What would a Russian defeat mean for the people of the West?

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Andrei Raevski
THE SAKER

Regular readers of the blog know that I separate our poor and long-suffering planet into two basic parts: Zone A, aka the AngloZionist Empire, aka the World Hegemony aka the “Axis of Kindness” and what I call Zone B, or the Free World.  Very approximately, we need to separate the ruling elites and the people they rule over separately.  Here is, very roughly, what we get:

  Zone A Zone B
Ruling elites Hate Russia/Putin Some fear the Hegemony, but others don’t
People Mostly indifferent or hostile Mostly support Russia/Putin

Next, I propose to make a simple thought experiment.  Let’s assume that Russia loses the war against NATO.  We do *not* need to spell out how exactly such a defeat could/would happen, we simply assume that Russia is unable to achieve her goals of denazification and demilitarization of the Ukraine (and, really, all of NATO), that NATO forces are successful in defeating the Russian military machine (again, it does not matter how, with or without amazing Wunderwaffen) and that Russia very clearly loses.

We don’t even need to define what “defeat” would mean?  Maybe we can imagine that Russia gets to keep Crimea, but loses all her recently liberated regions from the former Ukraine, or maybe NATO manages to even occupy Crimea. I don’t see NATO tanks in downtown Moscow, but we can even imagine a purely psychological defeat in which both sides believe that Russia has lost and NATO won.

Again, details, no matter how improbable and far removed from reality, do not matter.  What matters is only this: once all the four groups above realize that NATO has defeated Russia, how would they react?

For the leaders of the Hegemony, this would be a dream come true.  In fact, the Neocons running the Hegemony will most likely decide that they need to “finish the job” which they did not finish in the 90s, and that Russia needs to be broken up into several parts.  This would be the West’s latest “final solution” for the “Russian problem”.

For the leaders of the Free World (sic), a Russian defeat would signal that there are no alternatives to the Hegemony and that like it or not, the AngloZionists will rule the planet.  Like the Borg in Star Trek like to proclaim: “We are the Hegemony.  Resistance is futile.  You will be assimilated“.

For most people in the [real] Free world, a Russian defeat would be a crushing disappointment for the simple reason that most people would see the AngloZionist plan for what it is: get Russia first, then take on and bring down China and then, eventually, Iran and any other nation daring to disobey the rulers of the Hegemony.

Clearly, this is not about the Ukraine, this is about the future of mankind as a whole.

But what about the people in Zone A who currently already live under the AngloZionist yoke?

[Quick reminder: I have decided, for various reasons, not to discuss internal US politics on the Saker blog and I will try hard to stick to this rule.  Still, I will state the obvious: we all now know the outcome of the latest elections in the USA and the adults in the room understand what happened, no need to list various truisms here.  If there is anybody reading this who would sincerely believe that some variation of the Neocon Uniparty in power will change things for the better or even slow down the inevitable collapse I would recommend that this person stop reading here.  Now for the rest of us:]

I think that the initial reaction of most people in Zone A will be a mix of relief (“Of course I knew that the West would win!“) and indifference (transgender issues are SO much more important!): their valiant “finest fighting force in the history of the world” kicked some russkie commie ass which most definitely deserved some ass-kicking.  Some of the most sanguine defenders of “western civilization” will even drop by our comments section and gloat “ha! ha! told you! your Putin and his clueless generals got their asses kicked by the most bestest US and NATO generals!“.  And for a while, they will feel really good.  Vindicated:  finally the dumbshit, stupid Russians will pay the price for electing and supporting such a weak, indecisive, naive, corrupt, incompetent (and possibly even dying of cancer) leader!

And if only the Kremlin had had the wisdom to listen to its “western friends”!

But no, the Kremlin did not, and now there is going to be hell to pay.  Of course, if Russia’s “western friends” had been in charge, they would have executed a lightening fast blitzkrieg a long time ago, smashed Banderastan into smithereens (à la Fallujah if you wish) and quickly and decisively defeated NATO.  But those clueless idiots in the Kremlin did not listen, and so they deserve what is coming next.

Okay, fair enough.

But what about the regular people in Zone A?  The ones whose “side” supposedly “won”?

