Empire of Lies: How Governments Manipulate Words as Weapons of Truth to Justify Bloodshed
June 22, 2025•806 words
"The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism." ~ Hermann Göring, Nazi military leader, during the Nuremberg Trials
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." ~ George Orwell
"The media's job is not to report the facts; it’s to maintain the illusion of democracy while serving the needs of the powerful." ~ Chris Hedges
"The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." ~ Aldous Huxley
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." ~ Noam Chomsky
Power is not seized, it is manufactured, performed, packaged, and sold through illusionary propaganda. If war is your goal, you don’t start with force, you begin with a false story. A narrative of looming danger, urgent necessity, existential threat. In fact, the only people living an existential threat in the Middle East are the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They are the targets of an ongoing slaughter by the Israeli government and military, experiencing ethnic cleansing, genocide, and 99% of all buildings such as homes, hospitals, schools, universities, police and fire stations are completely destroyed by the Israeli military bombing, the Palestinians are on the brink of extermination. You weaponize language, you scapegoat the targeted nation and its people into subhuman creatures in which their lives do not matter, you make your people believe they are under siege, and soon they will cry out for violence in the name of safety.
The media becomes your mouthpiece, your amplifier, your camouflage. You flood the airwaves and social media with false royal titles for so called exiles, whispers of misinformation about nuclear catastrophe, dramatic tales of imminent destruction. Drape your lies in official robes and repeat them until even the skeptical start to question their sanity.
Such false narratives, false manufactured propaganda worked in Iraq, mythical weapons of mass destruction justified real slaughter of well over a million Iraqi civilians. Now, the same American government propaganda machine lurches toward Iran with clumsier lies and duller tools, daring the public to notice, and still, they look away.
Understand opportunism, it is the true currency of power. Tulsi Gabbard once warned of war, condemned the hawks. But ambition rewrites convictions. She now aligns with the very empire she once opposed, revealing the truth: principles are pliable, but access to power is sacred. Politicians who once pretended anti-war stances now parrot the rhetoric of empire, their integrity traded for influence and power.
Such politicians know the rules, speak what the powerful demand, and you rise up the political ladder. Question it, and you vanish from power, prestige, wealth, and influence. Truth is inert. Empire demands distortion. As Nazi Germany's propagandist Joseph Goebbels knew, the lie that moves hearts is the lie that wins wars. Accuse your enemies of your own crimes, say it often, and fear will do the rest. Control the narrative, and you control the war. Control the war, and you reshape the world in your imperialistic hegemonic image.
On a side note, Israel and the United States of America are the only countries in world history that have bombed civilian nuclear facilities, without any legal justification, totally against international law.
The first ever bombing of a nuclear facility which is against international law was Israel's Operation Opera (Iraq, 1981), the IDF bombed Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad.
Israel launched a surprise airstrike before it was operational. The reactor was destroyed with widespread international condemnation.
The second and third ever bombing of nuclear facilities again which was against international law was the United States of America. During American military bombing of Iraq (1991 & 2003) Iraqi civilian nuclear facilities were both bombed during these invasions of the Gulf War (1991) and the Iraq War (2003).
The fourth ever bombing of nuclear facilities again totally against international law was the Israeli Defense Force with the support of the United States of America.
Israel's Operation Orchard against Syria in 2007 bombed and destroyed the Al-Kibar facility.
The fifth ever bombing of nuclear facilities again totally against international law was again the United States of America—Operation Midnight Hammer, using 75 precision guided missiles, bombing and destroying of three civilian nuclear facilities in Iran on June 22, 2025. These three facilities, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, have been monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A very important fact to understand, all of these nuclear facilities were not being used to create nuclear weapons. They were all closely monitored by the IAEA for such activity.