Not So Déjà vu

War is Schizophrenia

As the hostilities between Hamas and Israel continue, I will safely assume that much like my social media feeds, yours too have been filled with accusations of wartime atrocities, public statements and condemnations, and protests spanning the ethnic diasporas of both Jews and Muslims all over the world. Without taking the time to dedicate what’s fiction — twisted truth for propaganda purposes — or even looking for sources outside the mainstream reporting, the war is in a constant fog, both digitally and on the ground.

For most of us, this conflict — whether it escalates or not — will first be a spectacle, if anything, followed by programming. No good tragedy is left unused for the purposes of the State, and especially when the nation state in question is Israel. Regardless of your position on this conflict, whether you take a side against Israel but still find yourself unable to side with Hamas or other terror groups, you, our readers, and many of us here at the Old Glory Club are cognizant that the same methods of media manipulation and outright lies are taking place just as they did in the immediate weeks and months after hostilities began between Russia and Ukraine.

At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and still to this day, there is footage taken from the MilSim Sandbox Game Arma 3 for the purposes of passing it off as actual combat footage, while other videos are meant to illustrate what the war on the ground is actually like. It has been fodder for fact-checkers to point out this obvious simulation being passed around as victories, losses, and on-the-ground tactics used by both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces.

Now as the conflict kicks off between Israel and Hamas, Iranian-backed Houthis, and other anti-Israel groups, we begin to see the same thing on both sides of the war.

I imagine Bohemia Interactive has very few changes to make to their existing copy about using game footage as news or war materials; just change Ukraine/Russia to Israel/Hamas. We know we’re in for a long war when various YouTubers start giving us long-winded videos and reports whose scripts were written or sourced from the National Endowment for Democracy, as we can see from the Kings and Generals YouTube channel:

And…

As the Americans, Iranians, and almost the entirety of the Islamic world holds its breath as protests, plans, and back-channel negotiations take place, the feeling of familiarity takes a strong hold on those far removed from the battleground.

This ongoing conflict is different from the last. It happens to strike at the heart of the most volatile part of the world out of which nations and ethnic groups have poured into Western countries either through porous borders or State endorsement, as well as overrepresentation in media and government, to enact policies detrimental to the native peoples of the West. If anything, COVID, the war in Ukraine, and the flagrant lack of any transparency on the part of the Regime have been their undoing when it comes to taking in the usual talking points about terrorism or the need to stand for Israel.

Sure, Nimarata Nikki Haley can say that we need to support our “greatest ally,” or Biden can rally up the WWII ’member berries about being the “Arsenal of Democracy” against a “new Axis of Evil,” but the Global War on Terror throwback just isn’t going as planned. Any shred of credibility held by the news has been washed out by alternatives and disintermediation, to the point where most younger audiences get their news from newsletters and YouTubers such as ourselves. Not to mention the feeling of resignation upon acknowledging that most of us are nowhere near the levers of power, but we’re still loudly going to make our opinions heard anyway.

Despite the constant stream of updates, reports, headlines, rumors, and footage, we will be in a schizophrenic media environment without being able to dedicate adequate time to keeping a closer eye on the unfolding events. The advantage that most people have is that we’ve gone through this before, and so it will be easier to sort out the agitprop and fake news faster than it was before. Additionally, places like Twitter are under new management, and while Elon Musk is still far from /our guy/, his run-ins with the ADL and his remarks on demographics and leftism have granted the right more room in which to operate — but it’s still no Poast or Gab, though.

Even Timcast’s Cassandra MacDonald points out the obvious:

This schizophrenic media blitz doesn’t have the same novelty, regionality, or impact as previous conflicts or crises, and this is both a blessing and a curse, but the curse element has yet to be seen.