U.S. foreign policy has been the dominant destructive force in Venezuela and El Salvador since the 20th century. Both countries are rich, but their governments and economies have been deliberately destabilized.
In Venezuela, the U.S.
- backed corporate oil control
- supported a 2002 coup attempt against the elected government
- imposed crippling sanctions aimed at regime change since 1999
In El Salvador, the U.S.
- funded and armed military regimes and death squads during the civil war (1980–1992)
- exported gang violence through mass deportations, directly shaping the conditions of today’s crisis
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When the so-called exposé hands you just enough outrage to feel informed, but not enough context to understand why it's happening, that’s not journalism. That’s controlled dissent.
Who needs censorship when you’ve got propaganda? If you narrate the violence correctly, suddenly it isn’t imperialism, it’s “security" or “stability.”
Sure, the blood is real, but the meaning gets rewritten.
I watched the leaked 60 Minutes piece. The one that shows the U.S. government torturing people offshore to skirt its own laws. And despite the good news that the clumsy, last-minute attempt at censorship failed, the piece isn’t a victory for truth.
It’s not a triumph of journalism. It’s a polished propaganda job dressed up in moral outrage, but it disseminates the same imperial logic it claims to expose.
Yes, it shows you the brutality. Yes, it shows you the cages. The USA is torturing people? That's awful. As disturbing as that is, the reality behind *that* is way worse!
But this news piece tells you the story the way empire needs you to hear it.
The main subject is a Venezuelan man labeled as coming from “repressive Venezuela.”
Venezuela is repressive.
That’s it.
No mention of decades of U.S. sanctions. No reference to economic sabotage. No context at all. Just a little branded line to implant the idea: he’s from a place that deserves this.
He’s one of "those" people. So go ahead and don’t ask what he did or didn’t do. His humanity has already been filed away under “enemy.”
Keep him away from my daughter.
And El Salvador? A country carved up by U.S. foreign policy, drowned in debt, and hammered by neoliberal reform?
Not a word about that. Instead, they’re framed as willing executioners.
As if building a mega-prison and stuffing it full of brown bodies is a Salvadoran pastime.
The piece doesn’t ask how or why. It doesn’t show the pressure, the coercion, the history. It just shows order. Discipline. Brutality. Those people. Live in an awful place.
As if El Salvador woke up one day and decided to be the empire’s warden and crack some heads. As a treat.
Since you can't talk about US foreign policy in the news, in this narrative, the victims of U.S. imperialism are repackaged as threats.
The oppressed become the perpetrators. The U.S. might be torturing people, yes, but the reasons things are this way? You’re meant to believe they just happened.
That’s the language of colonialism.
It doesn’t need to lie. It just needs to explain things a certain way.
It presents suffering as natural. Violence as cultural. U.S. involvement as distant, reluctant, even a well-meaning bystander. It gives you the horror show, but not the blueprint.
It shows you a cage, but never who profits from it or who needs it.
So sure, the U.S. tried to bury this story. And when it aired, people said, “See? The truth got out! Yay!" "And Fuck Trump!”
*Facepalm*
As if, US foreign policy hasn't been rife with human rights abuses under Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan and even Carter?!!
What got out today was a sanitized story, wrapped in empire’s vocabulary, made to reinforce the existing order, and keeping the big picture out of focus.
This isn’t journalism.
It’s narrative laundering. And an effective way to keep you from paying attention.
One step forward, two steps back. That’s the game. And if you’re not watching carefully, you’ll mistake the spectacle for the truth.