“Dr. [Paul Craig] Roberts is one of the few remaining voices of truth in the West. His essays expose the systematic lies of Western mainstream media which now provide propaganda rather than news. He explains these false narratives are designed to create a public lost in a Matrix of misinformation, which conditions people to hate and fear; the hatred of internal ‘enemies’ prevents social cohesion that could effectively challenge governmental authority, while external enemies are demonized to make people accept endless war.”
Professor Steven Starr 2023
“The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born.”
Paul Craig Roberts 2012
Empire of Lies is the title of a book on US domestic and foreign policies, published in 2023 by former Assistant Secretary of Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts. Roberts is a Ph.D. in economics, has held academic positions at Virginia Tech, Tulane University, Stanford University and University of New Mexico. He has authored a dozen books and has worked in media, business and public service. He has been regularly posting articles on his website paulcraigroberts.org. The book mentioned in the title of this article is a collection of his writings and some interviews.
A most important observation made by Roberts pertains to a profound difference between empires of the past and the American empire. Empires like the British and Roman empires were extractive and succeeded because the “value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance.” The American empire, on the other hand, spends immense amount of money on wars abroad, adding to the national debt. “Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The U.S. Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.” Since the American Empire strips the Americans of its wealth and liberty, it does not matter, whether America wins or loses a war. When one war ends America is shoved into another war. The wars must not end.
In order to exploit the people of the United States, the ruling elites have to control the mindset of the people. This is done through the media, which, over the years, has become a propaganda mouthpiece of the ruling elite. The media lies persistently about “enemies” of the country. Roberts writes: “The American media specializes in fake news. Indeed, since the Clinton regime the American media has produced nothing but fake news.” The destruction of countries such as Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya was based entirely on orchestrated propaganda. In Yugoslavia Clinton violated international law but was never placed in the dock. The George Bush regime lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and has never been held accountable for deaths of millions. “Do you remember the destruction of Libya based entirely on Washington’s lies and the criminal misuse of the UN no-fly resolution by turning it into NATO bombing of Libya’s military so that the CIA armed jihadists could overthrow and murder Moammar Gaddafi? Do you remember the killer bitch Hillary gloating ‘we came, we saw, he died!’” One may recall the lies that Obama regime propagated about the Assad regime in Syria with the intention of invading Syria only to be blocked by Russia and a resolution of the British Parliament. General Flynn admitted on Al Jazeera that it was “willful decision” of the Obama regime to send ISIS to Syria.
Paul Craig Roberts has repeatedly pointed out in his columns that “In America truth is offensive. If you tell the truth you are offensive.” All writers who are truthful fall in the category of being “offensive.” “I am offensive. Gerald Celente is offensive. Herman Daly is offensive. Nomi Prins is offensive. Pam Martens is offensive, Chris Hedges is offensive, Chris Floyd is offensive. Noam Chomsky is offensive. Harry Silvergate is offensive. Noami Wolf is offensive. Stephen Lendman is offensive. David Ray Griffin is offensive. Ellen Brown is offensive. Fortunately many others are offensive. But how long before being offensive becomes being ‘an enemy of the state’”?
In fact, people like Julian Assange who expose the lies of the US Establishment, are labelled enemies of the state and tried for crimes which never were crimes. Yet the media Wurlitzer continues to numb the American mind. Assange did nothing criminal but is facing extradition to the US where he could be imprisoned for 175 years! On 25 February 2024 Roberts wrote: “For 12 years Washington has been able to keep, with help from Sweden and the utterly corrupt British “judicial system,” Julian Assange under lock and key without any charges against him! This has been achieved by drawing out endlessly whether to not to extract Assange to America where he waits charges that do not apply to a foreign national. Washington doesn’t want the disgrace of trying Julian Assange in a show trial worst than Stalin’s. Washington wants him dead from stress from years of prison abuse and isolated confinement.” The criminals, whose crimes he exposed, sit in Washington, untouched and secure.
The case of Edward Snowden is another example. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote: “It is hard to understand the fuss that Washington and its media whores are making over Edward Snowden. We have known for a long time that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying for years without warrants on the communications of Americans and people throughout the world. Photographs of the massive NSA building in Utah built for the purpose of storing the intercepted communications of the world have been published many times. It is not clear to an ordinary person what Snowden has revealed that William Binney and other whistleblowers have not already revealed. Perhaps the difference is that Snowden has provided documents that prove it, thereby negating Washington’s ability to deny the facts with its usual lies.” Instead of arresting and prosecuting those in NSA who are violating the law, Edward Snowden has been targeted, He has sought asylum in Russia to escape arrest.
