Official narrative

The "Official Narrative" is the cover story of "the powers that be". On WikiSpooks this mean the story intended for citizens of the so-called 'Western Democracies'. This could be the truth, but the term is usually used for cases in which it is a veil over something more sinister.

Official narrative
Interest of	Gerald Posner
The "Official Narrative" is the cover story of "the powers that be". On WikiSpooks this generally means the story intended for citizens of the so-called 'Western Democracies'. This could be the truth, but the term is usually reserved for use in cases in which it departs significantly from the truth (which may be be unclear or completely unknown, cover by a veil of official lies).

The Official Narrative of an event is the story told about it by the establishment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has no page on this important topic - the closest it comes is a generic page about cover-ups.

Official Narrative

The Official Narrative about Official Narratives is that this is while not necessarily the whole truth, certainly a large part of it and are mistakes are due to accidental oversight or lack of evidence rather than deliberate mendacity. While other narratives are inevitably tainted by the suspicion of self-interest, the authorities are deemed creditworthy - in the establishment's view - by their 'official' nature (and imputed trackrecord of reliability).

Problems

The official narrative, like any other narrative is a human creation, and as such may be just as susceptible to human failings, bias, lack of integrity or other such shortcoming as any personal accounts. From the "white man's burden" to "Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction", history is littered with official narratives which were abandoned either because their mendacity was exposed or simply because they had served their purpose and were no longer needed. If the official narratives of yesteryear were packed with self-serving lies, is it reasonable to expect (far less, as the establishment would have it, assume) that the official narratives of the modern day are any less mendacious?

Official narratives are sometimes changed at short notice, and are sometimes demonstrably at odds with the facts. For example, the 9/11 Commission report that states that no one heard explosions in the World Trade Center, ignoring the testimony of dozens of witnesses such as the late Barry Jennings. They are very often inconsistent and/or incomplete (the Commission's first report completely failed to mention WTC7).

Official narratives often lack explicative power, and like the commercially-controlled media in general, are frequently self-referencing, facile and take a 'lowest common denominator' approach - i.e. By trivializing complex issues they fail to respect the subtleties of the matter at hand. (Who did 9/11?.. "Al-Qaeda, the evil doers". Why?... "Because they hate us." Why?... "Because we're free.").

By the usual definition (recorded verdict's of the "official" establishment body) the assassination of Martin Luther King has been, after the 1999 successful civil trial by William Pepper, in which a jury unanimously decided that Loyd Jowers conspired with unnamed (US) "governmental agencies" to kill King, demonstrably at odds with the idea of authorities as benevolent and reliable. The trial was subject to a partial news blackout by the commercially-controlled media. Although the verdict reported in the New York Times, unsubstantiated allegations were later made by the Washington Post and New York Times that the legal process had been "corrupted".

Recent Developments

Especially since 9/11, increasingly organised crowd-sourced efforts (such as this website) are scrutinising official narratives and are successful in undermining their credibility. One ongoing response to such beviour is to attempt to suppress it through casting aspersions about those who carry out such analysis (e.g. labelling as "Conspiracy theorists") another is to ramp up censorship, refusing FOIA Requests and issue less and less by way of official explanations, citing "national security" concerns as an excuse for a culture of secrecy.

Official opposition narratives

Official opposition narratives are establishment-approved stories that run counter the official narrative. This may sound contradictory, but controlling the opposition by leading them is an old tactic. As Theodor Hertzl reportedly counseled "We will lead every revolution against us". In common with official narratives, they cover a strict subset of observable reality, sometimes in ways crafted to appeal to particular groups. Where possible, subterfuge such as distraction or insinuation is preferred to outight lies (which might lead to problems later), but the prefered stategy of dealing with uncomfortable areas (e.g. Cui bono?) is to simply ignore them.

Framing the debate

Noam Chomsky has published eloquently about 'framing the debate' - if you can choose both sides of the debate, there is no need to worry about who wins. For example, "Should we spend more on the war on terrorism now or can it wait until next year?..." "What is the best way to attack Iraq?..." "Which set of policies are the best for us, republican or the democrat?..."

Party politics could have been designed with this strategy in mind. For example, the US 2004 election, Republican Bonesman George W Bush was up against Democrat John Kerry, a fellow Bonesman. So whether you voted republic or democrat, you were voting for the same US secret society, Skull and Bones. As Anthony Sutton noted back in the 1980s such playing of both sides is a standard strategy of the Skull and Bones fraternity.

