'left wing'

Disinformation comes no less from 'left wing' sources than the Murdoch newsmedia

Sat, 2011-08-20 00:20 by Geoffrey Taylor

Whilst the Murdoch newsmedia has, in the past, been able to manipulate political, economic and military outcomes in Australia, the US, the UK and across much of the rest of the world with its messages of hate and misinformation, it is no longer able to wield as much influence for harm as it was formerly able to. Much of the work, which was formerly handled by the likes of the Murdoch newsmedia is now handled by the supposed 'alternative' and 'left wing' newsmedia

The source of this illustration was which is an excellent article about the methodology of disinformation professionals.

Murdoch media disinformation

I found this comment in a mailing list discussion:

One vital thing necessary to accompany any form of Direct Democracy would be the responsible neutering of the Murdoch press as an agent of hate, fear and misinformation.

Whilst I can only agree with what was written above about the Murdoch newsmedia, I think it is no longer able to sway public opinion to its hateful views in the way it used to.

Certainly, at least until the 2003 Iraq War the Murdoch Media was able to wield enormous influence, which it used to almost at will, decide the outcome of elections and and have whatever Government won office dance to its tune. I recall, how Murdoch's overtly harmful role in Australian politics began in 1974, when it turned savagely against the Federal Labor Government of Gough Whitlam. Prior to that, I had considered Rupert Murdoch's Australian a truthful, left-wing and pro-Labor newspaper. From the middle of 1974 it began a relentless campaign to discredit the Whitlam Labor Government in which it ignore its achievements, blew up almost every mistake, nor matter how trivial, of every Labor Minister into a major front-page scandals lasting days, weeks and months. It blamed the Whitlam Government for all of Australia's misfortunes regardless of their causes and almost never bothered to report any of the Whitlam Government's positive achievements.

The Murdoch Press created the climate in which it was possible for the Governor General Sir John Kerr to dismiss the Government of Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975 and for Labor to lose the subsequent Federal election in spite of the initial public outrage against the dismissal.

Overseas, a particular target of the Murdoch Press was the now late Senator Edward Kennedy, the last surviving brother of the Kennedy family of his generation. His eldest brother Joseph was killed in action in the Second World War. His brother John was assassinated as President in 1963 and his murder blamed on the Patsy Le Harvey Oswald. His last surviving brother, Robert, was assassinated in 1968, just when he appeared to be set to win the US Democratic Party nomination to stand for President, Robert was assassinated. Another patsy Sihran Sihran was tried and found guilty at a rigged trial and remains in jail to this day.

In 1979 Edward Kennedy announced his intention to contest for the Democratic party nomination. According to :

A midsummer 1978 poll had shown Democrats preferring Kennedy over (then President) Carter by a 5-to-3 margin. During spring and summer 1979, as Kennedy deliberated whether to run, Carter was not intimidated despite his 28 percent approval rating, saying publicly: "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass." Carter later asserted that Kennedy's constant criticism of his policies was a strong sign that Kennedy was planning to run for the presidency. Labor unions urged Kennedy to run, as did some Democratic party officials who feared that Carter's unpopularity would lead to bad losses in the 1980 congressional elections. By August 1979, when Kennedy decided to run, polls showed him with a 2-to-1 advantage over Carter, and Carter's approval rating slipped to 19 percent. Kennedy formally announced his campaign on November 7, 1979, at Boston's Faneuil Hall. He had already received substantial negative press from a rambling response to the question "Why do you want to be President?" during an interview with Roger Mudd of CBS News broadcast a few days earlier. The Iranian hostage crisis, which began on November 4, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began on December 27, caused the electorate to rally around the president, allowed Carter to pursue a Rose Garden strategy of staying at the White House, and knocked Kennedy's campaign out of the headlines.

Edward Kennedy lost the campaign in 1980 largely as a result of him being attacked for his role of 1969 in which a friend, Mary Jo Kopechne drowned after he ran a car over a bridge into a river in 1969.

However, given that Kennedy was not pursued over this incident after he lost his Presidential campaign and allowed to remain in office until his death in 2009, it seems that the motives of the Murdoch and the rest of the US corporate newsmedia was less for justice than for preventing Edward Kennedy reaching the White House. Had he won, it seems highly likely that he would have ordered proper inquiries into the murders of his two brothers and almost certainly have uncovered a lot of embarrassing secrets about the US .

