It took several days but the pushback has begun against a secretive and sleazy organization that has smeared in excess of two-hundred alternative media sources as Russian propaganda outlets. The group, a murky operation that goes by the name PropOrNot appears to have the sanctioning of high ranking government officials given it's placement in the Washington Post which serves as the preeminent propaganda organ of the warfare state.
The WAPO featured PropOrNot in a major Thanksgiving Day story by Craig Timberg that melded together the memes of "fake news" and Russian leader Vladimir Putin's sinister American fifth column as well as provided anonymity to it's "executive director" who claimed:
The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy," said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers. "It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump's campaign. .".". It worked."
While those possessing a vested interest in a new Cold War with Russia and an overthrow of Putin praised and promoted The WAPO hit piece, it was soon exposed as the trashy advocacy for a totalitarian assault on free speech that it was. The first journalist to call bullshit was Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept who railed against the paper in his epic piece entitled "Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden and Very Shady Group" in which he unloaded:
Even more disturbing than the Post's shoddy journalism in this instance is the broader trend in which any wild conspiracy theory or McCarthyite attack is now permitted in U.S. discourse as long as it involves Russia and Putin -- just as was true in the 1950s when stories of how the Russians were poisoning the U.S. water supply or infiltrating American institutions were commonplace. Any anti-Russia story was -- and is -- instantly vested with credibility, while anyone questioning its veracity or evidentiary basis is subject to attacks on their loyalties or, at best, vilified as "useful idiots."
Greenwald's blistering broadside against the WAPO and PropOrNot was the tip of the spear for a belated counterattack on the Democratic party, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the neocons (yes they're still around) insidious war on dissent and the braying of conspiracy theories about a Russian hijacking of the U.S. political system. The Washington Post and it's staff of neocon propagandists provided the loudest megaphone and aren't taking Clinton's loss and the preemption of their war with Russia very well, hence the escalation of slanderous and toxic rhetoric against the alternative media.
The Intercept article opened the floodgates with Rolling Stone magazine's Matt Taibbi calling the WAPO smear campaign "shameful and disgusting" and in a story published Thursday by the New Yorker takes PropOrNot to task. The group had shopped the smear campaign to the magazine as well but unlike Pravda on the Potomac, the New Yorker wisely chose to pass on the big scoop.
I excerpt the following from Adrian Chen's "The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda":
The most striking issue is the overly broad criteria used to identify which outlets spread propaganda. According to PropOrNot's recounting of its methodology, the third step it uses is to check if a site has a history of "generally echoing the Russian propaganda 'line'," which includes praise for Putin, Trump, Bashar al-Assad, Syria, Iran, China, and "radical political parties in the US and Europe." When not praising, Russian propaganda includes criticism of the United States, Barack Obama, Clinton, the European Union, Angela Merkel, nato, Ukraine, "Jewish people," U.S. allies, the mainstream media, Democrats, and "the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes."
These criteria, of course, could include not only Russian state-controlled media organizations, such as Russia Today, but nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post itself. Yet PropOrNot claims to be uninterested in differentiating between organizations that are explicit tools of the Russian state and so-called "useful idiots," which echo Russian propaganda out of sincerely held beliefs. "We focus on behavior, not motivation," they write.
That pretty much nails it. The real targets of this dastardly attempt to purge the country of views that run counter to those of the corrupt and deranged Washington establishment and the eternal wars which sustain it are not Putin puppets at all but rather critics of the morally reprehensible criminal globalist ruling elite.
As a frequent contributor to OpEdNews - which is on PropOrNot's list - I can honestly say that I could give a tinker's damn about Putin or Russia. What concerns me is the reckless endangerment of the lives of millions of human beings by the neocons and their liberal interventionist allies, it is these zealots who are hellbent at risking a nuclear confrontation in order to impose their messianic dogma of regime change upon the planet.
As a loyal American and a taxpayer who has my hard-earned money forcibly confiscated to underwrite these fiends and their murderous policies I feel that I am entitled to air my opinion and anyone who has a problem with that can go straight to Hell.
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