Monday, July 30, 2018
Alan MacLeod: The Utiity of the RussiaGate Conspiracy Theory
The Utility of the RussiaGate Conspiracy Theory
Rachel Maddow compares Donald Trump to George Wallace on Jan. 5, 2016. Photo Credit: Screenshot / MSNBC
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
actordeclared;
“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.
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, 12/22/18).
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.
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