Speaking in an interview with FNA, Torabi said, “Even Americans refuse to trust mainstream media, despite the tremendous amount of capital invested in massive media companies… In today’s digital age when propaganda campaigns to distort reality fail people tend to look for independent journalism and media outside. From the worst humanitarian crisis of all times in Yemen to the apartheid policies of the Zionist regime in Palestine, resistance media’s efforts to expose what was really happening in the region were remarkable.”
Mehrdad Torabi is an international relations expert from the University of Bologna, Italy. He is a writer of political commentaries and analyses.
Below is the full text of the interview:
Q: When there is so much anti-Islamic anti-Iranian noise by the Western mainstream media, why does Washington take censorship to a new level of deplatforming the independent media?
A: In the recent annual digital news report for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, the United States ranked last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries. This shows even Americans refuse to trust mainstream media, despite the tremendous amount of capital invested in massive media companies. Let alone people in other parts of the world who have seen the atrocities of Western powers, lost homes and loved ones, and felt invasion, occupation, coups, instability, and so forth to the bone. Iran International TV advocating for sustaining sanctions on the Iranian people verifies my point. In today’s digital age when propaganda campaigns to distort reality fail people tend to look for independent journalism and media outside. From the worst humanitarian crisis of all times in Yemen to the apartheid policies of the Zionist regime in Palestine, resistance media’s efforts to expose what was really happening in the region were remarkable. Malign intentions of Western imperialism revealed to the people around the world, multiplied by a failed propaganda campaign, left the US with no choice but to suppress the truth through censorship.
Q: Amaq news agency belongs to Daesh Takfiri terrorist group. Why does not the US make an effort to stop the operation of the terror media agency?
A: Western powers separate ethics and politics, subordinating morality to power. Sub-state actors who use terrorist tactics to intimidate the public, therefore, play a role in the strategic objectives of the status quo powers who wish to maintain or increase their dominion. Just like the MEK terrorist organization, Daesh terrorists are considered as a variable affecting the political objectives of global hegemons. It was Iranian, Hezbollah, SAA, and PMU forces who fought terrorists on the ground in Iraq and Syria while Anbar province in Iraq had become an arms supply route from Saudi Arabia, the US’ best ally in the region, to takfiri terrorists. In Syria, Daesh and al-Qaeda terrorists were fighting in a united front with the United States against the Syrian government. When Jake Sullivan wrote in an email to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in February 2012 “[al-Qaeda] is in on our side in Syria,” he meant it. Daesh terrorists must remain and their propaganda campaigns must reach the world. That could justify the United States occupying Iraq and building up its military bases around the region. The political end of supporting the Zionist regime and subordinating nations to liberal hegemony then may appear to be in reach.
Q: How do you view Washington’s sanctions on alternative media?
A: In order to achieve political and economic domination the United States has committed horrific crimes against humanity. The US and the UK fired more than 300,000 depleted uranium rounds during the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of cancer and birth defect cases are recorded every month, and the figure is clear evidence of the extent of war crimes committed by the US-led coalition forces. This is just one example. Democracy, in the words of Hans Kelsen one of the most abused of all political concepts, was used to justify these crimes in pursuit of global hegemony: just like Social Darwinism formulated by Western powers to show their colonies as uncivilized inferior beings that could justify the violence of colonization under the pretext of awarding them with civilization and modernity. Therefore, the United States is, first and foremost, concerned with its evil behaviors in the past. Although peace is desirable, bloodshed has been the political reality of the 2,500 years history of international relations that we study. That means the United States will never be ashamed of its prior actions, will continue to pursue its hegemonic strategies. Sanctions on media as well as universities have shown the importance of individual consciousness, awareness, and education and the extent to which they appear to be threatening imperialism and the United States’ global hegemony.
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