If any anti-Zionist with a public profile said Jews control Silicon Valley and use it to influence public opinion to benefit Israel, they’d be denounced by the entire western political-media class as a rabid antisemite. But a Jewish politician saying it is another matter.
Flags of Israel. (Bar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
Amnesty International is now calling Israel’s mass atrocity in Gaza “a live-streamed genocide” due to the way this nightmare is unfolding right in front of us on the screens of our devices around the world, and public support for Israel is plummeting in the United States.
Zionists are losing control of the narrative, and they know it. And they are not taking it well.
During a speech at a summit hosted by the Jewish News Syndicate earlier this week, former U.S. senator Norm Coleman said that Jews are “the masters of the universe” and should use their power in Silicon Valley to control online information in order to win a “digital war”.
Coleman, who is Jewish, made the following remarks on Monday:
“A majority of Gen Z have an unfavorable impression of Israel. And, my friends, I think the reason for that is that we’re losing the digital war. They’re getting their information from TikTok… and we’re losing that war.
“And when you think about it, the masters of the universe are Jews! We’ve got Altman at OpenAI, we’ve got [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg, we’ve got [Google founder] Sergey Brin, we’ve got a group across the board. Jan Koum, y’know, founded WhatsApp. It’s us.
“And we have to figure out a way to win the digital battle. We’ve got to get our digital sneakers on, so that the truth can prevail over the lies. And when we do that, the future of Israel will be stronger because a majority of all Americans will support Israel. We’ll make that happen, we have to make it happen.”
If any anti-Zionist with a public profile had said Jews control Silicon Valley and use it to influence public opinion for the benefit of Israel, they’d be forcefully denounced by the entire western political-media class as a rabid antisemite. But a Jewish politician saying Jews must use their control over Silicon Valley to influence public opinion about Israel receives no attention from that same political-media class.
Interestingly, at that same event, Meta’s “Jewish Diaspora” chief Jordana Cutler noted that Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram “banned content claiming Zionists run the world or control the media.”
Under Cutler’s own guidelines, the prior comments from her fellow attendee would have been banned if he had said them on Facebook instead of at the Jewish News Syndicate International Policy Summit.
Israel’s backers have been whining about losing control of the narrative for months.
In February, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham told the press at an event in Tel Aviv that in the Arab world “Israel has won the war on the ground, but they’ve lost it on television,” lamenting that “all they see is morning, noon and night attacks on the Palestinian people.”
The Arab world is seeing attacks on the Palestinian people morning noon and night because that is what’s happening. That is what the entire world is seeing.
In a talk at the McCain Institute last year, then-Senator Mitt Romney told then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Congress supports banning TikTok because it shares information that turns people’s opinions against Israel, saying such information has a “very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t?—?we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
Notice how he said the word “narrative” three times? That’s how empire managers talk to each other, because that’s how they think about everything. Everything is about narrative control. It doesn’t matter what happens as long as you can control how people think about what happens.
During the university protests last year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.
“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow?—?no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”
In an audio recording published by the Tehran Times in 2023, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is heard saying “We really have a TikTok problem” and calling for more aggressive online narrative operations to control public opinion about Israel among young people.
In the audio recording, whose authenticity was confirmed by the ADL, Greenblatt says the following:
“I also wanna point out that we have a major major major generational problem. All the polling that I’ve seen, ADL’s polling, ICC’s polling, independent polling suggests this is not a left or right gap, folks. The issue in United States’ support for Israel is not left and right: it is young and old. And the numbers of young people who think that Hamas’s you know massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high. And so we really have a Tik-Tok problem, a Gen-Z problem, that our community needs to put the same brains that gave us Taglit, the same brains that gave us all these other amazing innovations, need to put our energy toward this like, fast. Cause again like we’ve been chasing this left-right divide. It’s the wrong game. The real game is the next generation, and the Hamas and their accomplices, the useful idiots in the West, are falling in line in ways that are terrifying.”
Israel’s backers are losing control of the narrative because there’s only so much that PR spin can do to convince people they’re not seeing what’s right in front of their eyes. If you’re strangling someone right in front of me there are no words you can say to me to convince me I’m not seeing someone being strangled, no matter how skillful you are at manipulation.
Actions speak louder than words. Talk is cheap. A picture is worth a thousand words. These aphorisms exist for a reason. Past a certain point there is only so much that mountains of verbiage can accomplish when people are seeing history’s first live-streamed genocide playing out right before their eyes.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The average human life is dominated by mental stories, so if you can control the stories they are telling about what’s going on, you can control the humans.
