A review of Russiagate, its propaganda and hysteria

Larry Kummer, Editor

8 years ago

Summary: Cold War II steadily gains momentum, despite having almost no basis in reality. Here we review a few of the many articles debunking this propaganda campaign. Let’s hope Americans begin to pay attention. A people so disconnected from reality, so credulous, cannot hope to remain a Republic.

“There’s really no question about Trump/Putin collusion, and Trump in fact continues to act like Putin’s puppet.”
— Typical delusional thinking from inside the Left’s bubble, by Paul Krugman on 17 November 2017.

Cold War II is a bipartisan project, as is Russiagate. Most of America’s major policy initiatives since 9/11 have been bipartisan — building the Surveillance State, passing the Patriot Act, and waging our foreign wars. No political polarization seen! An “echo, not a choice” is the key to our politics.

As for Russiagate, it makes little sense. Despite their supposedly massive infiltration of US computers, hacking the election, and control President Trump, they have nothing to show for this. Trump staffed his national security team with generals and defense contractors, all eager to restart the Cold War. Trump just signed a $700 billion check for military spending and approval for weapons sales to Ukraine. His national defense team advocates years of rapid spending growth. Our belligerent military foreign policy shows no sign of changing.

This post gathers some of the inconvenient truths about Cold War II. Let’s start with an article giving a big picture perspective on RussiaGate.

“Russiagate Is Making Everyone Stupid“

By Caitlin Johnstone at Medium.

“The establishment propagandists have shut down all dialogue and critical thinking by successfully advancing the narrative that everything they say is true and everything that contradicts what they say is Russian propaganda. By instilling a fear in their audience of all things Russian, any words that aren’t stamped with the approval of the western establishment are instinctively labeled Russian propaganda and therefore reflexively recoiled from.

Using tactics exemplified in the above smear pieces by The Guardian and NPR, thinking has been killed. People have been turned into drooling, flag-waving idiots.

“A new paradigm has been created wherein anti-establishment narratives are rejected by rank-and-file Americans not because of flawed arguments or factual inaccuracy, but solely because they are anti-establishment. The empire has created an impenetrable self-enforcing echo chamber, a mental prison of which their audience is their own wardens and guards. From that point they can weave any ridiculous ideas they like into the consciousness of mainstream media consumers, and it will be unquestioningly swallowed as gospel.

“And of course, it keeps the spotlight fixated on Russia, which keeps their own manipulations in the darkness. How hilarious is it that the first time the word “oligarch” was allowed into mainstream consciousness, it was being applied to Russians? Russiagate ensures that no matter what happens with Mueller, nothing about the US power establishment will ever have to change. The problem has been moved overseas to a distant icy potato patch they control all narratives about, which keeps Americans from paying attention to the Orwellian horrors being inflicted upon them by their own government. Keep them fixated on Russian oligarchs, and they’ll never notice that they’re living in a totalitarian oligarchy themselves.

“The more we fixate on Russia, the more stupid we become. The more stupid we become, the easier we are to manipulate and control. The easier we are to manipulate and control, the more we can be exploited without resistance by the Orwellian oligarchy that is the US power establishment. The more we can be exploited, the more powerful they become. And that’s what this whole game is ultimately about.”

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It is “hard to shake the feeling that we are living through a deranged re-run of the Cold War.
— Tony Wood on three new books about the Cold War 2, in the London Review of Books.

By now there are scores of articles documenting the hysteria of Cold War II and the typical McCarthyite persecution of those that refuse to go alone with it. But logic and facts mean nothing to our new Cold Warriors. But for those that care, here are articles providing both.

Other articles by Caitlin Johnstone at Medium. Note Leftists’attacks, going full-McCarthyite, in response to her fact-rich debunking of Russiagate (see examples here).

Article by Aaron Maté at The Nation

“Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact” — “From accusations of Trump campaign collusion to Russian Facebook ad buys, the media has substituted hype for evidence.”
“The Trump Team Definitely Colluded With a Foreign Power — Just Not the One You Think” — “Why are the media paying scant attention to Michael Flynn’s admissions about Israel?

More strange new information

Read these to learn things unknown to those who rely only on the major news media.

