The election of Donald Trump came as a shock to many (Independent, 11/5/16).
To the shock of many, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections, becoming the 45th president of the United States. Not least shocked were corporate media, and the political establishment more generally; the Princeton Election Consortium confidently predicted an over 99 percent chance of a Clinton victory, while MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (10/17/16) said it could be a “Goldwater-style landslide.”
Indeed, Hillary Clinton and her team actively attempted to secure a Trump primary victory, assured that he would be the easiest candidate to beat. The Podesta emails show that her team considered even before the primaries that associating Trump with Vladimir Putin and Russia would be a winning strategy and employed the tactic throughout 2016 and beyond.
With Clinton claiming, “Putin would rather have a puppet as president,” Russia was by far the most discussed topic during the presidential debates (FAIR.org, 10/13/16), easily eclipsing healthcare, terrorism, poverty and inequality. Media seized upon the theme, with Paul Krugman (New York Times, 7/22/16) asserting Trump would be a “Siberian candidate,” while ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden (Washington Post, 5/16/16) claimed Trump would be Russia’s “useful fool.”
The day after the election, Jonathan Allen’s book Shattered detailed, Clinton’s team decided that the proliferation of Russian-sponsored “fake news” online was the primary reason for their loss.
Within weeks, the Washington Post (11/24/16) was publicizing the website PropOrNot.com, which purports to help users differentiate sources as fake or genuine, as an invaluable tool in the battle against fake news (FAIR.org, 12/1/16, 12/8/16). The website soberly informs its readers that you see news sources critiquing the “mainstream media,” the EU, NATO, Obama, Clinton, Angela Merkel or other centrists are a telltale sign of Russian propaganda. It also claims that when news sources argue against foreign intervention and war with Russia, that’s evidence that you are reading Kremlin-penned fake news.
The Washington Post (11/24/16) was one of the first media outlets to blame the election results on Russian “fake news.”
PropOrNot claims it has identified over 200 popular websites that “routinely peddle…Russian propaganda.” Included in the list were Wikileaks, Trump-supporting right-wing websites like InfoWars and the Drudge Report, libertarian outlets like the Ron Paul Institute and Antiwar.com, and award-winning anti-Trump (but also Clinton-critical) left-wing sites like TruthDig and Naked Capitalism. Thus it was uniquely news sources that did not lie in the fairway between Clinton Democrats and moderate Republicans that were tarred as propaganda.
PropOrNot calls for an FBI investigation into the news sources listed. Even its creators see the resemblance to a new McCarthyism, as it appears as a frequently asked question on their website. (They say it is not McCarthyism, because “we are not accusing anyone of lawbreaking, treason, or ‘being a member of the Communist Party.’”) However, this new McCarthyism does not stem from the conservative right like before, but from the establishment center.
That the list is so evidently flawed and its creators refuse to reveal their identities or funding did not stop the issue becoming one of the most discussed in mainstream circles. Media talk of fake news sparked organizations like Google, Facebook, Bing and YouTube to change their algorithms, ostensibly to combat it.
However, one major effect of the change has been to hammer progressive outlets that challenge the status quo. The Intercept reported a 19 percent reduction in Google search traffic, AlterNet 63 percent and Democracy Now! 36 percent. Reddit and Twitter deleted thousands of accounts, while in what came to be called the “AdPocalypse,” YouTube began demonetizing videos from independent creators like Majority Report and the Jimmy Dore Show on controversial political topics like environmental protests, war and mass shootings. (In contrast, corporate outlets like CNN did not have their content on those subjects demonetized.) Journalists that questioned aspects of the Russia narrative, like Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté, were accused of being agents of the Kremlin (Shadowproof, 7/9/18).
The effect has been to pull away the financial underpinnings of alternative media that question the corporate state and capitalism in general, and to reassert corporate control over communication, something that had been loosened during the election in particular. It also impels liberal journalists to prove their loyalty by employing sufficiently bellicose and anti-Russian rhetoric, lest they also be tarred as Kremlin agents.