Once the initial bliss and celebrations are over, what will happen to them next?

Anybody wants to take a guess?  If so, please post your thoughts in the comments section below.

My personal take is that after the defeat of Russia, the defeat of China (by whatever means) would be next.  Once that happens, all of the following will become decapitated and irrelevant: BRICS, SCO, CSTO.  The next country on the Hegemony’s kill list is Iran which, having lost the backing of both Russia and China will not be able to successfully challenge the Hegemony.  That, in turn will have major consequences for the entire Middle-East.  Wannabe Pasha Erdogan would be very quickly brought to heel.  Ditto for MBS.

The Israelis will feel like they “fixed the universe” well enough and that their Moshiach must be next 🙂

With Russia and China out of the way, Central Asia would be frankly easy picking for the Hegemony. In fact, all the Russian limitrophes would quickly be absorbed into the Hegemony.

The same goes for Pakistan and India, who would quickly lose most (or even all) of their sovereignty.  Afghanistan will be handed over to the (US-baked and run) ISIS.  Eventually, both Latin America and Africa will be fully recolonized (to the immense relief and joy of the local comprador class).

Now I submit that anybody with a modicum of information and intelligence will agree that the gang of woke freaks currently running the USA and almost every EU country out there doesn’t give a damn about the people they rule over: they see them only as means of production, in other words, as slaves who need to be given sufficient amounts of (bad) food and immense amounts of (truly demonic) “entertainment” to keep them nice, and happy and, above all, obedient and ignorant.  So here comes my question:

With Zone B gone, what hope for a better future, if any, could the slaves of the AngloZionist Hegemony keep in their hearts if our entire planet turns into Zone A?

The current repressive apparatus available to the US ruling class includes 17 “intelligence” agencies,  the biggest military aggression budget on the planet, the highest number of prisoners kept in jails, the total informational control provided by Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. militarized police forces and other agencies ready to deal with “internal terrorists” (sometimes defined as any MAGA person), and a school and college system designed to create obedient office plankton (white collar) and fast food employees (blue collar) with almost no awareness, nevermind any understanding, of the outside world.  EU states are not quite there (yet) but they are catching up fast.

This is not a system which will simply collapse by itself or, even less so, be overthrown by its “deplorables”.

I have mentioned this many times in the past: the US political system is neither viable nor reformable.

The EU political system is basically an extension of the US political system, just with a more strongly pronounced colonial mindset (“fuck the EU” right?).

So will the Hegemony turn our entire planet into a giant and “woke” Disney World run by Neocons?

Not as long as Russia, China, Iran and others are standing firm.  But if these “resisting nations” are crushed, then it's show over for the people of Zone A whose slavery will not only last even much longer, but whose living conditions will further rapidly deteriorate

And once the “bread and games” thingie fails, you can bet that violent repression is next.

ANY regime which seriously aims at colonizing the entire planet (which the Hegemony undoubtedly does!) will ALWAYS keep its own population in slave-like conditions, materially, culturally and spiritually.  So, to paraphrase Malcolm X, the only hope for the House Negros still remains the Field Negro.  Whether the House Negros themselves understand that or not is immaterial.

Let me rephrase this in an even more shocking way: the last and only hope for the people of the USA and the EU would be a total Russian victory against NATO.  A NATO defeat will bring down not only NATO itself, but also the EU and that, in turn, would force the US to (finally!) become a normal, civilized, country.

As for the EU, a NATO defeat would mean the end of one thousand years of imperialism.

I get it.  For a civilization built upon the assumption of racial superiority (whether officially proclaimed or not) the notion that the only possible salvation could come from “inferior Asiatic barbarians” is shocking and can only be considered as an extreme form of doubleplusbadcrimethink.  Such a thought is, quite literally, unthinkable for most.

Yet, as I mentioned above, what the House Negros understand or not is entirely irrelevant.  Not only do they have no agency, they want none (Poland anybody?).

