I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.
– George Carlin
Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.
– Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a 2017 interview on MSNBC
As someone whose website was slandered by the earliest manifestations of the hysterical Russiagate mob, I could go on and on now that’s the whole spectacle’s been disproven, but I’m not going to do that. Rather, I want to highlight how despite the whole thing blowing up, we’ll be living with severe direct consequences for years to come.
First, it’s important to point out that none of Russiagate’s most irresponsible grifters will face any serious repercussions for wasting the country’s time, money and energy on a fake story for the past two years. Russiagate was as much a business model as it was a conspiracy theory, and some of it’s most shameless peddlers made out like bandits over the past couple of years.
As Glenn Greenwald noted:
Rachel Maddow makes *$10 million a year.* Every month, more money is put into her bank account by a major corporation than most people make in a lifetime, literally. She went on the air for 2 straight years & fed millions of people conspiratorial garbage & benefited greatly. pic.twitter.com/4PhOrZRR1D
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 24, 2019
All MSNBC hosts have millions upon millions in their bank accounts. It will buy massive third homes and boats, but it won't erase the role they played in going on TV every day and manipulating people's fears and disseminating a fake conspiracy theory that rewarded them greatly.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 24, 2019
Let’s not forget Luke Harding, a guy who literally wrote a book titled “Collusion,” which naturally soared to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
That this is @lukeharding1968's pinned tweet is the perfect encapsulation of Russiagate: its media "experts" deceitfully peddled a conspiracy theory that did untold damage to their industry & the world, but they benefited financially. See our interview: https://t.co/AVUQ7HF5Aa https://t.co/wnxadIFsyn
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 24, 2019
Of course, nothing seriously damaging will happen to Rachel, Luke or the other myriad Russiagate charlatans who drove and profited handsomely from what was by far the biggest conspiracy theory of the past two years. Will they be banned from Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Of course not, despite the fact that they played a larger role than anybody else with respect to driving our national conversation into a cesspool of insanity, xenophobia and falsehoods.
Nevertheless, you can be sure Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will never come out and condemn them for peddling endless amounts fake news. No tech giant scarlet letter will be forthcoming for the priests and priestesses of Russiagate; but why not?
The simple answer is that all the public concern about “fake news” was just a ruse — the tech giants were just pretending to care about it. The real objective was to appease angry politicians by finding an excuse to erase and de-rank opinions that don’t conform to the dispositions and leanings that dominate the executive suites of the largest tech companies and the power players in establishment Washington D.C.
Incredibly enough, the entire push that convinced much of the public of a pressing need to encourage tech giants to aggressively censor and ban certain opinions was driven by Russiagate in the first place. In other words, hysteria and fear that Russian propaganda would infect the minds of the American public was a primary driver in getting much of our culture to accept flippant de-platforming from tech giants across the platforms that have come to dominate online conversation in this country. Russiagate is now over, but tech giant censorship remains. We’ve been scammed in far more serious and long-lasting ways than meets the eye.
Read the tweet below and think about what's been done.
Trump is now cleared, but tech giants will continue to censor, and this impetus was put into motion in the first place by RussiaGaters.
So a completely false narrative led to censorship that will not be going away. https://t.co/ifHYCIAfD9— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) March 24, 2019
Now would be a good time to revisit a few excerpts from last year’s piece, These Are the Times Bitcoin Was Made For:
Donald Trump’s election and Bernie Sanders’ unexpectedly strong run in a rigged Democratic primary really shook the neoliberal/neocon establishment to its core. The status quo response has been as pathetic as it’s been extraordinary, with the hysteria so completely off the wall I sometimes wonder if the whole Russia-Trump collusion narrative was invented and propagated for the sole purpose of promoting a cultural acceptance of censorship.
There are two crucial attack vectors being targeted when it comes to punishing the transgressions of American thought criminals; money and communications, and we need to understand that Alex Jones is our cultural guinea pig. The tech giants started by kneecapping his voice by simultaneously de-platforming his presence from many of today’s dominant communications platforms. Now PayPal’s moved in to make payments more difficult, thus threatening his ability to earn money. You don’t have to like anything Alex Jones does to see how dangerous this is. What’s being done to him can and will be to done to others deemed undesirable by Silicon Valley oligarchs should they get popular enough. What’s emerging is a playbook on how to exert pressure and encourage self-censorship in the digital age and you better pay attention.
