The new Thirty Years' War
Germany is in the hands of fanatics in politics and in the editorial offices who are leading the country into the abyss. Exclusive excerpt from “Propaganda Press”.
The media as the fourth estate and controllers of state abuse of power? That would be nice! In fact, they have degenerated into a kind of propaganda department of the warmongers. Dedicated
to their duties and also as a result of personal anti-Russian
resentment, they are trying to fuel the mood for war even further. People
who have never visited the crisis area themselves and have no idea what
war means are shouting cheers in the direction of the Ukrainian
soldiers, thousands of whom are being burned to death on the front line.
In some
cases, the press and television have even succeeded in eliminating the
natural instinct for self-preservation of a majority of the German
population, which normally tends towards the motto “live and let live”
rather than killing and dying. Of course there are opposing forces - people who are not carried away by the general mood of war. But here the media are using all their power to insult and delegitimize this movement. It's
not just the Russians and Ukrainians who are firing their bullets who
have blood on their hands - the media who are helping to prepare this
death by propaganda also have blood on their hands.
by Patrik Baab
[This
article posted on 8/14/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.manova.news/artikel/der-neue-dreissigjahrige-krieg.]
The
syncrisis of German journalism with NATO propaganda is dismaying, not
only in terms of the primitiveness of the deep indoctrination and its
post-factual structure, but even more so because of the blind submission
to its emphatically intolerant claim to exclusivity. But
this only shows the extent of the self-alignment that extends from talk
show presenters to directors, from radio directors to desk editors,
from foreign correspondents to forest-and-meadow reporters.
In
their renunciation of sober research and rational reasoning in equal
measure, they differ from other academic “head-catchers” (Bertolt
Brecht) only in the form of their aggressiveness. They only develop a falsificationist killer instinct when it comes to outlawing dissent. This exposes the lack of dignity of the media makers (214).
As a result, we are disinformed by fanatics in editorial offices who confuse their own resentments with reality. They work seamlessly together with equally transatlantically corrupted fanatics in politics. Together they are perpetuating the fighting in Ukraine and leading Europe into a new Thirty Years' War (215).
What the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci described for intellectuals as a whole also characterizes the role of journalists:
"Intellectuals have the function of organizing the social hegemony of a group and its state domination (...). They
no longer represent the cultural self-consciousness, the self-criticism
of the ruling class; they have once again become direct agents of the
ruling class."
Their “mode of existence is ‘eloquence’ as the driving force of affects” (216). Wage
writers who are paid to mobilize the affects, for warmongering as a
prerequisite for “wariness” and the “will to fight” (217).
German journalism has thus reached the level of a propaganda company of warmongers. This
is particularly evident in the strategic framing: certain facts and
assessments are repeated, others are swept under the carpet: “lies by
omission”. I sent 25-page research reports to 3sat and MDR so that these people could get an idea of the historical causes of the war in Ukraine. They weren't interested in that. The focus was on scandalization and denunciation. But
behind these freelancers, who receive piecework wages and are
financially dependent, are senior editors who, in turn, consider
themselves beholden to transatlantic organizations or transatlantic
corrupt parties and remain in hiding. That's why I gave one such MDR employee, who is controlled from behind the scenes, the following advice:
"If lies have short legs, then MDR editor Martin Dietrich should avoid rolling chippings. He could injure his genitals" (218).
In his 1919 study of the press in the United States, Upton Sinclair quotes the longtime editor and later publisher of the New York Tribune, John Swinton, who answered a toast to the “independent press” at a banquet thus:
"There is no such thing as an independent press in America at all, except perhaps in rural places. You know that and I know that. There
is no one among you who will take the risk of writing his honest
convictions, and if you did, you would know in advance that it would
never go to press. (...)
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to
bluntly lie, distort, defame, kiss the feet of Mammon, and sell his sex
and his country for its daily bread. You know it and I know it, and how stupid it is to toast the 'free press'. We are tools and servants of rich men behind the scenes. We are their puppet masters; they pull the strings and we act accordingly. Our talent, our opportunities and our lives belong to others. We are intelligent whores" (219).
This has remained the case to this day.
What
these journalist-actors have in common is that they have never been to a
war zone, know neither Ukraine nor Russia from their own observations,
have never dealt with these countries and write what the boss wants to
read in a perfect subject mentality.