Controlled media

Full article: Corporate media

Just as the commercially-controlled media is the venue for promulgating official narratives, so it is for official opposition narratives. This insight may explain how many prominent and apparently ardent critics of the establishment turn out to have an unexpected background. Bill Moyers, for example, whose 1987 film The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis introduced many to the concept of the deep state, was White House Press Secretary, a top aide to Lyndon Johnson and a steering committee member of the Bilderberg group.

Example Official opposition narratives

Full article: Iraq War

The official opposition narrative to the invasion of Iraq is that it was a terrible mistake. Leaders were given "faulty intelligence", were hawkish, overexcited, even perhaps credulous and they allowed their desire to do good to overcome their good sense. Clear evidence of mendacity (e.g. the Downing Street memo) is more or less ignored and the issue of sincerity of leaders or their prosecution for war crimes does not arise. No mention is made of motivations such as the desire of multinational oil companies for continued easy access to fossil fuels, the massive profits made by mercenary companies and financial institutions.

Full article: “War on Drugs”

One official opposition narrative to the War on Drugs is again that drug prohibition is 'mistaken'. It states that concern for people's welfare has triumphed over the scientific evidence which suggests that the prohibition of drugs harms society and increases criminality. It never asks "Cui bono?"; it is silent on the wider consequences of drug prohibition such the immense profits which accrue from the global drugs trade or the criminalization of huge sectors of society.

Usage on Wikispooks

Many Wikispooks pages begin with an Official Narrative section. This reflects not a high degree of credibility in the official narrative, but rather the fact that:

1. Most events have a certain number of indisputable facts which are generally accounted for by the official narrative
2. Repetition by government schools and/or the commercially-controlled media means that many readers are more familiar with this perspective than any other

The official narrative serves as a starting point for the ensuing discussion, just as an introductory "Background" section often sets the scene for articles about people by giving some basic facts. Most "official narrative" sections (as on this page) have a "Problems" subsection which highlights some key weaknesses of the official narrative, whether in terms of its internal coherence and implausibility or in terms of its failure to sufficiently explain observed reality.

"Fringe theories"

The opposite to an "official narrative is termed by Wikipedia a "fringe theory", an idea too at odds with the official narrative to be worth contemplating. Wikipedia uses this label as an excuse for censorship. For example, the evidence that nanothermite explosives brought down the World Trade Center, although published in a peer reviewed scientific journal - by Wikipedia's own policy, a strong indication of reliability - is apparently invalidated by addition of the "fringe theory" label.

Fabrication by The Establishment

The spinning of official narratives by the establishment is a routine activity. This process is often the (completely sincere) routine work from officials who prepare press releases or public statements, later edited or soundbyted by the commercially-controlled media for their own purposes. Conscious deception is certainly involved in some cases, but creating official narratives is not necessarily indicative of venality; the majority are probably handled routinely by employees who have this responsibility precisely because their perspectives are sufficiently limited by the regulating group mind that they can be relied upon to create establishment friendly interpretations.

For particularly dramatic deep events such as the 9/11 attacks or the JFK Assassination sometimes one or more "official" investigations are carried out ostensibly to uncover the truth, but in practice more to diffuse discontent and public suspicion and to actually cover up the truth by working out a solid enough alternative version of events, one from which establishment wrongoing has been expurgated and so can be safely promulgated by the commercially-controlled media.

Censorship

Full article: Censorship

Censorship may indicate a duplicitous official narrative. For example, after it was shown on TV on September 11th, 2001, the collapse of WTC7 - in stark contrast to WTC1 & WTC2 - was not broadcast on commercially-controlled media for several years. Where no plausible official narrative can be concocted, this is generally preferred - so where censorship is evident, this may suggests malfeasance.

Another, albeit perhaps rare, motive for censorship is that an official narrative poses a clear challenge to the establishment. The best example of this is the 1999 verdict that the US government was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate MLK. Dramatic underreporting of this event by the commercially-controlled media has meant that most US citizens are still completely unaware of this fact.

Timing

The speed of concoction of the official narratives is sometimes revealing. On September 11th, 2001, the 9/11 attacks were being blamed on Al-Qaeda within a couple of hours, while the BBC and Fox News notably announced the WTC7 collapse before it actually happened.

