A free and fair press is critical to our freedom. When this is compromised, nation-destroying dangers result.

The media in America and Britain have become political tools. They no longer take a dispassionate, objective view of events. Far too many in the media have embraced a far-left political view, to the point that they cannot even recognize how grossly partisan they have become.

Media empires are extremely powerful. The left-wing media are in a power struggle to get control—and they have been winning. Though unelected, they have grown too powerful for politicians to challenge. To directly challenge the mega-media often leads to political death.

The one exception has been United States President Donald Trump. He has single-handedly challenged the press and exposed a great deal of its bias. Yet this has only caused the press to double down on its opposition to him and its advocacy for leftist politics.

Many in the media have forgotten their obligation to tell the truth! They have forgotten how noble it is to always seek and tell the truth. Only the truth can set us free (John 8:32).

A similar problem seized Britain in the decade leading up to World War ii. This is history with extraordinary relevance for today. The media and leaders of Britain and America should have learned some critical lessons, but most did not. There has been no repentance for their shameful failure. As a result, they are repeating the same mistakes. We cannot even calculate how much damage this is doing to our nations. The consequences this time will be far more severe.

Swindled by Hitler

Adolf Hitler had publicized his toxic views years before he came to power in Germany, but almost nobody believed him. The free media were dangerously manipulated by Hitler. They have probably never been more deceived—until today!

In 1933, during disarmament talks in Geneva, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a ban on all offensive weapons. Hitler loathed the idea, but he pretended to love it. He promised to scrap all of Germany’s offensive weapons along with other nations—even its entire military establishment! “His reply to Roosevelt was a fraud, of course, but it was the work of a master swindler, and it took almost everyone in,” William Manchester wrote in The Last Lion: Alone. “London’s Daily Herald, the official organ of the Labour Party, declared that Hitler, as a trustworthy statesman, should be taken at his word. The conservative weekly Spectator called him the hope of a tormented world; to the Times his claim was ‘irrefutable’” (emphasis mine throughout).

These newspapers were utterly duped by this madman!

Meanwhile, many signs showed that events in Germany were swiftly moving in a dangerous direction: The ruling party was organizing massive public book burnings. Trade unions were banned and union leaders were imprisoned. All non-Nazi political parties were wiped out. Jews were being mistreated and abused, and concentration camps were filling up. But these realities were of no interest to Britain’s ruling class and its press.

It’s hard to fathom how pathetic the Times had become in kowtowing to Hitler. In 1937, the Times editor wrote, “I should like to get going with the Germans. I simply cannot understand why they should apparently be so much annoyed with the Times at this moment. I spend my nights in taking out anything which I think will hurt their susceptibilities and in dropping little things which are intended to soothe them.” Such reasoning reflects a profound sickness! This is the ultimate in a defeatist attitude, and it leads to the death of nations!

Examples abound of the intellectuals’ disgraceful credulity—despite so much contrary evidence. “Once Hitler had been sworn in and his Strassenkämpfer began unsheathing their long knives, the British government took the remarkable position that the detailed reports from two of its most eminent ambassadors, describing conditions in the Third Reich, were based on misunderstandings, distortions and unconfirmed rumors,” Manchester wrote. “According to one Wilhelmstrasse document which came into British hands when Berlin fell in May 1945, [British Prime Minister Ramsay] MacDonald assured Germany’s ambassador to Britain, Leopold von Hösch, that he knew there were no atrocities, no beatings, no desecration of synagogues—that everything England’s own envoys had reported, was, in short, a lie.” They believed the Nazis rather than their own envoys! That defies logic!

“According to the Times, Baldwin told Hösch that England was ‘entirely willing to work closely … with a Germany under the new order’—die Neuordnung. It is startling to read this Nazi phrase, so freighted with evil, quoted by a once and future prime minister in the columns of the Times. Doubtless Baldwin had not grasped its implications. But he should have. And he should have spoken out. His silence, his refusal to see, hear and speak … evil of the Nazi chancellor was characteristic of the response among England’s ruling classes [led by the media]. If they offended him, they told one another, he would become hostile, and his hostility would blind him to reason” (ibid).

How repugnant and shameful! These leaders were terrified of offending Hitler and setting him off! They knew he was unstable and vicious, yet somehow thought everything would work out if they could just not offend him. This is how quintessentially compliant and passive Britain (and America) had become in the 1930s! And the media led the way.

This history is painful and embarrassing. But what did these leaders and the media learn from it?

Churchill’s Will to Win

All the while, Winston Churchill was delivering a very different message. He was doing everything possible to warn and save his country and the world from Adolf Hitler.

