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| (graphic by Kat Garcia) |
When going about the miserable job of exposing so-called fake news outlets (translation: any outlet either fairly or unfairly critical of the defeated Hillary Clinton as well as US foreign policy) it's always best to do your dirty work anonymously. You see, if the Russian puppet-masters controlling even such popular progressive American sites as Truthout and Naked Capitalism ever discern your true identity, you run the risk of getting rubbed out by a KGB agent in one of the dark alleys connecting the impulses of your paranoid little mind.
Therefore, in a craven attempt to stifle dissent, to damage lives and livelihoods, and to drum up the loudest possible publicity while still protecting your cowardly hide, you slap up an amateurish website called PropOrNot, and then you shop around your McCarthyesque list of 200 undesirable Internet news sites to the mainstream media.
And miracle of miracles - a huge billionaire-owned corporate publication called The Washington Post agrees not only to publish your fraud about fakery wrapped up in fiction, but to protect your identity in the bargain. It's the exact same way that establishment mouthpieces always protect the identities of powerful establishment figures whenever there's a war to be ginned up, or a political opponent to be smeared. You really must be someone special, or at least work for something, or someone, that is very special.
No matter that your brand-new site was exposed as a fraud and fake in its own right within a matter of hours. Who cares? Your damage has already been done. Your List of Enemy News Sites and enemy journalists continues to be Tweeted and re-Tweeted across the world millions of times. It is still the most popular news item on The Post. Even "respectable" journalists and politicians who otherwise wouldn't have touched your ridiculous smear job of a story with a ten-foot pole have no qualms at all about helpfully and gleefully spreading its nastiness. After all, if the establishment Post saw fit to print it first, serious people certainly are under no obligation to exert either their minds or their moral compasses.
Genuinely incensed at reaction to WaPo/Russian disinfo story. WE WATCHED THIS HAPPEN IN REAL TIME. Specific ways it was done, vectors, etc.
Josh Marshall
***
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
Paul Krugman Retweeted Josh Marshall
Yes, yes, yes. Putin role was obvious to everyone except people getting their news from email-obsessed media.***
Dan PfeifferDan Pfeiffer is the former communications director for Barack Obama, who got the whole "Fake News" ball rolling during his farewell tour of the world last week. Obama is a lot like the anonymous operators of PropOrNot: when he sent out his own press releases of himself touring Athens, he deliberately left out the part where 7,000 demonstrators protested his arrival and in return were tear-gassed and beaten by police for daring to exercise democracy in the birthplace of democracy.Why isn't this the biggest story in the world right now?
And Paul Krugman should talk. His own work has been regularly published on at least one of the respected progressive sites that PropOrNot has deemed to be "fake news."
We still don't know the identities of the person or persons behind PropOrNot, but judging from the earnestly juvenile quality of the site's rhetoric as well as the asinine quality of their Tweets, I suspect that a gaggle of recent college grads with a major in Safe Spaces were in need of work after their last gig at a certain campaign HQ in Brooklyn. Or maybe it's a couple of refugees from the "Correct the Record" SuperPac run by that other Clintonoid master of agitprop, David Brock of Media Matters.
The PropOrNotters sound like they come from a political oppo research shop, not from a think tank full of credentialed professionals volunteering their time and intellects for the greater public good. Their latest update, for example, consists of a clip of comedienne Samantha Bee showing what Russian propaganda trolls "look and sound like in real life."
When you visit the site, you're told that your first assignment in "fighting back" against the malign forces of outside-the-Beltway independent journalism is to watch Samantha Bee (a Hillary supporter) on television.
Because whether you know it or not, you are the victims of an orchestrated Russian campaign to eat your brains for breakfast.
Without even a hint of irony in light of the fact that its own anonymous propaganda was unquestioningly parroted by the Washington Post, PropOrNot accuses such independent sites as CounterPunch and Truthdig of undermining the work of consolidated, corporate-owned news organizations:
These (independent) sites have US audiences estimated in the millions, parrot Russian state-owned propaganda, and relentlessly attack the important investigative work done by actual American journalists.PropOrNot no doubt views such relentlessly and righteously attacked hacks as Thomas Friedman and David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer as "actual American journalists."