Thomas Friedman (Morning Joe, 2/14/18) pointedly compared email hacking to events that the US responded to with major wars.
When it was reported in February that 13 Russian trolls had been indicted by a US grand jury for sharing and promoting pro-Trump and anti-Clinton memes on Facebook, the response was a general uproar. Multiple senior political figures declared it an “act of war.” Clinton herself described Russian interference as a “cyber 9/11,” while Thomas Friedman said that it was a “Pearl Harbor–scale event.” Morgan Freeman’s viral video, produced by Rob Reiner’s Committee to Investigate Russia, summed up the outrage: “We have been attacked,” the actor declared; “We are at war with Russia.” Liberals declared Trump’s refusal to react in a sufficiently aggressive manner further proof he was Putin’s puppet.
The McCarthyist wave swept over other politicians that challenged the liberal center. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein refused to endorse the Russia narrative, leading mainstream figures like Rachel Maddow to insinuate she was a Kremlin stooge as well. After news broke that Stein’s connection to Russia was being officially investigated, top Clinton staffer Zac Petkanas announced:
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
“Commentary” that succinctly summed up the political atmosphere.
In contrast, Bernie Sanders has consistently and explicitly endorsed the RussiaGate theory, claiming it is “clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be involved in 2018.” Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking its readers, “When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals respond?” The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.
Outlets like Slate (5/11/18) warned of a sinister connection between Black Lives Matter and Russia.
It is not just politicians who have been smeared as Russian agents, witting or unwitting; virtually every major progressive movement challenging the system is increasingly dismissed in the same way. Multiple media outlets, including CNN (6/29/18), Slate (5/11/18), Vox (4/11/18) and the New York Times (2/16/18), have produced articles linking Black Lives Matter to the Kremlin, insinuating the outrage over racist police brutality is another Russian psyop. Others claimed Russia funded the riots in Ferguson and that Russian trolls promoted the Standing Rock environmental protests.
Meanwhile, Democratic insider Neera Tanden retweeted a description of Chelsea Manning as a “Russian stooge,” writing off her campaign for the Senate as “the Kremlin paying the extreme left to swing elections. Remember that.” Thus corporate media are promoting the idea that any challenge to the establishment is likely a Kremlin-funded astroturf effort.
The tactic has spread to Europe as well. After the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, the UK government immediately blamed Russia and imposed sanctions (without publicly presenting evidence). Jeremy Corbyn, the pacifist, leftist leader of the Labour Party, was uncharacteristically bellicose, asserting, “The Russian authorities must be held to account on the basis of the evidence and our response must be both decisive and proportionate.”
The British press was outraged—at Corbyn’s insufficient jingoism. The Sun‘s front page (3/15/18) attacked him as “Putin’s Puppet,” while the Daily Mail (3/15/18) went with “Corbyn the Kremlin Stooge.” As with Sanders, the fact that Corbyn endorsed the official narrative didn’t keep him from being attacked, showing that the conspiratorial mindset seeing Russia behind everything has little to do with evidence-based reality, and is increasingly a tool to demonize the establishment’s political enemies.
The Atlantic Council published a report claiming Greek political parties Syriza and Golden Dawn were not expressions of popular frustration and disillusionment, but “the Kremlin’s Trojan horses,” undermining democracy in its birthplace. Providing scant evidence, the report went on to link virtually every major European political party challenging the center, from right or left, to Putin. From Britian’s UKIP to Spain’s Podemos to Italy’s Five Star Movement, all are charged with being under one man’s control. It is this council that Facebook announced it was partnering with to help promote “trustworthy” news and weed out “untrustworthy” sources (FAIR.org, 5/21/18), as its CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with representatives from some of the largest corporate outlets, like the New York Times, CNN and News Corp, to help develop a system to control what content we see on the website.
“We are at war,” Morgan Freeman assures us on behalf of the Committee to Investigate Russia.
