Eric Holder's Shameful War Propaganda

The former AG, on the day of Navalny's funeral, took an opportunity to debase the dissident's memory with a plea for more war

Propaganda has always been a tool of the state. Most of the wars we learned about with pride as children were drenched with massive amounts of propaganda to convince an always skeptical American public that our leader’s wars were just. The Committee on Public Information (sometimes called the Creel Commission) was created by President Wilson to influence public support for World War I. When government sponsorship of propaganda fell out of favor due to the excesses of that same commission, President Roosevelt created a covert version of it named the Writer’s War Board during World War II. The board produced war propaganda films entitled “Why We Fight,” and encouraged racist tropes like calling the Japanese a “ruthless and animalistic enemy that needed to be defeated.” The Office of War Information helped to censor bad news from the public while pushing forward positive stories about the war.

Cold War propaganda continued, painting the Soviet Union as an evil empire throughout the 1950s and 60s. The Church Committee in 1975 covered up a large scale program by the CIA - Operation Mockingbird - that had worked for decades to manipulate journalists and news media for the purpose of disseminating CIA propaganda.

What is chilling about reading the history of propaganda in America - direct actions by the people’s government to purposefully lie to the people in order to get some policy win - is that most Americans are perfectly willing to believe the government did this in the past, but still believe their government stopped at some point. Americans today, despite an overload of information that has never been seen before, choose to willingly accept bald faced lies, as long as those lies do not upset the preconceived notions of the narrative being told. Evidence of the current propaganda machines that erase “disinformation” while promoting government-fed versions of the truth is all around us. Propaganda is so widely used by the political class because it is so god-damned effective.

The Ukraine War is the prime vehicle for modern propaganda in America, although propaganda is everywhere. The Ukraine conflict has a stunning resemblance to Cold War propaganda that turned regional conflicts into eventual huge disasters - in Korea and Vietnam - and more recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed we’ve heard it all about Ukraine: 1) that we’re supporting a fellow democracy in Ukraine - its not; 2) that failing to arm Ukraine will embolden Russia and China, a rehashed Domino Theory - the tired, 1950s geopolitical theory that was debunked long ago; 3) that the US military will be defending Europe against Russia if we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine - which completely defies logic, and comes from the SecDef who was AWOL in a stunning dereliction of duty, and 4) that the requested Ukraine aid is really a jobs program for US defense manufacturers - which really just enriches the DC elite war machine, and avoids the question of whether we should spend $60B we don’t have on manufacturing bombs instead of useful products for American lives. Finally, their case is so weak for Ukraine aid that they’ve tied it up with border security in order to get a pound of defense contractor profit for a penny of immigration reform.

Frankly the depths to which political elites will go to sell this enormous foreign aid bill has no limit. This weekend, former Attorney General Eric Holder posted a tweet on X that is the most shameful thing I’ve seen to date. You may recall Mr. Holder is famous for being the only AG ever held in contempt of Congress, and who, despite serving as the chief national law enforcement officer of the United States for six years after the 2008 financial crisis, brought exactly zero bankers, regulators and other fraudsters to justice for the blatantly corrupt collapse of the home mortgage market. He has, since leaving office, earned a lucrative living representing those same bankers on Wall Street at Covington & Burling. Here is Mr. Holder’s tweet, on the day of Alexei Navalny’s funeral:

I honestly considered not sharing this tweet, as in normal circumstances this picture should not be shared at all by anyone for any reason. Give the man and his family some peace.

But I’ve seen the photo all over the news, and the juxtaposition of the photo and Mr. Holder’s message seemed to me to be vital to describe the shameful post.

In effect, Mr. Holder is attempting to use the death of a Russian dissident to convince the American people that we should send more bombs to Ukraine to kill that dissidents fellow countrymen. It is a disgusting, cynical and shameful piece of propaganda, attempting to cloak a politician’s noble sacrifice onto a warmonger’s need for profit.

Even worse, it is completely inaccurate and misleading. Mr. Navalny was no friend to Ukraine, stating clearly that the Crimea always has been and should be part of Russia in 2014. Ukrainians, until his untimely death, viewed Mr. Navalny more as an “enemy of my enemy” than an actual ally. Certainly, we should all seriously consider whether a Russian patriot, despite his clear hatred of Putin and his war, would encourage prolonging such a war, thus ensuring that Ukraine and her clandestine partners would kill many more Russians at the front. Mr. Navalny would assuredly pursue peace, as should we all in his memory.