Both Britain and France have historically taken different approaches to dealing with the cultural identities of their subject populations. Yet the assumption of Western supremacy is ever present.

The first victim of information war is its own definition. Information war is not just propaganda, in the same way that PR is not just advertising.

It is stunts, events; it is making the news. You don’t just tell a story, you orchestrate events which demonstrate your story is true. False flags, agent provocateurs etc., are all essential weapons in the information wars. The victims of such events are nothing more than casualties on the global battlefield. As ‘accountable’ as the muddy corpses of WW1, sacrificed for a higher political vision. Unknown soldiers, even to themselves.

Those who condemn the left as ‘ideological’ are often defending a far more abstract set of values and fantasies – nationalism, patriotism, “the divine principle of the human soul”, rituals of elite tradition etc. But what more basic cry can there be than for bread and land?

One of the problems of the current political landscape is that – beyond their values – people tend to (over)identify as either a ‘compromiser’ a ‘tough decision maker’ or a ‘militant’… In reality – in relationships – these are each modes appropriate at different times.

Innovators in the political and community sphere are vilified as extremists, while those in the commercial or technological sphere are lauded as visionaries. Such is the inconsistency of neoliberal conservatism – at least be consistently conservative!

Either the ‘new normal’ is a nightmare vision of the dystopian future of capitalism. Or we are already living it and need to wake the f*** up.

The right mobilises through conspiracy theory and labels its opponents in the “MSN” as purveyors of fake news. Liberals attempt to discredit their opponents as dangerous conspiracy theorists whose ideas can now literally kill under the COVID regime.

Large disadvantaged black populations and entrenched racist policing make liberal US States and their politicians vulnerable targets for far-right accelerationist operations…

The diversity of national approaches to COVID and the lack of international scientific cooperation and consensus about the symptoms, the efficacy of tests, the reality of immunity and scientific advice in its means and rate of infection have created enormous space for interpretation. This space creates diverse possibilities for political opportunism and exploitation of the crisis. Each state cherry picking the ‘science’ that reinforces their political agenda.

Cultivating a xenophobic culture has the effect of narrowing the cultural experience of a population. It therefore narrows intellectual and political perspectives and prioritises the dominant ideology, this is a more subtle and self sustaining form of censorship than any deployed by soviet disinformation organs.