The network wasted no time in recruiting former Rep. Adam Kinzinger — arguably the most egregious warmonger on Capitol Hill — to its punditry lineup.
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) giving farewell speech to U.S. House on Dec. 15, 2022. (C-Span still)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
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CNN wasted no time in recruiting former U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger to its punditry lineup after he left Congress.
Kinzinger, who prior to being redistricted out of his House seat received handsome campaign contributions from arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, was arguably the most egregious warmonger on Capitol Hill.
Nobody in Congress lobbied as aggressively to start World War Three as Kinzinger did last year; he tried to advance a bill authorizing hot war against Russia if Moscow crossed specified red lines in Ukraine but couldn’t get cosponsors because even his fellow congressional hawks thought it was too insane.
He was the loudest voice in the U.S. government publicly advocating a no-fly zone over Ukraine in the early weeks of the war, an idea that was slammed by the mass media as it would necessarily have entailed the U.S. military shooting down Russian war planes and aggressively tempted nuclear war.
In 2022, while still in office, he became an official member of the empire-backed online troll farm known as “NAFO,” which was founded by an actual neo-Nazi whom Kinzinger openly supported both before and after revelations emerged of the founder’s expressions of hatred for Jews and fondness for Hitler.
While still a sitting congressman he was flagging trolls with hashtags inviting them to swarm the social media comments of critics of U.S. foreign policy who opposed his warmongering.
CNN headquarters in Atlanta. (ucumari photography, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Before the war in Ukraine Kinzinger was calling for the re-invasion of Afghanistan immediately following the U.S. troop withdrawal and raging about public opposition to “endless war.”
Before that he was cheerleading former President Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, calling for U.S. interventionism in Venezuela, defending the U.S.-backed war on Yemen, calling for the invasion of Syria and just generally pushing for more war and militarism at every opportunity.
Before that, he was helping the empire kill Iraqis as a member of the U.S. Air Force.
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I myself called him “the single worst Twitter account that has ever existed,” long before his CNN gig was a twinkle in his eye.
So it’s no wonder a warmongering propaganda network snapped him up the instant he became available, ensuring that his warmongering receives as large a platform as possible. As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp quipped regarding CNN’s hire, “All those calls for WWIII must have landed him this gig.”
All those calls for WWIII must have landed him this gig https://t.co/W5A9zOblNG
— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) January 5, 2023
Kinzinger’s assimilation into the war propaganda industry was so predictable that Glenn Greenwald ran a Twitter poll in October asking his audience where they expected him to go after he left Congress, with CNN being one of the options.
Shame on my audience for getting such an obvious and easy question wrong (though MSNBC was certainly a reasonable guess): https://t.co/MAQjJraBrd pic.twitter.com/xcETe1fRJg
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 5, 2023
As one Twitter follower put it, the “congressman to media commentator to lobbyist revolving door spins so fast in Washington, it actually affects the earth’s rotation relative to the sun.”
War is the glue that holds the U.S. empire together, and to serve that purpose it requires endless war propaganda.
War propagandists are not any more separate from the endless mass military slaughter they facilitate than the people who actually pull the trigger, and we see this illustrated in the way Kinzinger has been able to slide seamlessly from dropping bombs to passing bomb-dropping legislation, to manufacturing consent for the dropping of bombs.
CNN will be perfect for him.
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This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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The real economy is in a ditch, the nation needs war to pull it out of the ditch. The military-industrial Congressional complex is the only way out. A long war where other people pay the blood price is very profitable for the oil giants and the weapons industry and the finance could not ask for more. So far for the US economy and the profiteers, the business could not be better.
Excellent metaphor Caitlin: war/ glue/ empire…
If I may add: as the glue sets up, American children want as their working parents ossify.
Tnx all.
But the stock markets are rising. Therefore life is good.
Yes, for many Americans who are fortunate enough to have stocks, which is about 20%, life on paper is good.
“War is the glue that holds the U.S. empire together, and to serve that purpose it requires endless war propaganda.”
And the glue-sniffers know it.
He may be sitting pretty now, flush with donations from the death-industry, but in time Kitzinger and others like him will be rightfully vilified and shunned, held up as examples of what NOT to be like by future generations trying to put the pieces of a broken world back together in a better way, left to deal with the inevitable results of policies and actions sponsored by this generation of war-profiteering scum.
Kinzinger’s thirst for war is reminiscent of another person whose name is quite similar to Kinzinger’s and that would be the war criminal Henry Kissinger.
Of course CNN would snap up someone like Kinszinger. After all, war makes news and news draws attention and attention draws advertisements and advertisements make money.
Kinzinger wasn’t doing any killing while he was in the Air Force, he was a gas passer, piloting the KC135. Those on the front lines who see the carnage of wars first hand, aren’t normally in favor of more of it. Only those who benefit from war desire more of them.
“Created by wars that required it, the machine now created the wars it required.”
? Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes
Nailed it again. Caitlin!!! Keep those cards and letters comin’! They’re my lifeline to sanity.
CNN now makes Fox News seem rational. I’ve also stopped using the NYT, “all the news that fits the narrative…,” as kitty litter as well because I’m afraid of making my cat ill. She’s quite healthy but there’s no telling what diseases you can pick up from corporate war mongers. Quite an accomplishment really, every time you read or hear something in the mainstream press, you know less than you did before. It’s amazing how they can keep it up, from parody to farce to ludicrous to barking mad. How awful and soul destroying it must be to excel at something that is so heinous.
And it is all the corporate press. Mainstream, radio, TV and of course online media.
But millions still watch.
I find it un-believeable, but understandable.
As to the many appetites on legs, Americans, who watch these shows, one can only wonder what is going on in their consumer driven minds.
Yes, I gave up on the NY Times during Covid. Soon after quit scrolling through, but deliberately not reading, the rest of the pop MSM–The Gurardian, BBC, NPR, PBS and Council on Foreign Affairs member Judy Woodruff–the list goes on.
Thank you CJ, for this refresher on Kinzinger’s bona fides.
Indeed, with a resume like that, his continued financial security is assured.
The Dems make HEROS out of right-wing Republicans who are not on board with Trumpism. Doesn’t matter how much they work against the interests of working people, or anything else. Liz Cheney, Kinzinger and several others ——-> Dems fall over themselves in praise of these right-wingers. And, if any of them beat the drums for MORE war against Russia, they’re SUPER HEROS.