“The Russiagate scandal descends into total absurdity” by Alexander Mercouris — “US government paralysed as frantic searches for evidence to prove scandal true fail one by one.”
A social scientists speaks: “Were those Russian social media ads powerful enough to influence us? Let’s look at the evidence” by Babak Bahador at the WaPo. He is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington U.
“Vladimir Putin: Computer Genius?” by Andrew Cockburn at Truthdig — “The Democratic establishment seems to be telling us that the Russians were spectacularly successful in using the same tool that was a flop for the Clinton campaign.”
“‘Russiagate’ Zealots (Mainly Democrats) Have Become a Major Threat to US National Security” by Stephen F. Cohen (Professor Emeritus of Russian studies NY University and Princeton) at The Nation — “At an international summit in Vietnam last week, President Trump took necessary steps to reduce the perils of the new Cold War with Russia. Liberal Democrats call it ‘treasonous.’”
Putting Russiagate in perspective: “The most respectable conspiracy theory in Washington” by Matthew Walther in The Week.
A detailed review of the complex, even weird, stories told about Russiagate — from which he draws some plausible deductions: “Was the Steele Dossier the FBI’s ‘Insurance Policy’?” by Andrew McCarthy at National Review. This shows the weak basis for the big claims made about Russiagate, and the reason to suspect that it is a political attack on Trump.
Update: Even the WaPo admits that “There’s still little evidence that Russia’s 2016 social media efforts did much of anything.“

Recommended — Another source of incisive reporting about the follies of RussiaGate: the articles by Robert Perry and others at Consortium News.

Journalists have again joined the government’s parade

“The Basic Formula For Every Shocking Russia/Trump Revelation” by Michael Tracey at Medium — “The basic formula for every breaking Trump/Russia story is essentially as follows…” It is a 12-step program for Cold Warriors.

“The New York Times or Washington Post releases an article that at first blush appears extremely damning.
Anti-Trump pundits and Democrats react reflexively to the news, express shrieking outrage, and proclaim that this finally proves untoward collusion between Trump and Russia — a smoking gun, at last.
Aggrieved former Clinton apparatchiks *connect the dots* in a manner eerily reminiscent of right-wing Glenn Beck-esque prognostication circa 2009.
Self-proclaimed legal experts rashly opine as to whether the new revelation entails some kind of criminally actionable offense. …
The notion of Russian ‘collusion’ being key to toppling Trump becomes further implanted in the minds of the most energized Democratic activists …
Pointing out these glaring flaws in the latest anti-Russia frenzy is immediately construed by cynics as ‘defending Trump’ or ‘defending Sessions’ when it most assuredly is not. …
People who’d spent the past 12 hours frothing at the mouth gradually come to realize that their initial furor was probably overblown, and that a more sober look at the actual facts at hand reveal that the anti-Trump chorus probably got ahead of itself – again. …
Democrats who sought to capitalize on the uproar end up looking extremely foolish. …
It becomes ‘normalized’ (that new favorite buzzword!) to cast any meetings or contacts with Russian officials as inherently sinister. Rather than just a basic function of a Senator’s ordinary duties, meeting with ‘The Russians’ is increasingly viewed as evidence of nefarious intent, and perhaps participation in a grand global conspiracy.
Political ineptitude and clumsiness (as was very probably the case with Flynn) gets interpreted as something more calculated than it really is. …
A Trump official’s least egregious quality ends up being portrayed as his most egregious quality. …
The overall political climate gets further degraded and warped without any commensurate upside.
Repeat.”

“Facebook estimates 126 million people were served content from Russia-linked pages” by Dylan Byers at CNN — Buried in the article is the real story.

“Facebook does not know, however, how many of those 126 million people actually saw one of those posts, or how many may have scrolled past it or simply not logged in on the day that one of the posts was being served in their News Feed. …”This equals about four-thousandths of one percent (0.004%) of content in News Feed, or approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content. …Put another way, if each of these posts were a commercial on television, you’d have to watch more than 600 hours of television to see something from the IRA.'”

“The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened” by Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. He lists some of the many instances of fake news published by the major news media, all tilted in the same direction. Retractions are published later, buried in the news.

“The Lost Journalistic Standards of Russia-gate” by Robert Parry at Consortium News — “The Russia-gate hysteria has witnessed a widespread collapse of journalistic standards as major U.S. news outlets ignore rules about how to treat evidence in dispute.”

What does Putin think of all this?

The worst fate for a superpower is no longer to be taken seriously. Perhaps the Russians don’t take the second Cold War as seriously as the first. See “VLAD’S SECRET WEAPON: Stunning Bond girl lookalike is named Russia’s Defence spokeswoman” — “The Russian Ministry of Defence appointed 26-year-old former journalist Rossiyana Markovskaya as spokeswoman.” Also see the Spuknik News story.