Despite all the censorship and restrictions placed on their citizenry, the elite of the United States and the collective West cannot hide the fact that it is a declining empire that has been fleecing its taxpayers for decades to maintain and improve the lifestyles of the most wealthy.
As of 2023, the top 10% financially in the US controlled 66.9% of the wealth, with the top 1% holding 30.6% of the wealth on its own. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the country held only 2.5% of wealth.
That wealth inequality is becoming so drastic that Americans have been seeing its effects for themselves, no analysis or news reports needed. In December, chronic homelessness hit an all-time high in the US. In February, the collective credit card debt of Americans also reached an all-time high, surpassing $1.13 trillion.
As a result, Americans are understandably concerned about the economy, with a recent poll showing that 55% of Americans believe that the US economy is in a recession, despite a high stock market, low unemployment, a rising GDP and countless officials and articles and news reports telling Americans that they are wrong, the economy is actually doing great.
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? The Biden administration and mainstream media outlets seem to be asking Americans at every possible turn.
“[Americans are] forced to each and every day walk outside their house, go to work, eat lunch on the street, in the drive to work, and go, ‘Wow, there's a lot of tents up here. Wow, that's a lot of trash. Wow, a lot of shuttered businesses. What is going on?’” explained the host of AM-Wake Up, Steve Poikonen, while on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday.
“And then they see a bunch of goons on TV, like Paul Krugman, trying to tell you that the economy's never been better and that everything is fine. It’s a disconnect that is not going to work out well for the elite in the future.”
The Gray Zone is not the only outlet attacked by Russophobic smear campaigns. Other outlets, like Consortium News and The Real News Network, among others, have been labeled disinformation agents by government-funded “non-governmental organizations” like the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which labeled not only the Consortium News’ editor a purveyor of “Russian disinformation” but hundreds of X accounts, including ordinary citizens.
In May, rapper and MintPressNews contributor Lowkey was accused by one of the biggest newspapers in the UK of being promoted by a bot network from Russia, China and Iran on X.
Lowkey has several protest songs supporting Palestine and often posts pro-Palestinian messages on social media.
However, as pointed out by MintPressNews in their response article, the report relied almost entirely on an Israeli company named Cyabra, which was funded by the country’s military intelligence and half of its employees have left the company to rejoin the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to fight in Gaza. According to MintPress, the report by Cyabra did not mention Lowkey by name and did not reveal its methods or a list of accounts it was accusing.
In the social media age where every individual is essentially their own media outlet, the attacks are a direct assault on free speech in the West, particularly on the internet.
“We’ve seen very few instances over the last couple decades where anyone in the judiciary, let alone the [US] Supreme Court, is willing to take a stand to actually protect or preserve the marketing of the Constitution and the First Amendment,” argued Poikonen.
The censorship is “about all [the elite] have, with a bunch of other histrionics and then whatever version of events they can manufacture to try to sell the story,” Poikonen said earlier. “But we see them fall apart in real-time, thanks to the legitimate independent media and as citizen journalists on the ground in places where things are happening.”
Still, independent journalists and outlets need to be cautious of the corrupting influence of the elite, who would like to turn independent media into a tool of the mainstream media.
“There are people in independent media that are scrambling and climbing over each other [to] proceed to tables that the good Lord told them to flip over,” Poikonen explained. “We can stop trying to get seats at those tables. We’re going to be in a [much] better spot regardless of what kind of censorship goes on because you can’t stop the truth and you can’t stop everyone from telling [it].”