“Another Casualty of the Ukraine Conflict: The Truth”, March 5, 2022, Michael Brenner, Scheer Post, at < https://scheerpost.com/2022/
“Student ejected from audience of Australian current affairs program for asking critical question on Ukraine”, March 7, 2022, Richard Phillips, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
Introduction by dmorista
Both of these articles address the issues of Propaganda, Information vs Disinformation, and the manipulation of public opinion by the ruling class. Brenner writing for Scheer Post discusses the issue of the manipulation of public opinion on the wider level, and with some reference to the theoretical underpinnings of those efforts and the operations of the Corporate Controlled Media, in convincing enough of the population of the nobility of whatever horrific project is underway and keep them from undertaking active resistance and dissent. After dicussing some of the more substantive issues, he points out such absurdities as: “... the restaurant owners who are renaming Russian dressing as Ukrainian dressing and Beef Stroganoff as Beef Zelensky. …. (recalling that) the U.S. Congress back in 2001 changed their menu to substitute Freedom Fries for the unspeakable French Fries … (and that) in WW I, sauerkraut became Liberty Cabbage.” As Noam Chomsky and Edward S, Herman pointed out in their pathbreaking book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, manipulating the opinions and beliefs of the populations of democratic and even semi-democratic societies is a large undertaking with many avenues of effort needed to achieve the desired levels of social control.
Phillips, in an article at the World Socialist WebSite, relates a story of the on-the-ground operation of censorship and discourse control as exercised in Australia. This event took place on a major Australian News Show, called Q+A, that is hosted by Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Stan Grant. A University of Melbourne student: “Gillies-Lekakis, who was in the audience, was invited by Grant, the 'Q+A' presenter, to ask a question. He told the program he was 'outraged' by media reportage that simplistically depicted 'Ukraine as the “good guy” and Russia as the “bad guy” '.”
“Gillies-Lekakis then attempted to explain the death toll from bloody attacks by Ukrainian government backed fascist forces, such as the Azhov Battalion, on the Russian populations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 amid the long running civil war in that region.
“He was jeered by someone in the audience and then stopped by Grant who claimed the death toll figures were incorrect.
“Twenty minutes after Gillies-Lekakis’s question, Grant … intervened and suddenly ordered the young man out of the studio.”
The show featured a panel with the typical figures, a former spy, a bought and paid for journalist, some loyal party retainer, and an establishment affirming academic. They blathered on, with a couple of comments from some people with relatives in Ukraine. The panel spoke at length during which: “Grant gave free reign to the panellists to repeat pro-NATO talking points without offering a single critical question.”
Farther on the article notes that: “In July 2020, Grant became a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a right-wing think tank funded by the defence department and giant military hardware manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group and Raytheon Technologies. ASPI also receives government funding from the US, the UK, Israel, Canada and the Netherlands.” We can rest assured that Grant and others of his ilk in the Australian Corporate Controlled Media are rewarded with the standard lucrative perks. Items like becoming a member of some corporate board, where you collect tens of thousands of dollars for attending the occasional sleepy Corporate Board meeting and rubber stamping the proposals there.
Readers and commenters here at The Class Struggle need to recognize that we are witnessing, yet again, a massive Ruling Class snow job, as carried out primarily by the Corporate Controlled Media. If the victims of the U.S. imperialist attacks on countries from the Philippines in the late 1940s, to Vietnam, to Angola and The Congo, to Chile, and to Central America among others all got the same level of attention; the shows presenting the reports would still be broadcasting for several hours each and every day. Zelensky is, like Trump, the perfect media figure for this sort of PR campaign.
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Another Casualty of the Ukraine Conflict: The Truth
By Michael Brenner
War and conflict are the enemies of truth. Accurate perception, precise language and objectivity are its first victims. For good reason. Emotion eclipses reason. The ‘we/they’ prism refracts and distorts our thoughts. The individual is swept up into the mass mood. Frenzy roils just below the surface.
Experiences of war and conflict, though, are not uniform. They vary. Whose blood is being shed, in what quantities? Are we the direct protagonist or just the empathetic supporters of certain combatants? How closely and why do we identify with one side? How much do we hate the other side? Is our collective self ginger and vulnerable or self-confident? What is the pre-existing anxiety level? Consequently, each situation is peculiar. A country’s subjective response and attendant behavior, therefore, can be highly revealing.
