"Strømmen af "falske nyheder" i denne valgsæson fik støtte fra en avanceret russisk propaganda kampagne som skabte og spredte vildledende artikler med det mål at straffe Demokraten Hillary Clinton, hjælpe Republikaneren Donald Trump og underminere troen på det amerikanske demokrati, siger uafhængige forskere som følger operationen."
Mens artiklen i Washington Post ikke direkte linker til propornot siden, at gøre dette ville have afsløret den latterlige amatøragtige "metodologi" til alles beskuelse - nævner Timberg deres liste af online Boris Badenovs [Badenov er også et ordspil, idet "bad" betyder dårlig, forkert etc] som omfatter ikke blot Antiwar.com, men også Drudge Report, WikiLeaks, David Stockman's Contra Corner, the Ron Paul Institute, LewRockwell.com, Counterpunch, Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truth-out, og en hel skare af andre sider. Disse sider promoverede i følge Washington Post ikke kun en bølge af "falske nyheder" med det formål at slå Mrs. Clinton, men de gjorde det på ordre af en "centralt dirigeret" (i følge propornot) efterretningsoperation foretaget af Russerne. Så hvad bestod disse "falske nyheder" af? Timberg "rapporterer":
Kommentar: Delvist oversat af Sott.net fra Paying attention to reality? You're probably a 'Russian propagandist'
"Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery - including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of websites and social-media accounts - echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia."
Never mind that it was Hillary Clinton herself who heightened international tensions by threatening military retaliation against the Russians for supposedly unleashing via WikiLeaks a flood of embarrassing emails. In a speech touted as outlining her foreign policy platform, she railed:
"You've seen reports. Russia's hacked into a lot of things. China's hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we've got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us.According to the "experts" at propornot - granted anonymity by Timberg due to alleged fear of "Russian hackers" - to so much as note this clear threat is to brand oneself as a "Russian agent of influence."
"As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses."
And what about Mrs. Clinton's health problems - was reporting on this driven by Russian spies embedded in the alternative media? Or was it occasioned by this video, which saw her falling to the ground after leaving the 9/11 ceremony early? Are the folks at propornot and their fans at the Washington Post saying the amateur videographer who took that footage is a Russian secret agent? Were the television networks and other outlets that showed the footage "useful idiots," to employ a favorite cold war smear revived by propornot? Given their criteria for labeling people agents of the Kremlin, the answer to these questions has to be yes - and now we are falling down the rabbit hole, in a free-fall descent into lunacy.
Propornot's "criteria" for inclusion on their blacklist is actually an ideological litmus test: if you hold certain views, you're in the pay of the Kremlin, or else an "unwitting agent" - as former CIA head Mike Morell said of Trump. If you say anything at all positive about Russia or Putin - or a long list of entities, like China or "radical political parties in the US or Europe" (does this include the GOP?) - it's a dead giveaway. We're told to "investigate this by searching for mentions of, for example, 'russia', on their site by Googling for 'site:whateversite.com Russia', and seeing what comes up."
If only Sherlock Holmes had had Google at his disposal, those detective stories would've been a lot shorter!
The propornot site is filled with complex graphs, and the text is riddled with "scientific"-sounding phrases, but when you get right down to it their "methodology" boils down to this: if you don't fit within a very narrow range of allowable opinion, either falling off the left edge or the right edge, you're either a paid Russian troll or else you're being "manipulated" by forces you don't understand and don't want to understand.
Did you cheer on Brexit? You're Putin's pawn!
Vladimir Putin
Other proscribed opinions include: "gold standard nuttery and attacks on the US dollar," believing "the mainstream media can't be trusted," and "anti-'globalism.'" And to underscore their complete lack of self-awareness, we're told that additional warning signs of Putinism are "hyperbolic alarmism" and "generally ridiculous over-the-top assertions."
In their world, it isn't hyperbolic alarmism to point to ramshackle Russia, with a GDP equal to Spain's and a declining military budget that pales before our own, as an existential threat to the West. And if you're a reporter for the Washington Post, which has destroyed what reputation it had by effectively becoming the house organ of the Democratic National Committee, generally ridiculous overt-the-top assertions, such as those proffered by propornot, are "news."
The Post piece also cites an article published on the "War On The Rocks" web site (which is exactly what it sounds like). The authors, a triumvirate of neocons, avers that they've been "tracking" "Russian propaganda" efforts since 2014, and they've concluded that the Grand Goal of the Russkies is to "Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions" - as if this process isn't occurring naturally due to the depredations of a corrupt and arrogant political class.
Another insidious theme of Russian "active measures" as identified by these geniuses is "Stoking fears over the national debt, attacking institutions such as the Federal Reserve, and attempts to discredit Western financial experts and business leaders." So we mustn't talk about the national debt - because to do so brands one as a cog in Putin's propaganda machine. Gee, based on these criteria, we can only conclude that every vaguely conservative politician running for office in the last decade or so is part of the Vast Russian Conspiracy, not to mention numerous economists.
And that's not all - not by a long shot. Here's a list of more Forbidden Topics we're not supposed to discuss, except maybe in whispers in the privacy of our own homes: "Police brutality, racial tensions, protests, anti-government standoffs, online privacy concerns, and alleged government misconduct are all emphasized [by the Vast Russian Conspiracists - ed.] to magnify their scale and leveraged to undermine the fabric of society." After all, Russia Today is "emphasizing" these issues - so mum's the word!
Yes, these people are serious - but why should anyone take them seriously? Why is the Washington Post "reporting" this nonsense - and putting it on the front page, no less? In short, what's the purpose of this virulent propaganda campaign? After all, Hillary Clinton has been defeated, along with her campaign theme of "A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin." What does a continuation of this losing mantra hope to accomplish?
The folks at propornot are explicit about their goal: they want the government to step in. They want to close down these "agents of influence." In their own words, they want the FBI and the Department of Justice to launch "formal investigations" of the sites on their blacklist on the grounds that "the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business." They accuse the proprietors of the listed web sites - including us, by the way - of having "violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and other related laws."
Oh, but they say they want to "avoid McCarthyism"! They just want to shut us down and shut us up.
These people are authoritarians, plain and simple: under the guise of fighting authoritarianism, they seek to ban dissenting views, jail the dissenters, and impose a narrow range of permissible debate on the public discourse. They are dangerous, and they need to be outed and publicly shamed.
To be included on their list of "subversives" is really a badge of honor, and one we here at Antiwar.com wear proudly.
Kommentar: Further reading: Washington Post's Sloppy 'Journalism' Blames Russia for 'Fake News' Crisis and Trump's Win, While Pushing Neo-McCarthyism