Why CNN’s Downfall May Be The Most Significant Thing In The World Right Now

Caitlin Johnstone
5 min readJul 6, 2017

CNN seems to finally be learning that the harder it struggles against the tar pit of public resentment that it has created for itself, the faster it will sink. Its pundits are not pushing back against the #CNNBlackmail fury with anywhere near the pompous intensity with which they fought Trump’s wrestling tweet or the incriminating Project Veritas videos, instead opting to quietly move the news churn along in the hope that this will all go away in a few days.

It won’t.

We’re past critical mass now, and this is without a doubt the hottest that the media war has ever gotten. Never before have we seen such a widespread and concerted grassroots assault on the lies and manipulations of the deep state’s propaganda machine. Never before has the unelected US power establishment’s grip on public consciousness been this tenuous. This is a very exciting time to be alive.

I’ve been saying for some time that America has effectively become a corporatist oligarchy where democracy cannot be said to exist to any meaningful extent, and that the only thing holding this oppressive, exploitative power structure in place is the establishment’s impressive system of consent-manufacturing propaganda. The false narratives being constantly woven and promulgated by the handful of powerful plutocrat-owned corporate conglomerates which control the US media are the weakest point in the oligarchy’s armor, and a concerted effort to weaken public trust in those narratives has the potential to bring the entire thing crashing down. If mankind is to escape from the ecocidal, omnicidal trajectory that the ruling elites have got our species on, it will not be through politics, and it will not be through violent revolution. It will be through winning the media war against the establishment propaganda machine.

Last year we saw independent media, social media and WikiLeaks work together to cause the US power establishment to completely lose control of the public narrative for the first time in history. For the very first time, a crucial percentage of the population began telling their own stories about what was happening in America instead of the stories the talking heads on TV told them to tell. The term deep state became a household phrase, people began considering alternative narratives about what was happening with Russia and Syria, people read unauthorized emails and shared unauthorized ideas about their content, advancing unauthorized narratives which ultimately resulted in the unexpected election of a relatively unauthorized president. Since that time the propaganda machine has been flailing around clumsily trying to regain control like a novice ice skater scrambling to regain balance.

This unprecedented escalation in the grassroots media war upon the establishment propaganda machine may be the most significant thing happening in the world right now, because whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The real currency which drives humanity isn’t gold, isn’t money, isn’t plutocratic fiats, isn’t the petrodollar, isn’t even military strength — it’s narrative. Power only exists where it exists because people agree to pretend it exists there; they agree to all subscribe to the same stories about who has the power. If they wanted to, tomorrow everyone in America could decide that Khloe Kardashian is the undisputed Empress of the United States, and that all money has been replaced by pistachio shells. I’m not saying they should do those things, but it is absolutely within their freedom to do so; the only thing stopping them is a consensus narrative about government and money operating a certain way in that part of the world. Whoever controls that consensus narrative controls all power in the most powerful nation on earth.

It’s like this throughout all of humanity, and has been throughout all of history; whoever has been able to control a civilization’s story about what it is, how it works and where it’s going has been able to control that civilization. This is why religion has had such a massive influence upon human culture in a way that has almost always been intertwined with ruling power structures; religion is pure narrative, and whoever controls that narrative can control the people. There is a reason the most prolific religions place such emphasis on obedience, meekness, and the nobility of poverty while being sure to pay your tithes and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

With humanity’s newfound ability to network and share information at a wildly unprecedented rate, however, has come the potential for that power to move into the hands of the people as the public begins telling its own stories on a widespread, mainstream scale. Just as America could choose to shrug off the current system in favor of pistachio shell currency and Empress Khloe, it can also choose to shrug off the current system in favor of one that benefits all Americans instead of just a few plutocrats. The ruling elites are always acutely aware that this could happen at any time, and have been fighting very aggressively to lull people back in to trusting the propaganda networks which assure them that the status quo is a perfectly normal way for humanity to behave, and indeed the only safe way to run things.

The attack upon CNN by the new media is a powerful step in this direction. Already people in mainstream America have more skepticism toward CNN’s propaganda churn than they did even a month ago, and this healthy skepticism probably carries over to other branches of the corporate media as well. Let your victories over the warmongering psy-op factory that is CNN embolden you to keep expanding the assault on the corporate media as far as it can go, from the Democrat-allied outlets like MSNBC and the Washington Post to Republican-allied corporate media propagandists like Fox News; bring the whole ugly beast down. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not doing something hugely important by using your online presence to undermine and attack these outlets at every opportunity; indeed at this point in history it may be the most important thing that any one human being can do.

Keep bringing down CNN. Keep fighting the media war. Don’t stop killing the propaganda machine until it’s dead and nearly forgotten. I am so very, very impressed with you, oh clear-eyed rebels. You’re on the right track. You’re going to win this thing. We’re going to turn this ship around.

— — —

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even tossing me some money on Patreon so I can keep this gig up.

--

--