What does Joe Biden have in common with a New York Times article even critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin have described as “incompetent”? Both have received ringing endorsements from former US President Barack Obama.
“Democracy depends on an informed citizenry and social cohesion. Here’s a look at how misinformation can spread through social media, and why it can hurt our ability to respond to crises,” Obama tweeted on Wednesday – linking to an article published three days prior.
Written by William S. Broad, the top science journalist at the New York Times, the piece contains no actual science – merely a laundry list of conspiracy theories blaming Russia and Putin personally for wanting to “discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.”
“Analysts say” that Putin personally “played a principal role in the spread of false information” about vaccines, the coronavirus, and just about anything really, Broad argues.
Which analysts? Well, Broad cites only three professional Russia-baiters by name, uses two entirely unrelated stories from years ago that were in the general “blame Russia for disinformation” ballpark, and cites “sources” such as the infamous “Intelligence Community Assessment” blaming Russia for the 2016 presidential election.
Remember that one? The “Trump-Russia collusion” claim that Russia “hacked our democracy” (whatever that means) that the Democrats flogged for four years to explain losing to Donald Trump and attempt to oust him from office – until it imploded last May and they had to scramble to invent a bogus “Ukrainegate” conspiracy to actually impeach him – and the outlets like the Times and the Washington Post leveraged to get Pulitzers? Or has all this vanished in the mists of time, due to the month-long brain scrambling induced by the coronavirus lockdowns?
May 2019, incidentally, is when Broad wrote another hit piece along the exact same lines, only narrower in scope: he accused RT America of doing Putin’s bidding by reporting on theories that 5G wireless networks could be dangerous. No matter that mainstream US news outlets have reported on the issue in the exact same way – Broad saw “RUSSIA” and had to jump in.
Then, too, he chose not to interview actual scientists but Russiagate-pushers such as Ryan Fox, CEO of New Knowledge – the notorious outfit that blamed Russia for its own bot campaign in the 2017 Senate election in Alabama. In other words, a literal false-flag perpetrator.
Also on rt.com Obama squares up against Trump’s ‘PROPAGANDA NETWORK’ – but who’s got the bigger guns?It is tempting to try and pick apart Broad’s latest broadside line by line, but that would be insane. It’s entirely composed of self-serving quotes, innuendo, insinuations, transpositions, tropes and recycled propaganda – seriously, it even contains the bit about Putin having been in the KGB and the long-debunked“Gerasimov doctrine.”
By way of illustration, one of the “experts” Broad quotes has a line about “a cloud of Russian influencers,” which the NY Times journalist then describes thusly:
The players, he said, probably include state actors, intelligence operatives, former RT staff members and the digital teams of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a secretive oligarch and confident [sic] of Mr. Putin’s who financed the St. Petersburg troll farm.
“Probably!” Also, you left out the kitchen sink.
Little wonder one outspoken Putin critic, Sergey Radchenko, described it as the “most incompetent Russia article in the New York Times in recent memory.” He also called Obama’s endorsement of it “kind of worrying” – and considering he lives and works in Wales, that could easily be some British understatement right there.
If the mainstream media coverage of the 2016 US presidential election and its aftermath has taught us anything, it ought to be that fake news will fake news. It’s no surprise that Obama is promoting propaganda from the Times – along with the Post, it has practically become the official Pravda of the Democratic Party – but there is something deeply cynical about the man who literally presided over the US law enforcement and intelligence cooking up the original “Russiagate” fraud now seeking to perpetuate it.
Meanwhile, the Democrat-media complex is howling how Trump is seeking to blame China, the WHO and anyone else for the pandemic, which they argue is somehow his fault and no one else’s. But wait, I thought it was Putin’s? Can we get the Narrative straight here?
Therein lies the problem, by the way. The political and media establishment in the West has relied on narrative management for decades to get and keep power. When they tried to do so with the 2016 election, however, they failed – and exposed themselves as the proverbial emperor without clothes. Those who recall that story may also remember that the emperor doubled down and kept going, for what choice did he have? The narrative-managers are now doing the same, doubling down even as their lies and scapegoating become progressively more absurd and ridiculous.
Also on rt.com Thanks Obama!... for 4 more years of Trump in the White HouseSubscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.