With
their stupid chatter from the comfort zone, they stab reporters in the
war zone in the back and expose them to additional dangers. This
is because the gunners can target the Internet or mobile phone traffic
of those who - having come under pressure - have to seek legal help on
the “home front” by phone or email. To
put it bluntly: transatlantically corrupted desk clerks in editorial
offices are giving reporters in the war zone a free shot.
This
shows the extent to which ethical standards are disregarded in today's
journalism, how far reporting has shifted from a reality check on the
ground to post-factual scandalization and how deeply the reporting of
the mainstream media, including the public service media, is entangled
in NATO's propaganda system. The geostrategic and economic reasons for the war are known throughout the world. Only the children of the upper middle classes in German editorial offices do not want to take note of them.
This
“lying by omission”, the obvious primacy of propaganda, deepens the
legitimacy crisis of both the corporate and public service media. The all too obvious one-sidedness of reporting is causing them to lose market share. This is because many people are turning to the so-called alternative media. The more they come under economic pressure, the more aggressive the traditional media become.
The
more the West comes under military pressure in the proxy war in
Ukraine, the more the sanctions against Russia send Europe into an
economic tailspin, the more aggressively the pro-state propaganda media
react. It is not Russia but the West that has isolated itself worldwide as a result of the war in Ukraine.
The nervousness of politicians is spilling over into the media propaganda complex. As a result, we are experiencing an increasing division of the public. The trend towards censorship and denunciation is intensifying. States and supranational organizations are trying to counteract the increasing loss of legitimacy with censorship. The
repressive state apparatuses are also being used: the judiciary is
being instrumentalized to give the propaganda media a “license to lie”
in court rulings. Censorship is partially transferred to corporations and thus privatized. As a result, general terms and conditions are becoming more important than fundamental rights.
We are thus experiencing a new structural change in the public sphere. The “involution” of the public sphere goes beyond a “refeudalization” (220). This is because public space is privatized in the platform economy and thus withdrawn from democratic regulation. The
production of the public sphere no longer takes place on markets; in
the digital economy, the producers themselves are the market. The privatization of censorship becomes the core element in the escapism of the democratic public sphere. The dismantling of the democratic public sphere precedes the dismantling of democracy. In
this process, the press itself has become the most important organ of
censorship internally and the most important driver of war externally. Post-factual journalism is also post-democratic journalism.
But
when the media itself mutates into the most dangerous warmonger and
thus violates the peace commandment of the Basic Law, when the media
itself suppresses dissident positions, thus acting as the harshest organ
of censorship and thus destroying the freedom of opinion and
information according to Article 5 of the Basic Law - then those who no
longer engage with this anti-democratic press and build up and use
alternative media become defenders of the constitutional freedom of
opinion and information.
The media capitalization of resentment leads to a continuous hystericization of the public. It leads to racism and Russophobia. This is accompanied by a “relapse of enlightenment into mythology” (221). We find ourselves in an age of counter-enlightenment, the infantilization and moralization of public debate. The
“age of mass media stupefaction” (222), according to Peter
Scholl-Latour, in which Europe is gambling away its future, has long
since begun. Resentment is becoming the driving force of the public sphere in digital capitalism. This is, according to Joseph Vogl, “the ferment of a new pre-war era” (223). In other words, it is the psychological preparation for new wars. The
warmongers in politics, the media, academia and business are inciting
people in Germany deeper and deeper into a war that could easily have
been prevented if NATO had wanted to.
But the West torpedoed the Ukrainian leadership's peace efforts in February (224), March (225) and August (226) 2022. This
is why the entire rest of the world is shaking its head at the slogan
of an “unprovoked war of aggression”, despising the NATO countries for
this war and their anti-Russian propaganda.
But wars are not won with propaganda and prejudice. This is why NATO's involvement in the war has become a trap for the West (227). A glance at the key economic and military data is enough: The war in Ukraine is ending in the political, military, moral, economic and media bankruptcy of Europe (228). The
Russophobic desk warriors in the editorial offices are partly
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in
Ukraine. They must be held criminally responsible, because they have blood on their hands.