Conclusion:

Russia won’t lose this war, most of us understand that.  But to those who don’t, I will offer one simple conclusion: a Russian defeat would be a disaster for Russia.  And China.  And the rest of the planet.  But it will also be a true calamity for the oppressed people of the West.  They, of all people, should be very careful what they wish for. And the next time they want to hallucinate and gloat about a “strategic Russian retreat/defeat” they should ask themselves a simple question: what might this mean for *me* and *my own* future?  Do I really have a reason to rejoice?

Maybe they simply got used to being slaves and the idea of *real* freedom and diversity simply terrifies them?

—Andrei

Andrei Raevski is the founding editor of the Saker network of sites dedicated to geopolitical analyses.

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS



Is Elon Musk liable to be part of the solution or a more insidious problem? The omens are mixed.

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the establishment media is an enabler of endless wars and illegitimate oligarchic power

Tucker Carlson, Yasha Levine, Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, & Caitlin Johnstone

First an intriguing (if, in our view, way too optimistic) analysis by Tucker Carlson and Jimmy Dore. Then a short "cold water" opinion by Yasha Levine. Then realism—read a pessimistic look—by Lee Camp and, of course, Caity Johnstone, with whom we entirely agree. In an almost uniformly bleak media horizon, there is some reason for many people to want to be cautiously optimistic, but we must recall who Musk's closest business allies are, including his deep connections with the sinister national security state and the massive interests behind it. And that, like all arrogant businessmen and billionaires, he may also be alarmingly naive about the ugliness of imperialist politics.

Tucker: You just became a little more powerful

ENTHUSIASTIC: TUCKER CARLSON
Fox News host reacts to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' #FoxNews #Tucker


Apr 25, 2022
Tucker may be prematurely hailing the arrival of Musk as a magic solution to the huge problem of entrenched control of media by the US ruling class. 

Elon Musk Buys Twitter & Liberals Freak Out!

CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC: JIMMY DORE
Apr 26, 2022

HOPEFUL BUT THERE'S ROUGH WATER AHEAD: LEE CAMP

April 26, 2022
I am one of the most censored comedians in America. If you want to see my work continue, becoming a member at Patreon.com/LeeCamp and get exclusive content. Thank you producers! -- William Fitz, Nicholas Carlough, Kyle K. Mann, Robin Laurain, Andrew Standfast, Orleny Silverio, FreeAssangeNow, Michaelynn Kyjonka, Medea Benjamin -- (If you want to join the list of producers, become a top-tier member at Patreon.com/LeeCamp )

UNPERSUADED SKEPTIC: YASHA LEVINE

Elon Musk is Surveillance Valley

Apr 25, 2022

The latest outrage to hit the wire is that the board of Twitter has agreed to accept Elon Musk’s buyout proposal, which will give Elon full control of the company and allow him to take it private. There’s lots of howling all around, as if they sky is falling. If you ask me, Twitter — and social media in general — is garbage tech that mostly wastes our time and poisons our minds. But regardless of where you stand sale of Twitter to a Twitter-addicted oligarch, to me the deal just further proves the thesis of my book, Surveillance Valley. The Internet is an extension of the American Empire.

I mean here you have Elon — an “outsider” — mounting a hostile takeover of a major global communication platform. And the thing about him is that he’s not just a successful lithium battery salesman, he’s also a major military contractor doing business with the most secretive and “strategically important” spooks in America.

For example: Even as he was planning his takeover this April, this was happening: the culmination of a nearly $300 million military contract to launch a classified American spy satellite.

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — A classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office was launched into space from California on Sunday.

The NROL-85 satellite lifted off at 6:13 a.m. from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

It was the first mission by the NRO to reuse a SpaceX rocket booster, Vandenberg said in a statement.

…The NRO only described the NROL-85 satellite as a “critical national security payload.”

Its launch was one of three awarded by the Air Force to SpaceX in 2019 for a combined fixed price of $297 million.

The NRO is the government agency in charge of developing, building, launching and maintaining U.S. satellites that provide intelligence data to senior policymakers, the intelligence community and the Defense Department.

