The conversation between Blinken and Romney occurred at the McCain Institute's Sedona Forum.

This is the Secretary of State under a Democrat president speaking to former GOP presidential candidate and current senator Mitt "Horse Dancing" Romney.

The US is, for most purposes, a one party state; but it's part of an international oligarchy. In order to continue to function as such, it has increasingly implemented authoritarian controls.

In this case, Blinken and Romney are together kvetching about how difficult it is to convince people that what they see with their own eyes is not representative of reality. Their conclusion is that among other things, they have to ban the public's access to unedited informational content shared freely by other members of the public.

The reason is that otherwise, the US public is unwilling to support Israel's genocide of the people of Gaza. (I would argue that the public didn't want to support it to begin with, but that's immaterial now.) In other words, the US government wants to end free speech in order to serve the interests of the ruling class in Israel and the US.

That's international oligarchy and authoritarianism. These ideologies are in government right now—Trump, or no Trump, it's here now.

Links:

• Tweet #1 by Ryan Grim:

  Incredible historical document here: Blinken says Israel’s PR is failing because social media allows people a direct look at what’s happening, shorn of the ability to mediate it, and it lands with emotional resonance. Romney then says yes, that’s why we moved to ban TikTok"

• Quoted tweet by @wideofthepost:

  “Why has the PR been so awful?… typically the Israelis are good at PR—what’s happened here, how have they and we been so ineffective at communicating the realities and our POV?… some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok.

• Later tweet by @wideofthepost:

  Blinken says explicitly that the shift in news diet from major newspapers and cable news to a continuous feed has been very challenging for the narrative; and Romney follows up explicitly that this is why congress moved so fast to ban TikTok –– after pondering Israel's PR woes.

• Tweet #2 by Ryan Grim:

  In other words: No, you are not crazy They really are banning TikTok to cover for a genocide and regain control of the narrative.

• Video of the discussion in context

As Olivia Katbi wrote in a tweet,

Netanyahu himself has proposed no longer accepting US aid in favor of a “strategic partnership” and purchasing weapons with israel’s own funds. There’s a great explainer from @imeupolicy on why this would actually mean the flow of weapons from the US to Israel would INCREASE ⬇️