Quality and Propaganda 176
On 10 October I called out a viral video as fake. It featured pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Sydney, Australia, with a soundtrack of people appearing to chant “Gas the Jews”. The video not only went viral online, it was featured worldwide by mainstream media.
The New South Wales Prime Minister attacked a parliamentarian for daring to say that the incident was dubious
Antoinette Lattouf, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio journalist who investigated the incident and found that it did not happen, received enormous abuse. She was later sacked when she shared online a report on Israeli atrocities in Gaza by Human Rights Watch.
Finally, 100 days later, an exhaustive investigation by New South Wales police, which involved forensic investigation of many different videos of the incident (including professional video from inter alia Consortium News), has definitively concluded that it did not happen. It was a fake.
Now here is the important point. I saw it was a fake after about twenty seconds, not 100 days. It was an extremely clear and obvious fake. There was not a shadow of a doubt that it was a fake. No serious observer could believe it was genuine. I posted the simple empirical observation immediately on Twitter.
A lesson in Israeli propaganda. The video is a jump of many cuts but the soundtrack simply continues over the cuts.
Not a single person shown has lips moving in any kind of chant.
A large number of educated people, who must see and understand this, are deliberately tweeting out… https://t.co/OuRw1Pl8y1
— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) October 10, 2023
It is stark. The soundtrack simply runs continuously over several big cuts in the video. It is obviously an overlain soundtrack. Plus many people are shown very clearly in the video, and not a single one is moving their lips as if they are making a chant like that in the soundtrack. It is not just a matter of being out of sync. Nobody seems to be doing this sort of rhythmic chanting at all.
It is not just propaganda. It is a fake of the lowest quality, which any amateur can see the problem with, instantly. So why did hundreds of mainstream media journalists all over the globe report it as genuine and even retail it on MSM platforms. Why did politicians refer to it? Why were those who queried it attacked and ridiculed?
Here is a key point I have not seen anywhere else, shared with me by Consortium News who shared their footage of the same event with the police. The representatives of the Australian Jewish Association, who produced the fake footage, refused to hand over the original footage to the police investigation. Yet it does not appear they face any criminal charges, and they have the massive front to still be pushing their lies in the state and billionaire owned media.
The point is that Israeli propaganda can be of extremely low quality and obviously fake. It does not matter. The politicians will buy it and retail it because they are in the pocket of the zionist lobby. The mainstream media will promulgate it, because they work either for billionaires who share the zionist creed of the ruling classes, or, like those in the BBC, for states controlled by politicians in the pockets of the zionist lobby. All Israel has to do is chuck the propaganda out there. It will be massively amplified no matter how poor it is.
Let me give another example. You may recall seeing, on all broadcast media, the entrance to the “Hamas tunnel network” at Sheikh Hamad hospital, as evidence of why Israel has to target hospitals because they are essential nodes in Hamas “eight hundred mile” tunnel network. I believe it was also among the images Israel flashed up at the ICJ, though these were displayed so briefly it is difficult to be certain.
Well, now the IDF have totally destroyed the hospital and rendered it inoperable, they have moved on. We can now see it is a water tank. I cannot find a single example of any mainstream media issuing a correction or even saying it is a water tank.
Yeah remember when israel showed footage pointing to this “tunnel” next to Sheikh Hamad hospital and ran with this propaganda for weeks? While we’ve been saying that this is a water tank, here are reporters finally entering. pic.twitter.com/9QItVTM1Oc
— Hebh Jamal (@hebh_jamal) February 3, 2024
The point is that the propaganda does not have to be good. It can be rubbish. You show a picture of a hatch, say it is an entrance to a secret tunnel network, and the poodle media and massive hasbara online operation will amplify it massively. While the truth not only does not make mainstream media, it has to force its way through massive suppression of social media. My posts on X/twitter currently have less reach per repost than zionist accounts by a factor averaging around 50.
The extreme suppression manifests in strange ways. When I tried to find my tweet calling out the fake soundtrack, I could not find it at all. It had disappeared from my timeline completely. I appreciate this is too small to read properly, but this is my timeline from 10 October to show what I mean.
Nor could any search I tried bring it up. Yet the tweet was still extant, and someone kindly sent me a link to it. It had just been cloaked from me, and possibly some others, but not from the person who sent it on to me.
And as for Antoinette:
Well, being the only reporter in the whole of mainstream media to have told the truth does not get your job back if you have committed the greatest sin and contradicted the zionist narrative. I fear she will wait a very long time for any apologies from the Establishment.
The thing you have to recall is that every single one of them – the Israeli propagandists, the politicians, the mainstream media journalists and the hasbara operatives on social media – know that they are lying. They just believe that the lies are not important in pursuit of the greater good – or rather in pursuit of Greater Israel.
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