Let’s take another step back to take stock of where we’re at. Sure a bunch of scam-artist pundits and fake journalists were momentarily embarrassed, but these people have no shame and many of them already achieved fame and fortune. Moreover, just like the banker crooks of the financial crisis era and the Iraq war WMD peddlers that came before them, these people are more likely to be promoted than face any life-altering consequences for the society damaging lies they spread. In fact, our system is so completely rigged in favor of certain kinds of opinions, not even the most bald faced liars amongst them will even see their social media accounts shuttered.
So yes, Russiagate has blown up spectacularly, but we’re still left with selective tech giant censorship which focuses on a certain type of “conspiracy theory” or fake news. What Facebook, Apple, Google and others have made clear at this point is that fake news is fine as long as it’s repeating lies of the government or intelligence agencies. There’s no amount of war-creating government inspired fake news someone can spread that will ever get you banned by the tech giants, but if you dare to have a discussion about vaccines, 9/11 or flat-earth, you’ll never be heard from again.
Russiagate ending doesn’t alter this entrenched and very dangerous double standard. We’re once again left with a monumental falsehood exposed, yet the damage has already been done to public discourse and the ability to freely communicate on America’s dominant tech platforms. As such, we’ll continue to be led apathetically in a very restrictive and unfree direction unless we wake up and make some serious changes.
Yes, a ridiculous, false and deranged conspiracy theory has been disproven, but the damage has already been done — and the damage is severe.
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Thanks, Michael, another excellent article. You target some of the same concerns that have troubled me as of late. Namely, that even though the Russiagate Hoax has finally been exposed (although endlessly dragged out even thought Mueller knew early on that there was “no there there”), the policies that it gave birth to go on: internet censorship and Cold War II to name just two of its worst (and most dangerous) creations.
These policies are still in full force and gaining strength, as the establishment still holds to the false claim that Russia interfered in our election. Worse yet, the hypocrisy and sheer corruption of the U.S. government/media complex has been on full display, causing irreparable damage to our national image, and confirming to the rest of the world the loss of any moral stature we once claimed.
I’ve been quoting a song of Kristofferson’s from last year – “When they prove something wrong that you believed in so long, you go crazy!”
He was referring to Catholic and other Christian church scandals, but it applies just as much to any belief in the virtue of USA morality.
We are witnessing the disintegration of a world power. There are some extremely ugly illusions, traits, and warts exposed, and the desperate thrashing of the sick monster still causes many casualties.
Great article, Michael. I just want to know who murdered Seth Rich and where is computer is (the DC cops and FBI pointed fingers at each other).
But, might this be a sign that the plutocrats are very worried that more and more of the younger generation are catching on. I don’t think there’s anything they could do if more and more of them stopped spending… just kept their money. And they have to allow UBI + universal medical to pass, and folks had some security. And interest groups could communicate with members through… snail mail!! what a thought! The more desperate they are, the better for all….. I hope. (Really, my last hope is for secession.)
Tech censorship remaining in the wake of Russiagate is a continuation of the post 9/11 trend. The Patriot Act, TSA harassment at airports, crazed federal spending, and more aggressive policing all remained after the lies of Iraq/Afghanistan became known. Who cares if there were no WMDs and we wanted to grow poppies in Afghanistan?
I used to think the day of reckoning would come when the Fed lost control of the markets. I underestimated the Fed’s ability to collude with other central banks and their bipartisan stranglehold on US policy. Now I think things get interesting when people lose enough and get tired of their overlords, but of course this is why we see things like tech censorship in the first place.
Gonna be a bumpy ride for the foreseeable future!