I haven’t done a full accounting of Elon Musk’s military contractor history, but this is not a one-off thing for him. Since going into the space business, he’s angled to be a dealer of private rocket and satellite services to the Pentagon. In 2019, he got funding to test his Starlink satellites so they could route encrypted coms for the Air Force. 2020, he signed a $149 million deal to track missiles — aka to spy on the sky. And of course, in 2021, he won a $2.89 billion contract with NASA. And I’m sure there is much much more there — I just haven’t been paying much attention to the nexus of Silicon Valley and America’s sprawling security state over the last few years, as I’ve moved on to other things after writing Surveillance Valley.

But, yeah, the fact is that a “free speech” “outsider” oligarch now running a major public communication platform has a ridiculously close relationship to America’s security state. He’s been making good money doing his part to make sure America maintains its global military dominance. What do you think he’ll do with Twitter?

Yasha Levine is a Russian-American investigative journalist and author. Levine, who was born in the Soviet Union, is a former editor of Moscow-based satirical newspaper The eXile.[2][3] He has written the book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet which was published in 2018.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE: PESSIMISTIC REALISM

Billionaires Only Come To The Rescue In Movies And Comic Books

Twitter has done an about-face and sold the company to the richest person in the world for $44 billion.

Rightists are having a merry old time making fun of the melodramatic reactions from high-profile liberals who fear Elon Musk’s purchase will lead to more free speech on the platform for people who don’t align with them politically, and many of the blue-checkmarked commentariat who live on Twitter and can’t go five minutes without checking their notifications are making a big show of pretending they’re about to leave.

Many critics on the left are responding to the news by ringing alarm bells about a powerful oligarch controlling an influential social media platform, as though Twitter was anything besides oligarch-controlled before today and as though billionaires buying up media is some shocking new development. Some anti-imperialists have expressed tentative hope that this new development may lead to some rollback of the jarring escalations in censorship we’ve been seeing on the platform in defense of US empire narratives, due to the plutocrat’s comments on the importance of free speech.

From what I can see, though, the overwhelming majority of excitement on Twitter about Musk’s purchase is coming not from those who challenge power in any meaningful way but from those who want Donald Trump’s account restored and want to be able to say mean things to trans people. And I suspect that says a lot about what we’re looking at here.

This important distinction was summed up by journalist Michael Tracey, who tweeted, “The biggest test for Elon Musk will not be whether he rolls back the most obvious ‘woke’ content policies — that should be a given — but whether he continues to let Twitter be used as a vehicle for the US national security state to ‘counter’ official enemies like Russia and China.”

Speaking for myself I won’t be surprised if we do see some of the former, but I will be absolutely astonished if we see the latter.

You don’t get to be a billionaire, much less a billionaire with massively influential media ownership, unless you collaborate with existing power structures. Musk has certainly been collaborating with the oligarchic empire very nicely up until this point, and it’s a safe bet that his purchase would not be happening if the empire felt its narrative control machine was in any way threatened by it.

Believing Elon Musk is going to save Twitter is as naive as believing Joe Biden was going to save America. Arguing over which oligarchs should control the media is as silly and undignified as arguing over which oligarch-owned politicians should run the government.

Billionaires coming to the rescue only happens in movies and comic books. You’re as likely to be saved by Elon Musk as you are by Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark.

Image

How many times are people going to fall for this “a billionaire is about to stick it to the man and save us all” schtick? It’s very sad that we’re at a point where speech is being throttled so severely that people are hoping an eccentric billionaire will swoop in and rescue them from oppression. Real life is like a dumber, more boring version of Gotham City, except Batman is working with the bad guys.

I’ll start paying attention to Musk’s talk about free speech if and when Twitter stops censoring Russian media and unbans people like Scott Ritter who were removed from the platform for questioning official empire narratives about what’s happening in Ukraine. Until then I’m going to assume he’s at most only interested in protecting speech that doesn’t threaten the powerful like Republican partisan bullshit and hate speech against marginalized groups.

The billionaires are not coming to save us. The idea that they might is a carefully constructed propaganda narrative that we’ve been sold for generations. The leaders of the capitalist class are not going to overturn the systems of oppression and exploitation which form the very foundation of capitalism. Superhero stories are designed to prevent us from realizing that only we the people have the power to rescue ourselves.

