Articles by Caitlin Johnstone (141 total)
Notice which genocides you are and are not allowed to oppose
Do you notice how nobody’s losing their jobs or getting deported for criticising the genocidal atrocities in Sudan?
The onus is on Israel and its allies to end the genocide, not their victims
It’s actually never legitimate to withhold aid from starving civilians. It was never legitimate at any time.
Assaults on free speech go into hyperdrive after Charlie Kirk killing
When you see me refusing to play along with the campaign to canonise Charlie Kirk or respect the emotional hysteria around his killing, this is the main reason why.
Western civilisation is not worth saving
Western civilisation is not worth saving. I think that’s been pretty well established by now.
It shouldn't have taken this much for mainstream voices to start speaking up about Gaza
Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem has finally declared that Israel is committing genocide, as has the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights.
Imperial hypocrisy about 'terrorism' hits its most absurd point yet
The US has removed Syria’s al-Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organisations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups.
The Empire has accidentally caused the rebirth of real counterculture in the West
Everyone’s still talking about Bob Vylan, and rightly so. A crowd full of Westerners happily being led through a chant of “Death, death to the IDF” at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival was a historical landmark moment for the 21st century, and the group’s persecution at the hands of Western governments is once again highlighting the way our society’s purported values of free thought and free expression go right out of the window wherever Israel is concerned.
War is the worst thing in the world
War is the worst thing in the world. It is the single craziest behaviour exhibited by humans. The most destructive. The most traumatising. The least sustainable. The least conducive to human thriving.
Israeli officials explain balancing act between overt genocide and maintaining Western support
One of the talking points Israel apologists like to regurgitate is that Israel can’t possibly be acting with genocidal intent in Gaza, because if they had wanted to exterminate the Palestinians they could have easily done so in a matter of days.
Multiple Western press outlets have suddenly pivoted hard against Israel
After a year and a half of genocidal atrocities, the editorial boards of numerous British press outlets have suddenly come out hard against Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
Washington drops Ukraine, Israel backs down on Hamas demands
The two big stories in the news today are the Trump administration saying Ukraine is going to have to give up territory and NATO ambitions in order to secure a peace deal, while Israel appears to retreat from its ceasefire standoff with Hamas.
The Gaza ceasefire is being sabotaged by Israel, by Trump, and by the media
The Gaza ceasefire (if you can even call it that) is already in grave peril.
Only pathetic bootlickers spend their energy criticising China
The buzz around Xiaohongshu and then DeepSeek has had an unusually high volume of westerners speaking positively about China for the last couple of weeks, which of course means we’re also seeing many westerners falling all over themselves to say “Well actually China is actually quite bad actually” in response.
Trump reveals plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza
Well that didn’t take long. President Trump has said he wants to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to US client states Egypt and Jordan, which would of course be a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. It would also align perfectly with longstanding Israeli agendas to remove Palestinians from their homeland so that their territory can be seized and settled by Jews.
Donald Trump is the Empire unmasked
During his inaugural address, the new president of the United States was refreshingly open about the fact that Washington is the hub of a continuously expanding empire which is ruled by billionaire plutocrats.
Thoughts on the ceasefire deal
Israel and Hamas have reportedly agreed to a ceasefire and hostage deal, which is scheduled to take effect January 19. The deal as written is apparently virtually identical to the one Hamas agreed to last May, which Netanyahu then sabotaged with the complicity of the Biden administration.
Israel is killing civilians in Gaza on purpose, and it's not even debatable
Just so we’re all clear, it is a fully established fact that the IDF is directly, deliberately killing civilians in Gaza. There was a time in the early days of the genocide when this could be disputed, but that is no longer true. The facts are in and the case is closed. It’s happening.
That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be
“That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.” This is a line by fantasy author PC Hodgell, though it’s often misattributed to Carl Sagan.
I have learned a few things
I have learned a few things in my time on this earth. Not many, but a few.
In the fight against tyranny, don't let your happiness depend on big wins
If you stand for truth, peace and justice in this world then it’s important not to make your happiness dependent on large-scale wins.
Assad is out, woke Al-Qaeda is in
Well it looks like the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is on its way out, likely to be replaced by one or more US puppet regimes depending on whether the nation maintains its current borders or is carved up into separate states. The empire notches another win.
The mainstream western worldview pretends the Global South does not exist
Mainstream western politics and culture pretend the rest of the world does not exist. The mainstream western worldview shrinks the earth down to US-aligned countries and acts as though the billions of people who live in the global south do not share a planet with us.
The festering sore of Western civilisation is the only soil in which genocide in Gaza could take root
Some days it’s hard to say which is more horrific: the Gaza genocide itself, or the moral decay throughout our society which makes it possible.
Lying western press scramble to frame Israel's attack on Iran as self-defence
Israel has launched a round of airstrikes on Iran which the western news media are falling all over themselves to falsely frame as “retaliatory” strikes against an unprovoked missile attack by Iran.
When the Holocaust returned it came denouncing Anti-Semitism and wearing a star of David
When the Holocaust returned it came denouncing anti-semitism and wearing a Star of David. It was never going to look how we were expecting. It wasn’t going to show up in its old familiar costume with the bent cross and the tiny mustache, blaming all the problems on the Jews. It had to look different. If it didn’t look different, we never would have let it in the door.
More authoritarian Western crackdowns on speech critical of Israel
British “counterterrorism” police raided the home of Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley on Thursday morning, seizing multiple electronic devices on suspicion that the journalist violated the UK’s 2006 Terrorism Act with his social media activity.