Unfortunately, observation is blurred and selective. We are poor witnesses to ourselves. Sometimes, we never do gain the perspective needed for a clear rendering of what happened, how we felt and what we did. Oddly, the more peculiar the experience, the less the inclination and ability to reflect on it. Such is the case in regard to the current Ukraine affair. That singular feature is itself noteworthy. For that is not due to indifference – quite the opposite. Washington is the producer and would-be director of the drama as well as the co-star. The feature that cries out for our critical attention is the frenzy that the Ukraine conflict has engendered. This despite the absence of an American military presence, no obvious national interest of the first order at stake, and its erupting at a time when one would have thought the country’s appetite for this sort of thing satiated by two decades of endless, failed wars in nearly every part of the world.
My principal concern here is not to answer the question of ‘why?’ I have tried to address that in previous commentaries. Instead, the aim is to highlight those characteristics of our collective national persona brought into stark relief by our reaction to events.
HYPOCRISY. The air is rank with it. The overwrought emotional response to events, concentrated in D.C., spreads across the land – from sea to shining sea. As per usual, it is the MSM and the politicos who take the lead and set the tone. Sympathy for human suffering is admirable when genuine and the expression of sensitive, empathetic concern for our fellows., when we are moved by the occasion and not just the ritual. Honoring the victims of mass shootings, hate bombings, and natural disasters is moving and in a sense reassuring.
Today, we are seeing an outpouring of sentiment over the plight of Ukrainians. Most striking is the upwelling of vigils, prayer sessions and protests at universities. Demonstrative displays of feelings that are of this scope should set us to reflect on their full meaning. Here are a few things to consider.
Civilian casualties in Ukraine are relatively few. Despite the strenuous efforts to find then, actual numbers appear to be in the order of 300-400. For good reasons, Russian forces are calculatingly avoiding attacks on urban centers; after all, 40% of the population is Russian and concentrated in the regions where the fighting is taking place. Moreover, Moscow has no interest in subjugating the country to its rule. In comparison, the Ukrainian army has been shelling the city centers of Lugansk and Donetsk, producing casualties estimated by a UN agency at more than 1,300 (3 or 4 times what objective observers estimate on the Ukrainian government’s side of the battle lines). Also. the water system has been destroyed. Yet, these facts are unreported and unnoticed in the total absence of media presence in an area they have erased from their reportorial map.
A broader perspective is instructive. During the week of combat in Ukraine, a larger number of innocent civilians in other places have died from American actions. In Yemen, the unrelenting Saudi bombing and strangulation of the Houthi regions continues to take a heavy toll: from weapons, from starvation, from disease. This carnage could not have occurred without direct involvement by the U.S. military. Although the American contribution has diminished over the past year or so, we continue to play a considerable role in the Saudi onslaught. Our officers have sat in Air Force command posts in Saudi Arabia pinpointing targets, our planes have done the refueling of Saudi aircraft which, otherwise, could not have reached their targets, we have supplied the weapons and ammunition marked ‘Made In U.S.A.’ And we have participated in the embargo that has prevented food and medicines from getting to the needy. Famine has added immeasurably to the casualties. Over the past 6 years, tens of thousands have been killed, maimed or invalided by illness.
The carnage in Yemen to which we are accomplices is not collateral to the defense of any American national interest or the suppression of any threat. Its only rationalization is a dubious calculation that putting our arms around the shoulders of the psychopathic butcher Mohammed bin-Salman in Riyadh is worth the massive suffering of Yemeni innocents. That decision was made by President Obama and his Vice-President Joe Biden, reaffirmed by Donald Trump and continues to this day by President Joe Biden – the great humanitarian who last night shed copious crocodile tears for Ukraine.
Yet, one can search high-and-low for a vigil, a wake, a memorial service to honor the victims of our own government’s callous disrespect for human life in Yemen. None at our institutions of higher learning, almost none in in our places of worship, just fleeting platitudes by a few folks on Capitol Hill. Certainly, no apologies to orphans, widows and invalids. The blood on our hands is invisible, the blood on Russian hands undergoes microscopic examination. Hypocrisy in caps.