ABOUT CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Caitlin Johnstone is a 100 percent crowdfunded rogue journalist, bogan socialist, anarcho-psychonaut, guerilla poet and utopia prepper living in Australia with her American husband and two kids. She writes about politics, economics, media, feminism and the nature of consciousness. She is the author of the illustrated poetry book "Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers."

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

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 ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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WASHINGTON POST DISGRACEFULLY PROMOTES A MCCARTHYITE BLACKLIST FROM A NEW, HIDDEN, AND VERY SHADY GROUP

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This is an article from our series on septic media

With the help of uncritical journalists, a story about “fake news” ended up disseminating far more than it exposed.
, The Intercept 
[First posted on November 26 2016]

 We're reprinting this article due to a recrudescence of attacks on anti-imperialist media. 
THE WASHINGTON POST on Thursday night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg — headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” — cites a report by an anonymous website calling itself PropOrNot, which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”

The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.

This Post report was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website on Friday after it was published.

Yet the article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics. It was not surprising to learn that, as BuzzFeed’s Sheera Frenkel noted, “a lot of reporters passed on this story.” Its huge flaws are self-evident. But the Post gleefully ran with it and then promoted it aggressively, led by its Executive Editor Marty Baron:

In casting the group behind this website as “experts,” the Post described PropOrNot simply as “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” Not one individual at the organization is named. The executive director is quoted, but only on the condition of anonymity, which the Post said it was providing the group “to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers.”

In other words, the individuals behind this newly created group are publicly branding journalists and news outlets as tools of Russian propaganda — even calling on the FBI to investigate them for espionage — while cowardly hiding their own identities. The group promoted by the Post thus embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy, but without the courage to attach individual names to the blacklist. Echoing the Wisconsin senator, the group refers to its lengthy collection of sites spouting Russian propaganda as “The List.”

The credentials of this supposed group of experts are impossible to verify, as none is provided either by the Post or by the group itself. The Intercept contacted PropOrNot and asked numerous questions about its team, but received only this reply: “We’re getting a lot of requests for comment and can get back to you today =) [smiley face emoticon].” The group added: “We’re over 30 people, organized into teams, and we cannot confirm or deny anyone’s involvement.”

Thus far, they have provided no additional information beyond that. As Fortune’s Matthew Ingram wrote in criticizing the Post article, PropOrNot’s Twitter account “has only existed since August of this year. And an article announcing the launch of the group on its website is dated last month.” WHOIS information for the domain name is not available, as the website uses private registration.

More troubling still, PropOrNot listed numerous organizations on its website as “allied” with it, yet many of these claimed “allies” told The Intercept, and complained on social media, they have nothing to do with the group and had never even heard of it before the Post published its story.

 

At some point last night, after multiple groups listed as “allies” objected, the group quietly changed the title of its “allied” list to “Related Projects.” When The Intercept asked PropOrNot about this clear inconsistency via email, the group responded concisely: “We have no institutional affiliations with any organization.”

In his article, the Post’s Timberg did not include a link to PropOrNot’s website. If readers had the opportunity to visit the site, it would have become instantly apparent that this group of ostensible experts far more resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant, demonstrable bias in promoting NATO’s narrative about the world; and that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a wide range of critics and dissenters.

To see how frivolous and even childish this group of anonymous cowards is — which the Post venerated into serious experts in order to peddle their story — just sample a couple of the recent tweets from this group:

As for their refusal to identify themselves even as they smear hundreds of American journalists as loyal to the Kremlin or “useful idiots” for it, this is their mature response:

The Washington Post should be very proud: It staked a major part of its news story on the unverified, untestable assertions of this laughable organization.

One of the core functions of PropOrNot appears to be its compilation of a lengthy blacklist of news and political websites that it smears as peddlers of “Russian propaganda.” Included on this blacklist of supposed propaganda outlets are prominent independent left-wing news sites such as Truthout, Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Consortium News, and Truthdig. (And The Greanville Post)

Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and the Ron Paul Institute, along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the publishing site WikiLeaks. Far-right, virulently anti-Muslim blogs such as Bare Naked Islam are likewise dubbed Kremlin mouthpieces. Basically, everyone who isn’t comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new “plugin” that automatically alerts the user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet.

