never happens to US senators and representatives who accept all expenses paid trips to Israel, but Russia is different. Moreover, even if I were to pay my own expenses, as Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein did when she attended the 10th anniversary celebration of RT in Moscow, I would still be accused. Jill Stein was summoned before the Russiagate “investigation” to account for her attendance.

Paul Craig Roberts

In other words, my participation in an important Russian event would be used by those who don’t like what I write to undermine my credibility as a commentator on Washington/Russian relations. I would henceforth be described as a “Putin mouth.”

Indeed, it is not necessary to go to Russia to be accused. There are all sorts of sites, such as PropOrNot, the shadowy website that published a list of “Putin agents,” a list on which I was included. There are apparently an endless number of websites funded by Israel, George Soros, the CIA, the US State Department, and so on and on, the purpose of which is to slander and demonize Internet writers who challenge the elite’s control over the explanations.

Just the other day I received from a distinguished British intellectual of impeccable credentials a missive that an Israeli-funded German website, “Meldungen aus dem Exil,” that publishes in English alleges that I am the “editor of the white nationalist website VDare.” This is abject nonsense for at least two reasons. Peter Brimelow is the editor of VDare and always has been.

VDare is not a white nationalist website but a website that favors limited immigration that can be assimilated as formerly was the case prior to Identity Politics. What VDare opposes is America being overrun by hordes of foreigners who have every incentive to remain unassimilated. Not only have I never been editor of VDare, but it has been 5 years since VDare reposted one of my columns. VDare’s readers constantly complained to the editor that my columns were not about immigration. Responding to his readers, a half decade ago the VDare editor stopped reposting my columns.

Europeans tell me that “Meldungen aus dem Exil” is an Antifa website in Europe funded by Sayanim —“voluntary agents of Israel.” Wikipedia apparantly accepts the character assassinations published on these Israeli-funded websites in its biographies of writers who dissent from the official explanations that Wikipedia tends to favor.

As another proof that I am a “white supremacist,” the Sayanim website says that I have published 264 articles on the leftwing website, CounterPunch. As “white supremacist” and leftwing don’t normally go together, the Sayanim website reads CounterPunch ouf of the leftwing community and alleges that CounterPunch only pretends to be a left-wing website but really “offers a very steady diet of white supremacist and other reactionary authors.” The Sayanim-financed German website lists Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Paul Street, Amy Goodman, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir, and Ron Paul as “white supremacist and reactionary authors.”

Formerly we were mere “anti-semites” for criticizing Israeli government policies. Now the Israel Lobby has elevated those who have a moral conscience to “white supremacist.” Funny, isn’t it, that most of the “white supremacists” on the list are Jews, some being Israeli or former Israeli citizens. The Sayanim website goes on to denounce various Jews, such as Gilad Atzmon as “racist.” But, of course, it is the Israeli state that is Apartheid and racist, not the courageous Jewish writer who opposes it.

Do understand the total disrespect for facts and truth shown by the Israel Lobby. The American libertarian Ron Paul is described by the Sayanim website as one “who poses for photo ops with neo-Nazis.” Intimidation works on the weak. Among mankind cowardice is in abundance. Courage is a rare element. It exists less and less and is disappearing. People sell their souls for money.

Today in “freedom and democracy” USA where free speech is a constitutional right, it is not possible for anyone in the American media or American universities to criticize Israel and remain employed. The most effective criticism of Israel’s inhumane policies comes from Jews themselves who are labeled by the Israel Lobby “self-hating Jews.” Even Israel’s friend, President Jimmy Carter, has been labeled an “anti-semite,” and the Jewish members of the Carter Foundation resigned when the Israel Lobby leveled the false charge at former President Carter, proving that their commitment was to the inhumane Israeli state and not to the humane Carter Foundation.

Those with self-interested agendas, such as the government of Israel, the Israeli-allied American neoconservatives who represent Israel and not the United States, the CIA, the FBI, the military/security complex, Wall Street, the “banks too big to fail,” and the other ruling interest groups, could not care less about truth or facts. They care only and exclusively about their own agendas. They will lie, steal, bribe, slander, and murder to see that their agendas prevail.

Those with independent voices are in their way. I am one such independent voice. I am committed to truth, not to the agendas of the elite.

I cannot write the columns that you read without your support. I cannot write without optimism. My optimism comes from your support. If truth is not valued, there is no point in exposing myself to the ire of those who are determined to control the explanations.

Your choice is between truth, or something close to it, and controlled explanations that serve the self-interests of elites.

It is not easy to be optimistic that truth will prevail. Everyone has been scared, especially Americans who have witnessed the utter destruction of the civil liberties guaranteed by the US Constitution. Americans know that as a people they are powerless in the face of the evil that is Washington. The police/warfare state has Americans on the run. If they do not turn and fight, they will lose the truth and become the slaves that the ruling elite intends them to be, along with the Europeans, British, Canadians, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, Australians, Brazilians, Japanese, Koreans, and even Russians and Chinese. Yes, the arrogance of “American exceptionalism” goes that far.

Truth is under assault everywhere in the Western world. It is difficult to speak truth in America, where it is protected by the First Amendment. In European countries where it is not constitutionally protected, speaking the truth can put a person in prison.

For example, in Italy criticism of the president can be declared “villification of the head of state” and send a person to prison for 15 years. In England it can be “slander” and “libel” and can bankrupt you. France is joining the suppression of free speech with a “fake news law” that will protect official explanations from challenge. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-05/frances-fake-news-law-will-be-used-silence-critics-win-elections

Last February a poll revealed that only 6 percent of Americans trusted the mainstream media. As the mainstream media is the elite’s Propananda Ministry, this poll indicated that the elite were losing control over explanations to the Internet.

In a recent interview, Jaffe Arnold said that the elite are “ready to just pull the plug on the internet if it goes too far against them in exposing their operations.” https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/06/arnold-are-the-internets-days-numbered-assanges-disappearance-is-sign-of-the-times/

Killing the messenger has always been the practice of the rulers. The attack on Julian Assange and Wikileaks is what is in store for us all.

Think about it for a minute. Wikileaks is an Internet news organization. It publishes news and leaks, as The New York Times once did when the newspaper published the leaked “Pentagon Papers” that helped to end the Vietnam War.

Today Wikileaks is demonized by the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio for exposing Washington’s crimes and deceptions. Julian Assange, Wikileaks principal, has been under house arrest in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London since August 2012. The current president of Ecuador, under Washington’s influence, has curtailed all of Assange’s contacts with the outside world. In effect, Julian Assange is imprisoned and prevented from operating as a journalist.

In the Western World truth is fragile and is only tenuously associated with explanations of our times. With the public’s loss of confidence in the presstitute media, we have a chance to advance truthful explanations.

You can support the resurrection of truth by supporting this (Paul Craig Roberts') website.