The utility of this wave of suspicion is captured in Freeman’s aforementioned video. After asserting that “for 241 years, our democracy has been a shining example to the world of what we can all aspire to”—a tally that would count nearly a century of chattel slavery and almost another hundred years of de jure racial disenfranchisement—the actor explains that “Putin uses social media to spread propaganda and false information, he convinces people in democratic societies to distrust their media, their political process.”
The obvious implication is that the political process and media ought to be trusted, and would be trusted were it not for Putin’s propaganda. It was not the failures of capitalism and the deep inequalities it created that led to widespread popular resentment and movements on both left and right pressing for radical change across Europe and America, but Vladimir Putin himself. In other words, “America is already great.”
For the Democrats, Russiagate allows them to ignore calls for change and not scrutinize why they lost to the most unpopular presidential candidate in history. Since Russia hacked the election, there is no need for introspection, and certainly no need to accommodate the Sanders wing or to engage with progressive challenges from activists on the left, who are Putin’s puppets anyway. The party can continue on the same course, painting over the deep cracks in American society. Similarly, for centrists in Europe, under threat from both left and right, the Russia narrative allows them to sow distrust among the public for any movement challenging the dominant order.
For the state, Russiagate has encouraged liberals to forego their faculties and develop a state-worshiping, conspiratorial mindset in the face of a common, manufactured enemy. Liberal trust in institutions like the FBI has markedly increased since 2016, while liberals also now espouse a neocon foreign policy in Syria, Ukraine and other regions, with many supporting the vast increases in the US military budget and attacking Trump from the right.
For corporate media, too, the disciplining effect of the Russia narrative is highly useful, allowing them to reassert control over the means of communication under the guise of preventing a Russian “fake news” infiltration. News sources that challenge the establishment are censored, defunded or deranked, as corporate sources stoke mistrust of them. Meanwhile, it allows them to portray themselves as arbiters of truth. This strategy has had some success, with Democrats’ trust in media increasing since the election.
None of this is to say that Russia does not strive to influence other countries’ elections, a tactic that the United States has employed even more frequently (NPR, 12/22/16). Yet the extent to which the story has dominated the US media to the detriment of other issues is a remarkable testament to its utility for those in power.
A useful tool to forge truly “useful fools”
Typo in the last paragraph indicating a news article made on 12/22/2018, should be listed as 12/22/2016. Otherwise great article.
sigh—-I am still awaiting all of that proof…sigh… and dear dead major media… accusations are not proof.
In the past, I’ve been a democrat… and some politicians still appear to have intact brains—–but really THE DNC……… honesty is the best policy… try that.
i am surprised by how few comments for this article. fantastic article, analysis of the pathetic and sickening last gasp of establishment democrats. i think the term fake news was started by the clintonites and the dnc to defray all the bad press hillary was getting. what everyone has forgotten and is rarely mentioned is that hillary and the dnc were solely responsible for putting trump where he is. they derailed bernie sanders’ campaign by doing what they claim russia did to them. it is beautiful and harsh irony. they chose to lose with trump rather than win with sanders. keep that in mind. that little factoid seems to have left the discourse about all of this. i agree with ralph nader when he said, “the best thing about trump is he put an end to the clinton dynasty.” it was clinton, gore and john mccain that brought us the 1996 telecommunications act that indemnified the industry from lawsuits or even discussing health problems related to cell towers or phones. that egregious act will cost millions of lives by the criminal corporatists.
Dang straight. The DNC punked the Sanders campaign and alienated masses of enthusiastic Sanders supporters, who were then supposed to vote Clinton because they had no other choice. They stayed home election night. Now half the country has been whipped into a pack of screeching, hysterical banshees over the endless Russia-gate saga. Trump is now the “peace” candidate? God save us all, since our leaders probably won’t.
But Sanders himself was down with DNC dirty tricks against him… proving anyone who turns to Sanders is a sap.
Sanders’ presence in the Democrat 2016 primary was beneficial because, for all of his eventual sheep-dogging, he exposed the structural fault lines in the Democrat Party operation.