 

TO HYPE ITS story, the Post article uncritically highlights PropOrNot’s flamboyant claim that stories planted or promoted by Russia’s “disinformation campaign” were viewed more than 213 million times. Yet no methodology is provided for any of this: how a website is determined to merit blacklist designation or how this reach was calculated. As Ingram wrote: “How is that audience measured? We don’t know. Stories promoted by this network were shared 213 million times, it says. How do we know this? That’s unclear.”

Presumably, this massive number was created by including on its lists highly popular sites such as WikiLeaks, as well the Drudge Report, the third-most popular political news website on the internet. Yet this frightening, Cold War-esque “213 million” number for Russian “planted” news story views was uncritically echoed by numerous high-profile media figures, such as New York Times deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman and professor Jared Yates Sexton — although the number is misleading at best.

Some of the websites on PropOrNot’s blacklist do indeed publish Russian propaganda — namely Sputnik News and Russia Today, which are funded by the Russian government. But many of the aforementioned blacklisted sites are independent, completely legitimate news sources that often receive funding through donations or foundations and have been reporting and analyzing news for many years.

 
(RIGHT) The group commits outright defamation by slandering obviously legitimate news sites as propaganda tools of the Kremlin.

One of the most egregious examples is the group’s inclusion of Naked Capitalism, the widely respected left-wing site run by Wall Street critic Yves Smith. That site was named by Time magazine as one of the best 25 Best Financial Blogs in 2011 and by Wired magazine as a crucial site to follow for finance, and Smith has been featured as a guest on programs such as PBS’s Bill Moyers Show. Yet this cowardly group of anonymous smear artists, promoted by the Washington Post, has now placed them on a blacklist of Russian disinformation.

The group eschews alternative media outlets like these and instead recommends that readers rely solely on establishment-friendly publications like NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and VICE. That is because a big part of the group’s definition for “Russian propaganda outlet” is criticizing U.S. foreign policy.

PropOrNot does not articulate its criteria in detail, merely describing its metrics as “behavioral” and “motivation-agnostic.” That is to say, even if a news source is not technically a Russian propaganda outlet and is not even trying to help the Kremlin, it is still guilty of being a “useful idiot” if it publishes material that might in some way be convenient or helpful for the Russian government. In other words, the website conflates criticism of Western governments and their actions and policies with Russian propaganda. News sites that do not uncritically echo a pro-NATO perspective are accused of being mouthpieces for the Kremlin, even if only unwitting ones.

While blacklisting left-wing and libertarian journalists, PropOrNot also denies being McCarthyite. Yet it simultaneously calls for the U.S. government to use the FBI and DOJ to carry out “formal investigations” of these accused websites, “because the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business.” The shadowy group even goes so far as to claim that people involved in the blacklisted websites may “have violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws.”

In sum: They’re not McCarthyite; perish the thought. They just want multiple U.S. media outlets investigated by the FBI for espionage on behalf of Russia.

 

WHO EXACTLY IS behind PropOrNot, where it gets its funding, and whether or not it is tied to any governments is a complete mystery. The Intercept also sent inquiries to the Post’s Craig Timberg asking these questions, and asking whether he thinks it is fair to label left-wing news sites like Truthout “Russian propaganda outlets.” Timberg replied: “I’m sorry, I can’t comment about stories I’ve written for the Post.”

As is so often the case, journalists — who constantly demand transparency from everyone else — refuse to provide even the most basic levels for themselves. When subjected to scrutiny, they reflexively adopt the language of the most secrecy-happy national security agencies: We do not comment on what we do.

Timberg’s piece on the supposed ubiquity of Russian propaganda is misleading in several other ways. The other primary “expert” upon which the article relies is Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a pro-Western think tank whose board of advisers includes neoconservative figures like infamous orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis and pro-imperialist Robert D. Kaplan, the latter of whom served on the U.S. government’s Defense Policy Board.

What the Post does not mention in its report is that Watts, one of the specialists it relies on for its claims, previously worked as an FBI special agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force and as the executive officer of the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. As Fortune’s Ingram wrote of the group, it is “a conservative think tank funded and staffed by proponents of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia.”

PropOrNot is by no means a neutral observer. It actively calls on Congress and the White House to work “with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system, effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation of the election.”

