title: Mainstream Liars Now Want to be Self-Appointed Monarchs of ‘Truth’
text: This biggest failure of the mainstream media was their inability to police themselves. From partisan dishonesty to outright lies   they have destroyed their own credibility, and amazingly, now they want to be the internet s  truth  task force  Neil Clark RT OpEdgeThe Oxford Dictionaries have named  post-truth  as the word of the year.  Fake news  and  post-truth  politics have been blamed for both the Brexit vote in the UK and the victory of Donald Trump in America.It seems the uneducated plebs are falling for  fake news  they read in  new media  and the lies of dreadful rabble-rousing populist politicians who are relying on people s emotions, instead of  objective facts,  to get votes. It s all terribly worrying and poses a dire threat to Western civilization as we know it.Well, forgive me for laughing out loud. For this establishment  fake news / post-truth politics  concern is the funniest thing I ve come across in politics since Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, the very grand Chancellor of the University of Oxford, repeatedly called distinguished Sheldonian guest Mikhail Gorbachev,  Mr. Brezhnev. Why is it so hilarious? Because the people and the outlets warning of the dangers of  fake news  and  post-truth politics  have been the biggest peddlers of  fake news  and  post-truth politics  out there. It s like receiving lectures on the immorality of bootlegging from Al Capone or being told to sit up straight by the Hunchback of Notre Dame.Without a doubt the best, or rather the worst example of  fake news  in the last 25 years or so, was the neocon lie that Iraq had WMDs in 2002/3. That wasn t peddled by  obscure bloggers  and  new media,  but by mainstream Western politicians, from  mainstream  political parties, establishment-approved  experts  on the BBC/ITV/CNN, etc., and Op-ed columnists in  serious  and  respectable  media outlets.@georgegalloway @Independent Tony Blair is a lying warmongering post-truth politician, of course he hates Corbyn. pic.twitter.com/6ZD4FWudyI  Antony Warren (@Lovejoy999) November 20, 2016There was absolutely no evidence that Saddam possessed WMDs. The story was complete and utter BS. Yet this fake news dominated the headlines for months in 2002/3 and led to an illegal invasion in which many people lost their lives. Unlike today s manufactured  fake news  hysteria the Iraq war was no joke. An entire country was destroyed.And guess what? Those who pushed the  Iraq has WMDs line  are now coming on television to express their concern over  fake news !John Hilley notes The BBC even had Alastair Campbell (Tony Blair s spin doctor), in the studio defending the term  post-truth  as a way of exposing the  dangers  of  fake news.' Campbell stated:  It s acknowledging that politics, which has always been rough, has moved to a different phase where politicians who lie now appear to get rewarded for it.  (BBC2 Jeremy Vine Show, 16/11/2016).What might Orwell have said about Campbell, master spinner and Blairite warmonger, sitting inside the BBC being rewarded for his thoughts on  post-truth and  fake news?  Hilley asks.Once again, I m sure old George is spinning in his grave in Sutton Courtenay.Then there s that serial warmonger Bernard-Henri Levy. The Sunday Telegraph today told us in its headlines:  Leading French philosopher: Marine Le Pen may win election as people have lost interest in whether politicians tell the truth. Oh, the irony!Because if the French people really have  lost interest in whether politicians tell the truth,  Henri-Levy and his fellow liberal interventionist  regime changers  have got a lot to do with it. Think back to the war against Libya, which the  leading French philosopher  lobbied hard for. To sell the war to the Western public, we were told that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit a  Srebrenica-style  massacre in Benghazi. Media Lens noted the claims that were made at the time.But again it was a load of  rollocks.  Five years after Libya, like Iraq before it, had been destroyed by Western  interventionists,  a report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons declared:  the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence. It wasn t the only claim made about Libya by Western politicians that was  not supported by the available evidence.  In February 2011, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted that he had seen  information  which suggested that Gaddafi was on his way to Venezuela. An unnamed  diplomat  said that this was  credible information.  