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There Were
Neo-Nazis, Then There Were No Nazis, Then There
Were
By Patrick
Lawrence
June 08,
2023:
Information Clearing House
-- "I tell you,
serving as a New York Times correspondent these
days cannot be easy. You have to convey utter
nonsense to your readers while maintaining a
straight face and a serious demeanor. You have
to suggest the Russians may have exploded a
drone over the Kremlin, that they may have blown
up their own gas pipeline, that their president
is an out-of-touch psychotic, that their
soldiers in Ukraine are drunkards using faulty
equipment, that they attack with “human hordes”
(Orientalism, anyone?) and on and on—all the
while affecting the gravitas once associated
with the traditional “Timesman.” You try it
sometime.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
I am
reminded of that pithy passage in Daniel
Boorstin’s regrettably overlooked book, The
Image. “The reporter’s task,” Boorstin
wrote in 1962, “is to find a way of weaving
these threads of unreality into a fabric that
the reader will not recognize as entirely
unreal.”
Boorstin reflected on America’s resort to
imagery, illusion, and distortion as Washington
geared up its gruesome follies in Vietnam. The
reporter’s task is a whole lot harder now, given
how much farther we have wandered into illusion
and distortion since Boorstin’s day.
And now
we have the case of Thomas Gibbons–Neff, a
square-jawed former Marine covering the Ukraine
war for The Times—strictly to the extent the
Kyiv regime permits him to do so, as he explains
with admirable honesty. This guy is serious
times 10, he and his newspaper want us to
know.
Tom’s
job this week is to persuade us that all those
Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia,
idolizing Jew-murdering, Russophobic
collaborators with the Third Reich, gathering
ritually in Nazi-inspired cabals, marching
through Kyiv in Klan-like torch parades are not
what you think. Nah, our Tom tells us. They look
like neo–Nazis, they act like neo–Nazis, they
dress like neo–Nazis, they profess Fascist and
neo–Nazi ideologies, they wage this war with the
Wehrmacht’s visceral hatred of
Russians—O.K., but why ever would you think they
are neo–Nazis?
They
are just regular guys. They wear the
Wolfsangel, the Schwarze sonne,
the black sun, the Totenkopf, or
Death’s Head—all Nazi symbols—because they are
proud of themselves, and these are the kinds of
things proud people wear. I was just wearing
mine the other day.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for
many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune, is a media critic,
essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent
book is Time No Longer: Americans After
the American Century. His web site is Patrick Lawrence.
Support his work via his
Patreon site. His
Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been
permanently censored without explanation.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
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