Eurasia note #93:Plain Talk Gets Slovak PM Shot

Media double standards on Fico shooting

• First European premier to be shot since Swedish PM Olaf Palme in 1986

• Left-on-left, right-on-right attacks, if you believe it

• By a lone wolf, of course

• War in Ukraine is not going well for NATO as Russia advances on Kharkov

• De-industrialised West needs a pretext to shift to a war economy

• Diverting resources from social services, infrastructure, to the military

See also:
Who Is Afraid Of Democracy? - It’s under attack from those paid to protect it (May 15, 2024)
Russia's Spring Offensive In Ukraine - West less bullish, more cognizant of where advantage lies (May 14, 2024)
Ukraine: The War Everyone Saw Coming - The dispossession of human and mineral in the service of Monsanto-Bayer (May 05, 2023)

(2,100 Words or 10 minutes of your company.)

Tbilisi, May 17, 2024

The Lone Gunman Theory

Let’s get one thing straight: Robert Fico has called for an inquiry into the Covid jabs, he rejects the World Health Organisation’s “pandemic treaty” but, above all, he opposes escalating the war in Ukraine.

He calls it a “Russian-American conflict” and that is enough to make him enemies among the neo-liberal Atlanticists.

The press was quick to call the shooter a "lone wolf" — surely an unnecessary observation since the 71 year-old was filmed firing the shots (unlike Lee Oswald in 1963).

At least five state-corporate news outlets immediately declared him to have no political ties. On the other hand the venue in Handlova on May 15 was a closed government event. How he knew or gained entry is not explained.

Although Fico is a right-leaning politician, NATO voices like Anders Åslund are declaring the shooter was a pro-Russian right winger.

Olaf Palme’s killing has never been solved. Although he was a left-leaning politician, it was initially blamed on a 33 year-old leftist.

Palme was an opponent of South African Apartheid and financially supported the African National Congress. He opposed the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Others link his assassination to the Bofors arms company contract with India, and a scandal involving British middlemen. Yet others look to Operation Gladio and the death squads linked to Propaganda Due — a rabbit hole well known to researchers — or extremists among Swedish police, or Swedish businessmen (Skandia insurance company) or the Kurdish PKK, or the Yugoslavs.

The alleged leanings of Sweden’s business elite were the subject of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy — “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and its sequels.

The immediate point, as with Palme: don’t expect a straight answer.

You can find any number of speculations as to the motives of Fico’s would-be assassin. All of this distracts from the fact that Robert Fico, like Olaf Palme, is a politician who took a stand against the political in-group of the day.

Painting the narrative

I had just finished an article on the NATO-linked Alliance Of Democracy (AOD) and narrative control when Slovakia’s premier Fico was shot.

See Who Is Afraid Of Democracy? - It’s under attack from those paid to protect it (May 15, 2024)

Within minutes the BBC proved my point, a reporter crowing: "Brussels is very worried about the direction Robert Fico is taking his country." [1]

It portrayed the victim as somehow guilty of his own attempted murder, which is a way of dictating who is “one of us” and who can be justly eliminated — in the service of uniformity, group think and the greater good.

Just imagine if the victim had been British prime minister Rishi Sunak (substitute the face of any globalist).

To The Washington Post the most salient point was that Fico is "pro Russia." Britain’s Telegraph: “How Robert Fico turned Slovakia into one of Russia’s only allies.

The BBC’s Prague correspondent Rob Cameron used the same talking point in his article. “The attempt on Robert Fico’s life comes as Slovakia experiences yet another period of political turmoil — turmoil that he himself has largely created.” [2]

Another commented: "In the past he's expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin" and he is "extremely close to Viktor Orbán of Hungary — he's that illiberal prime minister known for his close ties to the Kremlin."

Watch Orbán’s interview with Tucker Carlson and you'll see that this propaganda has no basis in reality. [3]

Moreover, Orbán is a Zionist; Fico is not, which means they disagree strongly on Israel.

It is the neo-liberal “centre” that has revived the Cold War over two decades since the response to Nine-Eleven, described by Gen Wesley Clark as a plan to invade “seven countries in five years.”

Hungary’s foreign minister points out the hypocrisy of criticising East European countries for opposing sanctions, while EU countries secretly import Russian oil via third countries.

What stands out, apart from the uniformity of the media, is its mind-numbing lack of nuance.