Let us look at the wider record to see what it says about the American attitude toward law, a ‘rule-base international system,’ and criminal acts. The United States invaded and occupied the sovereign state of Iraq with no legal mandate whatsoever, no legitimate claim – however stretched – of self-defense, and with no expression of approval from the Iraq people. The results: tens of thousands killed directly by our military and their mercenaries, hundreds of thousands killed in the ensuing violence we provoked, untold wounded, and razing into moonscapes Falluja (twice), Mosul, Raqqa, sections of Baghdad and numerous smaller towns. The U.S. Marines alone fired 20,000+ artillery shells into densely populated Mosul – separate from weeks of aerial bombing. Empathy? Our government waited 3 years before making the reluctant ‘admission’ of 483 civilians dying in Mosul. By the standards applied to Ukraine, as headlined in The New York Times, that last figure would be publicized as a million or so. In fact, the true figure has been estimated as well over 10,000.
Then, there is ISIS. We are responsible for its very existence and, therefore, its grisly deeds. It birthing was in the prison (Camp Bucca), set up by General Stanley McCrystal, where we cooped up many thousands swept up indiscriminately. The grim conditions were the breeding grounds for its leadership and their recruiting ground.
In Afghanistan, the thirst for revenge for 9/1 drove us to spend 20 years generating violent chaos – 19 of them directed at the Taliban, not al-Qaeda. To this day, the Taliban has not killed a single American outside of Afghanistan. We have killed tens of thousands and inflicted suffering on many more. Now, in the wake of our shameful flight, the country is starving. Desperate women are selling their kidneys to organ traffickers in order to feed their kids. A decent society, with a person of integrity at its head, would invite one of those women to attend the President’s State of the Union Address as an honored guest – perhaps seated next to Jill Biden along with the Ukrainian Ambassador. Such a symbolic gesture would do more to advance America’s reputation and influence around the world than all the hollow posturing by Biden’s bunch of bumbling amateur foreign policy makers.
We have responded to those dire conditions by imposing economic sanctions. In a move that should be inscribed in its own page of infamy, humanitarian Joe Biden literally stole $8 billion of Afghan money held in U.S. based banks and the Federal Reserve. That is not Taliban money, and it is not just the state’s money either. Most belongs to small merchants and individuals whose deposits were transferred to the Afghani central bank for safe-keeping. That is as close as you can get to actually taking bread out of a baby’s mouth. Willi Sutton never had it so good – nor was he so morally crass as to boast of his humanitarian instincts.
Finally, let us not forget America’s full, unwavering endorsement of Israel’s repeated bloody campaigns to ‘mow the lawn’ in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. There, each ‘mowing’ causes thousands of casualties. There, schools, hospitals and the offices of disobedient journalists are indeed targeted.
The bill of indictment is a long one. We haven’t even touched on the torture regime that we organized on a global basis – in explicit violation of international law, treaties and American statutes, too. A ‘rule-based international system,’ indeed.
All of the peoples victimized, neglected and forgotten who are noted above share one common trait. I’ll leave its identity to your imagination. A hint: throw into the mix the Bosniaks?
LYING
Lying is the handmaiden to hypocrisy.
We Americans gradually have become used to lying and deceit from our leaders – whether in government or other big, powerful institutions. Even the CDC has succumbed to the fashion – losing its immunity in the course of the epidemic. We call it disinformation because ‘lie’ strikes many as too blunt for our sensitive eyes and ears. The NYT has a strict rule, in fact, not to use the word ‘lie.’ Not even Donald Trump has ever ‘lied’ insofar as its editors are concerned. In a sense, we have become inured to lying since it is so commonplace. Only the incurable innocents believe what is told them by political candidates or purveyors of electronic gizmos. Moreover, the line between truth and fiction has become so blurred that reality has lost much of its previous claim to preeminence. Everything, we are advised, is subjective; whatever you want to believe is the truth. So, despite the record of massive mendacity chalked up by the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and White House spokespersons over the years, the MSM swallow whole whatever is being sold and then they repackage it as reporting and sell it to us word-for-word.