Sources and notes:
(214) Baab, Patrik: “Controversial just means you're not conformist like the woken hairdryers”. Interview, Overton Magazine, January 13, 2024, https://overton-magazin.de/dialog/umstritten-bedeutet-nur-dass-man-nicht-angepasst-ist-wie-die-woken-foenfrisuren/l
(215) Baud, Jacques: The German government today consists of fanatics. Overton Magazine, March 4, 2024, https://overton-magazin.de/dialog/die-deutsche-regierung-besteht-heute-aus-fanatikern/
(216) Gramsci, Antonio: Prison Notebooks, Vol. 3, 4 . U. 5 . Issue. Berlin: Argument 1992 , pages 515, 554, 659
(217) Seliger, Marco: Germany should become fit for war. That means the times are over when the country wrote checks and others took the rap for it. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 5, 2023, https://www.nzz.ch/international/pistorius-und-die-kriegstuechtigkeit-deutschland-muss-kaempfen-lernen-ld. 1763792
(218) Baab, Patrik: Lies by omission. How the MDR uses fee money to spread NATO propaganda. Overton Magazine, November 24, 2023 , https://overton-magazin.de/hintergrund/gesellschaft/luegen-durch-weglassen/
(219) "There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There
is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you
did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I
am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest
opinions out of the paper I am connected with - others of you are paid
similar salaries for similar things - and any of you who would be so
foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets
looking for another job. The
business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie
outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of the Mammon, and
what folly is this to be toasting an 'Independent Press'. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
Sinclair, Upton: The Brass Check. Pasadena, Cal.: Published by the author 1919 , digitized for Project Gutenberg by Jane Rutledge, pages 366 following.
(220) Habermas, Jürgen: Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Studies on a category of bourgeois society. Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand 1976 (8), pages 233, 273
(221) Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W.: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer 1982, page 3
(222) Schack, Ramon: The age of idiocy. How Europe is gambling away its future. Berlin: edition ost 2023, page 9 following
(223) Vogl, Joseph: Capital and resentment. A brief theory of the present. Munich: Beck 202 (2), page 182
(224)
La Baume, Maia de, and Barigazzi, Jacopo: EU agrees to give E 500 M in
arms, aid to Ukrainian military in 'watershed' move. Politico, February 27, 2022 , https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ukraine-russia-funding-weapons-budget-military-aid/
(225)
Balachuk,Iryna, and Romaniuk, Roman: Possibility of talks between
Zelenskyy and Putin came to halt after Johnson's visit - UP sources. Ukrainska Pravda, May 5, 2022, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/ 2022 / 05 / 5 / 7344206
(226) Balmforth, Tom, and Shalal, Andrea: UK's Boris Johnson, in Kyiv, warns against 'flimsy' plan for talks with Russia. Reuters, August 24, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uks-johnson-kyiv-warns-against-flimsy-plan-talks-with-russia- 2022 - 08 - 24 /
(227) Baud, Jacques: The Russian Art of War. How the West led Ukraine to Defeat. Paris: Max Milo 2024, page 318
(228) Markel, Gerhard: What remains of Ukraine? We have all lost. Exxpress, December 30, 2023, https://exxpress.at/gerald-markel-was-bleibt-von-der-ukraine-wir-haben-alle-verloren/
Patrik Baab
is a political scientist and journalist at NDR and has worked on the
ARD films “The Death of Uwe Barschel” and “Uwe Barschel - The Enigma”,
among others. He
is a lecturer in practical journalism at the
Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel and at the Hochschule für Medien,
Kommunikation und Wirtschaft in Berlin.
The redistribution agenda
Social prosperity cannot be created through policies that impoverish the masses. This dynamic also led to the current stock market storm.
At the beginning of August 2024, there was a violent stock market storm on Wall Street. The most important US shares plummeted by over 7 percent in just a few days. On the bond markets, yields on 10-year US government bonds fell by almost half a percentage point. This raises the question of what is behind this and, above all, what will happen next. Increasing economic concerns are cited as the main reason for the stock market turbulence. Mass demand is necessary for the economy to grow. This would require mass incomes to rise. However,
if incomes increasingly flow upwards, to a rich minority of people,
then mass demand will become tight in the long term. This is exactly what seems to be happening now.
[This
article posted on 8/14/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-umverteilungsagenda.]
