Decoding the devious modus operandi of US propaganda

Anonymous American officials have recently spread fake news about the Chinese-Russian relationship that has since generated a firestorm of controversy in the US-led Western mainstream media. [Illustrated by Song Chen / China Daily]

Anonymous American officials have recently spread fake news about the Chinese-Russian relationship that has since generated a firestorm of controversy in the US-led Western mainstream media.

Some of the most ridiculous claims are that China demanded Russia to delay military operation in Ukraine until after the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics, that China might even have been able to prevent that conflict, and that China is now considering sending military aid to assist Russia's campaign there.

None of these are true, having all been denied by Chinese and Russian foreign ministry officials, but similar fake news nevertheless continues to be spread by the US.

This raises the obvious question of why that is, hence the purpose of this piece, which is to decode the devious modus operandi behind such propaganda.

Analyzing the three false narratives that have recently taken the Western mainstream media by storm, they all share the common thread of a dark conspiracy between China and Russia.

This is a far cry from the US' earlier fake news narratives which claimed that ties between China and Russia aren't as close as many might have thought.

These false narratives were intended to reassure their targeted Western audience that the US hadn't lost its unipolar hegemony over the world. The unaware public who only casually follow international events were misled into thinking that America will successfully continue to divide and rule Eurasia.

At all costs, their officials wanted to prevent them from realizing that the US' dominance over global affairs was over.

The reality all this time was that strategic cooperation between China and Russia had become unprecedented as jointly declared by their leaders during their many interactions together.

With time, this became impossible to deny, which is why the US' fake news industry started spinning the opposite narrative.

Instead of imagining that America was successfully dividing and ruling them to its self-interested hegemonic benefit, these same unnamed officials spun the false narrative that those two were closely conspiring with one another to destroy the West.

Few in the public questioned this new narrative despite now being told the exact opposite of what they were previously led to believe. Many simply nodded their heads in agreement and became fearful of the so-called "threat".

American officials subsequently exploited this false interpretation of events to rally the public behind their selfish efforts to continue spiking the military budget to the benefit of those members of the elite who invested in the military-industrial and related technological complexes.

This takes the form of America completing its conquest of the West by taking control over Europe without firing a shot simply by scaring its vassals and their people into accepting the US' hegemony in exchange for so-called "security" against Russia. On the other side of Eurasia, America is attempting to do the same vis-à-vis the similarly false so-called "China threat" as evidenced by its newly created military-nuclear Australia-UK-US alliance against China.

To simplify everything, the devious modus operandi of the US' latest propaganda about the Chinese-Russian Strategic Partnership is to misportray these major countries as a threat in order to scare America's regional vassals into accepting Washington's efforts to restore its declining hegemony over them.

This is being done out of desperation since the irreversible multipolar processes unleashed by the ongoing global systemic transition will inevitably end its dominance over international affairs. This fake news is so dangerous though since it's preparing the public for the current Ukraine crisis to escalate.

Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.

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