He also introduced topics into the conversation that needed to be included. The Democrat Party is where progressive activism goes to die. But Sanders’ run was a net loss for the Democrat elites and a net win for expanding the political conversation outside of the neoliberal mainstream, proving cross-appeal of a progressive to principled populists who are not liberals and who had been ignored by the Democrat Party.
Yes I agree. This is a great thorough article on why the country has gotten to this state. Thank you! It makes me sick to my stomach. I knew there was a reason why i never liked Hillary. After Bernie was pushed out I didn’t know who to vote for. I am embarrassed and mad that I voted for Hillary because i was afraid of splitting the vote. Another lie from the DNC. I am done with them… i don’t think they can be revived.
This is the most damning roundup of neoliberal perfidy I have seen in so many words. It should be widely circulated, and I’ll press into service by reblogging it. It shines by casting light on all the abuse those who don’t sufficiently toe the line of Kremlin culpability for whatever ails the US have suffered by the government, the media, and online gatekeepers. This deep state censorship is really scary and something every American should know is happening.
Elections in the USA have become like those in a banana republic. Why are the controllers of this country so afraid of democracy?
“Hysteria”? “McCarthyism”?
This nonsensical article is just sad, more evidence of what Eric Draitscher at Counterpunch has titled ” The Curious Case of Pro-Trump Leftism.”
This bombshell case of Trump’s epic criminality now has its scoffers, who join hands with the Republican Trumpians in poo-poohing the litany of clear evidence of Trump’s monumental career of crime.
And so we get this holier-than-thou complaint of insufficient purity from Macleod.
Fine, join with Putin and Trump, and Sheldon Adelson, and Hannity, and Buchanan, and all the ghouls and villains of global fascism, in deriding the greatest soap opera of our time. Tell me, Macleod, where else can we see such a revealing look at the machinations of those in financial and now political power? From the Glasgow University Media Group?
FAIR has become a joke on this issue, just as it has in its anti-atheist bias.
Oh——Martin, actually America is kind of a joke now and it’s not just because so many democrats didn’t trust Hillary. This doesn’t make the voters into Pro Trump leftists. as we don’t seem to have 2 parties anymore. If I hear the term CENTRIST’ once more time I will scream. Centrist has another meaning now “sell out politicians,” and sadly this democratic republic has been slip sliding away since at least the last 4 presidents.
I guess T.S. Eliot was right—
“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, with whimper. : (
Your comment is sad, and funny.
You’re kind of moving McLeod’s point with your comment. Nowhere in this article is there any approval of Trump. And if you think it through then you can notice ”RussiaRussia!” actually distracts from the very real, very awful things about Trump that SHOULD be getting more press, like the judges he’s appointing, the environmental assault, yet more tax cuts for the rich, ending net neutrality, the dangerous people he’s appointed to high offices…… talk about ignoring the man behind the curtain.
All the things I just listed are facts; there is actual physical in-the-public-domain EVIDENCE that these things are real. We still do not have anything other than “high confidence” by “officials “ about Russia – and of course, their amplifying talking heads and fellow travelers like Mueller and Brennan, both men known for whom there is evidence that they lie under oath. So yeah, I take exception to being called a Trump lover by someone who isn’t paying attention to the very real problems that Trump is causing or exacerbating. From my perspective, RussiaRussia gives Trump cover.
The only way I can understand what Morgan Freeman is doing is to think that he no longer thinks of himself as black, brown, or white, but as a kind of light green such as that in the background of a hundred dollar bill.
LOL on that!