Here’s a stark example. On March 2 President Biden was asked whether Russian forces are deliberately targeting civilian areas in Ukraine, the president says, “It’s clear they are.” An outright lie – picked up and transmitted without comment. The wrinkle in this instance that this is the same lie that the MSM had been disseminating for days. Two-way mendacity between the chief executive and the so-called Fourth Estate. Cozy. Those who know better will be kept at bay – non-persons.
So, we read in the august NYT that Russia Launches Missile Attack On Ukrainian Cities. Civilian Casualties Mount, Russian Offense on Kharkiv Stalls, Russia’s Pounding of Key Ukrainian Cities Is Escalated, etc., etc. All nonsense, all lies. Never corrected. They are just sub-heads in a fictional story designed to mythologize, to entertain, and to control thought. Straight out of 1984; who needs censorship? A body politique incapable of enunciating and observing reasonable ethical standards of behave should still find it within itself to engage in an honest discussion and debate on matters of supposed national consequence. Ukraine has shown, once again, that we are not so capable.
Why does a President so casually lie in public? Well, for one thing, long experience tells him that he could get away with it. After all, most Americans still take at face value whatever they are told about the international scene despite their being lied to and deceived by their leaders. They lied about WMD in Iraq; they lied about the reception to be expected from the Iraq people, they lied repeatedly about the insurrection, they lied repeatedly about torture, they lied about Petraeus’ magnificent Iraqi national army that fled before Mosul. They lied for 2O years straight about progress in Afghanistan; they lied about our underhanded dealings with al-Qaeda and associated jihadist groups in Syria, they lied about the critical support given ISIS by Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. They also lied in denying the comprehensive electronic surveillance of Americans’ communications. So why should we take their word for what they say about events in Ukraine? Yet we do – for several reasons.
One, we have become a gullible people. Two, we hold a picture of reality that has been shaped by the MSM which does not prize accuracy. Three, we really are not terribly interested in the truth. What we want is conformity to the story line that has been laid out for us, that compliments the United States, that we have been conditioned to believe, that doesn’t either strain our mental faculties or challenge our beliefs. Joe Biden knows all of that. Does he also know that American credibility suffers as a consequence among other governments that you are going to have to deal with? To paraphrase that master diplomat Victoria Nuland: “Fuck the Russians! Fuck the Chinese! Fuck the Indians!” And don’t even bother to fuck our European allies since they already have fucked themselves.
The current passion and range of the reaction in the West calls for close examination. Here, we are in the realm of social psychology and mass behavior. Hysteria – at times, in its extreme expressions. Bicocca University in Milan canceled a course on Dostyevsky taught by an Italian professor. The Munich Philharmonic has fired its acclaimed Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, because he refuses a diktat that he criticize Putin and the Ukraine invasion. They are seconded by orchestras in Rotterdam, New York, Vienna, and la Scala which have canceled all his engagements. Silence is not tolerated.
Equally outrageous, the famed soprano, Anna Netrebko, has forced to drop appearances at the Zurich opera House because she is deemed irremeably tainted by having received an award for artistic achievement from Putin personally and having voted for him in a past election. Long resident in Vienna, married to a Uruguayan baritone, she in fact has issued a statement condemning the war as senseless “aggression” and calls on “Russia to end it right now.” Even that cut no ice with the Inquisition. The general manager of the New York Met, Peter Gleb, who has assumed the authority of New York’s Gauleiter for cultural purity, declared that “denouncing the war is not enough.” Presumably, he wants Netrebko to arm herself with Madame Butterfly’s knife, clamber over the Kremlin walls and eviscerate Putin in his pajamas. The threat to cancel her spring appearances makes as much sense as cancelling performances by Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall because he has dined with Bibi Netanyahu at a time of a Gaza ravaging, and there shook the hand of racist Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman whose advocated solution to the Palestinian problem is to expel all Arabs from the Holy Land into the desert, i.e. the Armenian solution.
If Netrebko’s long-time colleagues in the music world had any principles or guts, they’ issue an ultimatum, quite her persecution or we’ll all boycott the Met’s entire season. Of course, that never will happen – these days, all spheres of Western society are pervaded with cowardice.