In the United States of America, anyone who tells the truth is demonized and attacked by trolls working for the agencies and vested interests. Wikipedia is also used for the purpose of demonizing truth tellers. Wikipedia articles on anti-Establishment writers and figures are biased and twisted and are intended to drive the unwary reader away from such writers and figures. Anyone who criticizes Israel is instantly labeled “anti-Semitic”. Anyone who suggests that the standard version of the Holocaust is incorrect and needs modification, is immediately labeled a “Holocaust Denier.” Anyone who writes that it is the US Establishment that is pushing for war with Russia, a war that Russia has been trying to avoid, is labeled a Russian agent. Anyone who questions the official 9/11 explanation, is called a “conspiracy theorist.” All these labels have been applied to Paul Craig Roberts, who is neither anti-Semitic, nor a Russian agent. The Wikipedia article labelled him as a Holocaust Denier and “it took forever to get the misrepresentation corrected. There are still problems with my biography in Wikipedia but I have given up. Every time corrections are made they are erased.”
Paul Craig Roberts emphasizes that the US economy was destroyed by offshoring of middle class jobs in order to provide corporate profits. He writes: “When US corporations send jobs offshore, the GDP, consumer income, tax base, and careers associated with the jobs go abroad with the jobs. Corporations gain additional profits at large costs to the economy in terms of less employment, less economic growth, reduced state, local and federal tax revenues, wider deficits, and impairment of social services.” He has argued that capitalist greed, aided and abetted by economists and policy makers has “murdered” the US economy.
When Donald Trump was elected Paul Craig Roberts wrote that it was unlikely that he would succeed in the “accomplishing the three objectives for which he was elected – peace with Russia, the return home of offshored US jobs, and effective limits on non-white immigration – because these objectives conflicted with the interests of those more powerful than the president.” Indeed, Trump was targeted and brought under control by “assassinating him with words rather than with a bullet.” Since the powers that be do not want peace with Russia, the reelection of Trump was destroyed through electoral fraud. The election that brought Biden to power was a stolen election. Roberts wrote: “Electoral fraud was organized in all of the states. The purpose was not to try to steal the red states, but to make the vote look closer than the expected pattern in order to provide for extensive fraud in the crucial swing states.”
In order to trap Trump the “Trump Insurrection” was concocted. FBI Special Agent Justin Eller testified in federal court on October 11, 2022 during the sedition trial of four Oath Keepers. When an attorney asked Eller if, from his review of the communications of Oath Keepers was there any indication that they intended to storm the Capitol or to stop the certification of the stolen presidential election, Eller answered “no” to both questions. Thus the Insurrection was a fantasy that never happened. But the media continues to give a different impression. Trump is still facing difficulties with litigation involving women, etc., and with the media because of the very same reasons for which he was elected.
In his writings *Paul Craig Roberts has emphasized that Abraham Lincoln was a racist who was “elevated to the undeserved position of black liberator by lies made up by the white liberal/progressive/leftists who hate the South.” He has quoted from the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln to support the statement that Lincoln was a racist. Lincoln wrote: “I have said that the separation of races is the only perfect preventive of the amalgamation [of the white and black races] . . . Such separation . . . must be affected by colonization” [ sending blacks to Liberia or Central America]. Another quote on subject from Lincoln is as follows: “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime.” Another quote from Abraham Lincoln is as follows: “I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.” The Emancipation Proclamation was a “war measure that only applied to slaves under the jurisdiction of the Confederacy in hopes of fomenting a slave rebellion that would pull Southern soldiers off the front lines to the protection of their wives and children.” Thus the history of the Civil War, taught in the U.S., is also based on lies.
Paul Craig Roberts also describes the policy of extermination of native Indians pursued by the military officers of Lincoln’s army. He writes that the “Union massacres of Indians began before the Civil War was won.” Lincoln’s Civil War generals William Tecumsch Sherman, Phillip Sheridan and others conducted warfare, not just against Southern women and children but also against Native Americans. Roberts quotes historian Professor Thomas DiLorenzo: “Sherman and Sheridan’s troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in winter months, when families were together. The U.S. Army’s actions matched its leaders rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians’ chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods…. By 1882, the buffalo was all but extinct.” The policy of extermination of Indians was further pursued during the eight years when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was president (1868-1876). “Entire villages, every man, woman, and child, were wiped out. The Union Army’s scorched earth policy starved to death those Indians who escaped fire and sword.”
The truth about the two World Wars is aslso concealed from the Americans. “Harry Elmer Barnes was the first American historian to provide a history of the first world war that was based on primary resources. His truthful account differed so substantially from the war propaganda that he was called every name in the book.” Similarly, David Irving has written extensively on WWII and has established that it was Churchill, and not Hitler, who wanted the war. “Irving provides documented facts from which the reader cannot avoid this conclusion. Churchill got his war, for which he longed, because of the Versailles Treaty that stripped Germany of German territory and unjustly and irresponsibly imposed humiliation on Germany.”
Based on the research of David Irving, Roberts writes: “Hitler’s program was to put Germany back together again. He succeeded without war until it came to Poland. Hitler’s demands were fair and realistic, but Churchill, financed by the Focus Group with Jewish money, put pressure on the British prime minister Chamberlain that Chamberlain intervened in the Polish-German negotiations and issued a British guarantee to the Polish military dictatorship should Poland refuse to release German territory and populations.” Britain was in no position to give such a guarantee. It was this worthless, unenforceable guarantee that led the thick-headed Polish leadership to continue massacring the German population in their country and to refuse to talk to Germany. And it were these massacres, that led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement that led to the partition of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. However, Britain and France declared war only on Germany and not on the USSR even though both countries had aggressed against Poland.