On April 24, 1932, he gave a speech saying that while he believed in Britain’s institutions, difficulties always came from “the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals”—many of whom were in the media, as they are today. He criticized their “defeatist doctrines.” “What have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias?” he asked. “Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.”

This is the same problem so many of our journalists and people have today! Intellectuals wallow in self-abasement. They are hostile toward America and Britain exercising real leadership and strength. They lack the will to fight even our worst enemies! Several nations today pose serious political, economic and military threats. Yet the intellectuals pretend the world is better off with a weak and apologetic America, and that the best way to ensure peace is through disarmament, negotiation and compromise. They pretend the world is full of reasonable peoples, and that peace is possible by international consensus. This is perilously delusional!

“The British left, led by Clement Attlee and pledged to pacifism and disarmament, deeply distrusted [Churchill],” Manchester wrote. “Thus he outraged M.P.s on both sides of the Commons. … Afterward he said there had been ‘much mocking in the press’ about his fall from grace. The political cartoonists in Punch, the Daily Herald, the Express and above all David Low in Beaverbrook’s Evening Standard were brutal. Public appearances became an ordeal for him. Chosen rector of Edinburgh University, he was unable to deliver his rectorial address; students hostile to his calls for a strengthened national defense repeatedly shouted him down until he gave up and left the platform” (op cit).

These students had never learned about freedom of speech, and Hitler almost took it away from them forever! Most journalists are educated in such institutions.

The pacifists were dead wrong. And if not for Churchill, most of them would have ended up just plain dead in the war!

Are our pacifists today leading us to a similar fate?

Shameful Blindness

Hitler was skilled at taking advantage of the naiveté of British leaders. “Hitler, deciding that Europe needed more reassurance, summoned the Reichstag on May 21 [1935] and delivered another Friedensrede, declaring that Germany would never dream of threatening other countries, that the Reich ‘has solemnly recognized and guaranteed France her frontiers,’ including the renunciation of ‘all claims to Alsace-Lorraine,’ and—at a time when Nazi Strassenkämpfer were storming through the streets of Vienna, clubbing Austrian pedestrians who had failed to greet them with the stiff-armed Hitlergruss—that ‘Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss.’” This directly contradicted Hitler’s clear statement in Mein Kampf that he would force Austria into the Reich. But the media believed his lies anyway.

The Times called Hitler’s speech “reasonable, straightforward and comprehensive.” “No one who reads it with an impartial mind can doubt that the points of policy laid down by Herr Hitler may fairly constitute the basis of a complete settlement with Germany—a free, equal and strong Germany instead of the prostrate Germany upon whom peace was imposed 16 years ago,” it wrote. It was doing public relations for Hitler as well as Hitler’s own propaganda minister.

Soon after, Germany took over Austria, plainly exposing Hitler’s gracious words as rank deceit.

Churchill gave a powerful message about the Austrian crisis. He warned the House on March 24, 1938, against becoming complacent because of a brief easing of tensions. Every time Germany made a move, it waited a while before making another. “After a boa constrictor has devoured its prey, it often has a considerable digestive spell,” he said. “Now, after Austria has been struck down, we are all disturbed and alarmed, but in a little while there may be another pause. [I]f there is a pause, then people will be saying, ‘See how the alarmists have been confuted; Europe has calmed down, it has all blown over, and the war scare has passed away.’ … The Times will write a leading article to say how silly people look who on the morrow of the Austrian incorporation raised a clamor for exceptional action in foreign policy and home defense, and how wise the government were not to let themselves be carried away by this passing incident.” Such thinking was a trap, he argued.

He finished by warning, “For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. [I]f mortal catastrophe should overtake the British nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory gone with the wind! Now the victors are the vanquished, and those who threw down their arms in the field and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery.”

How did people respond to this plain truth? That very day, the Evening Standard decided to stop printing Churchill’s articles. His syndicated column would no longer appear in over 50 newspapers around the world! Churchill was denied his media platform to warn the world.

Within days, the syndication manager wrote Churchill: “I have received expressions of regret from all the papers in England from which we have had to withdraw the series. All the editors are agreed that the articles were unusually highly appreciated by their readers.” It would be hard to find a statement more condemning of the media, and of academia, which produced these leaders! The people were much wiser, less biased and far less arrogant than the media!

It wasn’t long before Hitler began agitating for Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia, which was in an alliance with Britain. Astoundingly, the press, especially the Times, argued that the Czechs should give in to Hitler. They said the main threat to peace was the obstinancy of the Czechs! But the only reason the Czechs were obstinate was because they didn’t want to give Germany a large portion of their country!

What these leaders and the media did in dealing with Hitler before World War ii was despicable! Events make this inescapably clear. Almost all the media refused to see him for what he really was—until it was almost too late! Britain nearly lost World War ii. The world came dangerously close to being slaughtered and enslaved by Nazi Germany.