These distinguished personages thereby join the ranks of the know-nothings like the restaurant owners who are renaming Russian dressing as Ukrainian dressing and Beef Stroganoff as Beef Zelensky. There is precedent, the solons of the U.S. Congress back in 2001 changed their menu to substitute Freedom Fries for the unspeakable French Fries because Jacques Chirac did not think that an invasion of Iraq was a great idea. And in WW I, sauerkraut became Liberty Cabbage. Children will be children.
Then there is the Czech government issuing a decree that declares the expressing a favorable opinion about the Russian intervention a crime that will make you liable to prosecution and imprisonment. Even the Prague regime is overmatched by this blow struck for peace and freedom: the International Federation of Felines (FIFe) on Tuesday ordered a ban on the importation of Russian-bred cats, presumably anywhere in the world. “No cat bred in Russia may be imported and registered in any FIFe pedigree book outside Russia, regardless of, which organization issued its pedigree,” the FIFe board said in a statement.
To search for an explanation of this behavior, one would have to dive into the turbid depths of the human mind. That is beyond the scope of this essay. A couple of thoughts do come to mind. One is that this overreaction may be propelled in part by hidden feelings of guilt about the West’s irresponsible abstention in doing next to nothing to prevent or even mitigate the atrocities in Bosnia. Silence, then, was golden. (And public lies the order of the day: e.g., German President Franz-Walter Steinmeier and then Foreign Minister outstanding among them). Perhaps, those feelings were strengthened by the excesses of the American ‘War On Terror’ in which the Europeans were accomplices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. In addition to the provision of tangible aid, every NATO government was an accomplice in the rendition program, in one way or another – with the sole exception of France. They, thus, found themselves on the wrong side of a line of blood. Crossing back is important for a group of nations whose self-identity, and their one card in playing the game of international politics, is their proclaimed virtue and enlightenment.
A second, related point of conjecture is that these people have lived ‘non-moral’ lives in an ethically sterile environment. That is to say that they never were placed in or sought circumstances where they faced difficult moral choices – where they had to affirm through action the ideals and virtues to which they nominally adhere. At some level, certain of these well-educated enlightened elites felt that void to varying degrees. Suddenly, out of the blue comes a golden opportunity to do so. To do so without pain or serious cost, with the mutual support of a large consort of cosmopolitan fellows. There may be unwelcome consequences, but in the moment of exhilaration they are sublimated. The one negative that may enter the margins of consciousness is that people will freeze/sweat in the dark. Even then, well-heeled elites find ways to avoid freezing or sweating.
As so often is the case in present times, the ‘problem’ lies not out there but rather in ourselves.
GROUP THINK
We Americans pride ourselves on our independence, our individualism, our autonomy as citizens. “Don’t tread on me! Don’t mess with Texas! I’m from Missouri! Prove it!” Once upon a time, they might have been a semblance of truth to this. There no longer is. We long ago achieved a herd mentality. Our skepticism, our readiness to question, our ability to apply an elementary yet useful common logic – all that has become nothing but faded memory and legend. Commercial advertising, TV, and the dumbing down of education have done their work well. Public discussion on matters of public interest is shallow and dropping steadily year by year. Our leaders are at once effect and reinforcing cause of this phenomenon.
We find it far easier, comfortable and convenient to inhabit the same world of fable and fantasy that our fellows inhabit. This is most strikingly true in regard to our national identity, our place in the world, and our dealings with other nations.
As the gap between fantasy world and actual world realities widens, the need for reinforcement through manifestations of consensus gets stronger. So, too, the intolerance of dissent – its logical corollary. We saw that during the active period of the War on Terror. We see that today in regard to Russia and in regard to China. This group think is policed with a light hand because it is so enveloping and the outcome of willing adhesion to the fantastic creations to which we are donors and observers alike.
An illustrative anecdote. Some of my recent commentaries have evoked an unusually large number of replies: as many as a dozen out of 5,400 recipients (The Age of Communication?) A couple received last week are worth noting. They are both from retired ambassadors with whom I had had friendly exchanges previously, one of whom bears a name that many of you would recognize for notable accomplishments in the past. He writes undiplomatically: “How much were you paid to write this? You are going to lose what little standing you have left as a serious academic.”
