Donald Trump and Elon Musk, along with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have taken aim at seven more state institutions as part of their ongoing dismantling of the US government. This presidential decree-led blitz attack targeted institutions with various responsibilities, including labor conflict mediation and addressing homelessness.
Trump’s method is simple and well-known: the affected institutions are not officially abolished, but their budgets and personnel are significantly reduced, forcing them to cease operations.
Notably, the only type of budget cuts that seem to rile up centrists, liberals and mainstream media is those affecting state propaganda, specifically the global sense of it.
This time, Trump and Musk targeted the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is essentially the US propaganda ministry for the world.
USAGM, a relatively new label (2018), has its roots in the Cold War of the last century. Originally, the Radiosender Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were established. “Voice of America” emerged during World War II and was quickly used by the CIA as a propaganda tool in the Cold War. Its “younger relatives” – Radio Free Europe, founded in 1950 and Radio Liberty (1951) – were, in the true sense of the word, a façade for the CIA.
However, the CIA’s involvement was kept secret until the late 1960s out of fear of Soviet retaliation, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, with a refined British understatement and a large portion of gross misinformation: the fact that the CIA remained in the shadows was not because of the big bad Russians (then the Soviets), but simply a means to manipulate public opinion in the East and West and to sell propaganda as “independent news.”
After 1971, the CIA (officially) relinquished its control. If someone believes this means the agency ceased manipulating the strings, I can tell the story of Ukrainian “democracy” with “civil society” and all the subsequent consequences.
Formally, the Board for International Broadcasting took over the leadership. It was appointed by the US President, showing the importance of this global propaganda machine for Washington.
After further name changes, the Board eventually became USAGM. It controlled not only Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which had long since merged into RFE/RL, but also many other organizations, including Radio Free Asia and the very aptly named Office of Cuba Broadcasting.
According to its own website, USAGM had a weekly audience of 427 million in 64 languages, both through traditional radio and television and the internet. These “happy” viewers, listeners and readers were fed a unhealthy “information diet” that matched the “national interest” of the US, with “more than 3,000 hours of original programming per week.”
Regardless of what one says about this American ministry of foreign propaganda, it was indeed larger and richer than anything the old Soviets ever created.
And exactly this organization was dismantled by Trump and Musk. The Cold War is, of course, long over. Any reasonable person would have asked: “Why did it take so long?” Elon Musk was right when he wrote that these propaganda agencies are “only radical crazies who have self-conversations and waste 1 billion US dollars per year in American taxpayer money.” Unfortunately, they did not just talk to themselves. And what they made “radical” and “crazy” was in reality the fact that they were so “American” like an Apple Pie.
Rationality is, of course, in short supply in American politics. Instead of rejoicing that this costly Jurassic Park of media dinosaurs from the Cold War was finally removed from the American taxpayer’s ledger, it sparked great outcry.
Michael Abramowitz, the director of Voice of America, held a eulogy for his organization with a humbling modesty: “VOA promotes freedom and democracy worldwide by telling America’s story and providing objective and balanced news and information, especially to those who live under tyranny.” According to Steve Capus, the head of RFE/RL, “the end of the financial agreement with ‘Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’ is a great gift to America’s enemies.”
Oh, this rich sound of the 1950s! It’s almost as if Duke Ellington and his Big Band Orchestra are back, swinging with Joseph McCarthy.
Interestingly, Abramowitz did not exclude those living under the murderous occupation of the apartheid-Israel. It seems that it went just as well with “objectivity” and “balance” at VOA as with “democracy” and “freedom” in the US.
The former finance director of USAGM, Grant Turner – yes, that is his real name and not a joke – lamented the “Bloody Saturday.”
Of course, high-ranking propagandists will not erupt in jubilation when their life’s work is destroyed and their career comes to an abrupt, if also deserved, end. But Abramowitz, Capus and Turner are not the only ones expressing their outrage. NBC News, the National Press Club and the Association for International Broadcasting also joined the protests against Trump’s decision.
And Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said the EU should provide Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty with the necessary financial support. It will now be an EU matter: regardless of what a truly bad idea Washington has – whether it’s preserving costly propaganda relics from the Cold War or a more costly, bloody and hopeless proxy war against Russia – the Europeans will gladly take it up.
Hopefully, they will not succeed. It is time for these disinformation machines to finally disappear. They have never stopped causing immense harm, whether through war propaganda or the information war for regime change. Ivan Katchanovski, a leading expert on the Maidan massacre under false flag in Kiev in February 2014, wrote just about how it was “distorted [and] falsely presented” with unwanted video evidence disappearing and the “de facto confirmation” of the Ukrainian court that it was indeed a nationalist, right-wing, pro-Western operation, simply ignored.
Trumpists are not “good guys.” They rely just as much on lies and censorship as their Biden predecessors. Ask the Palestinians and their harassed and persecuted supporters, or the Yemenis and the Venezuelans. But no one in this world needs more financed lies. And if now an American group is fighting against the propaganda machines of the other, it will result in a grimly-amusing spectacle.