In other words, this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards — putative experts in the pages of the Washington Post — is actively pushing for Western governments to take punitive measures against the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme ideological framework that the Post concealed from its readers.

 

EVEN MORE DISTURBING than the Post’s shoddy journalism in this instance is the broader trend in which any wild conspiracy theory or McCarthyite attack is now permitted in U.S. discourse as long as it involves Russia and Putin — just as was true in the 1950s when stories of how the Russians were poisoning the U.S. water supply or infiltrating American institutions were commonplace. Any anti-Russia story was — and is — instantly vested with credibility, while anyone questioning its veracity or evidentiary basis is subject to attacks on their loyalties or, at best, vilified as “useful idiots.”

Two of the most discredited reports from the election season illustrate the point: a Slate article claiming that a private server had been located linking the Trump Organization and a Russian bank (which, like the current Post story, had been shopped around and rejected by multiple media outlets) and a completely deranged rant by Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald claiming that Putin had ordered emails in the WikiLeaks release to be doctored — both of which were uncritically shared and tweeted by hundreds of journalists to tens of thousands of people, if not more.

WaPo's editor Marty Baron: Shamelessly pushing manure to suit the deep state, but he's one of the country's media stars.

The Post itself — now posing as a warrior against “fake news” — published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that’s to say nothing of the paper’s disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of “fake news” from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.

Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists.

So the story spread in a flash, like wildfire. Tens of thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions, consumed it, believing that it was true because of how many journalists and experts told them it was. Virtually none of the people who told them this spent a minute of time or ounce of energy determining if it was true. It pleased them to believe it was, knowing it advanced their interests, and so they endorsed it. That is the essence of how fake news functions, and it is the ultimate irony that this Post story ended up illustrating and spreading far more fake news than it exposed.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience. 

—The Editor, The Greanville Post
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MUST WATCH: Top Corporate Media Myths That Perpetuate Income Inequality

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The Real News Network • Inequality Watch

The Top 5 Mainstream Media Myths That Perpetuate Income Inequality

December 27, 2019
 
The Real News takes aim at the top 5 mainstream myths that bolster income inequality and tout the ultra-rich.

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And before you leave

THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN

The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.



JIMMY DORE: Trump/Biden-Ukraine Corruption & Impeachment Media Ignores w/Aaron Mate’

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PATRICE GREANVILLE


[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is easily one of the BEST programs produced by Jimmy Dore, in a long roster of superior examples of vital journalism and remarkable lucidity in interpreting events. Note that Jimmy is often passionate in his presentations, as it should be, when contemplating genocide, ecocide and power-enabling hypocrisy and organised global corruption of colossal dimensions—none of which is ever reported or commented on by the humungous media machinery owned and built by the world's billionaires.  And never will be. 

As we have said before, the world would not even remotely be in the miserable state it is if the media—even a fraction of the corporate media—was doing a merely decent job. Decent, mind you, not even superior, the way Jimmy and his ilk, including this humble website, and Aaon Maté's The Grayzone, and the small group of genuine dissident sites demonstrate that it can and should be done.

As always, we ask that you DISSEMINATE this post as widely as possible. We need to deflate and ideally nip  this scandalous fraud in the bud (hard as that is to imagine given the prevailing Trump derangement syndrome Jimmy refers to in his own presentation and the abject, wholesale prostitution of the corporate media, and many supposedly non-establishment venues).  Fact is, there are intelligent and principled people out there, and they are not just a puny group that you can squeeze into a telephone booth. We are tens of millions. Maybe far more. But our voices are consistently negated and ghettoised by the mainstream media and the establishment's numerous shills, all of whom think and speak publicly only within the confines of a rump spectrum extending all the way from the ultra right to the center left. 

As many of you know, the official media's deficits and vices are legion, and that's when we critique the problem only on its "horizontal" aspects. Don't get us started on the "vertical" deficits of "professional journalism", American style.

•Sep 26, 2019
 

About the author(s)
Patrice Greanville is a media critic and founding editor of The Greanville Post.

This post is part of our Orphaned Truths series with leading cultural and political analysts.




 

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