Whether in Russia, China or the U.S., the capitalist bosses use the media to oppress, mislead, and manipulate the working class. In wartime, in particular, the media’s job is to sell the bosses’ lies and hide the ugly truth about imperialism. The historic task for Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the international working class is to turn inter-imperialist war into communist revolution for workers’ power. Workers have the capacity to do just that, but only if we reject the bosses’ fictions and are clear headed about what is really happening in the world.
In vilifying Putin and beating the drum for the victims of Russia’s invasion, the U.S. media isn’t helping the working class in Ukraine or anywhere else. In fact, it is just the opposite. Although the U.S. bosses are saying—for now—they want to prevent World War III, their goal is to build mass support for wider warfare to protect their profits against their imperialist rivals. While they may seem to have less formal control over television or newspapers or social media than in Russia or China, the liberal big fascists who own and run the mass media (with the exception of Fox) share the same class interests as ExxonMobil or JPMorgan Chase. Their phony claim of “objectivity”—an impossibility in class society—makes U.S. media more deceptive and even more dangerous. When push comes to shove—in Kuwait in 1991, in Iraq in 2003, in Ukraine in 2022—they guarantee that their “news” coverage serves the interests of finance capital.
Let’s look at three big lies the U.S. bosses’ media are spreading in their efforts to mobilize our class to die in their next global conflict.
Lie #1: The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a war crime and moral atrocity, far worse than the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or the U.S.-backed devastation of Yemen.
The U.S. ruling class media is working overtime to convince workers that nothing compares to the atrocities perpetrated by Russia on Ukraine. Images of maimed and murdered workers and children are heartrending. But coming from the U.S. bosses, who are guilty of the slaughter of millions upon millions, this is racist hypocrisy of the first order.
The U.S. bombed civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq for decades. According to the Lancet, the top British medical journal, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq killed more than 600,000 people (10/11/06). After a United Nations official estimated that half a million young children in Iraq were killed by UN/U.S. sanctions, Madeleine (Died Too Late) Albright, a leading architect of U.S. imperialism, infamously defended this atrocity by calling it “…a very hard choice, but …the price is worth it.” What Albright left unstated were the stakes for the liberal fascist bosses: U.S. power in the Middle East and control over the region’s oil.
Today, as the media bombards us with blood-soaked images from Europe, a mostly overlooked war is raging on the Arabian Peninsula. Armed by the U.S., a Saudi-led coalition has killed over 375,000 people in Yemen (Al Jazeera, 2/9). The horrendous racism of U.S. news coverage couldn’t be more blatant. While workers are conditioned to identify with fair-skinned people in Ukraine, Muslim workers are either ignored or even blamed for their plight. The coverage of Ukraine is preparing us to die for U.S. imperialism.
Lie #2: The war in Ukraine proves that Putin is a madman who will stop at nothing.
Over and again, the U.S. media are screaming that Putin is an unhinged megalomaniac. But in reality, in the context of imperialist competition, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is completely logical. The Russian, U.S., and Chinese bosses are fighting to redivide the world’s resources and markets. After the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the U.S. bosses expanded NATO while denying Putin's request to join it—all to keep their military advantage. Now, with U.S. imperialism on the downslide after defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia is trying to claw back some of its old sphere of influence. Beyond Ukraine’s strategic location between Russia and Germany, the country is a critical source of wheat, natural gas, and metals like lithium, an essential element of electric car batteries.
Imperialists are driven to war not by psychosis, but by the drive for profit. By painting Putin as a madman who may soon turn to “weapons of mass destruction,” the U.S. bosses are laying the basis for their own use of nuclear weapons. Representing the only country in history to drop atomic bombs on a civilian population, President Joe Biden confirmed that the U.S. would not rule out a first-strike nuclear attack (dailymail.com, 3/26).  If the U.S. bosses are losing a conventional war with Russia or China, and they consider the stakes high enough, they won’t hesitate to press the nuclear button.
Lie #3: The fight to defend Ukraine is a noble war for democracy and Ukrainian national sovereignty.
The U.S. ruling class media has worked hard to build support for Ukrainian nationalism, which has been riddled with open fascism and anti-Jewish racism since the 1940s (huffpost.com, 12/25/14). The whole concept of nation states serves only the rulers who created them to define and protect their wealth. Nations are a disaster for the working class. They lead workers to identify with “their” bosses and to shed the blood of their class sisters and brothers in other countries. Our class has no side in an inter-imperialist war.
As President Joe Biden and the bosses’ media try to rally workers around a war for “democracy” versus “autocracy,” they don’t mention how the U.S. has subverted and overthrown democratically elected governments whenever its imperialist interests are threatened--in Guatemala, Chile, Honduras, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just for starters. Then there’s Ukraine itself, where the current crop of bosses inherited power after President Viktor Yanukovych leaned too hard toward Russia and was kicked out in a coup the media now calls “The Revolution of Dignity.” The U.S. invested more than $5 billion to destabilize the Yanukovych government and pave the way for regime change (Counterpunch, 4/14/15).
Liberal democracy or Putin-style “autocracy” is a distinction without a difference. They both represent a dictatorship of the capitalist bosses. And they both lead to fascism and war. The ruling class will say and do anything to preserve their power. We must expose the truth and build the fight for communist revolution. Under communism, the media would serve the interests of the class that creates all value—the working class. Join us!