The other retired diplomat wrote this:
“Forgive me, but you’re sounding like a number of old FSO’s, so-called strategic foreign policy ‘Russian experts’ with whom I’ve lost patience. We are NOT still in the 20th c., generations and history and modernity have moved forward ….It is NoT humiliated, historic Russia in the abstract that is choosing to invade Ukraine now; it is Vladimir PUTIN in particular….. It is about the man, more than the country or its interests and government. The main problem is that both our law and international law and order have never been able to deal with damaged, insecure and delusional Aging leaders a priori!! “
So it goes. Enough said.
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Student ejected from audience of Australian current affairs program for asking critical question on Ukraine
In an unprecedented act of political censorship, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist Stan Grant ordered a young Russian-Australian student to leave the network’s weekly “Q+A” television show on Thursday for criticising media coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Billed as the program where “You get to ask the questions,” the nationally broadcast live show is promoted as a forum for democratic discussion on various political and social issues.
Grant’s removal of Sasha Gillies-Lekakis, a 22-year-old post-graduate student from the University of Melbourne, exposed these increasingly threadbare pretensions.
The censorship occurred as the entire political and media establishment is whipping up a wartime atmosphere. Two days earlier, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, with Labor’s backing, announced that Australia would provide $105 million to Ukraine, including $70 million in military equipment.
Supermarket chains are imposing bans on Russian products, sporting bodies are announcing boycotts of events in that country and a wall-to-wall media barrage is promoting the government line on the conflict.
Gillies-Lekakis, who was in the audience, was invited by Grant, the “Q+A” presenter, to ask a question. He told the program he was “outraged” by media reportage that simplistically depicted “Ukraine as the ‘good guy’ and Russia as the ‘bad guy.” “A lot of Russians here and around the world support what Putin’s doing in Ukraine,” he said.
Gillies-Lekakis then attempted to explain the death toll from bloody attacks by Ukrainian government backed fascist forces, such as the Azhov Battalion, on the Russian populations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 amid the long running civil war in that region.
He was jeered by someone in the audience and then stopped by Grant who claimed the death toll figures were incorrect.
Neither Grant nor anyone else dealt with the substance of the student’s challenge. Thursday’s panel was composed of Dennis Richardson, former Director-General of the domestic spy agency ASIO, Deborah Snow, a Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Liberal government MP Jason Falinski, Labor’s shadow minister for defence Brendan O’Connor and University of Sydney lecturer Olga Boichak.
No mention was made in subsequent discussion of the Azov Battalion or other neo-Nazis backing Ukrainian President Zelensky’s pro-US regime.
Twenty minutes after Gillies-Lekakis’s question, Grant, who was no doubt contacted by ABC chiefs via his studio earpiece, intervened and suddenly ordered the young man out of the studio. This was necessary, Grant declared, “because people here have been talking about family who are suffering and people who are dying.”
Grant falsely told the audience, “We can’t have anyone who is sanctioning, supporting violence and killing of people.” His anti-democratic attack on freedom of speech was applauded by Ukrainian nationalists in the audience and silently endorsed by the panel.
While scores of viewers protested Gillies-Lekakis’s ejection on the “Q+A” Twitter account, the only tweet referring to the incident that was published on the screen during the broadcast hailed Grant’s repressive actions.
Grant gave free rein to the panellists to repeat pro-NATO talking points without offering a single critical question.
Boichak, a Ukrainian-Australian, was given the last word, declaring that some of her friends and family had joined local “territorial defence units” and were “willing to do what it takes to not allow Ukraine to be occupied.” She quoted a section of Ukraine’s national anthem—“We will lay down our body and our soul for our freedom”—and declared this “is actually what is being asked of them right now.”
The entire discussion centred around how far NATO and its allies should escalate the conflict, with audience members and some panellists advocating the imposition of a no-fly zone that would likely result in a direct war between the US and Russia.
Grant’s allegations that Gillies-Lekakis was “sanctioning, supporting violence and killing of people,” was a lie, as was the journalist’s claim at the end of the broadcast that the student had asked a “rogue [unvetted] question”.
