Caitlin Johnstone: The Empire Exposes Itself

 

April 3, 2026

What was once revealed solely by whistleblowers, investigative journalists, activists and dissident media is now being shown by the empire itself, because there’s only so long you can hide the truth about something so malignant.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article

It used to be hard to help Westerners see the depravity of the U.S. empire. Now it’s just right in everyone’s face with raw genocide footage and insanely evil warmongering of direct economic consequence.

It took a lot of work to help the average Westerner understand that NATO aggressions actively provoked the war in Ukraine, or that Western interventionism played a major role in the violence and chaos in Syria, or that U.S. economic warfare was largely responsible for the suffering of Cubans and Venezuelans.

The murderous savagery of the empire was hidden behind layers of obfuscation, allowing the propagandists to frame the Western power structure as a passive witness to the abuses of foreign regimes.

Now the propagandists have very little to work with, so those obfuscations can no longer take place. There’s no way you can spin a school full of children blown up by an American double-tap airstrike as anything other than what it is.

There’s only so much narrative manipulation you can exert on raw video footage of a Western-backed genocide playing out in full view of the entire world day after day for years.

There’s no way to propagandize Westerners into believing they want to pay a lot more more money for their fuel and groceries.

I saw former EU Parliament member Luis Garicano complaining on Twitter that Trump’s actions are making it look as though leftists have been correct about the U.S. empire this whole time, saying

“Many of us, liberal Europeans, spent decades pushing back against the European extreme left’s cartoon version of America ( it’s all oil/ imperialism/getting rich at the expense of others) and then one dumb administration walks in and performs the caricature to perfection.”

Garicano’s entire worldview depends on his ability to avoid recognizing the obvious truth: that the so-called “extreme left” has always been correct, and that the empire he worships has always been evil. It’s just having a harder and harder time masking its true nature, because of the very evils it has tried to conceal.

Everything’s becoming more and more revealed. More and more transparent. What was once done solely by whistleblowers, investigative journalists, activists and dissident media is now being done by the empire itself, because there’s only so long you can hide the truth about something so malignant.

An empire that is held together by lies, corruption and endless slaughter was never going to remain unseen. The brutality necessary to dominate the planet had to come out into the light eventually.

“May all be revealed” has been my prayer for our world for many years now. That dearly held wish is now being answered, and the truth is looking every bit as ugly as expected.

May all be revealed. May all that is hidden become seen. In the empire. In our governments. In our culture. In our community. In our interpersonal relationships. In ourselves.

All abusiveness ultimately boils down to a lack of clear seeing. Governments are able to abuse people because the dynamics of corruption and tyranny aren’t clearly seen by the public, who would violently revolt if they truly understood what their leaders are doing to them and to their world.

Domestic violence and family sexual abuse can only continue when the rest of the community doesn’t see and understand what the abuser is doing.

Our own abusive tendencies can only persist for as long as our trauma responses and maladaptive coping mechanisms remain hidden in the shadows of our subconscious mind.

All of these dysfunctional dynamics will lose their durability as we become more and more conscious of what’s really going on, in ourselves and in our world. Things look ugly now because the truth is ugly, but it is only by truth revealing itself that we can move toward health and harmony as a species.

If you’ve ever done deep inner work on your own psychology you have seen this play out in your own personal experience. You can heal your inner woundedness if you can gather up the courage to plunge into your own darkness and face with uncompromising honesty the uncomfortable realities you’ve been avoiding within yourself throughout your entire life — but you kept those things unconscious for a reason.

They’re scary. They’re painful. They’re shameful. Facing them can feel like the end of the world. Yet it is only by coaxing them into the light of consciousness that they can be fully seen, reconciled and healed.

The whole world is like that. Humans as a collective cannot fix problems which we don’t clearly see and understand.

Our rulers pour so much energy into maintaining influence operations like news media propaganda, Hollywood psyops, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and government secrecy in order to obstruct our clear seeing and understanding.

But it’s all coming tumbling out into the cold light of day now. More and more is becoming visible.

May the lies and obfuscations continue to unravel. May the truth continue to reveal itself.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.     

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/04/03/caitlin-johnstone-the-empire-exposes-itself/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQ-tjFleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeKbVBZo_60A7ZySiMs6raispYhQMKqIG_aH4jeVRo3p9JVR8IOZA-Tef8aSk_aem_8SrNj5u0fdwA-1zJjJJhdA