I am quite surprised that so little has been said about the likely political implications — in the narrow sense of partisan electoral politics — of the two year long Democratic Party, MSM, and deep state obsession with peddling their their patently preposterous Russiagate hoax narrative, for which they have STILL provided not a scintilla of eveidence whatsoever upon the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections in November. Just as the Dems are clearly clueless that the American public, including the overwhelming majority of Dems themselves, has lost all interest in their endless campaign to scapegoat Putin and Russia for the truly monumentally pathetic performance of their party in 2016, so to they seem oblivious to the not so difficult to discern probability that, far from winning big in Novemberby benefitting from a huge backlash against the misrule of Donald Trump, their party is much more likely to lose big instead. And why? Again it’s so simple that anyone but a Russiagate deluded Dem political analyst could hardly fail to miss it. How can they hardly expect to win back seats in Congress when the have given the common people of this nation no reason to vote for them. Indeed, they have said next to nothing about any of the many issues and problems which Americans consider to crucially affect their own lives. Instead they are a broken record ever repeating , “bad Russians!. Bad Russians!. bad Russians!.” Just aks yourself this; do you really have any idea what the Dem party now stands for, aside that is from getting more of their corrupt cronies elected? Is there even a SINGLE issue or position that the Dems seem willing to go to mat to see passed or revoked? Of course not, in truth the Dem party hasn’t actaully STOOD for anything whatsoever at least since the days of the Clintons!! And now they have advanced in their self-centered obliviousness of the needs of the American people to the point where they won’t even pretend to address, much less propose concrete solutions to, any of the issues on the minds of tens of millions of voting Americans. The levels of arrogance and being blissfully out of touch with those whom they are supposed to be representing, and whose votes they need to win, are truly staggering! I personally am expecting a GOP landslide again in Novemeber, and thus the installation of a still more reactionary, indeed fascistic regime in Washington than we have now. For 50 years now the Dems have done nothing but betray the interests of the working class in this country, but now, with their monotonous Russiagate hoax droning at the expense of all else they have truly gone of the rails and self-destructed. such would be a good thing only if there were another party already organized which could simply supplant them when they final die for good. Alas, there is no such party!
Thank you Alan MacLeod for this powerful, extremely important piece of work & to FAIR for bringing it to us. I have been closely following & trying to counter this Russophobia in the media & US politics for almost 3 years now & this is the single, most important article I’ve found. There are, however, 2 very important books which document it even further: “Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy” by Prof. Andrei P. Tsygankov of San Francisco State U., 2009 & with a new edition due out later this year, which, will hopefully be cheaper as the current “library edition” costs more than $100 for 240 pp, and “Creating Russophobia: Rrom the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria” by Guy Mettan, Swiss journalist/President of the Geneva Press Club, published in multiple languages, in English by Clarity Press 2017 $29.95. Mettan has also been a member of the Geneva Parliament since 2001 & served as speaker in 2010. I first discovered Tsygankov’s work thanks to the Dartmouth College Russian Foreign Policy course I audited for which his book on Russian Foreign Policy was a required text. In Italy last winter, I found an excerpt of Mettan’s book in the superb Italian geopolitical journal, Limes, & was subsequently invited to write a 3,500-5,000-word essay-review of it for a prestigious American university journal. But when I turned it in, it was curtly rejected for no sound reason & I have repeatedly hit the publishing walls everywhere I’ve turned & found only a hand-full of “like-minded intellectuals”, who will even read it & give me feedback. Such is the state of mind control & pollution in America today…no thanks to our almost all-powerful Establishment’s media. And I see in Martin’s outraged comment below that he is one of the “afflicted”…unless he has another agenda? But one correction before I sign off: unfortunately, MacLeod apparently missed the TV clip of Jeremy Corbyn I found in either The Independent or Guardian on-line immediately after the “Russian double-agent & daughter poisoning affair”. He courageously stood up in the British Parliament and demanded evidence of the ALLEGATIONS! only to be all but hooted down & pilloried by his colleagues. I missed his later statement quoted by MacLeod, but assume that, as a politician, he was back-peddling to some extent to prevent what power he has accrued in the Labor party from being utterly crushed. We’ve seen the same the same kind of acquiescence from Germany’s then Foreign Minister, now President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (sp?) after he dared to question the efficacy of NATO & its “saber-rattling” in June 2016…and, of course, we see similar behavior by Trump when he has been battered by The Establishment & its Media whenever he’s even suggested withdrawing US troops from Syria or N. Korea and all but crushed after any of his attempts at detente with Russia or N. Korea…indeed whenever he says a word or a tweet, much less take a step which does not conform to their Foreign Policy script.