Gillies-Lekakis later explained on his Facebook page that his question had been submitted to the show’s producers, was approved and delivered with minimal changes.
Referring to Grant’s accusation that he supported violence, Gillies-Lekakis wrote: “I am unequivocally against war and the loss of any lives, be they Ukrainian, Russian, or any other, and want to be clear that I made no statements indicating anything to the contrary—I made no direct statement sanctioning violence or conflict.”
The post-graduate student said that he planned to explain that he supported “Putin’s grievances regarding the breaking of the Minsk Peace Agreement by Ukraine and the ensuing loss of life, particularly in the Russian-populated areas of the Donbas… [and ask] why these Russian deaths were seemingly less important compared to Ukrainian casualties in our media coverage, and whether the panellists thought there was any hypocrisy in their positions as a result…
“Unfortunately, I was unable to fully finish asking my question nor clarify myself despite trying, and so believe that my words were misrepresented and incomplete,” he wrote.
The WSWS opposes the Putin regime, which represents a Russian capitalist oligarchy, and its reactionary invasion of Ukraine. It is nevertheless the case that the US and NATO bear principal responsibility for the conflict, which they have provoked as part of longstanding preparations for war against Russia and China, to ensure American imperialism’s global hegemony.
The response to Gillies-Lekakis’s entirely legitimate question was intended to signal that no discussion of this broader context, or any opposition to the official line will be tolerated.
Since its founding 90 years ago, the ABC has functioned as a pillar of Australia’s ruling elite, manufacturing, moulding and mobilising public opinion in line with its national requirements.
At certain periods during the post-WWII period, individual ABC journalists and some programs have made limited criticisms of Australian foreign and domestic policy and differed from the politics espoused by the Murdoch media and other corporate outlets. These exceptions were used to promote the illusion that the state-funded network had some political “independence.”
Honest and critical journalists, particularly in the two decades since the US-led invasion of the Iraq War in 2003, have been marginalised or driven out. Restrictive editorial policies have been imposed following numerous government denunciations, threats, high-level “investigations” and budget cuts.
Among the most notorious of these was a special inquiry into “Q+A” after it permitted Zaky Mallah, a young Islamic man who was acquitted by a jury of terrorism charges in 2005, to ask a prepared and vetted question on its show on June 22, 2015. Mallah’s question challenged new laws that gave the immigration minister the right to cancel the citizenship of anyone convicted of terrorism.
Numerous angry comments have been posted on social media denouncing Grant’s censorship. Some speculated that he decided to remove Gillies-Lekakis only after receiving orders from government officials via the program’s producer.
Whatever the reason for Grant’s 20-minute delay before he booted the post-graduate student out of the ABC studios, the well-paid journalist is no accidental figure in the network’s stable.
Grant has not only worked for a range of commercial and studio-funded media outlets in Australia and international networks, including CNN, over his 30-year global career. He also has intimate connections with Australia’s foreign policy and military elite.
In July 2020, Grant became a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a right-wing think tank funded by the defence department and giant military hardware manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group and Raytheon Technologies. ASPI also receives government funding from the US, the UK, Israel, Canada and the Netherlands.
ASPI continuously promotes the US-led confrontation with China and advocates for its escalation.
Grant’s ejection of Gillies-Lekakis from “Q+A” serves these interests and is a clear message to all journalists and the rest of the country, that no diversion from the official government line will be permitted. The censorship should be roundly condemned.
That Grant could falsely accuse someone of promoting “violence” on national television and in front of a former head of Australia’s main spy agency—and not be challenged—establishes an ominous and dangerous precedent.
How long will it be before Gillies-Lekakis or any other individual that dares to challenge Canberra’s war-drive is visited and interrogated by police and spy agency officers?
Last Thursday’s “Q+A” program is a forewarning of how the official media as a whole will attempt to intimidate and silence widespread anti-war opposition and those who seek to give voice to it. This includes the Socialist Equality Party, the only party that fights to mobilise workers and youth internationally on a socialist program against the US-led war drive and the source of conflict, the capitalist profit system.
