It is hard to quantify the moral bankruptcy behind this resolution, which brings the EU and its parliament into disrepute. This is a parliament, it is worth bearing in mind, which is made up of representatives of governments that have either played a part in destabilizing the Middle East or lifted not one finger to try and alleviate the suffering of the millions impacted by the consequences of this destabilization.
@Europarl_EN Biggest anti-EU propaganda is what you did today — going for censorship by 'coordinating' with NATO.
— Ozgur Zeren (@ozgurzeren) November 23, 2016
Daesh emerged from the ashes of Iraq after the 2003 US-UK invasion and occupation of the country, resulting in up to one million deaths, millions displaced, and Iraqi society pushed into the abyss of a brutal sectarian civil war.
When Daesh appeared in Syria in 2013, the terrorist organization had already been responsible for unspeakable carnage and destruction. It emerged in Syria at the tail end of an Arab Spring that had run out of steam in Libya, where a NATO air campaign of regime change turned it into a counter-revolutionary process.
The end result was not the democratic future promised the people of Libya or Syria by western governments that had lined up to support the mayhem that engulfed both, but instead societal collapse, sectarian carnage and a refugee crisis of biblical dimension.
It's important to be reminded of this sordid legacy of western policy in the Middle East in recent years if we are to place in proper context the vote by the EU to place Russia in the same box with Daesh. A further layer of mendacity is added when we consider that it has been Russia and not the EU that has come to the aid of the Syrian people in resisting this Islamic Khmer Rouge, helping them combat the attempt to turn a multicultural and multi-religious society into a mass grave.
When it comes to the threat presented by the growing impact and popularity of RT and Sputnik among western audiences, this EU resolution comes as incontrovertible evidence that western media organizations, state sponsored or owned by western corporations, are losing the battle of ideas.
In this respect, it is simply not credible to infer that western media outlets offer impeccably accurate and non-biased coverage of world affairs, while their Russian counterparts do not.
After all, these western news organizations are the very ones that sold the British and American people the aforesaid war on Iraq on the basis of the existence of WMD; that sold NATO's intervention in Libya on the basis that it was in support of a popular democratic revolution; and which have sought to draw a moral equivalence between Salafi-jihadist groups such as Daesh and a secular non-sectarian government in Syria.
A more sinister aspect to this anti-Russian media campaign is the way it conjurs memories of McCarthyism, which at the height of the Cold War was whipped up to create a feverish Russophobic atmosphere and to persecute anyone who dare deviate from the received truths of US exceptionalism. In societies that spare no opportunity to proclaim their devotion to free speech and free expression, the dark chapter of McCarthyism leaves no doubt that each is upheld so long as it doesn't question too much or penetrate too effectively the temple of lies and deceit erected in support of western hegemony.
McCarthyism is being reprised in 2016 and its modern day Jesuits are to be found within the British neoconservative think-tank the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), which produced a report for consideration by the European Parliament in advance of the vote on the anti-Russian resolution which names western journalists, activists, politicians, and commentators who've dared appear on RT or Sputnik, demonizing them as de facto traitors to western liberal values, whatever those are.
HJS members believe that "modern western liberal democracies set an example to which the rest of the world should aspire." This is a fancy way of justifying western imperialism, responsible at root for the destruction of Iraq and Libya, turning Afghanistan into a failed state, and for wreaking chaos and crises throughout the Middle East.
It also underpins the aggressive military stance towards Russia that is currently in place, involving thousands of hostile troops being deployed on Russia's western border such as we haven't seen since the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
Perhaps the best way to understand the HJS is to imagine every rabid Russophobe, every unhinged neocon, and every right-wing crank with a computer in one room.
It was George Orwell who wrote, "Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future."
His words are a fitting reminder of the danger to society posed by those who unable to control the message decide to shoot the messenger.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
