The Union of Sovietized Western States.

It might not be what most people see of America, yet that was Washington’s plan from the outset.

Preamble.

Looking aside of current events actually happening in Eastern Europe, we do have to consider the reasons that have brought things to where they are. Without doubt they have root in the western establishment, yet the seed that has germinated into the today’s troubles and those who have nurtured them have remarkable parallels with those seen in the Soviet Union a century ago. This article is going to investigate the likenesses between the Soviet past and the western present in order to see where this may all lead.

Stalin’s State.

It has to be remembered that although it was Lenin and not Stalin that led the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin died after only a little more than six years in office, he never seeing the results of his politics. The true tyrant was Stalin he being far more brutal and holding office for far longer. In contrast to many who write about Russia, the author does hold Stalin in particularly low regard, and for a good number of reasons. This long article goes into far greater detail, yet for all those who laud the changes he brought and the accomplishments he made, they are petty in comparison to what could have been achieved if Stalin had not been as obsessive as he was. That said, if we look to today, western nations are governed by equally inept and vain individuals whose only concern is the welfare of those establishment of which they are a part. To examine how the Senate is following in Stalin’s steps however, we need to look at the situation from a number of different angles if we are to arrive at logical and sensible conclusions.

‘Свобода – Freedom’

Imperial Russia was a hellhole of a place from a democratic and rights perspective, yet the changes that the October Revolution brought to Russia were hardly what could be considered a step forward. Replacing the ‘Okhrana’ secret police of the imperial era with the Cheka and NKVD was hardly a quantum leap in liberties, and rather than having the Tsar’s opponents exiled in Siberia, those who opposed the new leaders were just shot. Although the situation became more tolerable after Stalin’s death in 1953, the remaining years of Soviet rule were hardly conducive to free thought or liberal expression.

Land of the Free.

In contrast, at this time the US was the land of the free. There were of course corruption, politicians, criminals and corrupt political criminals, yet for all the ills present, America was an oasis of freedom. This largely continued until the new millennium, yet the very liberties that people were able to enjoy meant that governments and corporations could not do the same, an increasingly autocratic line needed in order to keep the people down and the élite up. 9/11 was the perfect catalyst for the authorities to implement a raft of changes, these increasing year on year since. The number of alphabet agencies has increased exponentially since that time, previously innocuous and innocent activities coming under ever more scrutiny. Whilst to date, US agencies do not act as brutally as their Soviet predecessors, a notable change has occurred over the last decade, bringing them closer the regime that America so loved to hate.

Press Parallels.

It is common knowledge that once installed in the Kremlin, the Bolsheviks shut down any media outlets that weren’t singing off the party songsheet. Lucky editors were sent to Siberia yet those who particularly irked their overlords got treated to a firing squad. Moscow kept a very tight grip on not only the material available, but also the ideological it contained. The basic premise behind this was that people were given only what they needed to know, a lack of further information leading to rumors and hearsay, but little more. The Soviet regime also employed an army of spies, their job to remain inconspicuous and report conversations to their seniors when necessary. Careless talk costs lives, yet in the USSR at the time, the lives lost were those who uttered the wrong words. Everyone and everything was kept on the straight and narrow, a carefully written script presented in a given manner with no backchat whatsoever.

Look to the West and that very process is happening again, but due to technological advances, in a very different way. The communist era was all on paper, and in the digital world of today, equal care is being taken to ensure that unwelcome ideas are kept out of the public eye. Thousands of perfectly bona fide users have been suspended from countless platforms for doing nothing other than tell the truths of today’s events, others kicked out of chatrooms for saying the same. The press however has morphed completely over recent years, this now being a subject apart.

No News is Good News.

The Soviet Union was famous for being oblivious to the obvious, often choosing to either ignore or blatantly play down stories of paramount importance. It took over a week for the Chernobyl accident to be widely reported and when TASS reported the crash of an airliner in Vienna, it failed to mention that it was an Aeroflot aircraft that was destroyed. Those with their hands on the printing presses could take incredible liberties with the truth, yet that is happening again today, but in a very different way.

Not News.

Most notably with affairs regarding Russia, a couple of novel media branches have come into being over the previous decade. The first is fact-checking. Whilst at first glance, this seems entirely plausible, the truth is that these websites and organizations merely debunk stories as ‘fake news’ to the whim of western governments. Numerous events with a good base in fact have been universally ‘proven untrue’ through being lambasted by the sheer weight of criticism from these sites, none of which cite either the ‘experts’ involved, nor who they represent. The other is genuinely fake news or misinformation, stories put straight into the mainstream in order to blatantly mislead the public. Again, this is invariably aimed at ‘enemies of the state’, with few if any tangible sources to back them up.

Predominately Propaganda.