We must purge genocide from the marrow of our bones
The Israeli outlet Haaretz has a new article out titled “Israeli Defence Officials: Gov’t Pushing Aside Hostage Deal, Eyeing Gaza Annexation,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Anonymous senior Israeli officials are telling the press that the government has abandoned any notion of securing a hostage deal, and is now working toward “the gradual annexation of large parts of the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli snipers routinely, deliberately shoot Palestinian kids in the head
There’s yet another doctor testimonial about Israeli forces constantly shooting Palestinian children in the head, this one published in The New York Times.
Meta is aggressively censoring criticism of US-Israeli warmongering
I am at risk of getting banned from both Instagram and Facebook as both Meta-owned platforms keep censoring my criticisms of Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon, placing strikes on my accounts in the process.
Israel hates truth
Israel has continued its war on journalism with another attack on Al Jazeera, this time with a raid on the outlet’s office in the West Bank and an order to shut down for 45 days. The shuttering occurred despite the office being legally under Palestinian control per the Oslo Accords.
On war crimes and Western hypocrisy
The death toll has risen to 12 from Israel’s terror attack in Lebanon on Tuesday which detonated explosive materials hidden in thousands of pagers. Another 20 people were then killed in another attack on Wednesday with a second wave of explosions, this time using walkie talkies and home solar energy systems.
Rainbow flag genocide vs MAGA hat genocide
Kamala Harris has enthusiastically accepted the endorsement of Dick Cheney.
The West truly doesn't see Palestinians as human
You never see the dehumanisation of Palestinians in Western society exhibited so clearly as when something bad happens to Israelis during the genocidal assault on Gaza.
Democrats release insanely hawkish Middle East policy platform
“When you’re siding with John Bolton on whether to bomb Iran, you’re as insanely hawkish as it gets.”
Peace is not on the ballot in November
I keep seeing liberal commentators like George Takei trying to frame Kamala Harris as the best candidate to bring peace to the middle east, despite her coming directly out of the administration which has been lighting the region on fire with its insane warmongering.
"Another Massacre"
They bombed the Tabeen school in Gaza City with so much explosive force that not a single full body was recovered.
"Well What SHOULD Israel Have Done After October 7?"
People often object to criticisms of Israel’s ongoing mass atrocity in Gaza by saying, “Well what SHOULD Israel have done in response to October 7 then?” They say it like the question should confound you, as though it’s some kind of thought-terminating unanswerable Zen koan or something.
US presidential races hide the criminality of the US empire
The thing I hate about western electoral politics in general and US presidential races in particular is that they take the focus off the depravity of the US-centralised empire itself, and run cover for its criminality.
Nonstop news stories proving Palestine supporters right about everything
Haaretz has a new report out showing that the IDF has seized more than a quarter of Gaza’s territory, and is supporting moves by Israeli settlers to build on the areas that have been carved off from the Palestinian enclave. These areas are not just controlled by Israeli forces but have been completely demolished, with IDF military encampments constructed where Palestinian living spaces used to exist.
After the inhuman destruction of Gaza's health system, looks like bombing hospitals is bad again
A missile struck a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday during the heaviest Russian bombardment on Ukraine in months, which stretched across five regions and reportedly killed some forty people.
The US is preparing for WWIII while expanding draft registration
So I guess we should probably talk about the way NATO powers are rapidly escalating toward hot war with Russia at the same time the US is expanding its draft policies to make it easier to force more Americans [to] go and fight in a giant war.
Behold the world gently
The dead children don’t affect me like they used to.
When the powerful control public opinion
“Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” – Albert Einstein, 1949.
The reckless brinkmanship with Russia just keeps on escalating
It’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the warmongering of the western empire these days.
The US Empire isn't a government that runs non stop wars, it's a non stop war that runs a government
The US as a country is just a source of funding, personnel, resources and diplomatic cover for a nonstop campaign to dominate the planet with mass military violence and the threat thereof.
Biden lets Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons while Ukraine attacks Russian nuclear defences
Well it finally happened: Biden is now letting Ukraine strike Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. Escalations in nuclear brinkmanship which would have been unthinkable a few short years ago are becoming increasingly common as Ukraine loses more and more territory and runs out of soldiers to fight.
Israel massacres children, which the Western Press says is fine
Israel has not only completely disregarded the orders of the International Court of Justice to cease its assault on Rafah as we expected it to do, but has actually ramped up its ruthlessness as though trying to make a point. There were reportedly more than 60 Israeli airstrikes on the southernmost city in the Gaza strip in the 48 hours after the ICJ ruling, including a horrifying massacre on a displacement camp full of civilians in tents.
Under the cloak of genocide, nuclear brinkmanship escalates in Ukraine
While the antiwar zeitgeist has been quite understandably focused on the genocide in Gaza, over the past few weeks we’ve been seeing some very disturbing reports about empire managers ramping up nuclear brinkmanship escalations in Ukraine that are worth going over.
If you can't even elect a candidate who'll end a genocide, how real is your "Democracy"?
The Biden administration has reportedly approved of an Israeli assault on Rafah, the last slightly safe city in the Gaza Strip, and is openly preparing to work with Congress to punish the International Criminal Court for seeking arrest warrants of Israeli officials for war crimes. Biden is a monster who belongs in a cell at The Hague.
The US empire deliberately stokes hatred and violence in the Middle East
I sometimes see people expressing bafflement that the US would back a genocide in the middle east knowing that it will radicalise the region against them, mistakenly thinking this goes against US strategic goals.