Finally admitting the obvious – that the CIA knew of the attack in advance – is a step towards normalizing it
ByTarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/authors/tarik-cyril-amar/@tarikcyrilamartarikcyrilamar.substack.comtarikcyrilamar.com
© Coast Guard Handout /Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
[RT] Only
a few will be tempted to celebrate: German magazine Spiegel – once, a
very long time ago, a proud flagship of critical investigate journalism
but now an often cringe-inducing, radical-Centrist government and
establishment mouthpiece – has noticed the obvious fact that Germany’s American overlords were involved in the 2022 Nord Stream attack from the very beginning.
Spiegel – to paraphrase the title of a Soviet television classic
starring the immortal Viacheslav Tikhonov – has now been authorized to
announce: From the spring of 2022 (at the latest) Ukrainian saboteurs
and CIA spies – already well-acquainted with each other “for years” (How did that happen, by the way? Never mind, we know) – were meeting to develop the idea of launching the greatest single eco-terrorist attack in Europe’s history. On an “ally.”
You don’t say, Hauptmann Obvious! Honestly, what’s next from Hamburg’s brightest? “Gulf of Tonkin Incident – Did the US Lie?”; “Breaking: Gleiwitz Attack – a Nazi Black Op?”; “The Schlieffen Plan: Did it Fail?”; “Kaiser Wilhelm – Not so Bright after all?”
Have all the cringo-meters really gone the way of Germany’s notoriously
dysfunctional railways? Is there no one left at Spiegel with a basic
sense of professional shame and elementary decency?
The same can
by asked regarding German mainstream media as a whole. Markus Lanz, one
of Germany’s most styled and prominent – and soporifically anodyne, too –
talk show hosts, has recently “amused” us (yes, scare quotes)
with speculations both asinine and callous: Was the ugly – English frog
formerly known as Prince Andrew perhaps only trying to help when caught
on candid Epstein Mossad camera kneeling over a prone girl?
Frankly,
the new Spiegel line on Nord Stream is not much better. Its only
advantage is that, at least, it is not de facto covering for a pedophile
monster, just for Germany’s US “allies” and Berlin’s spongers
in Kiev, which devastated its vital infrastructure and crippled its
economy by locking in excessive energy costs.
To make things worse for itself, Spiegel is, of course, still
soft-pedalling its non-revelations, implausibly framing its
news-of-yesteryear as a silly story about the Americans “knowing much earlier than previously thought” about the Ukrainian plans.
This
implausibility turns into rock-bottom, barefaced absurdity when we are
told, once again, that ultimately the CIA turned against the plans for
the attack. A Ukrainian terrorist – yes, that is the correct term for a
participant in a treacherous sneak attack on a country pumping ceaseless
billions into Ukraine with massive ecological and economic consequences
– currently in German custody, meanwhile, is prettified into a “commando soldier.” How low will German “elites” bow to those slapping Germany in the face?
In
sum, your story, dear members of the Spiegel creative writing workshop,
seems to be this: The Zelensky regime, dependent for its very survival
on Washington, took American “advice” regarding the Nord Stream
sabotage and terrorist operation, and then simply disregarded the same
Americans when they called it off. BS, as they say in American English.
It’s one thing to try to mislead your readers – and that’s bad enough –
but please have some respect and stop treating them like total idiots.
In reality, the American “friends” were, of course, not merely informed – either at an early or late stage of planning – and they were not merely initially “benevolent”
observers. Instead they did exactly what the CIA is designed to do:
they got deep into the weeds of a perfectly illegal and absolutely
devious black-ops attack. In this case, they struck a so-called “ally,” an effective vassal in NATO-EU Europe.
Who came up with that brilliant idea first? Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal wanted to make us believe the answer was a few gung-ho Ukrainians on a bender. Forget about it. In all likelihood, it was the friends from across the Atlantic.
It
would be easy to dismiss this latest Spiegel feat as simply ridiculous,
and it certainly is. It’s yet another sad sign of how low not only
Spiegel but the wholeWestern mainstream media cartel have fallen. Yet there is another aspect to this inanity that we should take very seriously.
What has unfolded over the years since the 2022 attack is a
deliberate sequence that we can summarize as The Three Steps of
Normalizing the Totally Anomalous: First, commit an outrageous crime.
Second, launch and stick for a while to an equally outrageous lie. In
this case: it was the Russians who did it!
Third, slowly, gradually, step by step release carefully selected
fragments of the truth, while adjusting the publicly accepted story,
without, however (and this is crucial), ever looking back to address
your own inconsistencies, absurdities, and outright lies.
In these
three stages of normalization, the latest mainstream version is always
the right one, and the previous ones are simply forgotten. Or to be
precise, not mentioned among polite people who wish to advance or just
keep their careers. Those too smart and honest to go along with this
sequence must be maligned, demeaned, marginalized, and driven out of
good mainstream media and expert society. That is why, in the Nord
Stream case, Seymour Hersh was demonized and ridiculed when he fingered the US
in 2023. Hersh could not possibly get every detail right, but he was
close, while Spiegel and company were still stuck in their self-induced
infantile fairy-tale stage.
This early phase of the normalization
sequence is also an exciting time for ambitious mediocrities, when those
who are greedy for recognition and other perks are rewarded for having a
go at their betters, despite being intellectually – and probably
ethically – pedestrian. Witness the mean-spirited, below-the-belt attack
by German perma-talk show asset and security talking head Carlo Masala
on Hersh back in the day. It was abysmally cringey then, and it has aged
very badly.
The Three Stages of Normalizing the Totally Anomalous
– from outrageous crime to bizarrely transparent lying, to a gradual
release of fragments of truth without ever looking back on yesterday’s
BS – are the real story here, not the wanna-be scoop offered by Spiegel.
Here is the key point we need to understand: Controlled, staged – in both senses of the term – revelations are not
part of achieving transparency or, even more importantly,
accountability. Instead they are designed to first overwhelm, disorient,
and paralyze us with massive lies and threats not to challenge them,
and then to drip-feed us carefully selected and sequenced truth, so that
we forget to ask about accountability, including for those who have
been spreading lies and disinformation.
By the time, the full, already obvious truth about the Nord Stream attacks will finally be officially
revealed (if ever), we will have forgotten to ask the equally obvious
questions: Why then is Germany still a US vassal? Why is it still
pumping money into an ultra-corrupt Ukraine and ruining its relationship
with Russia to please both Washington and Zelensky’s Kiev? And why is a German government not protecting Germany from these predators? That is the purpose of the Three Stages of Normalizing the Totally Anomalous strategy. Don’t fall for it.