In 1991, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard published a series of essays in Libération and The Guardian entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard's argument was effectively twofold. Firstly, since the American military overwhelmed the Iraqi army so easily and barely sustained casualties, what took place for the West was not really a war per se.
Secondly, the new medium of cable news television meant that viewers in the United States were able to watch the war unfold in real time, albeit through a lens of carefully curated propaganda. Viewers were told that they were being given real-time insight into war, but in reality, they were being fed a simulation of war that was, in many ways, more fictional than they would receive from high quality war fiction.
Our guest today, Anon writer and Substack Amerikanets has written a new essay in this genre entitled Virtual War Simulated Conflict in the Trump era (https://www.amerikanets.com/)
In the essay, Amerikanets described the same experience on the morning after the capture of Venezuelan president; a feeling of unreality.
The initial images and news stories available that morning suggested something like a major American military strike on a capital city. But as the smoke cleared and time went on, it became increasingly evident that all was not what seemed.
The war simulation machine appears to have now reached its nadir, but it has not resulted in a unified propaganda net where everyone unquestioningly accepts the American narrative of global conflict.
Rather, it has created an extremely fragmented reality where no one is really sure what is going on. And as Amerikanet’s essay shows, the more you actually understand what happened, the greater the looming sense of unreality becomes.
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