But it wasn t. It was the same old fake news that we get every time the Western elites are trying to achieve  regime change. In April 2011 we heard that the devilish Gaddafi (who had not, after all, fled to Caracas), was supplying his troops with Viagra  to encourage mass rape. REVEALED: The Real Fake News List https://t.co/1CkOSe25LU pic.twitter.com/lqb9Uze1pi  Ron Paul (@RonPaul) November 19, 2016 Gaddafi s security forces and other groups in the region are trying to divide the people by using violence against women and rape as tools of war, and the United States condemns this in the strongest possible terms,  declared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose supporters are now complaining about  post-truth politics.Again, no evidence was put forward for the Viagra/mass rape claim and, surprise, surprise, none was ever found.A clear pattern can be discerned. To get public support for its illegal regime change wars, the Western establishment energetically promotes a number of  fake news  stories. These stories are usually reported unquestioningly in  respectable  outlets and are regularly cited by neocon/liberal interventionist commentators as a reason for taking action against the target state.  Anonymous  sources feature heavily in these stories, which like MI6 s  Operation Mass Appeal  are often planted by the security services.Meanwhile, people s emotions are shamelessly played upon by the  something must be done  brigade of  liberal  laptop bombardiers, the same crowd, note well, who accuse  populist  politicians of ignoring  objective facts  and playing on people s emotions.The fake news continues while the regime change operation is ongoing. After its over, we re all meant to forget about the false stories we were fed and focus on the next  New Hitler  who needs to be dealt with. In 2011, it was the despicable Gaddafi, now it s the despicable Assad and the despicable Putin who we re told:  have to be stopped. Every time 'MSM' report US-UK government claims of a perceived 'responsibility to protect' Iraqis, Libyans and Syrians, it's fake news.  Media Lens (@medialens) November 19, 2016The term  post-truth  politics implies there was a time when politics was truthful. I doubt if that ever was the case, but certainly in the last 25 years, thanks to the influence of neocons and  liberal interventionists , the lies have been off the scale. Remember the Niger uranium forgeries? And Saddam s horrific  People Shredder ?And before the Iraq war, we had the  humanitarian  NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, where again fake news dominated. US Defense Secretary William Cohen claimed about 100,000 military-aged  Kosovan Albanians were missing   they may have been murdered. As John Pilger reminded us,  Kosovo, the site of a genocide that never was, is now a violent  free market  in drugs and prostitution. It wasn t the only lurid claim that was made to sell the war. But again the  genocide  and hundreds of thousands killed stories were false, as a UN court itself ruled in 2001.Fake news also featured heavily in the neocon campaign to get Iran sanctioned for an entirely unproven nuclear weapons program. It s dominated the coverage of recent events in Ukraine, with Russia s non-existent  invasion of Ukraine  routinely referred to as a fact. The conflict in Syria too has been marked by  fake news,  and theories being reported as if they re 100 percent proven. How many times have you read that  Assad gassed his own people  at Ghouta in 2013, even though we still don t know for sure who carried out the attack?If it s  official enemies  we re talking about  fact-checking  and citing sources isn t all that important for those who pounce on a mere typo if it s an anti-war writer who s making a claim.Now, the same people who have disseminated fake news for so long and who are still, even after Iraq and Libya, embedded in the West s political and media establishments, are lashing out because they no longer control the narrative as they used to. The public is getting their news from a much wider variety of sources and voting for  populist,  i.e., non-neocon/liberal interventionist-anointed candidates/parties at elections.Instead of admitting that it s their  fake news  and  post-truth politics  which has caused people to switch off from establishment media and to stop voting for status quo candidates, the endless war lobby has the effrontery to accuse others of the things they have been guilty of.Concern over  fake news  and  post-truth politics  from the West s endless war propagandists?It s hard to think of a better example of what psychologists call  projection. Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66READ MORE ABOUT MSM LIES AT: 21st Century Wire MSM Watch Files