Awestruck media pundits who like to refer to recent global and national happenings as “unprecedented” might want to pop open a history book where they will discover that much of today’s “news” is not really new …

Let’s go back (once again) to ancient Greece to view one of the earliest examples of what might be called “flawed messaging”. In the 5th century B.C., leaders of the various Greek city-states who wanted to embark upon some highly important project felt obligated to consult first with the famous oracle at Delphi to see if the gods approved or disapproved of their endeavor. In the spring of 480 B.C., the Persian King Xerxes, intent upon conquest, invaded Greece with a massive army, prompting the city of Athens and the kingdom of Sparta to send delegations to Delphi to ask the highly-respected “pythoness” whether or not they should prepare their armies for war. Unbeknownst to both delegations, Greek traitors in the pay of Persia bribed the oracle to oppose mobilization. She informed the Spartans that, if they opposed Xerxes, their king must die or the city would be destroyed. Because of the prophecy, only a small force of 300 elite troops under the command of King Leonidas was allowed to resist the invasion. Their “noble” but bloody defeat at the strategic pass of Thermopylae has become the subject of poems and books, as well as (mostly inaccurate) movies, and excessively gory video-games.

This was only one of a long line of instances where “compromised” information (or “fake news” as its called today) has been employed to influence events. The Egyptian pharaohs were masters at altering historic facts and diminishing the accomplishments of their predecessors to make themselves look good. In medieval times, fibs were put out in abundance to incite violence against Jews, Muslims, and so-called “heretics”. The Mexican War of 1845 was prompted by “manifest destiny” propaganda and the Spanish-American War resulted from a skewed story alleging that the Spanish blew up the battleship “Maine”. The altered “Zimmerman Note” was used to start W.W. I. The Nazis, Japanese warlords, Winston Churchill, and even FDR expertly used massive propaganda programs to secure popular support during W.W. II. The costly war in Vietnam was based largely upon false allegations about a non-existent “domino theory”, and we hardly need to be reminded of the phony WMD claims that the Cheney-Bush folks utilized to push for the 2003 occupation of Iraq …

When “putsch” comes to shove, however, the all-time champions of disseminating disinformation have been the Russians. What began during the Czarist regime of Catherine the Great (whose chief-minister Grigory Potemkin constructed fake villages in the Ukraine to create false images of “progress”), was expanded during the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars and put on steroids via the complex but clumsy machinations of Stalin and his successors who used media entities like “Pravda” to promote Soviet aggression in the Cold War-era, has culminated in a slightly more sophisticated (and possibly more successful) effort by current Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to employ modern social media and alleged “news” outlets outlets like “Russia Today” to perpetuate his rule, to destabilize democratic institutions in the west, to promote Russian expansionism, to sanctify the notion of worldwide criminal oligarchy, and to depict war-crimes and atrocities committed by Russia in the Ukraine and Syria as “business-as-usual” … He’s had some help in pushing his agenda …

Perhaps the greatest irony of the present time is that Putin has found fertile ground for his proselytizing efforts among so-called “conservative” Americans who were once considered the most “anti-Russian” folks on the planet (Joe McCarthy, Robert W. Welch, and Barry Goldwater are no doubt tumbling around in their graves). When one considers all the factors (including the phony one touted by Bill O’Reilly), it makes perfect sense that Donald Trump and his authoritarian-minded “alpha-male” buddies like Steve Bannon would eagerly embrace Putin’s agenda and tactics. The standard tools of deception and disinformation, originally designed by Soviet propagandists like Lenin and Trotsky and Nazi honchos like Josef Goebbels, have during the last 70 years been co-opted by right-wing American groups such as the John Birch Society in the 1950s and ’60s, the “Moral Majority” in the 1970s and ’80s), by ideologues like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove in the 1990s, and are widely used today by ideology-driven outfits like C-PAC … Such tactics include “false equivalency” claims (i.e. comparing the separation of church and state or environmental regulations to the policies of Hitler), character assassination (referring to political opponents as “unChristian” or “unAmerican”, stereotyping public assistance recipients as “undeserving bums’, or branding certain ethnic groups as “terrorists”, “rapists” or “drug-dealers”), blatantly telling lies to blur differences between truth and fantasy (the ongoing attempted legitimization of so-called “alternative facts” by Trump surrogates like Sean Spicer or Kellyanne Conway), creating lists of “enemies” and “friends”, “projecting” one’s own prejudices onto others, or “transferring” one’s crimes to their political opponents, proclaiming that fantasy is truth (i.e. branding the legitimate media as “fake news” and claiming that “truth” can only be found in tabloid periodicals like The National Enquirer or via fringe media outlets like Breitbart News, InfoWars or Fox News). When confronted with facts, it is easy (isn’t it Mr. Spicer?) to simply change the subject (i.e. instead of giving a straight answer to valid questions about the Trump team’s involvement with Russian spies, it’s much easier to find new ways to blame everything on Obama or his former National Security adviser, Susan Rice). Besides “patriotism”, the real “last refuge of a scoundrel” is the hypocrite’s fervent appeal to Christian faith and religion …

Now that the American public are finally beginning to realize some of the Russian-style propaganda devices that the Trump people employed to win the 2016 election, they are confronted with reality in the form of incompetent policies at home and the dead bodies of innocent children who have been murdered in Syria with the assistance and compliance of the same Russian leader who fascinates Trump so much and has successfully compromised most of his people – the same Vladimir Putin who has outfoxed the oracles of information, and launched an all-out attack upon the very fabric of western democracy … “Go tell the Spartans!”

Fred O’Neill lives in Marietta.