USAID and EU: Manipulating “independent” media and controlling public opinion
Over the years I have been one of those people encouraged by the many parallels between European populist-nationalists and the MAGA movement in the US. There is indeed something going on in many places in the world where shadowy deep states are under threat by nationalist movements of many types.
Sometimes though, I have struck a cautionary note, telling people that while there may be similarities between, say, Trump in the US, Farage in the UK and Orbán in Hungary, conflating these groups into a single political force is a bridge too far. Of course, with the Left, all three aforementioned groups would be thrown into the sloppy category of “Fascist.”
It is no coincidence that George Soros’ favourite political philosopher is the late Karl Popper, who felt that any deep dive into political thought in our time encourages “Fascism,” so just shut up and follow the neo-liberal line. A non-philosophy larping as a philosophy. A. A. Reno does a great job of explaining this in his book Return of the Strong Gods (2019).
Still, one sees many parallels in reform movements in the US and Europe. This was very much brought to my attention by the very similar scandals revolving around the EU Commission and USAID.
In the European Union, it was discovered that EU agencies were giving money to NGOs that were lobbying for more stringent environmental rules championed by the EU itself. This, dear readers, is a form of “manufacturing consent,” a term invented by far-left American theoretician Noam Chomsky, who accused the US media of being too pro-capitalist and squashing socialist voices. The NGO scandal is similar, but different in one way; it is the EU manufacturing consent to the views of the EU bureaucracy itself.
The EU gave, between 2014 and 2018, something on the order of 122 million euros to Euronews, an organisation pretending to be an independent news outlet. For several years now, I have visited Euronews fairly regularly to check for major stories going on in the continent. Of course, the pro-globalist/EU bias of Euronews is as obvious as the nose on my face.
Well, in the US, Donald Trump deputised a team of computer nerds, led by Elon Musk, to ferret out wasteful spending in government agencies. Target number one was the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Now, I’ve known for decades that USAID was a CIA front group, but what surprised me was the size and scope of wasteful, bizarre and degenerate programmes around the world.
The most disgusting were all sorts of programmes aimed at promoting homosexuality and transsexualism in third-world countries. How’s about 2 million for sex changes in Guatemala, $70,000 for a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) musical in Ireland, and $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia? How’s about a solid half million dollars to promote atheism in Nepal?
Of course, USAID was not just doing crazy-tier nonsense. An organisation called Reporters Without Borders reported that USAID provided funding to 6,200 journalists, 707 non-state media outlets and 279 media-focused NGOs in 30 countries. The US had planned to spend for 2025 a total of $268.4 million on “independent media and free flow of information.” Politico, the German-owned online media political site, gets 8 million dollars a year for US government “subscriptions.”
Both the EU/NGO scandal in Europe and the USAID scandal in the US put the lie to the claim that we have a free press and an open market of ideas in the West. Opinion is manipulated and moulded toward the outcome desired by our masters.
In a lot of ways, it’s worse than the old Soviet system. At least the common Russian on the street could read Pravada knowing that it was government propaganda. In a system like that, a smart person could ‘read between the lines’ and come to some intelligent conclusions. Here in the West many journalists are bought and paid for spreading very particular ideas by an alleged independent media and until now it was always hush-hush.
Author: Kenneth Schmidt
yogaesoteric
February 26, 2025