Paul Craig Roberts expresses his own opinion on the war in the following words: “The German leader, Adolf Hitler, had re-acquired German territories given to Denmark, France and Czechoslovakia by the humiliating Versailles Treaty and had united with German Austria without war. But three wanted war with Germany: Zionist Jews who saw war as a path to the Jewish state in Palestine, Winston Churchill, who dreamed of repeating the military conquests of his famous ancestor, and Franklin D. Roosevelt who intended to ruin Britain with war and take over the British pound’s role as as world’s reserve currency and destroy Britain’s control of world trade. The British guarantee emboldened the Polish military dictatorship to refuse to negotiate the return of German territory and population.”
Ron Unz has written and spoken about the lies pertaining to WWII. Roberts quotes Ron Unz: “Churchill’s ruthless violation of the laws of war regarding urban aerial bombardment directly led to the destruction of many of Europe’s finest and most ancient cities. But perhaps influenced by his chronic drunkenness, he later sought to carry out even more horrifying war crimes and was only prevented from doing so by the dogged opposition of his military and political subordinates.” Thus it is to be borne in mind that aerial bombardment of civilian populations was begun by Churchill and not by Hitler, as is falsely propagated.
Paul Craig Roberts is a very courageous writer who is not afraid of either the Zionist lobby or the military-industrial complex. He writes: “Hitler and Nationalist Socialist Germany (Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party) are the most demonized entities in history. Any person who finds any good in Hitler’s Germany is instantly demonized. The person becomes an outcast regardless of the facts. Irving is very much aware of this.” As a consequence, every time his factual account displays a Hitler who differs from the standard account, he has to throw some negative comments about Hitler. Conversely, every time Irving’s factual accounts of Churchill reveal a depraved man different from the idolized version, Irving has to express some appreciation of Churchill. As Roberts’ writes: “This is what a historian has to do to survive telling the truth.”
Paul Craig Roberts is deeply concerned about the possible genocide of white Americans at the hands of NGO sponsored immigrants. In an article titled “America is Undergoing Genocide” published on February 6, 2024, Roberts writes: “It is not a conspiracy theory that the 300,000 immigrant-invaders (official count) entering the US unopposed each month are recruits organized by NGOs and not refugees from political persecution. The NGOs that are underwriting the invasion provide maps of the routes along which food and shelter are provided. Roads and bridges are being constructed to aid the invasion.” He stresses that the current director of Homeland Security Alejandro Masyorkas is a Jew, “foreign born and himself an immigrant-invader”, who was a board member of an NGO HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society) until December 2020. HIAS is sponsoring massive immigration and has received $100 million from the US government over the past three years. Roberts points out that “According to the report on substack, HIAS has a processing center in the Darien Gap used to collect the immigrant-invaders and to send them on their guided and provisioned way. Apparently, Mayorkas is aware of this, and possibly is helping to finance it.” He points out that the open borders policy of the Democrats “saddles us with 12 cities the size of Pittsburgh, full of third world immigrants who know nothing of Western ways.” He considers this a new form of genocide that America is undergoing. He concludes his article with the following words: “Just as nothing will be done about the genocide of the Palestinians, nothing will be done about the American genocide. White people are an endangered species. Their governments are conspiring against them.”
Paul Craig Roberts is deeply concerned about the possible consequences of the US sponsored and instigated war in Ukraine. Efforts made by Russia to arrive at a mutual security treaty with the US and NATO were rebuffed by both, the US Secretary of State and the NATO Secretary General in December 2021 and January 2022. Massive sanctions have been applied against Russia and in September 2022 the US and the UK blew up the Nordstream gas pipelines, while accusing Russia of sabotaging its own pipelines! He points out that tensions with Russia are extremely serious and “The situation is worse than the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock indicates. The correct time is one nano-second to midnight.” Roberts’ adds: “America’s foreign policy ‘experts’ are a collection of whores on military/security grants and consultancies, and the presstitutes support rather than investigate official narratives.”
Paul Craig Roberts sums up the current global scenario in the following words: “The efforts of 20th century American presidents to end the Cold War, restrain armaments, and reduce the possibility of nuclear war have been completely overturned by neo-conservative dominated governments in the 21st century. The tensions today are far greater than at any time during the 20th century Cold War. Today the Kremlin openly states that the Russian government has zero trust in the West and believes that the West intends to destroy Russia. This is extremely dangerous. During the Cold War there were numerous incidences of false alarms from incoming ICBMs, but neither side believed them because ongoing negotiations had created a framework of mutual trust. This achievement has been squandered by America’s 21st century leadership which in pursuit of the neoconservative goal of American hegemony has left the door wide open to Nuclear Armageddon.”