Ok, you got me – I am one of the “afflicted,” and yes, I have a another agenda.
As to what these are, I have no idea at this moment, so I”ll let you diagnose.
“Russiagate” and “Russophobia” are stupid terms that go nowhere – this is Trumpgate, from beginning to end, and from whatever source the leaks and investigations come, it’s one hell of ride – but just not for the Vlad-fans who seem to demand proof, yes, Proof! on their doorstep now! of what is completely evident except for the most naive of the starry-eyed dictator-lovers who are a disgrace to the term “left.”
Martin, how can something be “completely evident” yet not capable of being proved? This is the language of religion, not science or research. You seem to be a True Believer, and America has a long tradition of True Believers, starting with the Puritans. Russiagate appears, rather, to be a psyop designed to gaslight the American people, a psyop designed to roll back the 2016 presidential election and install the deep state supporter Pence instead. It is a psyop coming from Hillary, a proven liar, and from several politically chosen leaders of IC, such as Brennan, Clapper, and Comey, who are known to have spoken less than the truth to Congress and whose dubious statements are recorded on tape and in the Congressional Record. I recommend that you read the Congressional report published by the Church Committee back in 1975 that catalogs an extensive history of misleading statements by the IC. The investigation led by Senator Church caused the creation of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to oversee the IC. Unfortunately, however, since the 2016 election, the Dems have completely forgotten to read the report by Dem Senator Church and his colleagues. The Dems in Congress have now become religious fundamentalists, and they act as if they supported the creation of Senate and House Intelligence Worship Committees. Something close to pure madness and irrational groupthink has descended on the Dem Party, which is for the most part unable to admit its own recent failures and is now falsely scapegoating Russia instead.
I am glad that FAIR has maintained its independent stance while other publications such as Mother Jones have completely capitulated to the mainstream narratives. Nice article.
I gotta say that this whole Russia-gate thing sure seems like a nothing-burger in terms of being a cause celebre for the DNC Dems. First of all, Clinton — for all her faults ( I voted Stein) WON the popular vote by reportedly 3 million votes, so she won the election right? No? Why not? Russians or electoral college rules? Second, I’m supposed to believe that those damn Rooskies — from another culture significantly different than ours — are MORE politically savvy in US politics than US right-wing conservatives (who are notoriously devious when it comes to hardball politics, and unfortunately have been ascendant since the late 70’s) and could have any significant impact against a background of $100’s of millions of expenditures by the GOP. Thirdly, how did they do it? By planting fake stories on the Internet? But I thought that EVERYTHING on the ‘Inter-tubes’ was TRUE (at least before ‘Russian meddling’)- – – there aren’t any scams or misrepresentations there, are there? And everybody of voting age could safely believe everything there (in spite of the constant warnings from shortly after it’s inception about doing the exact opposite!) Fourth, ‘the Russians use social media to sow political discord in our democracy’’. HUH? WTF? Are they SERIOUS? The RUSSIANS do that, NOT the right.and left wing politicos in the US? NOT the corporations (including entertainment/media corps, like MSNBC for instance?) in the US? NOT every-other drunk at the end of the bar? And the previous ~250 yrs of US political history was non-discordant? All the different social movements were just calmly, rationally assimilated into our body politic and we were sitting around holding hands singing ‘coom baya’ before the Russians poisoned the well?
Fifth, even Clinton reportedly said that the main thing that supposedly hurt her campaign was the reopening of the emails case by the FBI (by Comey I believe— I don’t keep up on the Clintonology enough to be sure of his name). Lastly, as the above article so well notes, the DNC Dems are focusing almost exclusively on this nebulous charge, while not pushing a progressive agenda,so I’ll guarantee that many ‘Putin stooges’ like we Greens, and the ‘basket of deplorables’ in the blue-collar ranks, etc aren’t going to be voting Dem POTUS anytime soon IF they field another hawk/‘free marketer’ again.