Increasing concentration of wealth in the USA
According to the US Federal Reserve, wealth in the USA has become significantly more concentrated between 1989 and 2023. In
the third quarter of 2023, the top 10 percent of income earners in the
US owned 66.6 percent of all assets, up from 60.9 percent in 1989.
The share of the bottom 90 percent fell accordingly from 39.1 percent to 33.4 percent in the 34 years from 1989 to 2023. The top one percent owned 30.5 percent of all assets in 2023, compared to 22.9 percent in 1989. In
the 34 years from 1989 to 2023, a clear shift in wealth in favor of the
top one percent and at the expense of the “bottom” 99 percent can
therefore be observed.
Effects of increasing wealth concentration
What are the effects of increasing wealth concentration? Apart
from increasing political and social influence by billionaires, rising
wealth concentration means that an ever greater proportion of capital
income is flowing to the top 10 or 1 percent of the population.
If
the top one percent of households own more than 30 percent of assets,
more than 30 percent of all dividends, rents, leases and interest will
flow to the top one percent of households. How much money is that?
Corporate profits
In
the first quarter of 2024, US corporate profits after tax amounted to
an annualized USD 3,168 billion, according to the US Federal Reserve. This corresponds to 11.2 percent of the national product. From 1947 to 2000, US corporate profits averaged 6 to 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). From
the turn of the millennium, there was a sharp increase, so that since
2010 the share of corporate profits has averaged just under 11 percent.
In
recent decades, not only has the wealth share of the top one percent
increased significantly, but also the profit share of companies, which
are largely owned by them, so that the wealthiest Americans have
benefited twice over - at the expense of other US households, whose
share has decreased accordingly.
Interest income
The
debt of private households, companies - excluding financial services
companies - and the state amounted to around 135% of total economic
output (GDP) in the US at the beginning of the 1980s. In the first quarter of 2024, they amounted to 264% of GDP. Debt per dollar of GDP has therefore roughly doubled since 1980. Since
the financial crisis, interest rates have been lower than ever before
in US history and the US Federal Reserve has printed large amounts of
fresh central bank money - the amount of central bank money has
increased almost ninefold since the financial crisis. This is also unprecedented in US history.
As
a result, the sharp rise in debt has not played a major role in the
last 15 years - simply because very little interest had to be paid. However, this has changed since spring 2022. The
US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates very sharply - from zero
to a good 5 percent - and long-term interest rates on government bonds
have also more than doubled - from around 1.5 percent in 2021 to around 4
percent today. Over
the next 10 years, interest rates are expected to remain between 3
percent (3-month interest rates) and 4 percent (10-year interest rates).
Assuming
interest rates of around 3.5 percent on average, a good 9 percent of
GDP will flow to the holders of debt securities in the coming years,
i.e. essentially to the top 1 to 10 percent of households. For the year 2024, this would be around 2,600 billion US dollars. In
reality, however, the amount is likely to be much higher, probably at
least 3,000 billion dollars, because the interest rates for private
loans and companies are significantly higher than the interest that the
US government has to pay.
Who pays the interest? The national debt is financed through taxes. Even the poorest sections of the population pay taxes, for example through the value-added tax or gasoline tax. Corporate debt is passed on to customers in the form of product prices. With every purchase, every consumer pays the corporate debt.
Ultimately,
therefore, all interest, regardless of whether the state, companies or
private households have the debt, is paid by private households. As I said, this is currently probably over 3,000 billion dollars per year.
As
not only has the share of wealth held by the top one percent increased
significantly in recent decades, but interest rates have also risen
dramatically in recent times, the wealthiest Americans have also
benefited from this twice over - at the expense of the other US
households that pay the interest.
Rents
A
good third of US households do not live in their own four walls: 34.3%
at the end of 2023. US rents have risen very sharply in the last 4
years: From 2020 to 2023, rents charged on new leases increased by 30 percent. Around one in twelve US households pay more than half of their income on rent.
It is very difficult to estimate the total amount paid for rents and leases in the USA. Assuming
similar ratios as in Germany, where land yields accounted for around
12% of GDP in 2017, around 3,500 billion dollars could be paid for land
yields in the USA today.
The
recent sharp rise in rents has meant that the top one percent of
Americans have benefited twice over, as their share of wealth has
probably also increased significantly over the last 30 years, as has
their share of rental properties.
