“But remember, sanctions are a tool. They’re not a goal. What’s the goal? The goal is for the rest of the world – and remember, you’ve asked questions from [State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller] for months and months about the Global South, and why there’s not more support for Ukraine in this part of the Middle East or that part of Latin America or this part of Africa. Well, one of the reasons – not the only reason, but one of the reasons why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be, given that Russia has invaded Ukraine and violated rule number one of the international system, is because of the broad scope and reach of RT – where propaganda, disinformation, and lies are spread to millions if not billions of people around the world,” Rubin explained at the press conference.
The implication could not be more clear. RT and outlets like that are reaching people with a message that resonates, particularly in the Global South, and that is why the US security state cannot abide by it.
“If the crime is the content, then aren't we talking about a free speech issue here?” asked Michelle Witte, the co-host of Sputnik’s Political Misfits during a conversation with journalist and geopolitical analyst KJ Noh, an assertion that Noh agreed with.
“[Rubin] kind of gave away the game and with people this incompetent, no amount of propaganda is going to make the difference,” explained Noh.
While the US State Department has painted RT as a global propaganda machine with its tendrils seeping out of the shadows to infiltrate the minds of the public who are too stupid to evaluate information critically, in truth it is dwarfed by the propaganda arm of the West.
RT has a budget of about $300 million while outlets like the Reuters and The New York Times have budgets measured in the billions, Noh asked how RT is “winning the war for public opinion when it’s outmatched in funding by 50 to 1 by Western media agencies? I mean Reuters alone is 20 times the budget [of RT]. So, either RT has the smartest, most cost-effective propagandists on the planet, or maybe it is telling the truth and people can see that and hear that.”
Days before the sanctions on Russian outlets were announced, the US House of Representatives passed the Countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China] Malign Influence Fund Authorization Act. If signed into law, it would allocate $1.6 billion for the State Department and USAID to, among other tasks, subsidize media and civil society sources around the world to counter China’s alleged malign influence.
USAID has been accused by multiple heads of state of acting as a front for the CIA to sow dissent in their countries. In 2010, it was caught launching and running a social media website described as “Cuban Twitter” designed to foment unrest.
“One of the things that Baudelaire, the poet, said is that the greatest trick of the devil was convincing the world that he didn't exist. I think that we could apply the same thing to propagandists. You know, the greatest propaganda coup of the Western media is convincing themselves or/and convincing the world that they don't do propaganda,” Noh lamented.
The $1.6 billion spread over five years equals approximately $876,712 a day. If spent entirely on anti-China propaganda, that would result in roughly 53,333 articles per day at $30 an article, a high rate for a 500-700 word article in the Global South.
While the fund will also be dedicated to other purposes, it demonstrates that the US propaganda arm is far more well-funded than any news outlet funded by Russia.
“In other words, we are going to get an incredible barrage of anti-China BS. It’s just not going to stop,” explained Noh. “We are going to be deluged with this complete firehose of falsehoods that… exists already inside the context in which we’re already being hosed down with nonstop propaganda and lies against China.”
“I think we really are in this kind of no-holds-barred information war. The US military, the Pentagon, sees [the] information space as a theater of war. They see narrative dominance, full-spectrum dominance and as a result… our minds have been occupied,” Noh concluded.