Updated from ‘The Function of the Fake Binary‘, May 16 2022
In his 1998 book The Common Good, Noam Chomsky describes the key role that managed disagreements play in modern politics…
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate…”
This remains true despite the increasingly obvious fact that Chomsky himself is part of that function.
What he’s describing is the “fake binary”. The imposition of the idea that Viewpoint A is the official approved narrative and that Viewpoint B is therefore its antithesis.
Points C through Z can therefore be ignored.
The fact hidden in plain sight being that both Viewpoint A and Viewpoint B actually reinforce the overarching narrative being sold and both lead to the same place.
It’s an incredibly effective management tool.
A fake binary allows you to not just manipulate the conformist Normies who automatically obey, but also those who consider themselves to be ‘anti-establishment’, contrarians or ‘rebels’.
How are fake binaries created? They are often initially introduced by the following methods…
– Using the legacy media to promote Viewpoint A as the “truth” but also widely publicize Viewpoint B while appearing to deny, refute or ridicule it.
– “Leaking” allegedly confidential documents that “expose” Viewpoint B as the “hidden truth”. This is usually done through the legacy media, though it’s more effective if you can seed it through the indy media sector.
– Creating entities that are tagged as “anti-establishment” but given a mass following, and feeding them Viewpoint B material.
Once Viewpoint B becomes a dominant “anti-establishment” view you can afford to sit back and allow the oppositional instinct in human nature to do your work for you, and reinforce the fake binary you created without the slightest awareness this is what is happening.
It becomes widely understood that the only solution to the obvious and real evils of Viewpoint A is Viewpoint B.
The fact Viewpoint B actually concedes all the same falsehoods contained in Viewpoint A remains unnoticed and anyone pointing this out tends to be attacked by both sides.
Fake binaries are a godsend to the opinion-managers.
May 2026
Can this analysis be applied to the current geopolitical situation?
Lets’s call Viewpoint A the broadly pro-US, pro-Israel, pro-Ukraine POV that is mainstream in the west.
And let’s call Viewpoint B the broadly “anti-imperialist”, pro-Russia, pro-Iran POV .
Mainstream western society is dominated by Viewpoint A of course. Most of the press are currently serving up traditional amounts of hate-focusing and often nonsensical propaganda in the venerable tradition of “the dastardly Hun bayoneting babies” type of thing.
Nothing unusual there.
But we do also see some examples that allow the other side of the argument some space, and not just from alternative or quasi alt sources. So, let’s look at that.
We have the Telegraph for example documenting Israel smashing solar panels in Lebanon. with a subhead that reads
destruction of the village, Debel, follows criticism that ethical standards in the IDF have plummeted
Ironic for anyone who’s been following the career of the ethically challenged IDF for any amount of time, that smashing solar panels marks a new low, when smashing children’s heads has been de rigeur for them for some time, but if you’ve been more or less silent on Israel’s appalling crimes for several decades and then start talking about them, you have to find some spurious reason – eg that the IDF’s conduct has only recently become a cause for concern, due to “plummeting” standards..
The FT just six days ago, ran the headline “Why America is Falling out of Love with Israel“, and their subhead reads pretty damningly…
Public opinion and elite sentiment has turned decisively against Netanyahu
Pretty reasonable under the circumstances we have to say, but still counter to the long-held establishment line that Israel was all but untouchable.
The BBC, Sky News, CNN, Guardian, Independent and PBS can also be added to the list of legacy outlets giving Israel’s crimes mainstream airtime.
Last month the BBC told its audience
Israeli strikes kill eight Palestinians in Gaza, first responders say. One strike killed three children and two adults near a mosque in the northern town
Just yesterday (May 9) PBS reported
Israeli drone strikes kill 4 near Beirut as southern airstrikes kill at least 13
CNN recently ran this headline
Lebanese PM accuses Israel of war crimes after strike kills journalist
And last month it aired this TV segment – claiming “Israel is losing US support – even among Republicans”
It would be wrong to say the media are flipping the narrative on Israel at this point – they’re not . But they do seem to be making sure Israel’s insane levels of aggression and violence are reaching sections of society that have been largely shielded from them in the past. And they do seem willing to feed both sides of the divide on this subject.
The US and its hegemony is also getting some unusual levels of critical attention from unlikely sources.
Just seven days ago (May 3) The New York Times published an opinion piece headlined
America Is Officially an Empire in Decline
adding in its first sentence
The American-Israeli attack on Iran was more than a bad idea; it has turned into a watershed in the decline of the American empire.