I gotta say that this whole Russia-gate thing sure seems like a nothing-burger in terms of being a cause celebre for the DNC Dems. First of all, Clinton — for all her faults ( I voted Stein) WON the popular vote by reportedly 3 million votes, so she won the election right? No? Why not? Russians or electoral college rules? Second, I’m supposed to believe that those damn Rooskies — from another culture significantly different than ours — are MORE politically savvy in US politics than US right-wing conservatives (who are notoriously devious when it comes to hardball politics, and unfortunately have been ascendant since the late 70’s) and could have any significant impact against a background of $100’s of millions of expenditures by the GOP. Thirdly, how did they do it? By planting fake stories on the Internet? But I thought that EVERYTHING on the ‘Inter-tubes’ was TRUE (at least before ‘Russian meddling’)- – – there aren’t any scams or misrepresentations there, are there? And everybody of voting age could safely believe everything there (in spite of the constant warnings from shortly after it’s inception about doing the exact opposite!) Fourth, ‘the Russians use social media to sow political discord in our democracy’’. HUH? WTF? Are they SERIOUS? The RUSSIANS do that, NOT the right.and left wing politicos in the US? NOT the corporations (including entertainment/media corps, like MSNBC for instance?) in the US? NOT every-other drunk at the end of the bar? And the previous ~250 yrs of US political history was non-discordant? All the different social movements were just calmly, rationally assimilated into our body politic and we were sitting around holding hands singing ‘coom baya’ before the Russians poisoned the well?
Fifth, even Clinton reportedly said that the main thing that supposedly hurt her campaign was the reopening of the emails case by the FBI (by Comey I believe— I don’t keep up on the Clintonology enough to be sure of his name). Lastly, as the above article so well notes, the DNC Dems are focusing almost exclusively on this nebulous charge, while not pushing a progressive agenda,so I’ll guarantee that many ‘Putin stooges’ like we Greens, and the ‘basket of deplorables’ in the blue-collar ranks, etc aren’t going to be voting Dem POTUS anytime soon IF they field another hawk/‘free marketer’ again.
Without a doubt, this is the best summary of media perverseness and the eagerness of centrist forces to exploit it that I have yet seen. I hope that the article is shared widely.
Without a doubt, this is the best summary of media perverseness and the eagerness of centrist forces to exploit it that I have yet seen. I hope that the article is shared widely.
The problem, it seems to me, is that the truth simply doesn’t matter anymore.
Trump’s meeting with Putin has unmasked power of the Deep State and its stenographers in the MSM like never before. The Neocons behind the curtain have never outed themselves so obviously. Yet because the coverage has been so hysterical, so extreme, so one-sided, few can see the proverbial forest for the warmongering trees.
Two other elements are driving us toward global thermonuclear war. The first is ignorance. The generations who’ve come of age after the fall of the Soviet Union don’t understand what nuclear weapons can do. They don’t realize that they have *always* been in mortal danger from an accident which could end civilization in an afternoon. Most importantly, never having lived through the 50s, 60s, and 70s, they never experienced the visceral fear of the instant annihilation of everyone and everything they’ve ever loved. As Stephen F Cohen points out, Republicans have always initiated detente, but this is the first time that reactionaries of both parties have opposed it, and the first time an American President has been called a traitor by mainstream politicians and pundits.
The Democratic Party certainly isn’t about to educate them. Indeed, the Democrats (with the help of partisan media) have managed to mutate most of their constituency into fear-freak Russophobes that have absolutely no idea how conservative they really are. These blind neo-McCarthyites at this point assume that Russia is an enemy, and many are demanding retaliation for its utterly-unproven “interference” in American Election Theater. They know nothing about NATO aggression on Russia’s border, of course, and don’t give a damn that Obama kicked off a new, trillion-dollar nuclear arms race. What will happen when President Harris/Booker comes into office, promising not to be weak, like Trump, in the face of “our greatest foe”?
