Western Media and How it Frames Resistance

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/08/the-shanghai-cooperation-organization-and-brics-2025-eurasias-re-alignment-in-the-face-of-late-stage-barbarism/

For those who follow the meetings and agendas of groups like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) or BRICS, Hudson's explanations are nothing new. However, his relation of this agenda to Western media coverage is critical and telling, as it's clear the media doesn't actually want the public to engage. These meetings and organisations are utilised by the media as a means of stoking fear and anxiety.

While these nations are making claims about the post-war global order and its narratives about the world - and attempting to counter it, their actions are simply painted as aggression and often malicious and irrational aggression rooted in avarice, jealousy, or simple evil intent.

So often Moscow and Beijing are responding to moves made by the West - and sometimes these are complicated combinations which date back years. But this is never explained. Instead every reaction by Moscow or Beijing is presented as aggression. The honest observer is frustrated by this because to call this out gives the impression that one is acting as a partisan for Russia or China - which is often not the case at all. The intent is to get to the truth of the matter and to provide an honest telling. From my standpoint, the regimes in Moscow and Beijing are evil - but I would say the same about Paris, London, Berlin, Brussels, and most certainly Washington DC.

Hudson is also perceptive in pointing out that American coverage is always Americo-centric. The idea that something might have nothing (per se) to do with America is inconceivable. It is the calculus of empire and it is destructive. History bears this out.

I had not heard the quote from Merz calling Putin the most serious war criminal of our time. Ironically there are several others that have a better claim to that title - one of them (Dick Cheney) just died and yet no Western leaders will tell the truth about Cheney. By the standards of Nuremberg (which is much in the news at the moment), he should have been incarcerated for the rest of his life or worse.

Hudson also points out that the economic assumptions which govern the West (and all its major political parties) cannot be questioned in mainstream discourse. As such, the motivations behind the SCO and BRICS cannot seriously be entertained, let alone why non-power-player countries from the Developing World are increasingly looking toward these blocs as an alternative to NATO and the IMF/World Bank financial complex.

Putin's statement might be viewed as disingenuous, but the reporting should at least give it consideration as it runs completely counter to the media narratives in places like Paris, London, Brussels, and Washington. Putin is explicit - the intent is to go their own way, to divorce themselves from the West, and to minimise contact and exposure.

This might be beyond what some Western thinkers can contemplate, but from the standpoint of someone like Putin (and likely Xi), the West is on a path to self-destruction. They don't need to 'take it on' but rather to divorce from it and let it destroy itself.

Hudson further states:

The only military confrontation that is threatened is by NATO, from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea, Syria, Gaza, the China Sea, Venezuela and North Africa. But the real threat is the West’s neoliberal financialization and privatization, Thatcherism and Reaganomics. The SCO and BRICS (as are now being discussed in follow-up meetings) want to avoid the falling living standards and economies as the West deindustrializes. They want rising living standards and productivity. This attempt to create an alternative, more productive plan of economic development is what isn’t being discussed in the West.

This great split is best epitomized by the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline. This gas was planned to go to Europe, feeding into Nordstream 1. That has all ended. Siberian gas will now go to Mongolia and China. It powered European industry in the past; now it will do the same for China and Mongolia, leaving Europe to depend on U.S. LNG exports and declining North Sea supplies at much higher prices.

It is both a counter-narrative and an indictment of Western hypocrisy and blindness. The problem is the West won't stand for it. If the US is the indispensable nation, these moves represent a categorical rejection of that notion. From the standpoint of Atlanticist imperialists, these nations (and their Third World allies) have no right to self-determination, to decide how these resources will be used. The West has the claim, the moral right to these things and to determine how they should be used. And if they dissent, they deserve death. It's that simple.

The unfortunate reality is this move (by the SCO) is once again splitting the world into blocs and the countries that are trying to straddle the two worlds will increasingly find it difficult to do so. They will be trapped into an impossible choice - as at the end of the day both blocs are about power and thus quickly succumb to evil intent.

Is the contrast between oligarchic financialised capitalism and industrial socialism? The irony is that both seem to be leading to authoritarianism, but that tendency is part of a larger set of equations and considerations related to everything from population to limited resources, and yes, geopolitics.

It is understandable that some might be alarmed by Evangelicals and their talk of end times. But those who do embrace Dispensationalism increasingly function as Dominionists who for all practical purposes have left their premillennialism behind. Some are still given to making prophetic utterances and offering commentary, and yet these same people continue to push for policies that think in the long term. They may speak of imminence concerning the return of Christ but they live as if He's not coming and they are preparing to dominate the world order. It can be quite confusing, especially for those on the outside.

This is not to downplay the magnitude of the threat. Make no mistake these Evangelicals have allied themselves with ultra-Right and fascistic elements in their bid for power. For my part, the alarm is not with regard to Western Democracy but rather the heretical and increasingly apostate nature of their movement. They support policies of war and murder but the real and pressing tragedy is that they are teaching the Church to follow the enemy. Indeed the Enemy has become rather comfortable in the pews and pulpits of American Evangelicalism. He has many people there who are in his grip and doing his bidding - and even calling it Biblical Worldview at times.

While I think Christian Jihadism to be somewhat meaningless - there is a push for Crusade-inspired holy war and all the more as nationalist narratives are being wed to romanticised and revisionist notions of Christendom that are far removed from anything taught in the New Testament.

An interesting article. It has its flaws, but also provides a great deal to think about. I wish I could say the same about what's flowing from Christian pens these days.