Media wars and mud-slinging are part of the games of conflict and offer only temporary victories; because the truth is, the only victor in a nuclear war will be death.
It’s all very well to enumerate the various excesses of the Russian state and its Orwellian stance on free speech, but when double standards exist across the board on home territory, it’s time to take a step back and re-evaluate the choices of those who control the current narrative blaring across our television sets. Human nature is a homogenous phenomena; therefore no one nation can claim to be better and more civilised than the other -although often every one of them does-especially when engaged in warfare and most certainly when both sides are guilty of aggression, censorship and mass propaganda at international levels.
How terrible it must be to live under the Russian Fascist Vladimir Putin whose government decided to ban Instagram from the country-a US owned social media platform particularly popular with its youth –a fate which tech giant Facebook had previously succumbed to. “Moscow influencers WEEP in final posts before Putin banned the site for ‘incitement to violence against Russians” laments one particular headline from the nation’s favourite tabloid the Daily Mail. The raison d’etre for Russia’s censorship is expressed in either incredulous punctuation by the latter, or stated in monotone sentences such as in the classier Washington Post, neither condemning nor justifying hate speech. In fact justification is hinted at in a subtle fashion by the award winning US based broadsheet through the statement that Meta, the American parent company of Instagram and Facebook, “…made an exception to its policy against inciting violence, so long as the posts represented political expression against Russian forces invading Ukraine. Meta said calls for violence against ordinary Russian citizens would remain prohibited…”.
Interesting.
Suddenly the apparently tiny clause that differentiates ones right to freedom of expression from hate speech ceases to exist. All is fair in love and war, they say.
Censorship arrives on European airwaves
Or is it? Yesterday, the Russian News Channel RT was banned by British Media regulator Ofcom – a move closely following Youtube’s ban of all Russian state funded media worldwide, which included RT, a few days prior, and Canada’s RT ban just two days before.
The justification cited for these undemocratic moves? Canada cited content coming from the channel as ‘abusive’ to Ukraine – no justifications of hate speech there – Ofcom, however, offered a vague explanation for it suppression of the Russian channel, saying that it “…did not consider Rt’s licensee, ANO TV Novosti, fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast licence..”
Flip through the news channels or scroll through Twitter and other social media, and it is obvious; double standards abound in such abundance that it is difficult for those too young to remember the last major conflicts with huge civilian displacement, many of which are ongoing, (with far greater loss of life) to escape such a narrow world view.
Suddenly, the Daily Mail, infamous for its anti-immigrant stance throughout the various refugee making conflicts in the Middle East – most of which have been perpetrated and include aerial bombardment by Western or Western backed forces- raised £7.2 million to help Ukrainian refugees. Then, 100,000 Britons who opened their homes to Ukrainian refugees were lauded by the tabloid as big-hearted, and in general Western news bulletins are replete with the footage of the death and destruction raining down upon the civilians of Ukraine as well as the hundreds taking shelter in the underground.
Today, Europe has welcomed with open arms around three million refugees from Ukraine within three weeks since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The bloody conflict in Syria created almost 7 million refugees 2015, the biggest movement of displaced persons since the second Word War, most of them taken in by Turkey – and in total Europe took in just one million of them over a period of a few years after much dehumanising language framing victims of conflict seeking safe havens as ‘migrants’.
In stark contrast, British TV Star Martin Roberts broke down weeping after being denied access to more than two Calpol bottles which he was buying for Ukrainian children caught up in the conflict.
Where were the tears of TV stars when Iraqi babies were buried under twenty feet of rubble by British bombs? Does it state on the label that Calpol is only for Caucasians?
And where was the sudden surge of generousity on part of the British press for the refugees of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine?
In fact, they were framed as a ‘looming crisis’…thousands of Iraqis who sought refuge in the UK and Europe lost the right to remain and many were forcefully deported back to war torn Baghdad, Denmark imposed the ‘Jewellery Tax’ on refugees from the 2011 Syrian war which made it legal for the Danish government to seize assets that valued above 10,000 Kroner, forcing helpless civilians to pay for their refuge.
In the first week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Denmark announced it would not be imposing the jewellery tax on Ukrainian refugees. That law was enacted when the colour of a refugee’s skin was darker than the Danish people, and clearly, times have changed.
The True Cost, and Victor, of War
The truth is, it is easy to reprimand Russia. It is easy for the pot to call the kettle black, for who is there to hold up a mirror before it? But glaring hypocrisy is always plain to see for those who care to pay attention. Both Russia and pro – Ukrainian and Western media are engaging in dangerous and undemocratic games of censorship and suppression while carrying out their own forms of aggression in the battlefield – “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech” said Benjamin Franklin – while in the background, it is the Ukrainian population who are facing the consequences of this growing conflict. As of now, around 550 Ukrainian civilians have been killed (Although the Israeli government manages more than that number within the same time frame during its frequent escapades in Gaza & the Occupied Territories ) according to the United Nations. Russia justifies bombing hospitals, schools and residential areas because they claim Ukrainian soldiers use civilians as ‘Human Shields’, the same claims made by the Israeli government to justify its almost regular bombardment of Palestinian hospitals, schools and residential areas in Gaza – but of course because Palestinians belong to an Eastern race and religion, those carrying out the act of human shielding are named terrorists.
Millions of Ukrainians are now refugees – it is purely luck that they are Caucasian and have Europeans welcoming them with open arms. Otherwise the influx of such a large number of people in such a short amount of time is hard to contemplate – in the case of Middle Easterners, almost impossible to accept.
Therefore, mud-slinging and media victories aside, everyone must know that there are no winners in such a drawn out and bloody conflict and it is only because this war is closer to home that its vibrations and the emotional toll, and loss of civilian life, is felt and appreciated by the British people and the West in general. And it is also true that it cannot be that Russian civilians will not experience loss in one form or another the way Ukrainian civilians have already done so.
What are they all fighting for? What did the troops that invaded and bombed more than a million Iraqi civilians claim to fight for? In the end, more than a million lives, which included children, whole families, budding young men and women dreaming of bright futures, were bartered for a few laughs as George W.Bush – the US President who led the 2003 coalition backed invasion, joked a year later at a black tie dinner for journalists that the weapons of mass destruction – the pretext cited for invading Iraq – were nowhere to be found.
As far as the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is concerned, it’s all for the expansionist aims of a military alliance that seeks to counter another expansionist nation’s attempts in a never ending vicious cycle of tit for tat that has led to such brutal escalation.
Our media, and those who fail to call it out on its excruciatingly blatant bias, are fanning the flames of a conflict that is only spiralling further and further out of control. These PR victories only help further disinformation and a biased narrative that offer temporary wins.
You see, the only victor in a nuclear war will be death.
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Sultana Bhatti
23 March 2022 at 11:28 pm
The media have begun to influence the narrative rather than report objectively on what’s happening. They seem to want to nudge towards use of nuclear weapons purely for ratings. Ironic that extreme consumerism is happy to sacrifice, well, consumers