 

Examples

Page name	Description
"Discredited and disproven"	ON affirming phrase.
9-11/Commission/Report	An official narrative crafted to deceive the ignorant, which highlights the roles of Al Qaeda and the 19 hijackers.
9-11/Official narrative	The 9-11 plot, a false flag attack staged by the US/Deep state in concert with other deep states, was blamed on "19 hijackers" who were members of Al Qaeda. The official opposition narrative states that small scale corruption within the US government prevented the successful apprehension of the gang of 19, and also lead to some relatively minor inaccuracies and inconsistencies between the different official narratives.
CONTEST/Prevent/Official narrative
File:Cass sunstein conspiracies.pdf	A classic Official Narrative-type exposition of Conspiracy theory and Conspiracy Theorists with recommendations on how governments should deal with them. It is the principal source of the now widely-used expression "Cognitive Infiltration"
JFK/Assassination/Official narrative
Lockerbie Bombing/Official Narrative	The Official Narrative about the Lockerbie bombing was presented by former Lord Advocate Colin Boyd on 28 August 2001.
The Power of Unreason	A critique and deconstruction of an 'Official Narrative'-type paper on 'Conspiracy Theory' from the 'think-tank' publisher Demos. It includes an exchange of correspondence between its authors and a Wikispooks editor which is continued on the discussion page.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
American Historical Association	“During the past one hundred years any theory of history or historical evidence that falls outside a pattern established by the American Historical Association and the major foundations with their grantmaking power has been attacked or rejected - not on the basis of any evidence presented, but on the basis of the acceptability of the argument to the so-called Eastern Liberal Establishment and its official historical line.”	Antony Sutton	2002
Corporate media/Mendacity	“More and more we are seeing narratives about cyber-threats being used to advance reports of “attacks” and “acts of war” being perpetrated which, as far as the public is concerned, consist of nothing other than the authoritative assertions of confident-sounding media pundits. There was a recent NBC exclusive which was co-authored by Ken Dilanian, who is an actual, literal CIA asset, about the threat of hackers working for the Iranian government. The alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections is now routinely compared to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, despite no hard, verifiable evidence that that interference even took place ever being presented to the public.”	Caitlin Johnstone	11 August 2018
Gaslighting	“This is also the model for the greater imperialist propaganda construct, not just with regard to Syria but with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and any other insolent government which refuses to bow to American supremacist agendas. It works like this: first, the oligarch-owned establishment media, which itself is chock full of Council on Foreign Relations members, uses other warmongering think tanks and its own massive funding to force deep state psyops like Russiagate and “Saddam has WMDs” into becoming the mainstream narrative. Second, they use the mainstream, widely-accepted status of this manufactured narrative to paint anyone who questions it as a mentally defective tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. It’s a perfect scheme. The mass media has given a few elites the ability to effectively turn a false story that they themselves invented into an established fact so broadly accepted that anyone who doubts it can be painted in the exact same light as someone who doubts the roundness of the Earth. The illusion of unanimous agreement is so complete that blatant establishment psyops are placed on the same level as settled scientific fact, even though it’s made of little else but highly paid pundits making authoritative assertions in confident tones of voice day after day.”	Caitlin Johnstone	12 February 2018
Truth	“After a political event of the size of JFK’s assassination or 9/11, everybody runs for cover and prepares their exculpatory narrative. ‘The truth’ doesn’t make it onto the political agenda. This is normal bureaucratic behaviour.”	Robin Ramsay

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Pilgrims Society Address 2002	speech	28 November 2002	Richard Boucher	Full of platitudes and the obligatory quotations from politicians past to bolster and confirm the essential righteousness of the Pilgrims present. Probably a fairly typical address to The London Pilgrims by a US Embassy Official, but hard to read without squirming at the delusional sanctimonious arrogance it exudes.
Document:Pro-Kremlin trolls infiltrating comments on news sites for major influence operation, research says	Article	6 September 2021	Deborah Haynes	A study at Cardiff University shows that "Pro-Kremlin trolls" are influencing opinion in the West by infiltrating the comments sections of news websites. Dissent from the Official Narrative? Must be Russian disinformation.
Document:The corporate media’s world of illusions	blog post	11 June 2018	Jonathan Cook	Once one is prepared to step through the door, to discard the old Great Western Narrative script, the new narrative takes its hold because it is so helpful. It actually explains the world, and human behaviour, as it is experienced everywhere.

Rating

1 July 2016 Robin  An important concept on Wikispooks
This provides an overview of both 'Official narratives' and 'Official opposition narratives' can be used to frame debates in ways that suit the establishment.

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