Finally Hitler forced them to see how evil he really was! They didn’t see until they were forced to. Don’t forget that!

As Churchill worked furiously to save Western civilization, most of the media worked equally hard to destroy it! They inflicted horrendous evil on Churchill because he was trying to save the world from tyranny! This was a severely criminal act that should never be forgotten! And it should have caused the media to bitterly repent. There should have been sweeping changes after World War ii, turning from such dangerous thinking.

Yet no such repentance ever took place. The media simply moved on as though they bore no guilt whatsoever. And don’t expect them to voluntarily repent today. The left-wing media today are making even bigger mistakes, and so are our politicians, educational institutions and religious leaders.

What does this portend for the survival of Britain, America and the Western world?

Tyrants of the Intellect

The media today are much further left than in the 1930s. Their reporting is even more biased and dangerous. They have an even more entrenched hatred for American and British power, deeper commitment to pacifism and failed internationalism, and still no comprehension of the nature of evil.

They attack the Trump administration for punishing Iran, the world’s number one state sponsor of terror. When the president ordered a strike on top general Qassem Suleimani, who had killed hundreds of Americans, they called that a dangerous provocation and depicted that murderer like a beloved saint! They are angry with President Trump for standing up to China on economic and trade policy. They are enraged by his forcing Mexico and Latin American countries to stop encouraging immigrants to illegally flood into the U.S. Every move the president makes to protect and defend American interests, they condemn.

The left-wing media are almost always against using our military might to stop the Hitler-types and to do good in the world. That means they provide very little context in their reporting. They give their biased opinion and often fail to tell the whole story. They fight against the truth and blind many of our people to reality. This means our leaders almost always lack the support to fight the real enemy, even if they have the will.

The left-wing media are lost in their own warped human reasoning. They are a danger even to themselves, and a grave danger to the many people who trust them. They are destroying the military spirit that defends our people! They are destroying the security of America, Britain and Israel. Our military power is of little value if we lack the will to use it. We have degenerated into unparalleled selfishness and fear.

Why should our most courageous young men and women risk their lives while most of the media condemn what they are doing? In the process we are fulfilling a prophecy where God says He will “break the pride of your power”—or will to use that power—because of our sins (Leviticus 26:19). This is the real problem we must confront, regardless of our political philosophy! In the age of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, such weakness leads to the death of nations!

The media’s goal is to change the people to their way of thinking. And they are having frightening success. They arrogantly believe they are qualified to tell people how to think. Their goal is not to get the facts to our people, which journalists should be doing. They want to rule—not inform. They are tyrants and terrorists of the intellect!

It’s the 1930s all over again. As Churchill said, we never learn from history. That means history is going to repeat itself! And the next time, there will be no political leader to save us!

Greater Threat Today

The left-wing media scorn history. That is why they never seem to learn lessons from history—even recent history like events leading up to World War ii. If the “appeaseniks” had won in their battle with Winston Churchill—and they almost did—there would be no media freedom in the Western world!

The left-wing media learned nothing from that mega-disaster. Media leaders still cannot see and will not repent of their glaring faults. They are simply too arrogant. Leaders of the powerful media must have abundant humility, or they are a deadly danger to their nation and the world!

So who can we trust? The Bible warns that trusting men will bring us many curses! (e.g. Jeremiah 17:5).

In many ways, the threats in the world today are even more menacing than Hitler was. Think about what rogue states and terrorists can do with weapons of mass destruction. This issue gets to the heart of the survival of our peoples. That is how important it is.

Some people are going to scorn this analysis, but not for long.

Words will not bring people out of this darkness. It will take a jolt like World War ii. That is the only reason Winston Churchill came to power. And if we don’t wake up, we are going to be hammered by a far worse World War iii of nuclear bombs to wake us up!

Falsehood enslaves us—it takes us into a black world of deceit. It is less violent than what terrorists fight for—but it is still slavery! It is a slavery of the intellect. We become enslaved to error, evil and fantasy and call it truth and freedom.

This issue gets to the core of whether or not we really love truth and freedom. Anything less than the truth is just another form of slavery and terrorism.

The self-willed, arrogant, left-wing media are trying to enslave us, just as the world’s worst terrorists are! It is just another form of terrorism.

Whether it comes from the right or left, it is still repugnant. The more we see such hatred of the truth, the more we ought to see how precious truth is.

Whether we realize it or not, God used Winston Churchill to save us. But no such political watchman will be used to save us today. Many Bible prophecies warn that only repentance of our many sins can save us now. God will give His blessings and protection to any individual who will learn this lesson.