Elena Basile discusses the censorship faced by researcher Giacomo Gabellini after interviewing former Swiss intelligence colonel Jacques Baud, highlighting the suppression of dissenting voices in Western media. Basile criticizes the illusion of free expression in democratic societies, contrasting it with the acknowledged media manipulation in autocratic states. She points out the systematic exclusion and defamation of analysts critical of NATO and Israeli policies, drawing parallels to the suppression of Russian media. Basile concludes by emphasizing the diminishing space for genuine free thought and critical discussion in the West.
* * *
by Elena Basile
Giacomo Gabellini, researcher and esteemed author of numerous geopolitical books, interviewed former Swiss intelligence colonel Jacques Baud on his YouTube channel, and it was censored. Baud is a political scientist and writer who has been publishing successful essays on ongoing conflicts on Europe’s eastern border and in the Middle East for years. He rarely appears in widely watched and read media as he carries out a well-documented critique of US and NATO policies, exposing propaganda lies with seldom attackable evidence. If free thought also disappears from social media, the goal of total disinformation of Western citizens will be fully achieved.
In so-called autocratic societies, it is understood that the media and the press are tools of power. A Russian, a Chinese, a Turk reads the national press with a grain of salt. The successful operation in the West, which shows how Orwell‘s dystopian dream is coming true at surprising speed, lies in the ingrained belief among the majority of civil society that they live in free countries, governed by the rule of law, in a media space that reflects free expression.
I would like to summarize the objective arguments I have long illustrated to refute this false security of ours.
Former EU Foreign Policy representative Borrell has established that there is no free access to Russian media in Europe. The censorship was justified by the intent to protect European citizens from enemy disinformation. We know well that this has been and is the alibi of dictatorships. Our highest institutional offices have conformed to this, often blaming Italian civil society for being brainwashed by so-called pro-Putinists.
The epithet has been reserved for all analysts who, in examining the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, have illustrated dynamics dating back to the 1990s that prove NATO’s strategic and offensive expansionism towards Moscow. Most of these analysts have not had access to the most widely read and watched newspapers and networks. Some have been defamed, sued, and publicly lynched with blatant lies. On Corriere and Repubblica, I was called a “pseudo ex-ambassador.” A simple internet search can verify how this defamatory insult is an objective lie. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has been even worse. Analysts who do not justify the occupation and slaughter of innocents in Gaza as a civilizational operation against barbarism and as a consequence of Israel’s right to defend itself have been labeled anti-Semitic, in some cases sued for incitement to hatred.
It is true, in TV shows (I won’t call them programs as some would like) dedicated to politics, two, three, four dissenting voices are admitted in clear minority, serving only to instill in viewers (they are not listeners) the illusion that all opinions are represented. Naturally, the admitted dissent is implicitly denigrated, mocked. The subliminal message often conveyed is that analysts outside the mainstream are comedians, incompetent, not worthy of attention by decent and moderate citizens.
The four international news agencies often copy press releases from Western services and newspapers, spreading the word using the same expressions. If you compare Corriere or Repubblica with La Libre Belgique, Le Monde, and even The Guardian, you will see disturbing similarities. The same happens with few exceptions on radio and TV; Rai News, La7 recite the catechism dear to European media.
The few aware of the abject state of Western information are forced to search for news on the web, independent TV, competent YouTubers interviewing inconvenient figures from Mearsheimer to Chomsky, to Ilan Pappé, to Moni Ovadia, to Jeffrey Sachs, to Baud, to Colonel McGregor, to former British and American diplomats unknown to the audiences of leading European hosts.
It is a minority of conscious authors and users who do not succumb to stereotypical and simplified language, to the rhetoric according to which Biden is an illustrious and pure statesman while Putin or Xi are terrible bloodthirsty dictators, Ukraine a democracy defending Western freedom, and other clichés shamelessly sold even by educated, learned, respectable editorialists to the public. That is why the news of Gabellini’s censorship struck me. The oxygen is thinning.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, August 8, 2024
