Russiagaters Now Claiming NFL Debate Is Fueled By A Kremlin Conspiracy. Yes, Really.

My new favorite cartoon show has no animated characters, no eye-popping double takes, no attempted murders via defective ACME products and no rabbits dressing up as women to deceive unrealistically credulous hunters with speech impediments. Nevertheless, it is just as wacky, zany and hilarious as any other cartoon show, and makes for just as entertaining an escape from the grinding everyday experience of the real world. My favorite cartoon show is called Russiagate, and you can tune in to watch it every day on cable news.

In their latest knee-slapping goofball escapade, the cast and crew of the Russiagate cartoon have been asserting, with straight faces, that the debate over the on-field protests against racism and police brutality by NFL players is the result of a Kremlin conspiracy. As usual they offer no evidence for this claim apart from the authoritative tone in which they say it, and as usual it is being swallowed and passed around as fact by the pussyhatted McWarriors of the McResistance anyway.

New reports from establishment outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters and ABC News have — in all seriousness and in real life — been advancing a completely unsubstantiated claim made by ambitious rookie Senator James Lankford that the Russian government worked to stir up the debate over the NFL protests using Twitter bots and viral hashtags.

“We watched, even this weekend, the Russians and their troll farms, their internet folks, start hashtagging out #TakeAKnee and also hashtagging out #BoycottNFL,” Lankford said during a Senate hearing on threats to US security.

“They were taking both sides of the argument this weekend … to try to raise the noise level of America and make a big issue seem like an even bigger issue as they are trying to push divisiveness in this country.”

Never mind the fact that this divisiveness happens to consist of the same exact textbook wedge issue politics that Democrats and Republicans have been using for decades to manipulate the public into supporting America’s two increasingly indistinguishable pro-establishment political parties. Never mind the fact that Russians would be doing both Democrats and Republicans a huge favor by fanning the flames of a debate involving both America’s blood-soaked racial problems and flag-waving patriotism to bolster the insipid us vs. them political environment which the US power establishment uses constantly to keep the public locked into a fake two-party system with the illusion of free choice. Never mind the fact that America doesn’t need Russia’s help to find outrage in its gaping racial wounds. This is a cartoon show. Don’t think about it too hard.

Oh be fair. Everyone knows there was no racism in the US until Lenin and Putin started tweeting about it in 1917.

— Chris Floyd (@empireburlesque) September 26, 2017

Even Clint Watts is not sure Twitter accounts weighing in on NFL debate were RU. But it has become accepted truth.https://t.co/jIsQnR9txw pic.twitter.com/DCzgwvZKrO

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 28, 2017

The whole NYT article is based on secret decisions by new neocon/Dem group (https://t.co/s1dIqBqxmb), but it's Russia, so no evidence needed https://t.co/tz44erHxWd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 28, 2017

Bill Kristol, Mike Morell & Chertoff start new group & w/in 2 months its secret analysis is authoritative in NYT https://t.co/iKjKyJc0Xy

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 28, 2017

In a feigned attempt to substantiate their cartoonish reporting, these Russiagate-promulgating establishment outlets have been citing a neoconservative policy group the The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald ripped to shreds back in July of this year. Greenwald’s article shows how the Alliance for Securing Democracy policy group is full of discredited lying war hawks like Bill Kristol, and goes on to describe how those neocons have been re-aligning themselves with the Democratic party in order to advance their bloodthirsty agendas more effectually.

This makes it all the more laughable when these outlets cite Alliance for Securing Democracy as a “bipartisan” group. Democratic neocons and Republican neocons working together to escalate cold war tensions is all it takes for something to be labeled “bipartisan” these days.

From Reuters:

A website built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project to counter Russian disinformation, showed tweets promoting both sides of the football debate from 600 accounts that analysts identified as users who spread Russian propaganda on Twitter.

From the New York Times:

Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts — human users and suspected bots alike — they have linked to Russian influence operations.

These establishment propaganda rags go out of their way to emphasise that this neoconservative firm is “bipartisan” to dupe readers into the belief that its findings are unbiased, as most Americans are unaware that neoconservatism spans both sides of the political aisle with increasing focus on the donkey party of late. This is really the only tool they have for inspiring confidence in their claims, since the Alliance for Securing Democracy refuses to disclosehow it came to its conclusions or how it identifies Russian propaganda accounts on Twitter.

This latest episode of daffy cartoon antics is coming on the back of the thoroughly discredited claims that Russian advertisements on Facebook influenced the 2016 election and the thoroughly discredited claim that Russia attempted to hack the elections systems of 21 states in the leadup to the November vote. In an excellent new article about the latter issue titled “Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?”, Greenwald wrote the following today:

Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump and the rest, nobody can possibly regard this climate as healthy. Just look at how many major, incredibly inflammatory stories, from major media outlets, have collapsed. Is it not clear that there is something very wrong with how we are discussing and reporting on relations between these two nuclear-armed powers?

Something very wrong indeed, Double-G. There’s something awfuwy scwewy going on awound here.

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