"Left wing" media disinformation

Today the task of misleading public opinion has largely fallen on what most take for 'alternative', 'left wing', 'socialist' and 'far left' media, and if their record at least back to the early 1960's, the time of the murder of President Kennedy and its cover-up by the US establishment, it can be shown that they have also played no less a role in misleading the public on behalf of powerful vested interests.

In more recent years, the role of misleading the public has more and more fallen on the hands of the supposed ''left' newsmedia than on the likes of the Murdoch Media.

In Chapter 5 of "Towers of Deception" of 2006 Canadian Malthusian and truth activist, Barrie Zwicker warned that the "left wing" newsmedia, in fact, played a more vital role than the right wing corporate newsmedia in misleading public opinion on behalf of corporate interests. Two examples he gave were:

  1. the role of the supposed "left wing" in helping the US Government cover up the truth about the false flag terrorist attack of 11 September 2002.

  2. The role of many left wing organisations in helping to cover up the truth about the conspiracy to murder President John F Kennedy in 1963. This includes concealing the fact that President Kennedy stood up to the military industrial complex to prevent them from launching nuclear war on three occasions ans worked tirelessly to prevent the outbreak of wars in Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Indonesia ans other places.

In 20011, we can add to this the efforts of far-left groups to mislead about the war against Libya and the threatened war against Syria.

For most phony left-wing groups, their disinformation is either somewhat subtle or else they are almost completely silent. However, one UK group Workers' Liberty has come out openly in support of NATO's attacks on Libya and Syria.

Disinformation about Libya

It is recommended that, before following the links below and risking becoming confused and disoriented by the disinformation linked to by those links, you read the truth about the wars being waged against Libya and Syria, if you have not already done. One good place to read the truth is

(http://globalresearch.ca/). Articles about Syria and Libya include: . . , , . . .

- a A teaser and headline linked collection to a series of articles, currently on the front page of . Curiously the most current article in the 'debate' is dated 4 May 2011! That's over 4 months ago?! The teaser follows, followed by the links to articles from the linked page:

Gilbert Achcar, Ira Berkovic, Clive Bradley, Barry Finger, Martyn Hudson, Dan Katz, Sean Matgamna, Solidarity [US] National Committee, Peter Taaffe, Martin Thomas debate the proper socialist attitude to the conflict in Libya and UN- sanctioned outside intervention.

  5. S

Also, linked to on the front page is of Workers' Liberty is another collection of articles in the 'debate' with the Socialist Party (formerly the Militant tendency):

Peter Taaffe of the Socialist Party on the "no-fly zone" in Libya; the Socialist Party on imperialism; how the proto-AWL separated from the proto-SP; and other disputed questions.

Surprisingly, The has not taken up Workers' Liberty's ( is linked to from that page) and little can be found on its front page about Libya. Most curiously, I was not even able to find on the pages of the UK Socialist Party newspaper an article by by Peter Taaffe, Libya: the no-fly zone, AWL, and the left. I could only find it on Workers' Liberty with a publication date of 25 May 2011.

So, why the UK Socialist Party, presumably opposed to the capitalist government of the UK and its participation in the criminal war against the sovereign nation of Libya would avoid a public debate with Workers' Liberty is a mystery.

In any public debate any opponent would have little difficulty, with an abundance of facts obtained from sites like , tearing shreds off Workers'' Liberty for its support of war. They could not lose.

The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that, in truth, the UK Socialist Party is no more 'socialist' and no more opposed to the bombing of Libya than Workers Liberty nor a large number of other phony socialist organisations, both from the UK and Australia on candobetter. Rather, it is controlled by people who are consciously working on behalf of the British elites. They help to prop up their rule by diverting the energies of people, who would otherwise be engaged in more effective campaigning into supporting political campaigns for relatively trivial causes or phony progressive causes (such as, in Australia, the for the rights of the relatively tiny numbers of supposed asylum seekers, who are able to pay people smugglers to bring them to Australian shores) and "party building" activities.

Engaging in an effective debate that would reveal to the UK public the truth about Workers' Liberty, at least, and help pave the way for an effective campaign to oppose the war against Libya and the planned war against Syria runs counter to the script of the pantomime in which 'opposed' supposedly Trotskyist organisations denounce the other as 'reformists' or 'revisionists', 'apologists for Stalinism', etc in the tradition of sectarian far left politics which dates back to at least the 1970's

Disinformation about Syria and preparations by NATO to make war against Syria.

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