Elon Musk calls for Radio Free Europe and Voice of America to be shut down
American billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has called for the US-funded radio stations Radio Free Europe and Voice of America to be shut down. Source: Musk on X (Twitter) Yes, shut them down.
Radio free Asia is the one that actually needs to be shut down.
They all need to be shut down.
Are not lot of people clued in to what RFX & VoA are really about nowadays? Because if so, maybe they really have become inefficient propaganda outlets. They could be spending it on new and better propaganda.
I get the impression that the neocon faction is getting purged after having bet everything on Ukraine. The question is what the new faction that's taking power plans to do geopolitically, and we'll have to wait a bit before that becomes clear. I imagine new propaganda outlets will be spun up to support whatever the new narrative is.
Great perspective. It makes the most sense. The faction that said "we will administer the ship of state for all of us" has been shown to have failed and a new faction is not only purging the old faction but is also purging the structures and systems they put in place. Essentially, the new faction of technologists is blowing through the old faction's sunk cost fallacies and emotional attachments, creating the space (vacuum) for new systems to emerge.
And it's clear what the new systems are going to be: artificial intelligence, digital surveillance, autonomous weapons platforms, domestic brownshirts, pre-crime, lebensraum, reindustrialization, and domestic acceleration of precarity.
We can only hope that it doesn't include nukes. But I have a bad feeling I will see one used against humans before I die.
You mean like Twitter?
Okay I'm down for this one. For wildly different reasons
Replaced with “Podcast Subscription Europe” and “/r/TheShitpostsofAmerica”
Are there no military advisors in there? Surely somebody must've told them that VoA is a key pysop agency. Or is Musk one of those bosses that don't let their advisors advise?
Either way I'm constantly waffling between "this actually makes sense" and "this actually makes no sense" and killing VoA and specially RFE makes no strategic sense to me. Although "Europe is already free" in the liberal sense, Europe is still in dispute both in the world market sense wrt China alignment, but also internally with the myriad anti-NATO parties.
Backing away from that front on a crucial moment with the coming backlash and fingerpointing of the end of Ukraine seems to me at best to be a tactical retreat from obvious defeat, or just a big blunder. So if this is a rational decision (and it's getting hard to tell from Musk's antics but also incompetent "progressive" liberal reporting), this is would be IMO an announcement of propagandistic weakness wrt Europe.
Edit: Fuck, I think I get it. They're gutting all this psyop apparatus because they intend to double down on more effective means. They have Google (YouTube), Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) and Musk (Twitter) fully on board. That's the only unchallenged hegemony left, and I believe it's gonna get very intense soon.
It makes sense if the US is planning to pull out of Europe and cede it to Russia though.
That would be massive and probably imply full European alignment with China. Europe would lose their bigger supporter in the maintenance of their colonies. And the United States would lose its most developed industrial ally, as well as the base for operations in the Middle East and North Africa.
Although that would probably help Europe's economy get back to growth with cheap gas again, unless China or Russia are willing to become the colonial enforcers the Glorified Peninsula will never be the same again, and whatever remains of their ruling class will never accept it.
On the other hand the US sphere of influence would shrink to the north Pacific and Latin America. I don't think that's plausible, and I think in fact the new US admin should be trying to end the Ukraine war specifically as pretext to get cheap gas back in Europe and avoid anti-NATO sentiment. From that solid base they can wage war (economically or militarily) over the Rest of the World with China.
Wonder how many libs would subscribe to a VoA Patreon lol
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Broken clock I guess. Not getting rid of radio free Asia though? That's the one we fund that writes articles about how everyone is North Korea has to have Kim Jungeon's haircut and then later write one that says only Kim Jungeon can have that haircut.
Oh, also, the north Koreans have to push their trains by hand.
I think it’s telling if they don’t get rid of the Asia one but do get rid of Europe. It speaks not of empire pulling inward entirely but refocusing everything on China and on war and containment many have long predicted would come before 2030.
I just saw an article. The chief negotiator for the US with Russia intends to make part of their demands that Russia break its alliances and security pacts with the DPRK and China. This could very well just be an attempt to make peace with Russia to totally focus on destroying China. And I don’t trust Russia or Putin enough that I’m convinced they couldn’t be bribed with reintegration with Europe to look the other way and whistle while the US attacks the DPRK/China.
And I don’t trust Russia or Putin enough that I’m convinced they couldn’t be bribed with reintegration with Europe to look the other way and whistle while the US attacks the DPRK/China.
My question there would be, what would the US bribe them with? Temporarily not vilifying, dehumanizing, and trying to undermine them for decades? I don't see what benefit "reintegration with Europe" would even be, especially that would be worth discarding China or trying to play some kind of Pontius Pilate thing. The US is becoming behind technologically with no prospects of improving on that front, it and its European "allies" are in a sad state of affairs in terms of producing their own goods, their internal contradictions keep getting worse, and their image on the world stage keeps taking hits. If I were trying to put myself in the head of a person thinking only in terms of cynical long-term benefit, China would make far more sense as the one to bet on. Russia throwing China under the bus in order to ally with the US after everything it has done to Russia not only doesn't make much strategic sense, I would think it would be extremely humiliating for Russia to do, to being throwing away such a powerful ally just to please the chronically abusive and terrorizing US that has caused them so much grief. Russia, like China, would probably prefer that the warmongering ends, even if they are not quite the same political systems, which is where openness to talks comes in. Lest we forget that Russia didn't want to war with Ukraine and western influences sabotaged at least one attempt at peace between Ukraine and Russia already.
Stranger things have happened, but the idea of it is odd to me. The empire has made a mockery of itself in Ukraine and I can't see how it would be anything but immensely foolish for Russia to view talks as the US being in a position to set terms. They can demand all they want, but the situation on the ground is another thing.
demands that Russia break its alliances and security pacts with the DPRK and China
The likelihood of that succeeding is extremely low. Even as liberal as the Putin government is, it would have to be extremely stupid to fall for that. I'm not saying it's 100% impossible but at the moment the mood among the Russian government seems to be one of complete and total distrust in any promises the West can make them. They are saying every day that they will not accept any kind of Minsk-3 type deal.
Besides which, their reorientation toward the East is very hard to reverse anymore now, because so much has been invested in it. The more economic and security links are built the harder it will be to sever them again. The way i see it the Eurasian strategy now has taken on a momentum of its own that will continue even if the entire West does a complete 180 on Russia. And Europe, quite frankly, is not willing do so at the moment regardless of what the Americans do.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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