By Edward Curtin - February 25, 2025
There is history worth remembering as Trump is lauded in certain circles on the so-called “right” and “left” as a peacemaker with Russia over the US/NATO proxy war against Russia via Ukraine: President Richard Nixon, who ran as the peace candidate in 1968 with a “secret plan” for peace in Vietnam that was actually a plan for more war, visited China in February 1972 in a move to exploit the Soviet-China split, and yet the US war against Vietnam went on until April 30, 1975 when the U.S. was driven out of Vietnam.
I think extreme caution is advised when it comes to Trump’s plans to end the U.S. proxy war against Russia, which, following the Nixon-Kissinger script, seems to be aimed at splitting the Russian-Chinese partnership now threatening U.S. world domination.
Trump, like his predecessor Joseph Biden who presided over the proxy war against Russia and the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, is no man of peace. He is fully in support of the extinction of the Palestinians and behind Israel’s war aims in the Middle-East. So when it comes to his recent overtures to Russia and a resolution to the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia, one needs to reflect on history and Trump’s inclination to make “a deal.” The man, after all, was a reality-television star and has long reveled in radical reversals of previous statements and intentions. For example, in his first term, he often talked of withdrawing from NATO but never did; NATO, in fact, expanded under his watch. He talked about ending the U.S./NATO support for Ukraine’s bombing of Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine, only to withdraw from the Minsk Accords and send military equipment to Ukraine to bomb those areas.
Those who are praising him now say he is a changed man after time “in the wilderness” these last four years (one is reminded of Nixon’s wandering wilderness days from 1960-1968). Would a changed man have Elon Musk as his right-hand man or have as Vice President JD Vance whose career has been backed by Palantir Technology’s Peter Thiel?
Investigator journalist Whitney Webb has reported extensively on Thiel and Vance’s ties and the interconnections between them and other supporters of the surveillance state tied to the Democrats, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. If you assume the surface war between Trump and the Democrats is the real deal, Webb’s work will have you wondering. They have their differences, of course, but a reading of history would suggest both fully back the surveillance panopticon that has stolen American’s freedom and privacy in the name of what else – freedom and privacy.
Now Trump-Musk-Vance are touting their dedication to free speech and their opposition to censorship, which are clearly admirable goals. But one needs to remember Marshall McLuhan’s adage that the medium is the message, and that the medium touted by Trump – front and center – is represented by the omnipresence of Elon Musk, whose face symbolizes the smirking machine and the use of digital technology to accumulate and exert power. In a digital age, technological technique is King Propaganda, and technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.
As in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the brothers Tweedledee Democrat and Tweedledum Republican fight over their rattle as the audience focuses on their battle while their joint racket goes unattended.
‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ Tweedledum; ‘but it isn’t so, no how.’
‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’
‘I was thinking, Alice said very politely, ‘which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me please?’
It is dark. Of course, the way out is to stop reacting and do what the press is obligated to do: be skeptical, question authority, and don’t be cheerleaders for anyone in power, whether they be Biden or Trump or someone else.
The opposite of such skepticism has been happening, and many in the alternative press, who [including me] have correctly accused Biden and the Democrats of war crimes, lies, censorship, Russiagate propaganda, etc., are now awash with grandiose praise for Trump, many calling him a revolutionary in a good sense. This is absurd.
Such hyperbole is quite naïve, as has been the calling of Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech historic and Ciceronian. It was a good speech [text here] in many ways, but…
He rightly ripped the Europeans for their censorship of dissidents and their repression of alternative voices, although his examples were weak and narrowly focused.
His statement, while surely partisan, was true that . . .
[SNIP]