As discussed, the Soviet media was brutal, yet this was in an age where many were still illiterate, radio (wireless!) was still a luxury and people obeyed their leaders with few questions asked. The US obviously had a head start regarding radio and then television, today being a nation where mobile phones and the internet are vital essentials, people able to get a huge amount of information in a matter of seconds. This has meant that by clever manipulation and a great deal of influence from government agencies, a very successful effort has been conducted over decades to ensure that if people only see one version of the same story for long enough, they will reject any other narrative. With the advent of the internet, anybody and everybody suddenly had access to everything, this compelling the authorities to pressure the media, social or otherwise into ensuring that only the right stories were to be on public view. Moreover, outfits such as Bellingcat have been given credibility by governments and media alike, obscure sofa superstars now being the go-to sources in western cyberspace. As mentioned, many ‘alternative’ sources have been deplatformed or blocked, yet in the world of TV, networks shun any journalist who looks away from the script. With that in mind, we have to take a closer look at those who give us our news.

Hounding the Newshounds.

Aside of the internet which is a true smorgasbord of the good, bad and ugly in this world, the media today is centered around the news networks which claim to tell us what’s going on. A multitude of impeccably presented anchors give us their government’s version of current events, safe in the knowledge that for as long as they continue in this vein, they’ll stay in the limelight and on a good salary. For those out there who care to tell the truth, life is somewhat more of a challenge. Not only is there not one single western network that will touch any journo without a whiter-than-white pedigree, even when truthtellers go it alone, they are persecuted by their peers. This does not translate into a profitable business, meaning that those whose daily job it is to tell the truth do not whilst those who do tell the truth need a day job to pay the bills.

Political Pointscoring.

Under the iron rule of Stalin, a huge proportion of the general public were card-carrying members of the party if for no other reason than their career hinged upon it, yet if we look to the political apparatus of the time, it is obvious that there was only one party to follow. That was obviously a necessity for those who wanted to climb the political ladder by fair means or foul. Influence played a huge role in ideological ascent, one only having to look at subsequent Soviet leaders and those who sponsored them. A one-party system gave huge advantages to those with ambition, acumen and above all acquaintances, this increasingly being the case in the US.

The Political Path.

One would have thought that the ‘land of the free’ would offer boundless political possibilities, yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Whereas the Soviet system never pretended to be anything other than a one-party political apparatus, the US system goes to great lengths telling the world it is not, yet even a vegetable can tell that Democrats and Republicans are like peas in a pod. When one of their increasingly aged number heads for the sky, both sides of the house sit in church together. The death of one of their own sees sees their rear ends sitting in the pews as close together as their common politics do in real life. With that, an aspiring politico is forced to walk a tightrope if they are to succeed. As decades of collusion have made the American political establishment what it is, anything other than toeing the line means falling into the abyss, a duopoly of democracy permitting little more legislative liberty than offered by the Politburo in its heyday.

Keeping Guard on the Bots (KGB).

The intelligence agencies of the former Soviet Union need no introduction, the KGB, NKVD and Cheka now being the stuff of legend. Be it knocking on your door at the dead of night, arresting people for subversive activity or simply spying on millions of people, these Soviet spooks were not only very good at what they did, they also caused mass fear for what they did badly. Their finger was on every pulse, no heartbeat of dissent going unnoticed in the Lubyanka building in Moscow. The use and abuse of power was the lynchpin of these organizations, they absolutely controlling the information available to their people. Aside from that, tens of thousands of agents were inserted into innumerable workplaces, listening for words that challenged the party narrative and should remain unspoken. For all the draconian measures taken in the Soviet period, a number of alarming similarities are now to be seen in the West.

Internet Intelligence.

As mentioned, today we live in a digital world, and with that, the means and media have completely changed. Rather than there being illegal printing presses and meetings between dissidents, opposition voices are now to be seen in cyberspace. With that, western governments, most notably that of the US, now dedicate immense resources and personnel in order that the one-party narrative goes unchallenged. Both social media and messaging apps are targeted, as well as websites disappearing from internet searches, the alphabet agencies working alongside the Google parent company, Alphabet. The US has the CIA in its various guises to keep tabs on the general public, yet apart from the spies one would expect, there are upwards of fifty thousand agents assigned to ‘signature reduction’, they having a huge range of tasks before them. One of their primary assignments is to influence social media, provide misinformation, misattribute information that is true and monitor activities in cyberspace. Other tasks include supporting and aiding America’s clandestine work worldwide, providing cover to agents, defeat of biometric systems and manipulation of public records. In short, for all the talk of a million Russian trolls, troll farms are America’s bread and butter, immense efforts being made to ensure that the world swallows Washington’s narrative. An equivalent organization exists in Britain, the 77th Brigade being the UK’s troll farm, ensuring that the limeys toe London’s line.

Summary.

With all that has been discussed, there are certainly parallels between the past and present. More worryingly, with the West following the path that it is, this does not augur well for the future. A veritable purge of parley is under way, every effort being made to mimic the Bolshevik blockade of information under the auspices of nation security. Rather than there being a gamut of different opinions, today, just like in the proletariat’s past, we are today faced with both holes in history and government-sanctioned lies.

The printing presses are gone, yet are replaced by pressing propaganda, a one-party system forcing fake news on its population through politics that only follow a certain line. With true journalists such as Assange behind bars whilst those who commit crimes drink free in bars, a new Soviet system is creating wholly surreal environment around those it governs. The KGB is now consigned to the history books, and an LBG society ruling the roost in the West; the communists may be gone, yet compulsion is increasing apace in the West…