Fake News Is Not a Modern Phenomenon

Fake News is anything but a modern phenomenon. It is an art perfected by newspaper editors and the bankers, industrialists and shady figures who stood behind them in the days leading up to the First World War. As far back as 1815, the Rothschilds made a fortune by implying to the Stock Exchange that Napoleon had won the war. The stocks were sold at a low price, the Rothschilds purchased them and were later able to sell them back at a massive profit. In 1895, the Kaiser warned the Tsar that journalists were making mischief to stir up international tensions; and the British Prime Minister, Asquith, later warned the Kaiser that shady groups controlling the press were doing immense damage in both countries. In 1909, Lord Northcliffe printed a series of articles suggesting that the Germans were about to invade Britain; and soon afterwards an American journalist stated:

“There is no such thing as an independent press in America. It is the duty of a New York journalist to lie, to distort, to revile, to toady at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country for what amounts to his daily bread – his salary. We are the tools and vassals of the men behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings and we dance.”

It was largely due to the fake news in the Russian press, stating falsely that the Germans had mobilised that led to such patriotic fervour that the Tsar, too, felt obliged to mobilise. More disturbingly still, as I show in my book, ‘The Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II’, in 1917, the Congressman Oscar Callaway:
 ‘...accused the banker, J.P. Morgan, and a syndicate of steel and railway magnates, of gathering a group of twelve influential pressmen who would gradually take over one-hundred-and-seventy-nine American newspapers to ensure that the public would only read articles supporting policies which would best suit the financial interests of the syndicate.’  

It often seems we all need to look way beyond the headlines and newspaper reports. When the press and other media attack a person in a position of power, such as a president, so mercilessly, it immediately begs the questions: What are they afraid of? And what are they really tying to achieve? And, more importantly, who truly is behind it?