Considering that not so long ago the NYT would have refused to acknowledge there even was an American empire, to be not only accepting this reality but publishing claims that said empire is “in decline” is speedy and noteworthy progress.
In the same vein, Newsweek April 22 ran an opinion piece by Thomas G Moukawsher headlined
Has the US Become the Bad Guy?
And going on to say
Being bad may be a good diversion from other problems, but it won’t make us safer, and it must never make us prouder.
We can’t in all conscience disagree with that sentiment, and of course the answer to the previously posed question is “yes, for some time, did you only just notice?”, but even so we must note what might be an emerging theme among the US intelligentsia.
The Nation in the person of Aaron Regunberg hit the same talking point in March titled
What Are Your Obligations When Your Country Is the Villain?
Claiming
Under Trump, the US is unequivocally a force for evil in the world. It can seem morally intolerable to embrace happiness as our government massacres children
Again as if this is a new phenomenon and not a continuum of villainous bloodshed spanning decades.
Regunberg also adds this gem
Trump’s nihilistic war on Iran is not the first disaster that’s made me think the United States might be a baddie. My first time cursing our government was when George W. Bush officially killed the Kyoto climate treaty.
Yup it’s that lack of action on climate change that stood out for me too. I mean illegal war, regime change and murdered kids are all very well, but failing to enact meaningless legislation for a non-existent crisis – that is low.
January this year The Hill also opined
The American empire has entered its final act
Including this interesting para (my emphasis)
America is not falling tomorrow. It is settling into managed decline. Each generation inherits a narrower set of possibilities. Boomers dreamed big. Gen X sought security. Millennials adjusted to constraint. Gen Z dreams of not becoming homeless.
“Managed decline”? That looks like a bit of narrative insertion to me. One of those soft sells we see when a new reality is being eased into place. A kind of shrug of acceptance and normalisation. America is “in decline” now. Don’t ask why or how, it just is and we’ll all have to get used to it – “manage” it while accepting the inevitable.
January again The Indy reported Chris Hayes wondering…
if the US is now the ‘bad guy’ as it acts like an ‘Axis’ nation
So, no denying it is slightly trendy in certain circles to a) critique Israel and b) declaim the US empire to be on the way out. But why?
I will be told all the above is because it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone rational to justify the insane excesses committed by the US and Israel, not to mention the even more insane ranting of Trump and Netanyahu. But while in every basic sense this is true, the mainstream media isn’t bound by such considerations – unless it wants to be.
Remember the grotesque way the Odessa Massacre of 2014 was put across by pro-western media? Just one example of too many where morality was easily sidelined as inconvenient. These people have no problem with lying and defaming the dead, ignoring mass murder, or distorting reality to make victims into perpetrators. If they wanted to continue apologising for Israeli and US excesses they simply would.
This stuff is there because it serves a purpose, not because it’s so manifestly true it can’t be ignored. Literally NOTHING is that true for the agenda-creators and their stenographers.
I will also be told it’s simply Dem commentators taking shots at a GOP president in the grand old tradition, and God knows not without cause. Trump has after all given them copious ammo, why wouldn’t they use it?
But I think there might be more going on than that. The curious question of why exactly Trump has been permitted, or encouraged by his handlers (yes, he has handlers, they all have handlers) to make such a monstrous fool of himself is one it might be interesting to contemplate.
Remember when, just about a decade ago any POTUS doing and saying the things this man says and does would have seemed cartoonishly impossible?
You’ll say “ah, well Trump changed all that”. Yes, I guess he did, didn’t he. But why was he permitted to? What happened to the careful curation and hyper-management that kept past presidents from ever revealing how drunk, drugged, stupid or criminally malign they were?
Did the system forget how to manage itself? Or is Trump’s raving disintegration of his and his office’s dignity and credibility something of a choice made by someone somewhere?
Let’s think about the fake (or curated) binary again.
Version A is the old song of American exceptionalism which has been the mainstream narrative for decades and is still being sold to us as such – but now with caveats and discordancies. The melody isn’t as true any more, and the voices are thinner. Less effort seems to be made to hide the decay behind the facade.
And we’re increasingly being gently invited to reject it. That voice isn’t strident yet, but it’s there, where it wasn’t not so long before.
Meanwhile Version B – is – what? A “multipolar” world, free of the empire?
Or the empire in continuum, freed from America’s sins? An ancient power structure reclothing itself for the hundredth time as something new and hoping to fool us all once again?
Remember it’s the unquestioned assumptions held true but BOTH sides that offer us insight into the real agenda.
So, what are they?
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