Interim result
Let
us note that the share of wealth held by the top one percent of US
households is greater today than it has ever been in recent US history. The
wealth share of the bottom 90 percent of US households is significantly
lower today, at around one third, than it was a generation ago, when it
was just under 40 percent.
What does this mean for the economy? This
shift in wealth in favor of the very wealthy alone means that an
ever-increasing stream of so-called non-earning, non-working or passive
income is flowing to the upper class.
This trend has been exacerbated in the last 20 years by two factors in particular. Firstly, corporate profits have risen to historic highs since the beginning of the millennium. Secondly, debt has risen to new all-time highs. The
dramatic interest rate hikes of the last two years have caused interest
payments to rise enormously in a short space of time, so that today a
disproportionately higher stream of interest payments is flowing to the
wealthiest households.
If
we add up the figures estimated above - 3,200 billion dollars in
after-tax corporate profits, 3,000 billion dollars in interest payments,
3,500 billion dollars in land income - the result is a volume of around
9,700 billion dollars in unearned, passive non-labor income from
assets. That is a good third of GDP. Around 30 percent of this goes to the top one percent. That would be around 2,900 billion dollars per year. Per capita, that's about 850,000 dollars per year. So
each of the approximately 3.4 million Americans who belong to the top
one percent currently receives about 850,000 dollars a year in income
without having to work for it, essentially in the form of rents, leases,
dividends and interest.
Who pays this money? Those
who have little or no assets, i.e. essentially the bottom 50 to 90
percent of the population, for example through product prices, taxes or
interest payments on home loans or other household debts.
This
means that “normal households” in the USA are slowly but surely having
to transfer more and more money to the wealth and moneyed upper classes.
As a result, the unequal distribution of income is also increasing.
Increasingly unequal distribution of US income
A
comprehensive study conducted by the Pew Research Center at the
beginning of 2020 shows that in the 48 years from 1970 to 2018, upper
income households, i.e. households earning twice or more the median
income, increased their share of total income from 29% in 1970 to 48%. The
share of middle income households earning 66 to 200 percent of the
median income fell from 62 percent in 1970 to 43 percent in 2018 and the
share of lower income households earning less than 66 percent of the
median income fell from 10 to 9 percent of all incomes.
In
1980, the top 10 percent of households earned 9.1 times as much as the
bottom 10 percent; in 2018, it was 12.6 times as much. The gap is widening.
In
short: the development over the 48 years from 1970 to 2018 shows an
impressive shift in income from the lower and middle to the upper
incomes.
Incidentally,
the developments shown here took place not only in the USA, but in
almost all industrialized and many developing countries.
Conclusion
What do these developments have to do with the stock market? A lot. Due
to the increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income,
mass incomes have been lagging behind economic growth for decades. The resulting demand gap has been solved over the last 50 years by ever-increasing debt. However, this economic growth based on debt is now reaching its limits. This is because interest rates are now too high to continue. Further
money printing by the central banks via quantitative easing and a new
round of zero interest rate policy is also unlikely to be feasible again
due to the poor inflation experiences of the last two years and the
resulting inflation concerns.
This means that at some point a large proportion of US households are likely to run out of steam economically.
It will become increasingly difficult to continue driving consumption and growth. Demand, sales, the economy - and corporate profits - are then likely to falter. And if corporate profits stop rising or even fall, then share prices should also fall.
The S&P 500 is currently valued higher than almost ever before in history. The
price/earnings ratio of 27.7%, i.e. the profits of the last 12 months,
is around 75% more expensive than in the last 150 years, while the
return on equity investments of 3.6%, i.e. the profits of the last 12
months, is only half as high as in the last 150 years.
In short, the US stock markets are, historically speaking, unusually highly valued. Incidentally,
the same applies to house prices in the USA: measured in terms of
median income, houses are now more expensive than at any time since the
Second World War and significantly more expensive than shortly before
the US real estate bubble burst in 2007.
If
the economy were to actually slow down in the coming months or stock
market (and real estate) valuations were to return to the levels seen in
the past, a significant correction would be required. This
could easily lead to economic problems, high unemployment and - in view
of the very high international tensions at the moment - to
international upheaval or unrest.
The
wealth and income trends of the last 50 years have not only been
anti-social, but are also quite dangerous for society as a whole. We are dancing on a volcano.
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