The US has long maintained a largely invisible, highly effective propaganda system, described by CIA official, Frank Wisner, as the mighty Wurlitzer,” on which he could play any propaganda tune.

Back then the CIA maintained a network of writers, journalists and talking-heads, who operated as agents, disseminating an approved narrative, code named Operation Mockingbird. Mockingbird was a large-scale CIA program that started in the early years of the Cold War and manipulated domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes.

These days, they run the whole thing off-the-books, through NGO’s. President Trump’s decision to cut funding to USAID revealed the extent to which the US government has been financing so-called independent media, protests and other means to hijack civil society around the world.

It was Obama who codified the new construct. “In his last days in office … President Barack Obama made the decision to set the country on a new course. On Dec. 23, 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war, a war that fused the security infrastructure with the social media platforms – where the war supposedly was being fought”.

The collapse of the legacy, corporate media and its rapid replacement by monopoly social media platforms, had made it possible for the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party to sell a narrative, and reconfigure social attitudes, prejudices and policy preferences in entirely new ways.

Plus ça change.

Trump’s purge of USAID revealed the extent of Obama’s social-media Mockingbird. It turns out that the government organization had been funding numerous alternative media outlets. From Wikileaks: “USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, “Internews Network” (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and “training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives…“

Despite claims of “independence” these media organs amounted to a state media. USAID funded Politico, which was the source for countless other so-called independent media like the BBC, the New York Times CNN and NBC. In other words, in one way or another almost all of the western media is funded by the US government.

Something to think about.

Just like everything else in today’s “Newspeak“, the term “democracy” means the repression of dissenting voices, “peace” describes funneling more weapons to overt Nazi and genocidal regimes. Now, it turns out that “independent media” refers to an almost entirely government funded operation. The aim was for this “independent media,” funded by USAID, and armed with laptops and smart phones, to promulgate the latest inspired Party meme and to immediately repeat, and repeat it, across platforms, giving the appearance of an overwhelming tide of consent. And thus giving people the “permission structure” of apparent wide-spread public support to believe propositions that formerly they would never have supported.

If you have liberal family and friends, I’m pretty sure you understand what I’m talking about? Or, before Trump’s arrival, conservative family and friends mesmerized by Fox News?

In our post Citizens United world it’s more than apparent that with enough money, political operatives could create and operationalize mutually reinforcing networks of activists and experts to validate a messaging arc that would short-circuit traditional methods of validation and analysis, and lead unwary actors and audience members alike to believe that things that they had never believed; or even heard of before: Were in fact not only plausible, but already widely administered throughout the world by USAID, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the other alphabet agencies that make up the national security state.

Of course, the usual suspects chimed in to muddy the water. Liberals wailed that USAID was simply benevolent American foreign aid, administered by a cadre of dedicated public service workers, and that all the talk of USAID’s un-democratic actions abroad are conspiracy theories and Russian disinformation. while the right portrayed USAID as the second coming of the Comintern, busy spreading Marxism. Most Americans are only dimly aware of US foreign policy, leaving plenty of space for propaganda.

The reality is that US foreign policy has been outsourced to a bevy of NGO’s, funded by USAID, who operate a shadow government. Most of these NGOs were born during the Reagan years. While not all USAID and State Department funding flows through them, they control the purse strings for much of America’s global financial influence. Rather than altruism, the goals are corporate penetration, resource access, and a docile low-cost labor, in the countries targeted.

Matt Kennard in his book, “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire,” documents how U.S. institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID and the Drug Enforcement Administration, work in tandem with the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to subjugate and oppress the Global South. Client states that receive aid must break unions, impose austerity measures, keep wages low and maintain puppet governments. 

The crimes on the empire’s periphery always return to the homeland. All of the regime-change mischief and color revolutions carried out in hostile countries, came back when Trump was elected in 2016. The NGO’s funded by USAID were instrumental in Russia-gate, the two impeachments aimed at Trump, and the false claim that the Hunter Biden story was a Russian hoax.

Liberals used to believe in the 1st Amendment and support a polity that encouraged debate, dissent, skepticism and free speech, but now they have turned on a dime and advocate narrative control and censorship. Since Trump’s election liberals have become more authoritarian, and more repressive of dissent. What ironic is that liberals have come to believe their own propaganda and they’re trapped in an echo chamber of which the USAID. support of “independent” media plays a very significant role. 

It will be fascinating to read Noam Chomsky’s reaction to the further confirmation of the ways in which the American empire goes about Manufacturing Consent. In their groundbreaking expose Chomsky and Edward S. Herman detail a propaganda model enacted through government and corporations and “powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”, by means of the propaganda model of communication.”

USAID funding and promoting “independent media” amounts to the a modern day manufacturing consent for the American empire. Moreover, the USAID exposure should call into question the campaign against “disinformation.” How is this not the biggest case of disinformation?

It’s also a blatant attack on the Constitution and represents a flagrant disregard for the role of an informed citizenry in exercising our rights and responsibility to freely elect to public office those whom we believe best represent our values, and to hold those thus elected accountable for what they do in our name.

Unfortunately, a state media can simply disappear such oddities and questions down the memory hole.

Update: USAID has many dedicated workers and engages in many charitable, critical activities worldwide: Social and economic development programs, health and nutrition programs, irrigation and drainage projects, disease eradication, environmental remedies. I would like to believe that if all the USAID did was dole out charity overseas, it would still be in business.