I have no platform; I have followers, and some outlets re-publish my writings for free. If you don't like how I write or what I write about, you've got ten typing fingers and access to all the same free blogging sites I use. Write it yourself. You have the exact same tools as me.
I don't have connections; in fact I actively avoid them. I write directly to the people, and the people decide how much that's worth. The only reason anyone knows who I am is because regular people enjoy and share it. You can do that too. Just don't pester me to do it for you.
And I really do mean that; I wish there were a lot more people doing this. The world needs more indie media. If you see too few people doing it the way you think it should be done, please do jump in and help out with indie content creation. We need all the help we can get.
Substack is free to use, so is Medium, so is WordPress. Just write what you see and what you feel and share it on social media. If writing's not your thing, try video, podcasts etc. I wrote some tips on how to get started here: caityjohnstone.medium.com/how-to-get-you…
This is a really really common complaint from lefty commentators @jack@TwitterSupport. Why are so many of them getting notifications flooding in for new followers, but their follower account stays the same? Happens to me too off and on for days on end.
The ultimate goal of the US-centralized empire is to have such control over the world's economic and financial systems that conventional warfare becomes obsolete, because they'll be able to fully strangle any population which disobeys its dictates by cutting them off from money.
It's a warped and perverse version of what we think of when we utter the phrase world peace; their version of "world peace" is a world where overt warfare is unnecessary because all disobedient populations can simply be quietly strangled to death via economic violence.
The same power structures which enacted the rape of Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia etc are not going to carry us into a peaceful and harmonious world. They do not have the neurological wiring to do that, even if they wanted to. Their vision for our world is dark.
If the western world valued justice Julian Assange would not have been rotting in Belmarsh Prison for two years, after being arbitrarily detained for the previous eight, under a campaign of draconian lawfare. theguardian.com/media/2016/feb…
Tankie, Conspiracy Theorist, And Other Pejorative Tools Of Narrative Control
"Pay attention to the way imperial narrative managers try to use smears and pejoratives to file away anti-imperialists into a 'don't listen to the things this person says' box" caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/tankie-consp…
Bloomberg pundit @noahpinion had a very revealing interaction on Twitter the other day that I've been meaning to write about ever since.
It's been obvious for ages that pejoratives like "tankie" are being used by imperialists to control the narrative in a way that benefits ruling power structures, but it's not often you'll have a mainstream narrative manager come right out and admit that that's what they're doing.
Hi my name's Caitlin Johnstone, I spend my life being told by strangers on the internet that they hate China's GOVERNMENT, not its PEOPLE.
Some days I'll have these flashes of self-reflection where the tenth mindless drone bleats the same tired old State Department line at me and I'm just like "I can't believe this is my life now."
Oh? Oh really? Why I've never thought of it that way before! Thank you so much for that brilliant, brilliant, brilliant insight. I will go rethink my entire life now.
Imagine being fully aware that you are starving children with sanctions and then getting up there and saying you're sanctioning them because you care about those children. You'd have to be missing pieces of yourself. Pieces of your humanity. You can't be fully human.
True. No sane parent would trust Blinken alone with their kids.