Sometimes what comes from the media would be amusing if it weren’t such an obvious attempt at manipulation of the public through intentional disinformation.

Take, for example, the, (identical), screaming headlines from the “New York Times” and “Washington Post”;

“Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit”

The story is based upon four, (un-named, as usual), sources that when examined degrades into absolute silliness and blatant false reporting trying to paint Special Counsel Robert Mueller, (he of the “Russia Collusion” investigation), as the good guy in the white hat doing battle with the villain in the “White House”.

Unfortunately, there is historical precedent for this, there is even a term for it; “Agitprop”

Agitprop: a combination of the words “agitation” and “propaganda”. It is political propaganda, especially the communist propaganda used in Soviet Russia, that is spread to the general public through popular media such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms with an explicitly political message.

The term originated in Soviet Russia as a shortened name for the Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department. Typically Russian agitprop explained the policies of the Communist Party and persuaded the general public to share its values and goals.

Soviet Russia had two main newspapers, Pravda and Izvestia. Pravda, which means “Truth”, was the official voice of the Communist Party and Izvestia, which means “News”, was the Official voice of the Soviet Government.

There was also agitprop theater, a highly politicized left-wing theater that originated in 1920s Europe and spread to the United States.

Today we seem to have our own home-grown equivalents; “The New York Times”, (Pravda), and the “Washington Post”, (Izvestia) in print and CNN and MSNBC taking the place of agitprop theater.

Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule. Pretty much the same for our own home-grown broadcast agitprop theater.

One of the running jokes throughout most of the Soviet dominion over Russia was this assessment of the two newspapers by the non-Communist citizenry: “There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and there is no Izvestia in Pravda” or in English “There is no truth in News, and there is no news in Truth.” But this was said carefully and to people who would not report you to the Central Committee.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

(2018)