← Back to context

Comment by xanthor

12 hours ago

That's a very outdated model for how conspiracies work. Why would it be necessary to bribe and threaten journalists working at these organizations? They genuinely believe in the project of the US financial, military, and cultural empire. They went to the same schools and were socialized with the same core beliefs as the people in US government and high finance or those running the intelligence agencies and military-industrial complex. They wouldn't have the opportunity to work at these 'news' organizations if they had worldviews that were radically incompatible.

Likewise, I don't believe anyone is coercing you to push these ideas online. I believe I could drill down on every single source and claim, and your fundamental beliefs about this question would remain the same.

Proximity to and dependence upon established institutions exerts an inexorable gravity on worldview. It determines one's social circle and path to advancement in every area of life. Those inside the bubble feel themselves to be 'free thinkers', but one who strays outside the acceptable range of beliefs and ideas will immediately experience a sharp discontinuity in this 'freedom'.

You have a group of Swiss journalists who regularly publish critical stories about war crimes in Gaza, the US detaining immigrants, the Trump administration, and waning influence.

And your first thought is that these people have such a hard on for the American Cultural Empire that they are willing to fabricate massive amounts of evidence of Chinese wrongdoing with no coercion required?

They’re just all sitting around writing stories about how fucked up the Trump administration is and how America is over and how the next century belongs to China, and then they think “hey we should probably all work together to make China look bad because America Fuck Yeah! Am I right!?!?”