Losing narrative control is losing real power. That’s why Israel’s supporters are growing increasingly anxious.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
I think anyone who knows anything about the world would have a hard time believing a country with one of the “best” if not *the best* intelligence service in the world didn’t know the Hamas attack was coming. Not something you’d need to learn on tiktoc
The Zionists are trying to figure out how to convince people to love evil.
A little late …. capitalism has already done that.
After all, capitalism is the complete rejection of traditional morality in favor of letting profit make all the decisions. Capitalism is the philosophy that says the only thing that matters is material gain. Therefore, it is rather obvious that capitalism has already convinced many people to love evil.
The solution is a simple one. Cut the embecil-lical cord from the U.S. to Israel. For the sake of DOG this stuff cannot be made up.
What is it you suppose dear leader has in store for either or both, Israel and or Muskrat?
Do to the influence of money on politics, thanks to the hapless puppet majority on the SCOTUS , MONEY is now considered speech. See the Jan 21, 2010 ruling they made reversing the Citizens United v F.E.C. . One month after the Obama victory far too many ignored or missed this critical juncture in American History. A totally insane ruling based on nothing but conjecture = an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information. In this case it was from coo-coo talk!
Controlling the narrative is exactly why Israel, since the October 7th resistance, has refused to allow any outside media to enter Gaza. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank would have been stopped long ago it the public was able to see the truth of the genocide taking place.
Some people need to turn off American TV. The world has seen the truth. “The Free World” has killed over 200 journalists to bury the truth, but the world has seen it anyways. Except of course for the people who watch American TV.
Since the Zionists re so wrapped up with their control of digital platforms, military analysis of such a situation would support a rather simplistic solution….
As a Senior Software Engineer and Military Historian-Analyst I can categorically say that any such military analysis would simply have people go “low tech”, which the hi-tech world has no control over.
If people can convince younger people to simply get off these social media platforms and return to letter-writing and setting up their own sites on such outlets as WordPress, which are completely free for basic blog sites, Zionists would find it increasingly difficult to counter such a move.
This is because they would have no way to compete with a low-tech resistance, with the exception of attempting to shut down WordPress. However, even if they achieved this, there are so many hosting services in the world today that are inexpensive and provide WordPress capabilities that Zionists would have to literally shut down the entire Internet to succeed with their plans.
We in the software engineering world have always been aware that low-tech always defeats hi-tech since hi-tech cannot go outside its own environments.
The real battle then is to get people off these social media platforms since they are nothing more than sewers of garbage that really serve no real purpose other than to make people feel like they are connected and can control their own narratives, which are just delusions…
Israel claims to be a victim of an “Intelligence Surprise”. The first step towards creating an “Intelligence Surprise” is to turn off your phone and don’t carry it with you wherever you go. Even Mister Orwell didn’t seem to imagine that humans would compete to get the latest surveillance device and insist that they must carry their own tracking device with them at all times.
Social Media, in this age of Big Data and now AI, should come with a warning message on every login …. “What you say can and will be used against you.” Big Data has always been watching.
Organize locally. Talk to your neighbors. Neither the tech-addicted spies nor AI will see you when you talk to your neighbor on the porch. All politics is local. An ally next door is a lot more useful than an ally on the other side of the nation when the proverbial brown stuff hits the proverbial fan.
You can just imagine Germany’s Nazis in the 1930s having a similar conversation over their propaganda efforts at that time.
The “success” of the Nazis’ propaganda effort was ensured by Gleichschaltung.
We are still a long way from there in the USA.
Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.
I’ll admit to having to go look up Gleichschaltung. (Ain’t the internet and access to information wonderful! In the past, I’d have had to gone to a library with a German dictionary to find that out.) America did in the past have some strong “synchronization” if you think back to the 1950’s. The way all proper Americans thought alike and had the same goals. It wasn’t universal, but it was strong enough that the opposition to the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism had to create a Counter-Culture to get outside of the synchronized American culture that stifled all outside thought.
Trump is obviously trying to re-instate this by force. We see the brown-shirts, no, modern version, the MAGAs, openly attacking all institutions that don’t simply obey and praise the Great Leader and his latest brain-fart. I abhor elitist places like Harvard, but with Trump attacking everyone from elitist institutions to the courts and all media that opposes him plus now trying to promote himself as the equivalent of a Pope …. well, objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.
(Ps …. apologies for not being original with the invented name.)
Also shocking to me is the utter vulgarity and banality of these “folks’ ” sp eech.
“Gonna”? “Wanna”?
It is shocking that such “folks” have ever controlled any narrative at all or hold positions of power in the USA.
Send them all to the front lines in Gaza.
Good point, which is often overlooked. Trump can barely speak and write, despite having ample resources to learn to do better. This goes for quite a few members of the political class and their servants in media.