There are more proper, preferred sources of information to help manufacture your consent. PropOrNot urges you to consume their corporate content and also to send them some of your money:
- Spread the word: Russia is attempting to manipulate the American people through online propaganda.
- Obtain news from actual reporters, who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, VICE, etc, and especially your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!
- Familiarize yourself with this project, at www.propornot.com, and especially our Introduction, Frequently Asked Questions, and Manual Propaganda Analysis example, so you can practice distinguishing between Russian propaganda and actual news for yourself.
When I Googled Merry Levov, I discovered that she was the bomb-throwing lefty extremist in Philip Roth's American Pastoral. In other words, a fictional character.
So, given the amateur verbiage on the PropOrNot site itself, I wouldn't be surprised if the self-proclaimed credentialed volunteers from the analytics and national security worlds turn out to be nothing but low-level political hacks in disguise. The very fact that they offer ridiculous, pseudo-scientific methods to detect Russian propaganda is one clue. So is their frequent politician-speak use of the word "folks."
If they truly were such powerful "experts" at the highest levels of the Deep State, and not paranoid trolls sitting in front of a basement computer, would they be sending out silly Tweets like this?
Pinned Tweet
Updated report here: http://bit.ly/2fyrUz1 Russian imperialists & bots/trolls are vewwy vewwy upset; we're stoked!
#Путінхуйло
0 replies 3 retweets 7 likesPropOrNot ID Service @propornot
Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the subject - they're so vewwy angwy!! It's cuteWe don't censor; just highlight.
As Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald expound in their exhaustive take-down of this scandal:
The Proper Nutters obviously thrive on all the negative attention. They claim to be receiving new names and suggestions for addition to the Banned List of 200 by the hour. They have only just begun. So much subversion and independent thought, so little time. And to make the situation even more tragic and un-American, some of the site operators they are targeting are completely, innocently unaware that the Russians are controlling their brains and their journalism.In casting the group behind this website as “experts,” the Post described PropOrNot simply as “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” Not one individual at the organization is named. The executive director is quoted, but only on the condition of anonymity, which the Post said it was providing the group “to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers.”In other words, the individuals behind this newly created group are publicly branding journalists and news outlets as tools of Russian propaganda – even calling on the FBI to investigate them for espionage – while cowardly hiding their own identities. The group promoted by the Post thus embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy but without the courage to attach their names to their blacklist. Echoing the Wisconsin Senator, the group refers to its lengthy collection of sites spouting Russian propaganda as “The List.”
But of course, their aim is not to censor - only to expose. They don't outright accuse the List of 200 of treason, or anything like that. Because this is America.
Meanwhile, they're champing at the bit to sink their sharp righteous teeth into even more subversion:
- We will do that as soon as we can sink our analysis tools and review processes into the outlets we've been asked to look into, and we'll be updating our browser plugin as well. Due to different volunteers being responsible for different parts of the option, please note that the list in the plugin is slightly ahead of the list on the website. We will fix that.
- We are updating our homepage slightly, to give people a better sense for what the Russian folks working to influence US public opinion look and sound like.
- We are proud to present our updated Black Friday Report, and extremely grateful to everyone who contributed! We look forward to your thoughts, suggestions, and contributions as we move forward. It is available for download here, or can be reivewed (sic) directly below:
When all is said and done, of course, the real culprits here are the Washington Post and its Media-Political Complex co-conspirators and Re-Tweeters. All of them are wantonly discarding all the principles of journalism by treating a bunch of trolls as a legitimate news source. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Post and its Obama/Clinton pals and maybe even some deep state psy-ops shop turned out to be the real brains behind PropOrNot. To use the lingo of the fraudsters wrapped up in the fakery inside of the fiction, a lot of "folks" have gotten themselves pwned. And when they're inevitably exposed by name in all their McCarthyesque complicity, they can always plead ignorance, despite being the allegedly smartest experts in the room. Unaccountability is the cornerstone of their business model.
Just wait. The powerful people who hope to benefit from this ham-fisted intimidation campaign will end up blaming a bunch of unpaid volunteers (or FBI or CIA operatives pretending to be a bunch of goofy unpaid volunteers) with a website. Mistakes were made. Whoever could have imagined that such all-American untruthiness was going on in this Establishment?
