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The war between the United States-led imperialist powers and Russia that is playing out in Ukraine is not merely a proxy conflict. It is an existential showdown for the U.S. hegemonic system, benignly known as the “West”.

The high stakes of this showdown explain why it has assumed such extreme geopolitical tension to the point where there are palpable fears that the conflict could escalate to a nuclear World War Three conflagration.

We have arrived at this abysmal danger in large part because the Western-controlled media have distorted and lied about the conflict to cover up the responsibility of the Western imperialist powers.

The Western media have performed as they have always done – to serve as a propaganda system to promote false claims and warped history in such a way as to enable the Western regimes to act criminally but with the cover of apparent virtue.

The United States and its imperialist partners in the NATO alliance claim that they are defending the sovereignty and democracy of Ukraine from “unprovoked aggression” by Russia. The Western media have indulged this narrative by repeating it incessantly, while strenuously omitting alternative perspectives.

Understanding the cause of the conflict is impossible if one were to rely solely on Western media for information. Because the “information” is essentially a propaganda narrative aimed at giving the U.S. and its NATO partners a license for what is otherwise their provocative military offensive on Russia’s borders. Russia’s deep-seated concerns about NATO’s relentless expansion since the end of the Cold War – despite assurances to the contrary from former U.S. leaders – are belittled by Western media.

The Western media will not tell its consumers about the CIA coup in Kiev in 2014 that overthrew an elected president to install a NeoNazi regime. The Western media called it a pro-democracy movement. The Western media will not tell its consumers about how the NATO powers weaponized the Kiev regime over the following decade to wage a low-intensity war of aggression against the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine, culminating in Russia’s military intervention in February 2022.

The Western media won’t tell its consumers that Ukraine has always been an object of intrigue for the U.S. and its NATO partners as a way to destabilize Russia and formerly the Soviet Union.

Destabilizing Russia and other foreign states is what Western imperialist powers have been doing throughout history, specifically since 1945, even though such interference in foreign states is a violation of the UN Charter and international law. Some independent historians like the late William Blum estimate at least 100 instances of the U.S. invading or interfering in other nations since the end of World War Two through election manipulation, sabotage by unconventional warfare, or fueling proxy armed conflicts.

No sooner had the UN Charter been established in June 1945 to protect nations’ sovereignty, and the U.S., Britain and other Western imperialist states began recruiting Ukrainian fascists who had collaborated with Nazi Germany in its extermination of Slavic peoples. Remember, the Soviet Union had lost 27-30 million people during World War Two to Nazi imperialism. A temporary war-time alliance formed between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and Britain was quickly rejected by Washington and London and replaced by the Cold War. The redeployment of Nazi remnants by the Western imperialists against the Soviet Union was a staggering act of treachery.

The Western media played a vital role during the decades of the Cold War to whitewash and normalize the criminal conduct of Western imperialism. They portrayed the Cold War conflict as one of “noble West” versus “evil communism”.

Even when the Western imperialists were waging genocidal wars in Korea, Vietnam, and across Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America and Africa, the Western media served the same function over and over again. To be crude, they acted as a systematic toilet flush. They dutifully swept away the putrid filth and crimes of the Western regimes so that the Western public and the rest of the world could not examine too closely the lies and preposterous falsehoods.

In particular, the United States’ imperialist regime has been spectacular in being able to get away with genocidal wars and multiple violations of the UN Charter through covert and overt aggressions – and yet after all that infinite mayhem and malice, the U.S. political leaders and media are brazen enough to proclaim what should be the mind-boggling nonsense of their country being exceptionally virtuous, the leader of the “free world”, the “indispensable nation”, the custodian of the “rules-based global order,” and so on.

How is it possible to utter such lies and falsehoods? The Western media is the janitor to clean up the foul mess and stench of lies. We see this still happening – to some degree with lesser efficacy – in the appalling genocide in Gaza. How is it possible for Western states to keep supporting the Israeli regime’s mass murder of civilians every day and for the U.S. to veto a ceasefire five times at the UN Security Council? To some extent, the Western media have acted to normalize the genocide and to shield Western governments from condemnation for their sponsoring of the Israeli regime. The genocide in Gaza is part of why the Western media and the Western imperialist regimes have been fatally exposed for their criminality. The other critical exposure is the insanely dangerous war being waged against Russia in Ukraine.

Granted, Western media have at times reported on the crimes and misdemeanors of their governments in the conduct of foreign relations and wars. We could mention here the reporting of the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s, which exposed the imperialist criminality of the Vietnam War. But such breakthroughs are akin to cracks in an otherwise monolithic system of lies and disinformation.

For the most part, the Western media’s fundamental role has been whitewashing, apologizing, or covering up the crimes of their governments. That makes the Western media complicit in the imperialist crimes by misleading the public into accepting crimes under the guise of a justifiable pretext, such as “fighting communism” in Vietnam instead of genocide of Vietnamese, or “eradicating weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq instead of Western plunder of the Middle East.

When has the American or British media ever been held to account by the prosecution for publishing lies that enabled imperialist crimes, such as the Vietnam War or the War on Iraq?

For decades, the Western media functioned rather effectively as the propaganda arm of Western imperialism. Of course, there were healthy skeptics and critics among the public who could see through the lies and distortions. But generally, the propaganda system known as “Western news media” tended to command the public’s acceptance and trust. The CIA referred to the Western media as the “Mighty Wurlitzer, and to a large extent, the media played the tunes and swayed the people to sing and dance accordingly.

In the age of alternative news outlets and global information, the Western establishment media have lost their monopoly on manipulation and have fallen into fatal disrepute. Donald Trump’s mocking term “fake news” has resonated widely not just among his supporters but across the globe. The Western media have become an object of scorn and derision for the lies and warmongering justifications they peddle.

The lies over the Iraq War were a big exposé. More recently, the Russia-Gate nonsense over Trump, the Gaza genocide, and the insane proxy war in Ukraine against Russia have also fatally undermined the Western imperial war-and-lie machine. The election of Trump in the U.S. can be seen as a rejection of the establishment media and their instruction on how to vote.

In the Ukraine proxy war, the United States and its imperialist partners in crime have reached a certain historical dead-end. Their lies have caught up with them.

The Western regimes have always been a cesspool of lies and filth over their war crimes and crimes against humanity in every continent.

In desperation to preserve their hegemonic dominance, the Western imperialist powers are pushing the conflict with Russia to the point of inciting nuclear war. Russia is not backing down. It has the military strength to be defiant, but also its politicians are much too knowledgeable about history to be deceived by Western regimes. The lies of Western regimes are no longer tenable, and their criminal aggression is no longer tolerable.

In previous times, the Western regimes got away with their murderous mayhem because the lies they told were dutifully laundered and sluiced away by the complicit media. But now the Western media no longer have credibility or authority. The Western cesspool has a busted flush.

The author thanks Paul McCartan for an inspirational idea