Yeah, Iraq WMD hoax…
https://www.mintpressnews.com/16-years-iraq-us-become-nation-passive-neocons/256387/
March 20th, 2019 By Whitney Webb
…….the only thing the domestic outrage over the Iraq War seemed to accomplish has been a massive effort waged by the government and the corporate elite to engineer a public that doesn’t complain and doesn’t care when their government meddles or invades another country.
For many Americans today, much like the war itself, the outrage over the Iraq War is a distant memory and comparable outrage has failed to emerge over any other U.S. government crime committed or contemplated on a similar scale — whether it be the “regime change” invasion of Libya, the ongoing genocide in Yemen, or in response to crimes the government is now setting up.
Our forgetfulness has informed our silence and our silence is our complicity in the crimes — past and present — orchestrated by the neocons, who never left government after Iraq but instead rebranded themselves and helped to culturally engineer our passivity. As a consequence, we have again been hoodwinked by the neocons, who have transformed America in their image, creating a nation of neocon enablers, a nation of passive neocons………
It is important to understand that they have now lost all of their credibility.
As a result, they have handed us a sledgehammer of their own making to use against them moving forward.
Plus, there is much more that has yet to come out in that regard. So the sledgehammer will become larger, heavier, and capable of much more damage.
This is a major turning point for the better.
—
They lost their credibility in the 80s, then again in the 90s, then again during the WMD hoax. Only fools or very young people think that the corporate media has ever been credible when it comes to warmaking, Wall Street profits, or the plight of the “little guy” against the giants of industry, including today’s tech behemoths.
Unfortunately, and frightfully your dead right . We need to demand the breakup of above mentioned corporations/ for the betterment of the world .
Could never understand why Americans hate Russians so much ? Surely having your hands full with a far more dangerous adversary in China , you would look to Russia as a partner more than an adversary.
Nevertheless your great president needs heads on a pole to appease the public ! Perhaps yanking a few broadcast licences ??
Non-responsive systems continue to the point of catastrophic failure. I suspect it’s a macro expression of the Peter principle.
I don’t really care for Lady Gaga but her comment about social media being the sewer of the internet is right on the money.
There is no need to feel sorry for the malignant narcissist dimwitted dullards who volunteer all of their private information so someone else can profit off of it.
I’ve never used Fakebook or any other of the social media but one day in the future it will be mandatory.
Excellent article. The authoritarians used the same tactic about 90 years when outlawing civilian full automatic firearms without special permits. One senate hearing had a senator refer to a well known and highly respected firearms designer testifying there as “Sidewalk Sledley” implying that he was involved in organized crime. Mr. Sledley said after the hearing that it was the first time that he had been referred to as that.
“We’ve been scammed in far more serious and long-lasting ways than meets the eye.”
Agreed.
There are many excellent points in this article. Thank you for writing it and pointing out censorship’s lasting damage to our society. I just want to add one more thing that both Russiagate and its lasting censorship has wreaked on this society–the inability to have conversations with each other about what is happening in our nation.
Russiagate has consumed Democrats and Republicans alike. I do feel that Democrats think worse of any fellow citizen who does not “believe” in their cult than Republicans. However the shear amount of hatred for having different political ideas is overwhelming at this time in this society.
Censorship of ideas is an important cult control technique. It keeps the cult member from reaching out to and listening to those who may have insights into the cult’s dangerous actions.
We seemed to have lost the will to make solid arguments for what we think. In my lifetime I remember people having real arguments about politics. I seldom saw anyone “convert” the other person, but I do remember that it was o.k. to air differences
stridently and still be friends with each other. This seldom seems to happen any longer. The inability to make a valid argument is both the result of censorship of ideas and itself a form of censorship. It all makes me feel so sad.
I don’t know that Russiagate ad nauseam was other than a smoke screen for the DNC and Podesta email scandals. Censorship and the closing in of walls has been on the controllers agenda for quite sometime and not just in the west. China and other of its ilk quite obviously. However, Russia has announced a censorship agenda almost at the same time as the Russiagate collapse in synchronization with the EU’s anti-sharing internet regs.
Its a game of incrementalism done in sequential operations across many fronts simultaneously being practiced at Doctoral levels of propaganda, misdirection and obfuscation.