But simply go to tiktok or Facebook and read some of the responses to virtually anything. People can’t think straight, and can barely write. Multiple exclamation points to emphasize their Bad ideas (Trump is fond of this); all-caps use to further drive home their ignorance; the utter inability to use quotation marks, periods, commas, and apostrophes correctly, etc.
How did this happen? That’s a complicated question, but it started some time ago. The counter-revolution that started with Reagan might be a good place to mark the beginning of the end.
The orange golem arm in arm with the 4 gilded demons of the wicked political winds;
Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Israel Lobby.
Down below, Charon waits for them to enter the queue for a ferry ride across the river Styx. Their golden coin of lucre clenched between their teeth as fare.
On the other side, Beelzebub himself awaits with stoic indifference.
You can only hope, above it all, Hind Rajab shyly opens the gate to Jannah for the souls rising off the rubble of Gaza to join the other children playing in the olive groves.
I wonder if Palestinian intellectuals can develop a vision for coexistence that the American or Israeli people will demand their politicians embrace.
I’m old (77) and have long been repulsed by the dominant narrative. Over those decades since the Dems and similar Labour and Liberals abandoned the majority working class to function as enablers of neolib econopathy. We’re invisible to the political and econ elites who do the NYT and MSM. So there are a lot of us simmering in skepticism. Seething, actually.
The young with their constant social media presence and the protesters on college campuses are of course quite visible. And they have more support than the would-be controllers would ever acknowledge. We unseen elders know by bitter experience the narrators are full of sh*t. Despite (or because of) the constant barrage of propaganda against the dissenters and censorship of anything for, it’s far, far more likely they are telling the truth.
Yep. 60’s here and also invisible. But my anger at the parties, leaders, institutions, media, and people, who have betrayed their humanity for profit, or merely to hold on to their remaining comforts, is well beyond marketers ability to sell me any “narrative.” They even tried to market a lesser genocide last November?
I, too, am old, and I have been fuming about Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians for years. The live-streaming of the genocide in Gaza is one of the best uses of the internet since it was created. But, will our political leaders bow to public opinion, when it might cause them to lose the support of their biggest donors? That may not happen until voters express their opinions about the Gaza genocide at the ballot box.
Excellent article. We need these articles to stay in touch with our conscience in case the main narrative threatens to overwhelm us.
I would like to recommend a very recently published book by Omar El Akkad: “One day, when………, everyone will have always been against this”.
G.
Excellent book! And I’d like to add the art and writing of M.Fish (Dwyane Booth) who can succinctly expresses our anger at the vile callousness of the marketers in a single panel. His work can be found at Clowncrack.com
Most of the world has already turned against The Genocide State; all it takes would be the US joining in. That’s a PR loss they couldn’t ignore.
Next question: how does that play out, given that Israel is a nuclear power? They could take the whole Middle East (for lack of a better term) down with them. Not a pleasant thought.
In the ’70s, while living in L.A., I was in a discussion about the futility of the Vietnam war. So happened two there were WWII American vets who had fought for the foundation of a Jewish state in ’48. One was a physicist; he noted the prevalence of Jewish scientists in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Also the refusal of the U.S. and most of the so-called civilized world to let in refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Governments knew and pretended they didn’t. He said that if similar ever happens again, they’ll take the rest of the world with them. I understand why the attitude. But to let “never again” justify a genocide committed by Zionists is absolutely unconscionable. With an implied threat to far more than the Middle East (western Asia) lurking in the background.
Imo, this is not a young or old problem for I am an older adult woman, and believe it is a matter of conscience.
It is simply shocking to me what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza .
Probably like many people, and because of my generation, it wasn’t until October 2023 , that I even paid much attention to the area.
Since then I have read several books on the subject and of course have listened to many interviews and lectures on the subject.
Free Palestine, Free Gaza !
Agree.
Although the user profile for Tik Tok probably is an important factor.
Me? I am 78 and don’t watch TV—do not own one.
So that is also a likely factor in my imperviousness to narrative control because I have not been bathing my brain in BS for years.
That said I first was redpilled as to the horrendous Gaza / Palestine situ back in 2010 when a friend joined the Freedom Flotilla.
“Zionists are losing control of the narrative, and they know it. And they are not taking it well.”
Of course, this is terrific news, wonderful.
But there is some concern. With the Samson Option in their holster, I never know what to expect from these arrogant and paranoid mad-dog creepy sadists.
Israel has officially said it would use it’s nuclear capabilities if it – Zionism, I guess – faced an “existential” threat.
narrative control is indeed a very powerful first line of defense (and offense) of establishment machinery. it is also a velvet glove over the iron fist. another thing is organisation. the oppressors have loads of it, the oppressed kinda have quasi none.
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