Who will be left to stand against the end of the world, when the average American is this ignorantly suicidal?
Say what? “Truth”? “One-sided, thermonuclear, Putin/ Trump as peacenik saviors, “suicidal” – this thread seems to be spinning completely out of control. Thanks, MacLeod and FAIR, you done lost your minds on this one.
Now, what, OJ was innocent, Santa Claus is real, and Damn Turd Pol was framed! Yeah, ok.
Next you’ll be telling me what a swell guy Pence is going to be for world peace.
Martin, perhaps many of us remember all too well the weapons of mass destruction incident the innocents of this country and the middle east is still paying for. Perhaps we have grown bit smarter and don’t want to be lied to anymore by anyone.
The sight of Amerikastanis on discussion fora clawing each other to bits is wonderful. The more they hate, distrust, and fight each other the better. It’s almost worth being inflicted with Trump for eight years (because of course he’s going to be re elected in 2020 with a huge majority) to watch this infighting and especially the liberal meltdown.
The cultural War/political war in the US has created such a tsunami of propaganda that anything resembling truth in the media has been completely drowned out or corrupted.
The United States has become a dangerous rogue nation. Any geopolitical entity that fails to consider US intentions/actions toward them would be committing National Security malpractice. Putin had/has a duty to “deal” with the US challenge/threat to Russia.
The actual extent of Russian so-called “meddling” is difficult to ascertain, particularly because its energetic amplification is so important in the current propaganda war.
I expect that the Russian leadership and security services analyzed in depth the pros and cons of attempting to influence the US election. Whether to do it, how to do it, how to conceal the effort, etc. They would unquestionably have anticipated that discovery of any influence effort on their part would result in just the sort of blowback we are now seeing. What they could not possibly have foreseen — what none of us could have foreseen — was the full court press by Clinton & Establishment to lay the blame on Russia following the totally unexpected Clinton defeat.
Personally, I celebrate the election of Donald Trump, and even though I doubt any significant contribution by Russia, I fully approve of ***ANY*** foreign effort to influence the US political situation. One need only look at the core of US foreign policy, the Wolfowitz Doctrine — military domination of the world by the US — to see that “the world” needs to involve itself in US politics, Russia & China in particular. Putin is the preeminent world statesman of our times, and I support his effort to help the US escape the clutches of the Neocons (Israeli agents) and their apocalyptic, humanity-destroying war-mongering.
the current media feeding frenzy regurgitating the “Russian meddling” hypnosis is testament to the power of Propaganda under a NeoLiberal Capitalist narrative Bubble! Just a couple of “unnamed sources” and NSA/CIA officials(don’t forget these are the same folks who brought us the “Slam Dunk” evidence of Saddam as having nuclear WMDs!), and quickly echoed and re-echoed by scores of corporate media talking heads, and Voila! the New Cold War is being re-invented to blame everything wrong with the actual realities of a Clunkering and Collapsing Capitalist Calamity on the Russians. My goodness, if Putin is 1/10 as effective as he is being charged, he would be the most powerful man in human history, bar none! This whole RussiaGate false narrative is hogwash.
So reminiscent of the post-war Witch Hunts which were launched by liberals in the FDR Administration and groups such as the ACLU and League for Industrial Democracy. McCarthyite Witch Hunts were designed to repress all Progressive Movements not controlled by deep State spook agencies.
Contemporary McCarthyism has taken on a life of its own to quash Progressives as well and circulate War Propaganda. Amazing to watch Left Liberals slobbering over the CIA- FBI that not long ago hounded such people.
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PS – site administrator, seems like there’s more of these slipping through lately..?
Posted this on Reddit and got accused of being a Russian bot because, apparently, pushing people to question intelligence agencies is exactly what Russia wants. Neo-liberal McCarthyism at its finest.
Posted this on Reddit and got accused of being a Russian bot because, apparently, pushing people to question intelligence agencies is exactly what Russia wants. Neo-liberal McCarthyism at its finest.