this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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That's right, the elephant in the room cannot be mentioned because then people might start asking who committed the biggest act of industrial terrorism in Europe since WW2.
it's presented like weather or the natural state of things, you're not allowed to ask why the energy costs are high
reminds one of O'Malley-Dillon and Plouffe and Cutter talking about "PoLiTiCaL hEaDwInDs"
It does seem like people are starting to clue in though. At first, most people didn't see impact on their daily lives and that made state propaganda effective, but now as the material conditions continue to decline it's becoming less palatable by the day.
It also honestly just reads like standard US news media propaganda that comes up whenever they want something to be privatized, whether that's Venezuela's oil, Chile's copper, Chinese industry, the VA, USPS, public schools, etc. It's basically an underhanded threat and an attempt to lay the groundwork for justifying gutting European public services.
What's more, the Nordstream bombing is far from the only act of sabotage the US has done to Europe, which also includes stuff like the Ukraine war itself, suspicious fires at ASML plants, and the Suez canal blockage where the ship (for some reason) drew a giant penis before beaching itself.
Thing is that Europe is a capitalist economy and people who own companies will make decisions that increase their profits. You can't compare Europe to China or Venezuela because the nature of the economy is not the same here. You are completely right that the US has been systemically undermining Europe though. The US has no interest in Europe becoming a competitor.
I agree and I don't want to sound like it's just US vs EU here, because there are plenty of capitalists in the EU of course who would certainly love to have more "austerity" and gut public services with as little public backlash as possible. I'm just saying I've seen similar propaganda in the US my entire life, often directed at institutions in the US, and a lot of times it shares similarities with how the US media also treats certain foreign governments.
Oh yeah, no argument that the article is very clearly doing propaganda to justify the austerity that's coming. Basically, the way I look at it is that there are two things at play here. First is that capitalists who own the means of production are going to use the economic crisis in Europe as an opportunity to drive austerity policies. Second is that capitalist own media is going to do a propaganda blitz to condition the public to accept that.