The latest round of US sanctions against RT is a “desperate” attempt to silence opinions that deviate from Washington’s narrative, Joe Mhlanga, editor and founder of the South African ‘Behind the News’ network has said.
Mhlanga spoke to RT on Saturday, a day after the US rolled out new sanctions against the news outlet. According to the US State Department, RT has funded “proxy outlets” that engaged in “covert influence activity” in places including Africa, Germany, France, and Argentina. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went as far as to claim RT is “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.”
According to Mhlanga, it is getting increasingly “difficult” to listen to the “stupid pronouncements” spewed by US officials, as they never support them with any credible evidence.
“There’s a sense of desperation here… These guys like to speak without evidence, you see their track record – they would say there are weapons of mass destruction that killed three million people without evidence. So where is the evidence of RT covert operations?” Mhlanga argued.
“The way they say things, they think people are still not realizing that everything they do is based on lies,” he added. The analyst said that the sanctions targeting RT were a “predictable” step on the part of Washington, which often resorts to “stupid and bullying tactics” to silence those who do not play to its tune.
“When they do something and you respond – to them it’s a form of aggression, when they say something and you oppose it, you’re [accused] of [malign] influencing,” he stated, claiming that this policy is especially obvious in the case of Russia. “It’s like these guys are programmed that anything that comes from Russia they need to persecute.”
Anything and everything that [the American government] will pronounce is unfounded rumors, but they will act on it, they will make laws for it, they will go to war based on rumors.
Mhlanga was also outraged at the accusations that Moscow is influencing people in Africa through RT. In his press remarks on Friday, Blinken claimed that the news outlet ran an online platform in the region that “gave voice to Kremlin propagandists.” Mhlanga slammed this charge as coming from a “colonial master” who believes that “Africa is still in the 1800s” and that “Africans can’t think for themselves.”
“They have not stopped looting Africa and getting involved in African affairs – so when someone is coming to put true stories to assist Africa and treat African people as partners – the colonial master will never like that,” Mhlanga said.
Watch the full interview here: