MoA - Twitter Files Debunk Hamilton 68 Dashboard - (We Did The Same Five Years Ago)

January 28, 2023

Twitter Files Debunk Hamilton 68 Dashboard - (We Did The Same Five Years Ago)

The Twitter files continue to confirm our long held suspicion of nefarious anti-Russian influence in mainstream media.

When criticizing the recent fakenews about letter bombs in Spain spread by the New York Times I asserted:

The New York Times, as well as British media with their equally stupid Skripal affair claims, can be credited with giving cover for the anti-Russian propaganda campaign. It was unleashed after, in 2014, Russia reintegrated Crimea and foiled British and U.S. plans for stationing their naval forces in the Azov and Black Sea.

The Times and other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused.

Six days ago the New York Times attributed the letter bombs in Spain to Russian secret service based on 'U.S. officials' assertions. Yesterday the Spanish investigating magistrate refuted those claims:

[T]he evidence suggests Gonzalez acted alone, the judge wrote. He said the suspect's alleged actions showed his intent to alter the public peace and to give the impression they were carried out by people with ties with Russia as retribution for Spain's and the United States' support for Ukraine amid Russia's invasion of the country.
"There is no indication that the person under investigation belongs to or collaborates with any terrorist gang or organised group," the statement said.

The letter bomb campaign, as well as the New York Times false assertions about them, were both part of the public anti-Russia campaign.

The campaign, launched in 2014, was reinforced after the 2016 election when the losing candidate, Hillary Clinton, blamed 'Russian influence' for her loss instead of her own ineptitude for any higher government position.

Soon a horde of 'disinformation de-bunking' institutes and lobbies evolved. They all claimed to have some insight into 'Russia's influence campaign' that was allegedly designed to deceive U.S. voters. 'Russiagate', the MI6 operation that created the Steele dossier and the false narratives around it, grew on top of that. Partisan actors in the FBI and CIA jumped in to amplify that stuff despite knowing well that it was nonsense. Irresponsible media sucked it all up and spread it further without any fact checking or logical thought. For so called mainstream journalists it was all easy work that brought in good money.

One of the organization involved in this was the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a part of the the German Marshall Fund (which has by the way little to do with Germany). It created the 'Hamilton 68 dashboard' which listed trending hashtags used by some 600 Twitter accounts which it alleged were 'Russian bots'.

Based on the dashboard mainstream media produced hundreds of stories about trending hashtags that allegedly furthered Russian influence.

But, as I exposed in February 2018, there was nothing there. Just like 'Russiagate' it was just another great scam.

As I wrote at that time:

The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is run by military lobbyists, CIA minions and neo-conservative propagandists. Its claimed task is:

... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.

There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin ever made or makes such efforts.
The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items" and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It claims that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3. accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and 2 tweet about.
Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one "openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.

On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who - according to the NYT - want to sow divisiveness and subvert democracy, wished everyone a #MerryChristmas.

bigger
The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious:

Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag, ...

The Daily Beast reported earlier that the last claim is definitely false:

Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.

The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.

Matt Taibbi, who was recently given access to Twitter's internal archives, has retrieved and analyzed internal Twitter emails and conversations about the 'Hamilton 68' scam. His thread about his finds is here. His full write can be found here.

Mr. Tweet @elonmusk - 19:48 UTC · Jan 27, 2023
An American group made false claims about Russian election interference to interfere with American elections

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi - 19:44 UTC · Jan 27, 2023
Hamilton 68’s blue-red founding team of Jamie Fly and Laura Rosenberger, told Politico they couldn’t reveal the “dashboard” accounts because “the Russians will simply shut them down.” The real reason? It was bullshit:

Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud
The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork

From the Twitter Files Taibbi found:

The company was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it also ordered a forensic analysis. [..] Twitter was checking to see how many of Hamilton’s accounts were spammy, phony, or bot-like. Note that out of 644 accounts, just 36 were registered in Russia, and many of those were associated with RT.
Examining further, Twitter execs were shocked. The accounts Hamilton 68 claimed were linked to “Russian influence activities online” were not only overwhelmingly English-language (86%), but mostly “legitimate people,” largely in the U.S., Canada, and Britain. Grasping right away that Twitter might be implicated in a moral outrage, they wrote that these account-holders “need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.”
...
“The selection of accounts is… bizarre and seemingly quite arbitrary,” wrote [Twitter's Trust and Safety chief Yoel] Roth. “They appear to strongly preference pro-Trump accounts (which they use to assert that Russia is expressing a preference for Trump… even though there’s not good evidence any of them are Russian).”

But fearing a backlash Twitter refrained from going public with the fraud it had found. On background it informed several journalists that the whole thing was bogus. This led to the Daily Beast story linked above. But most media simply ignored Twitter's background information and continued to spread the dashboard nonsense.

Moon of Alabama was one of the few sides that dug into this and called the media out:

The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.

Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?

But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.

This is nuts.

Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted:

The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.

It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.

The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times - are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.

How long will it take until people die from it?

It took four years. The public sentiment created by the anti-Russia campaign was one of the conditions for the war in Ukraine. Some 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers, some 20,000 men fighting on the Russian side (source Col. Doug Macgregor) and some 10,000 civilians (UN) have so far died in it.

But the media and politicians who willingly fell for the scam and furthered the anti-Russian disinformation will never acknowledge that they were wrong and are guilty of causing so much deaths.

As Taibbi writes:

I asked for comment from a huge range of actors — from the Alliance for Securing Democracy to Watts and McFaul and Podesta and Kristol to editors and news directors at MSNBC, Politico, Mother Jones, the Washington Post, Politifact, and others. Not one answered. They’re all going to pretend this didn’t happen. The few reporters who got this right contemporaneously, from Glenn Greenwald to Max Blumenthal to Miriam Elder and Charlie Wurzel of Buzzfeed to sites like Moon of Alabama, can take a victory lap. Almost every other news organization ran these stories and needs to come clean about it.

I honestly do not feel like taking a victory lap. The Hamilton dashboard, like the Steele dossier, was so obviously fake and dangerous that it did not take much effort to debunk it.

I am just sad that so few called it out and that, in the end, it all achieved the desired nefarious results.

Posted by b on January 28, 2023 at 10:46 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The sheer volume of media lies and manipulation.
We know.
But most are too doped up by BS and gas lighting to care or respond.
The Ukraine debacle driven by very similar people and means.
It's very frustrating watching the non responsive.

Posted by: jpc | Jan 28 2023 10:52 utc | 1

Santa Claus is real and wants you to send F16 to the front.

Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jan 28 2023 11:10 utc | 2

We see now why the CIA developed the term "conspiracy theory" in 1965 to describe their output. It is funny to consider how Goebbels facilitated everything as a Jewish or Jewish-Bolshevik Plot and the sanctions of US Jewish groups against Germany led to the retaliatory boycott of Jewish businesses in German Reich yet Hollywood was highly responsive to Goebbels' requirements for films shown in cinemas in the Reich..........rather as it nowadays accommodates China.

To think the people pulling strings in State or in Media or in BigTech or wherever with their common threads that bind, are now busy fabricating Hate Stories and Inflammatory Jingoistic rhetoric against Russia, and the Muslim world, in a frenetic campaign of vilification.............it is so blatant as to separate wheat from chaff in Western society and allow people to see why side of the metaphorical fence they wish to stand

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jan 28 2023 11:11 utc | 3

Although I know that predicting is hazardous especially about the future, I would dare to make a bet that Zelensky govt will not last up to Easter this very year...
If I win you'll owe me a single malt shot (AGED Bourbon will do), if I lose I will donate 100$US to the bar.
Happy Easter.

Posted by: Greg Galloway | Jan 28 2023 11:17 utc | 4

Spreading the truth again: the truth is that the US manipulated the elections in the US and other countries. in 2016, they hoped to defeat Trump in key states, but they failed.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 11:50 utc | 5

These so called fact checkers have been made a EU policy and therefore they are paid by EU taxpayers. They are even a priority among the topics to be funded by the various EU agencies which are supposed to be redistributing the money confiscated from universities and national research bodies.
Just google CreativEU, Marie Curie, Civis3, Horizon2020, DariahEU and follow every sub-link to see what I mean.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 28 2023 11:52 utc | 6

I honestly do not feel like taking a victory lap. The Hamilton dashboard, like the Steele dossier, was so obviously fake and dangerous that it did not take much effort to debunk.

I’m with you all the way b from early on .. the PropOrNot scam of a group of rightwing ultra-conservatives and persons employed by the Pentagon of MIC cabal or former US and UK intelligence agents.

Once a spook, till you die a spook. Lying liars and warmongers for at least three decades. All US presidents were involved.

Every year MI6-CIA hooked onto an incident to perpetuate anti-Russia narrative of hate. As the Atlantic Council was used to define Russia as a pariah state shortly after VP Cheney bullied NATO members to accept to enlargement to include Georgia and Ukraine … the NATO Bucharest Summit of early 2008. See Ivo Daalder and John Kerry. The biggest whore of all was NATO Commander Breedlove who interfered continuously with European national politics at the behest of NATO HQ in Brussels.

Hybrid Warfare: UK Statecraft Integrity Initiative | Dec.26, 2018 |

○ Khodorkovsky – The Interpreter – Henry Jackson Society (UK)
○ Unpacking PropOrNot Misinformation Site (2017)
○ British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft | Craig Murray |
○ Dutch Media Take EU Disinfo Watchdog to Court #EUvsDisinfo

Posted by: Oui | Jan 28 2023 12:12 utc | 7

All there is in the west, the whole project of [fillintheassaults] will fall once trust in the media is gone. Once a majority of people considers everything the msm says as a lie (and acts accordingly) there is no way forward for our overloards.

Posted by: Orgel | Jan 28 2023 12:35 utc | 8

At one point, the Steele Dossier was so often mentioned in US media that I turned it into a drinking game ... vodka, of course.

Posted by: Cato the Uncensored | Jan 28 2023 12:38 utc | 9

"There is no indication that the person under investigation belongs to or collaborates with any terrorist gang or organised group,"

Unless you consider acronym agencies "organized groups".

Posted by: Tesshu | Jan 28 2023 13:30 utc | 10

What is on American television is weather, sports, celebrity gossip and pharma advertisement. The public knows nothing, is only barely exposed to any tidings from the outside world.

Only a small coterie of educated PMC seeks news at all. It is possible to be a success in any professional/managerial career while knowing nothing more than the average couch potato. Those few who do read news are carefully cultivated and indoctrinated. Above our host calls out "the media and politicians who willingly fell for the scam". The educated public fell for it too. Hook, line, and sinker. Of course any PMC who had non-conforming views or information would be totally ostracized and soon be unemployed.

I know a few families at the margins of elite status who lived most of their lives with no television in the home. Had no need for the pabulum plus the policy guaranteed the children had academic success. This changed since 2016. All of those families are now watching PBS Newshour and some of them watch CNN. The children and grandchildren are all totally woke and appear to me as little stormtroopers.

Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 28 2023 13:32 utc | 11

Definition of common terms according to left-wing media

Extremism: Anyone that disagrees with democrats on any subject that actually has serious significance

Divisive Politics: Policies that disagree with the idea that everyone in society regardless of ethnicity, social backgroundand and crime record is perfectly equal in potential, and so is capable of rehabiliating to a funcitoning citizen of society, even if they were a murderer/pedophile (white people excluded)

Hate: A unique mental disorder of republicans and the right-wing. Democrats do not hate, they just sympathetically pity your poor existance.

Posted by: A200 | Jan 28 2023 13:45 utc | 12

Seems like the plan after Hillary beat Trump was to go to war with Russia immediately. The signs were there, such as during the debate when Hillary called for a no fly zone in Syria. When Trump won, russiagate was plan B to get the masses ready for what would happen as soon as they got Trump out.

As horrible and vapid as Obama’s foreign policy was, he seemed to believe that Ukraine was (mostly) part of a Russian sphere of influence. He also seemed to recognize reality in Syria. Once Hillary got in there these views would no longer be a hinderance. Obama wasn’t being altruistic in the least, he just preferred that someone else be responsible for WW3 rather than him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left Victoria Nuland with power in the state dept under the feckless John Kerry.

Posted by: Dennis | Jan 28 2023 13:59 utc | 13

Part 2

Democracy: Form of government where the leader is chosen by the people, but he must only follow socialist policies. If no, then it must be rigged elections

Freedom of speech: The freedom to speak except the freedom to speak against the freedom of speech

Terrorism: Any conventional military opponent who does not fight by the rules of never tested in real life 21th century SASO warfare.

Posted by: A200 | Jan 28 2023 13:59 utc | 14

Extremism, division and hatred are at the very heart of Marxism: the division that breaks the illusion of social solidarity and the extreme hatred against the bourgeoisie. These concepts are not necessarily bad.

I am a strong advocate of expanding punitive justice, the only problem is that the punishment is improperly targeted. Many white collar criminals fail to receive any punishment, and even when the wealthy are caught, they are rarely convicted and are quickly released from prison.

Many police officers are more horrible than gangsters, and they don't get even similar punishment.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 14:00 utc | 15

Terrific piece. Over 90% of ‘news’ in the US comes from corporate media, owned by 6 large corporations, with market cap of circa $500 billion. Thus, corporate media has the same economic/class interests as the ruling/financial elite running the country, which is to increase corporate power and profits. The ruling elite view the Russia-China-Iran axis as an intolerable obstacle to US/NATO global power. This was clearly pointed out by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock who recently stated “Germany is at war with Russia’.

Posted by: paulb | Jan 28 2023 14:14 utc | 16

Dennis | Jan 28 2023 13:59 utc | 13
So much typing.So much inanity.
Who was Obama’s VP?
Under whose administration was the Maiden coup orchestrated?
Obama stated Russia was now a “regional power, at best”.
He shared McCain’s view Russia “was a gas station masquerading as a country”.
Absolute asinine statement that Obama *seemed* ……”to believe that Ukraine was (mostly) part of a Russian sphere of influence.”.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jan 28 2023 14:15 utc | 17

Melaleuca - my intent was not to exonerate Obama. He was about his own ego and the continuation of the Empire. My point is his ego would now allow him to be the one posterity blame for world war. And that as bad as he was, he was not going to give complete control to the crazies in the basement on this particular issue. Let Hilary be the one to do it.

I wasn’t saying that he was in anyway antagonistic to neocons tactics nor the overall strategy of the Wolfowitz doctrine. And certainly if given the choice between them and any sort of Sanders like left, he would chose the former. As he proved a few days before Super Tuesday when it became clear that his preferred candidate mayor Pete had no chance

Posted by: Dennis | Jan 28 2023 14:31 utc | 18

"....Democracy: Form of government where the leader is chosen by the people, but he must only follow socialist policies. If no, then it must be rigged elections..." A200@14

You might want to enquire into your own prejudices.
To call the US (imperialist) media "left wing" is rob the term of most of its meaning. The media is wholly owned and controlled by a capitalist class which can only be described as 'left wing' by someone who regards society, government and conventional wisdom as being "left wing'. And that person could only be a fascist.

As to the idea that imperialism promotes 'socialist policies' by insisting that governments around the world either practise socialism or resign, you obviously don't get out much. Or look out of the window.
The reverse is the case, ask any Latin American, ask Jeremy Corbyn, ask anyone at all. They will all confirm: the US crushes socialism, if necessary by practising the Jakarta Method and killing a million people or bombing south east Asia for years, wherever it comes close to it.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 28 2023 14:45 utc | 19

Colin [15]

"At the very heart" is a strange conception. Marx himself was thoroughly bourgeois and tried to produce a desiccated work of analysis. What you call "Marxism" is undefined but I doubt it has anything to do with Marx as such.

What you wrote is unfortunately phrased in the very way Adolf Hitler posited and how he substituted "Blut und Erde" - the basis of German Citizenship 1913 - for Class Politics.......he was Pan-German rather than nation-state focused which is why he preferred "social solidarity" around Das Volk

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jan 28 2023 14:50 utc | 20

Will anything become of this? Will anything change in regards to the news we get? Will it be as truthful as possible or will we be inundated with more flim flam stories from these groups? For me is this question. Where is the American people on this? They’ve been hoodwinked so profoundly as to affect their own future and survival. Will they open their eyes and make some noise to make them stop their behaviors? Or will they just continue worrying about pot, porn and sports, the new American pastimes?

Posted by: Jose Garcia | Jan 28 2023 15:15 utc | 21

Culture Control is practiced through Public Relations and Advertising ‘Agencies’.

Media are Mediums, each and everyone has been planned ,created and controlled by the same people who runs Defence (War) , Foreign Policy (imperialism) , armed services and police (private militia to control LOCAL populations and Finance (the means of extracting wealth from the masses) and organised religion (brainwashing from birth).

The elite House Slaves are their managers in all of the above. Relatives and private school friends, work in each of these and they are the perma state. It is the same throughout the Collective Wastes poisonous Garden.

They behave accordingly. They make things up and ‘Sell’ it through all these modern and old pulpits. Using velvet gloves to cover their hoary claws.

They bring out a Guantlet when the natives get restless and grassroots leaders rise.

This covers literacy, music, film, tv, internet as well as pamphlets and billboards!

The Wizards of Oz are obvious to these of us who have somehow managed to breakaway from the daily brainwashing.

MoA is the master of breaking the mesmerism.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 28 2023 15:56 utc | 22

thanks b...

you make the key, critical point at the end.."in the end, it all achieved the desired nefarious results." that being the war in ukraine...

these folks have blood on their hands and they will be the last to admit it.. this whole russia did it meme which has been running in earnest since at least 2014 is built into a huge tower of lies and deception, thanks the intel agencies, media in tow and all the rest of the folks who remind me of the scare-crow in the wizard of oz.. of course the intel agencies do have a brain, but they haven't figured out how to put it to proper use, as they have no heart...

Posted by: james | Jan 28 2023 15:56 utc | 23

Thanks b

You are one of the few islands of sanity in the media wasteland

Posted by: Chris N | Jan 28 2023 16:20 utc | 24

@ Posted by: Jose Garcia | Jan 28 2023 15:15 utc | 21

Not a thing. The left have eagerly embraced Russia as an opponent, an incredibly successful piece of domestic psyops that made the most anti-war demographic in America into full blown war boosters. To the extent they’ll passively accept further cuts to social spending.

The right gamed themselves when they accepted in opposition to any solid evidence, that their Pres was cheated of his rightful 2nd term.

The real govt gets it all, Left vs Russia, Right and Left vs China, both against the Center and any vestige of common sense or govt accountability for where their taxes go. And for the rest of us scratching our heads “this was WAY too easy”.

Posted by: MillerJ | Jan 28 2023 16:31 utc | 25

Posted by: james | Jan 28 2023 15:56 utc |

It's just lies all the way down Jim, lies all the way down.

Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 28 2023 16:37 utc | 26

'Terrific piece. Over 90% of ‘news’ in the US comes from corporate media, owned by 6 large corporations, with a market cap of circa $500 billion. Thus, corporate media has the same economic/class interests as the ruling/financial elite running the country, which is to increase corporate power and profits."
Posted by: paulb | Jan 28 2023 14:14 utc | 16
----------------------------

I agree with you about the class content of the corporate media. It is a fully integrated part of the Ruling Class. Many of the media CEO's sit on the boards of some of the largest corporations around the world. They are well represented on MIC boards and think tanks.

https://truthout.org/articles/inside-the-militaryindustrialmedia-complex-impacts-on-movement-for-social-justice/

To the peep squeaks (not you paulb) who are crying about socialism and Marxism on this string, it is not Marxism that is bring the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, it is late-stage capitalism run a Muck. In fact, if you think about it, you will find that the ideas of Marxism and the discussions about socialism in no way affect your life today.

But corporate fascism and US Imperialism, now that is something you should be concerned about because everything that disturbs you today is about capitalism.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 16:40 utc | 27

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jan 28 2023 14:50 utc | 20

You obviously misquote what I was talking about.

I'm talking about Marx's opposition to social solidarity, as opposed to the social solidarity supported by Hitler and the liberals aka libNazis.

And you obviously haven't read the entire Marx collection, because most pages of it are far from just "a desiccated work of analysis" as you call them. Even Das Kapital is more interesting than most contemporary papers.

Lenin literally inherited the title of his father (literally a noble), which obviously did not contradict his overthrow of the Russian Empire and the killing of the Tsar & his family.

Trotsky, Mao and Castro are all literally the sons of landowners as well.

Obviously, the Chinese landowners would be happy if Mao did not hate them as you would claim.

The obvious truth is that Socialism is primarily about hate, divisive politics (aka class politics) and extremist class war with terrorism, not about love, unification, solidarity, mainstream and anti-terrorism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_Communism

Hippie college students who knew only "love and peace" were just unreliable petty bourgeoisie in the eyes of the Soviet Union.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 16:47 utc | 28

As another person who saw Russiagate as a complete fraud, writing several pieces about it (on Medium at the time, but they're on my Substack now), I agree that it wasn't hard to see through. What is shocking is that the vast majority didn't see through it.

When an org like Ham68 won't name the 'bots' they're going on about, or tell you HOW they identified them, pretty safe to say it's BS. But MSM universally nodded and said "ooooh, tell me more!"

Posted by: muttman | Jan 28 2023 17:01 utc | 29

It seems that some people think I am against Marxism and socialism because I correctly claim that Marxism is primarily about division and hatred.

But, in fact, it is psyops to package Marxism as being primarily about love and peace (similar to Christianity after it was sanitized by the Roman Empire). According the texts and the history, the true Marxism is about (class) hatred and (class) war: Lenin remembered this on the eve of WWI, while Bernstein and Kautsky had already chosen the dead-end path of "social peace" and "social solidarity".

Correct hatred is very good, that is why predators always package the doctrine of hatred, rebellion and struggle as the doctrine of love, peace and unity.

U.S. imperialism uses puppets like Sanders and the squad to chant "unity" in order to carry out a devastating war abroad.

https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2022/bernie-sanders-the-house-progressive-caucus-ukraine-letter-was-wrong

Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 17:05 utc | 30

"Will anything become of this? ......For me this is the question. Where are the American people on this? They’ve been hoodwinked so profoundly as to affect their own future and survival. Will they open their eyes and make some noise to make them stop their behaviors? Or will they just continue worrying about pot, porn and sports, the new American pastimes?"
Posted by: Jose Garcia | Jan 28 2023 15:15 utc | 21
---------------
Here is something to help explain why the MSM is nothing but propaganda, and how long it has been used against the American people, and why it may never change in the US and the collective west.

phys.org/news/2015-07-american-mindedward-bernays-birth.html
The manipulation of the American mind: Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations
[Bernay] chose a career in journalism, eventually helping the Woodrow Wilson Administration promote the idea that US efforts in World War I were intended to bring democracy to Europe. Having seen how effective propaganda could be during war, Bernays wondered whether it might prove equally useful during peacetime. [However since] propaganda had acquired a pejorative connotation (which would be further magnified during World War II), so Bernays promoted the term “public relations.”

Drawing on the insights of his Uncle Sigmund – a relationship Bernays was always quick to mention – he developed an approach he dubbed “the engineering of consent.” He provided leaders the means to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it.” To do so, it was necessary to appeal not to the rational part of the mind, but the unconscious.

Even though Bernays saw the power of propaganda during war and used it to sell products during peacetime, he couldn’t have imagined that his writings on public relations would become a tool of the Third Reich.
In the 1920s, Joseph Goebbels became an avid admirer of Bernays and his writings – despite the fact that Bernays was a Jew. When Goebbels became the minister of propaganda for the Third Reich, he sought to exploit Bernays’ ideas to the fullest extent possible. For example, he created a “Fuhrer cult” around Adolph Hitler.

Bernays learned that the Nazis were using his work in 1933, from a foreign correspondent for Hearst newspapers. He later recounted in his 1965 autobiography: They were using my books as the basis for a destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me, but I knew any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones.

What Bernays’ writings furnish is not a principle or tradition by which to evaluate the appropriateness of propaganda, but simply a means for shaping public opinion for any purpose whatsoever, whether beneficial to human beings or not.

This observation led Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter to warn President Franklin Roosevelt against allowing Bernays to play a leadership role in World War II, describing him and his colleagues as “professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism, and self-interest.”

Today we might call what Bernays pioneered a form of branding, but at its core it represents little more than a particularly brazen set of techniques to manipulate people to get them to do your bidding.
Its underlying purpose, in large part, is to make money. By convincing people that they want something they do not need, Bernays sought to turn citizens and neighbors into consumers who use their purchasing power to propel themselves down the road to happiness.

Without a moral compass, however, such a transformation promotes a patronizing and ultimately cynical view of human nature and human possibilities, one as likely to destroy lives as to build them up.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 17:06 utc | 31

Since 2013 us gov can deliberately spread lies, propaganda to us people:

JULY 14, 2013, 7:06 PM
"For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?"

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/

Posted by: Laura Roslin | Jan 28 2023 17:07 utc | 32

Considering that npr has been around for a long time, this is not even a shock.

Not to mention the close ties of various media and think tanks to big business and US intelligence

Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 17:23 utc | 33

Bevin- "The media is wholly owned and controlled by a capitalist class" Assuming that "capitalist class" is an edgy term for "rich people", then yes, no shit. Most rich people vocal in the media are easy-made actors and singers who make money despite having no intelligence, heirs who led a pampered life as common in the modern west becoming ignorant of the harsh work of their self-made parents and grandparents, politicians who didn't ever work in their life and IT hipsters who are "leftists in denial", referring themselves as so-called "right-leaning moderates" while thinking they are smartass. These kind of rich people we have today are very different than the self-made engineers and businessmen who built from scratch modern america in 20th and 19th century. They live very coddled and spoiled, in wealthy suburban neighborhoods far from migrants, drug hobos and criminals. If they are ever exposed to poverty zones in america, then for them it's like an exotic, optional experience; they can walk around then go back to their home when they please. They develop a very childish view that the world is really as convenient and rich as their own lives... Crime can be tolerated, you can just move away to a new place, if the car got jacked just buy a new one, if there are poor people then just give them more welfare, I mean there is so much resources etc... In other words, left-wing policies. Indulgent rich people lean towards the left, along with urban poverty class who range from unemployed to part-time jobs to useless governemnt/liberal made jobs. The ones who mostly lean the right today, that is the real right, are mostly the geniue working class and farmers, those who maintain the entire food and product supply of the US. They know that things have limits, things are hard to make and you can't just throw them in to welfare unlimitedly or neglect their losses to crime. That includes people's lives.

Posted by: A200 | Jan 28 2023 17:27 utc | 34

A200
I think you are dead wrong on the hate train
Both parties have trained their puppets to hate and they do it well. I have worked at various levels for the d party and watched it devolve into a I hate Russia party and I hate china party and mostly I hate Republican Party with trump hate beyond anything I have ever seen.
The republicans: Hate anyone who threatens gun rights. Democrats, and women, and brown people. Immigrants in particular , China. They hate hillary almost to the level Ds hate Trump
We actually have a Uni party full spectrum hate

Posted by: Susan | Jan 28 2023 17:46 utc | 35

And now you know why I don't even read or listen to American or British MSM. If they get anything right, it's a complete accident.

Posted by: Jeff Harrison | Jan 28 2023 18:01 utc | 36

It seems that some people think I am against Marxism and socialism because I correctly claim that Marxism is primarily about division and hatred.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 17:05 utc | 30

I want to make big bucks by writing a series of self-help books, but I have too few ideas. "How to binge drink responsibly and other advises for happier live" does not make a series, but Colin seems to suggest Volume II:

"How to live with the bastards of the ruling class in harmony, love and peace"

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:13 utc | 37

Personal example. Yesterday I talked with a young man I had not seen since spring 2020. A man I have known since he was in the womb and now in his 40s. Describe him as a Democrat. He considers that I am a Putinbot and a Trumptard. Words that he used. I will acknowledge readily that on a broadbrush look I might be characterized as a Putin lover by people who think that way. Never had any use for Trump, consider his limited attempts at pro wrestling the best thing he ever did.

So this young man says to me "Your generation -- my parent's generation -- is on the way out. When my generation takes charge, if you are alive in five years, you are spending the rest of your days in prison." I reminded him that President Nixon did put me in prison and it would not surprise me at all if Brandon or Kamala treated me the same. He came back with "If it were up to me you would be executed. Don't come looking to me or my family for a character reference."

Arguably I have saved this man's life. And his sister's life. His politics say I should be executed. Have known his mother for 66 years. There is no reason to believe these people can be bargained with.

Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 28 2023 18:13 utc | 38

This was clearly pointed out by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock who recently stated “Germany is at war with Russia’.

Posted by: paulb | Jan 28 2023 14:14 utc | 16

This is not correct. She actually said, that whole of Europe is together in this war against Russia. Interesting is that she said this in the European Council wich is something different than EU. Russia not just left this body recently, also finished the connected position of being final appellation instance for all legal question. Wich is a boomer.
Being a product of a politician making machine, her purpose is to steer the continent into its position as hub for the coming eternal war. I really recommend the book of Joe Halderman with this name: Eternal War. He not just describe this, he also actually invents the woke culturalism of modern western defense ideology. He himself is more a Peacnik.

Posted by: rico rose | Jan 28 2023 18:14 utc | 39

Posted by: A200 | Jan 28

Adorable that you believe that there is a "left wing" of the Democratic Party.

Posted by: nwwoods | Jan 28 2023 18:14 utc | 40

Posted by: Susan | Jan 28 2023 17:46 utc | 35

You seem to (a) deny the words of Our Lord and Savior (b) absurdly advocate disregard for 10 Commandments (c) slyly suggest that 2nd Amendment is not one of the 10 Commandments.

I am more and more disappointed with this forum daily. [snark!]

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:20 utc | 41

Posted by: Susan | Jan 28 2023 17:46 utc | 35
Spot on Susan, thank you.

"The republicans: Hate anyone who threatens gun rights. Democrats, and women, and brown people. Immigrants in particular , China. They hate hillary almost to the level Ds hate Trump
We actually have a Uni party full spectrum hate".

As a former dem and former listener of npr from the 70s (we hippies considered Cokie Roberts was a lefty) I am particularly tuned into the blue team/russiagater hate, pre-pubescent/early pubescent finger pointing and a frenetic urge to be accepted by the "cool people". Both teams have their monsters, their red lines in order to maintain "membership", triggers and "don't look over there" lists.

Like many barflies, I have lost a fair number of friends.

Posted by: migueljose | Jan 28 2023 18:36 utc | 42

Yes, Colin class war is divisive and quite correctly often hateful. That is because class war is about the terrible exploitation against a majority class or classes of people by a minority ruling class or classes.

*Ask a chattel slave if he loves his master.
*Ask a feudal peasant or serf if he loves his King or Nobel Lord.

Capitalism is also an exploitive system against by a minority ruling class against the majority working class; the struggle to end that exploitive system is called socialism. And the most prolific writers and thinkers on the subject are Marx and Engels.

Their ideas were profound that they became the foundation for almost all anti-capitalist theorists after them. That being said, from Marx and Engels many variations of "Marxism" have emerged: Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, variations of Anarchism, and Kautskys German Social Democracy.

But you Mr. Colin lumped Marxist all together as one big bundle of "hate."
Would you have the chattel slave love his master, even while undergoing terrible beatings.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 18:44 utc | 43

Unfortunately the Operation Mockingbird structure is fully intact and expanded with all this so called Silicon Valley social media. To be informed and actually understand what is going on is an active task that is becoming increasingly more difficult. One can hear silly unlogic stories that run on MSM being regurgitated by someone (the Russia-bombed-Nord-Stream fake for example) and then carefully explain why it's utter bullshit and doesn't make any sense. So this person now is somehow informed about this aspect although you do notice some cognitive dissonance. However the very next day, the person will regurgitate that same fallacy as if one is experiencing the movie Groundhog Day. The reason is because this layered web of misinformation is omni present. You listen to music on the radio and at least once per hour you get fed with MSM misinformation. You use a search engine and MSM misinformation search hits are throttled while search hits that debunk the lies get memory holed. You log on to some social media/mail web page and you get MSM misinformation popups, throttled misinformation takes and the ones that do report in all seriousness get stifled with shadow bans, actual bans, ... . You're working on you computer and this Google Chrome news things completely embedded within Windows 10 shows an MSM misinformation popup now and then in the right bottom corner begging you to click on it (ok not on my PC but I noticed it with a colleague once and when I asked him about it he said he didn't know how to turn it off). You watch television, well that's obvious of course. There is the dystopian outright censorship where news channels like RT, Sputnik News and many more to get a balanced view are banned. So to escape these nauseating lies is difficult. And the majority of people (95%) just prefer easy and want to remain in their bubble of ignorance, their comfort zone.

Posted by: xor | Jan 28 2023 18:49 utc | 44

"You seem to (a) deny the words of Our Lord and Savior (b) absurdly advocate disregard for 10 Commandments (c) slyly suggest that 2nd Amendment is not one of the 10 Commandments.
I am more and more disappointed with this forum daily. [snark!]"
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:20 utc | 41
--------------------------

You have every right to believe your religious beliefs, but you have no right to attack others who don't share your fairy tales.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 18:52 utc | 45

Thanks, b, for sorting out yet another pile of shit proving yet again the basic values of Neoliberals and the media in general. Clearly neither want the truth about anything to be exposed and discussed. Fortunately, media elsewhere outside of the West has actual morals and humanistic ethics.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 28 2023 19:07 utc | 46

You have every right to believe your religious beliefs, but you have no right to attack others who don't share your fairy tales.
Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 18:52 utc | 45

Sorry Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:20 utc | 41
[They] have every right to believe [their] religious beliefs, .......

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 19:08 utc | 47

Thanks for reminding us of this, b.

I actually posted that Taibbi Twitter thread in the comments under the story about the Spanish debunking.

I was in my (late) 20s when 9/11 happened and had been pretty much just a partier and academic to that point in my life. Hadn't paid attention to politics other than the stolen 2000 presidential election. But once the planes hit the towers I noticed a market shift in the media and it only accelerated and amplified up through the push to invade Iraq on the basis of lies and omissions. By the time of Russiagate and Ukrainegate, I had lost any faith in the American corporate MSM in part due to the Iraq years and also for how they had treated Manning, Assange and Snowden - all three of whom provided them with big bucks and publishing awards (Pulitzers IIRC). But beginning with the Maidan coup and once again metastasizing in February of 2022, what we have here in the US (and I'm guessing Canada and EU) is 'information totalitarianism' - a near complete blackout of any dissenting media, be that facts, commentary, analysis, opinion, etc. We also have a memory holing of previously widely read articles on matters of the Ukraine but they now no longer appear in Google searches unless you use the exact quote. You know, stuff about the nazi problem in Ukraine and the picture of genocide that emerges when one takes in all the different angles on the Donbass separatist movement.

From this point forward, corporate media can never be trusted on any topic.

P.S. Posted by: Colin | Jan 28 2023 17:05 utc | 30

You're injecting a straw man into the conversation about socialism when you say it's "about hatred" and not about "peace and love." What is your angle? Every -ism has proponents and practitioners who engage in nefarious things. They all have people who operate out of hatred and jealousy but they also have people who operate out of a genuine belief that they can do good for their fellow human. So what's the hangup on trying to frame (all) socialism as (only) about "hatred"?

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 28 2023 19:08 utc | 48

You seem to (a) deny the words of Our Lord and Savior (b) absurdly advocate disregard for 10 Commandments (c) slyly suggest that 2nd Amendment is not one of the 10 Commandments.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:20 utc | 41

The practical wisdom contained in the Bible can be summed up as: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." which is great when times are good.

When times are bad, as they are quickly becoming, it changes to: "Do unto others before they do unto you."

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jan 28 2023 19:09 utc | 49

As if capitalism is about peace and love. LMAO literally the opposite with anti-communism being the most militaristic face of capitalism. More deliberate death and destruction stemming from and birthing new hatred can be attributed to capitalist anti-communists than any socialist movements combined. And yes, that includes the famine which some around here insist on referring to as the Holodomor.

Here, read this for starters: https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf

Subsequent editions cover the Ukraine crisis as well, as it is related.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 28 2023 19:14 utc | 50

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 17:06 utc | 31

It's fitting to bring in Bernays who happened to be Sigmund Freud's nephew. This 2002 Adam Curtis documentary delves into his significance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jymMjNc0igI

The legacy of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud informs the lives of people throughout the world even to this day, though it's a phenomenon to which most are unaware. The Century of the Self, written and produced by Adam Curtis, is an exhaustive examination of his theories on human desire, and how they're applied to platforms such as advertising, consumerism and politics. This four-hour odyssey is divided into four distinct segments.
Happiness Machines. The first episode concerns Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and one of the most influential pioneers in public relations. Appealing to what his uncle believed were the aggressive and prurient forces hidden inside of all mankind, Bernays manipulated these inner desires to promote group thinking - first in drumming up the patriotic support of U.S. citizens during World War I and later in the realm of advertising.

The Engineering of Consent. Perhaps the darkest illustration of Freud's philosophy can be found in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The film's second segment recounts the efforts of Bernays and Freud's daughter Anna, who collaborated alongside the American government to devise methods for suppressing the barbaric potential of the human mind. It was only through these activities, the government believed, that a harmonious democracy would be possible.

There is a Policeman Inside All of Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed. Segment three takes place during a vastly different period of American history: the 1960s. As dissenters of Freud began to come to prominence, so too did a younger generation who were determined to fully embrace and flaunt their inner desires. Following on their lead, corporations and their advertisers morphed their message from one of conformity to a celebration of the individual. In so doing, they showed that the tenants of Freud's theories could be successfully manipulated regardless of the temperature of the times.

Eight People Sipping Wine In Kettering. The final section takes us full throttle into the universe of politics. During the 1990s, in a desperate measure to regain the White House, the Democratic Party enlisted the assistance of Matthew Freud, a public relations expert and the great-grandson of Sigmund. With a determined reliance on focus groups, the party recalibrated their campaigns to fulfill the innermost desires of the American people. Shortly thereafter, Bill Clinton became the 42nd President of the United States.

Whether these tactics were employed for reasons of nobility or perversion is for viewers to decide. Regardless, The Century of the Self unlocks many essential human truths; chiefly, our vulnerability to influence and our need to be controlled.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 28 2023 19:31 utc | 51

"As a former dem and former listener of npr from the 70s (we hippies considered Cokie Roberts was a lefty)
Posted by: migueljose | Jan 28 2023 18:36 utc | 42
---------------
Miguel, take a trip down memory lane with this documentary "Drugs, Guns and the CIA." https://archive.org/details/GunsDrugsandtheCIA, Written, produced and directed by Andrew and Leslie Coburn and hosted by Judy Woodruff. Even in 1987 this film blew my mind, and you will never see anything like it on PBS again.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 19:38 utc | 52

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 19:39 utc | 53

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 19:40 utc | 54

Irresponsible media sucked it all up and spread it further without any fact checking or logical thought. For so called mainstream journalists it was all easy work that brought in good money.

Some element of this was at play, 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' is very real, particularly among the kinds of people who make up the bulk of journos, but really, we have to note that the highest prestige press who set the tone for 'truthiness' for the others had editors who knew well this was all bullshit too. They knew this about WMD in Iraq too.

The reality is that they either were neocon-aligned partisans (IE, pro-Israel partisans) or were scared of neocon-aligned partisans (IE, pro-Israel partisans), the Israel lobby isn't called just 'the lobby' for nothing, it is the third rail of American power politics and media.

This madness isn't borne out of a cold desire for people think 'America first' in seeking to preserve hegemony because what has been done since the end of the Cold War has been entirely Israeli-focused except the attempt to turn Russia into an utterly neutered and politically-controlled entity. For if that was the case the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc would never have happened. Neither would a game of nuclear chicken with Russia when, though regained of some long-term planning ability and mistrust of the West (For rational reasons) Russia posed no threat to US interests, only US designs in Syria. The logical play was to make peace with Russia and use it to counter-balance and contain China. The economic war that has been sparked threatens the US dollar as global reserve and thus threatens to plunge the US into serious economic decline beyond what it has already experienced under 50 years of neoliberalism.

Over and over again the Russians tried to pursue this option, being truly at peace with the West.

What has happened is a combination of teenage girl power users on the internet having a never-ending Salem witch trial hysteria on social media crossed with a deliberate MSM media campaign to somehow conflate Trump with Putin and it worked. It's surreal to see the mainstream left go neocon on Russia but here we are. The fall of the Soviet Union pulled the rug out from under the real left (Economic collectivism) and the left only the fake left of the middle and upper middle classes. (Social individualism)

The left cannot process the fact that Trump wouldn't have started this war but Biden did. And that at least in part the reason Biden started this war was because he felt pressure from low information voters suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Posted by: Altai | Jan 28 2023 19:44 utc | 55

While the Hamilton Dashboard has been even more debunked, there is still a problem Tabbi told Glenn Greenwald--which even Twitter realized were a problem. And that is the rise of mostly academic based disinformation centers such as the Clemson Media Forensics Hub. They and others of their ilk are funded under the rubric of objective, measurable truth and lies. Groups like this produce impressive graphs such the linkage of various groups, particularly suspected Russian sites. But based on bullshit data.

The thing Hamilton did was create false data. The problem with these academic groups is that they manipulate the search of static data to get the results they want. And the data they use is so much mush, you can conclude anything you wish. For example, I remember an article early on from skeptics that the way Twitter users were identified as Kremlin bots is if they had Cyrillic letters in their tweets. Lo and behold, Russians are not the only people who use Cyrillic. Real Bulgarian users were id'ed as Kremlin stooges or bots.

Posted by: Erelis | Jan 28 2023 19:45 utc | 56

Most of the commenters at Moon who have opined elsewhere their criticism of the American war machine, and especially its aggression towards Russia, in the blogosphere have been called Russian names as epithets. The twits at Hamilton 68 were a part of that subjectivation, which was adopted especially by liberals who cannot condemn America's wars of terror.

Posted by: Wilikins | Jan 28 2023 19:45 utc | 57

Irresponsible media sucked it all up and spread it further without any fact checking or logical thought. For so called mainstream journalists it was all easy work that brought in good money.

Over and over again the Russians tried to pursue this option, being truly at peace with the West.

What has happened is a combination of teenage girl power users on the internet having a never-ending Salem witch trial hysteria on social media crossed with a deliberate MSM media campaign (Driven by neocon agendas and atavistic ethnic hatred towards Russians and Ukrainians) to somehow conflate Trump with Putin and it worked. It's surreal to see the mainstream left go neocon on Russia but here we are. The fall of the Soviet Union pulled the rug out from under the real left (Economic collectivism) and the left only the fake left of the middle and upper middle classes. (Social individualism)

Posted by: Altai | Jan 28 2023 19:47 utc | 58

Posted by: Wilikins | Jan 28 2023 19:47 utc | 59

Posted by: Erelis | Jan 28 2023 19:47 utc | 60

Jeez old hippy
That is an awful story, I am sorry this family friend is so lost and angry and took it out on you. That kind of reaction is scary. Is this kid unstable rather then just ignorant? My brother goes bonkers with my beliefs so we just don’t talk politics. Funny he was a republican then went full into trump hate after clinton hate. He is sure because he got a degree in history he knows everything that would be US history lol

Posted by: Susan | Jan 28 2023 19:50 utc | 61

Irresponsible media sucked it all up and spread it further without any fact checking or logical thought. For so called mainstream journalists it was all easy work that brought in good money.

Over and over again the Russians tried to pursue this option, being truly at peace with the West.

Posted by: Altai | Jan 28 2023 19:50 utc | 62

Posted by: Susan | Jan 28 2023 19:51 utc | 63

Here's even more "shocking" news:

The Anglo-American Free Press as an institution is a Free Lie. This media is the greatest propaganda machine in human history--precisely because it comes disguised as a “watchdog of democracy,” “the Fourth Estate,” and other Orwellian bullshit.

Joseph Goebbels was a pathetic amateur compared to the Anglos and their culture of deceit.

In many ways, this is totally appropriate.

America itself is the Empire of Lies, as a guy named Vladimir Putin himself has stated.

And yes, Elon Musk is part of this American Empire--albeit representing one faction that is currently engaged in a gangster turf war with another faction of this same American Evil Empire.

Yes, the internet was always intended to spy on us.
https://yasha.substack.com/p/yes-the-internet-was-always-intended

Elon Musk, eager tech salesman to the Deep State
https://yasha.substack.com/p/elon-musk-eager-tech-salesman-to

Posted by: ak74 | Jan 28 2023 19:52 utc | 64

Posted by: Susan | Jan 28 2023 19:56 utc | 65

Irresponsible media sucked it all up and spread it further without any fact checking or logical thought. For so called mainstream journalists it was all easy work that brought in good money.

What has also happened is the formation, through social media of teenage girl power users (Such power users seem to be very disproportionately BPD and Gen Z) on the internet having a never-ending Salem witch trial hysteria on social media crossed with a deliberate MSM media campaign to somehow conflate Trump with Putin and it worked. (Beginning due to Trump's lack of support for expanding US forces role in Syria) It's surreal to see the mainstream left go neocon on Russia but here we are. The fall of the Soviet Union pulled the rug out from under the real left (Economic collectivism) and the left only the fake left of the middle and upper middle classes. (Social individualism)

Posted by: Altai | Jan 28 2023 20:02 utc | 66

The malicious nefarious character assassination of Russia in the mainstream media is by design. It is a psychological operation or psyop designed to paint Russia in the worst possible light and blame them for all things that don't go their way. Avarice is the reason. Russia is a land bank and extremely wealthy and the west wants it. The psyop is done to inure the population and create a hatred toward Russia. Once the population is sufficiently conditioned to dislike Russia the powers behind this can move against Russia, which they have done using Ukraine. The belligerence from USA is absolutely criminal and it needs to be held accountable and treated as a criminal and severely sanctioned. The goal is for regime change in Russia and that's obvious. It's not working that way so far but all the other things that happen are just fine with USA. The heinous sabotage of the Nord streams, the 46 bio weapons labs in Ukraine for spraying covid or whatever over Europe Russia included, the arming of the azov Nazis in Ukraine to perpetrate genocide over ethnic Russian population, men women and children, in eastern Ukraine, the theft of 300 billion in Russian foreign reserves, this chaos plays into the USA's goals and playbook, but this is absolute criminal activity and it needs to be prosecuted at the international level. The USA is under full control by the WEF and George Soros. Russia recognized the psyop immediately, the USA and NATO have sanctioned Russia heavily but what no one talks about is that Russia has sanctioned NATO and the USA as well. The USA did not count on losing so quickly and decisively in Ukraine. The oblasts in eastern Ukraine were legally annexed by Russia and they are now Russia. The belligerence will continue and it is a tragedy but that works for the eugenicist agenda of the West, just like the kill shots with the 2nd psyop of the manmade COVID scare. Psyops are all about fundraising. They want to keep that money laundering Ukraine psyop going as long as possible. Reporting from USA and extremely embarrassed of the criminal activities of this avarice-driven, covetous, abhorrent country. I would love nothing more than the ROW to stand up and put USA in its place and prosecute the perpetrators heavily. The body such as the international criminal court would be a good place to start, but the ICC is controlled by the West, so it is therefore corrupted. Another organization needs to be established with teeth. It needs to start with the prosecution of war criminals Barry Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton (WEF and Soros puppets). The ICC could work but Europe must unchain itself forever from the shackles of the USA and regain individual sovereignty. Russia will not be shackled.

Posted by: Diego | Jan 28 2023 20:15 utc | 67

Posted by: Diego | Jan 28 2023 20:17 utc | 68

oldhippie | Jan 28 2023 18:13 utc | 38

What a horrible and sad experience it must have been, sorry to hear.

"Never had any use for Trump, consider his limited attempts at pro wrestling the best thing he ever did."

Great sentence, it really is Trump in a nutshell in a way. In my eyes, just hearing this one sentence should make a person go through a whole hour of wholeheartedly not agreeing with you, if the conversation were that way.

Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Jan 28 2023 20:41 utc | 69

I clicked on the link Colin provided in his comment @ 20 regarding Leon Trotsky's "Terror and Communism" and the debate with German Marxist writer Kautsky on the Bolsheviks' seizure of power and their resort to violence to maintain their power.

The Bolsheviks defended their use of violence and dismissal of representative democracy to secure and maintain control. The context in which they seized power was chaotic: the Russian imperial govt had been overthrown, and in the Civil War following Russia's withdrawal from WW1, numerous foreign forces invaded the country on the side of those fighting the Bolsheviks.

Kautsky must have been unaware of the instability in Russia brought about by the former Tsar Nicholas II's conduct of the war which ruined the country's economy and led to its defeat (and the Tsar's overthrow). Kautsky's insistence on representative democracy during a period of chaos and foreign infiltration into Russia shows his ignorance of the situation and failure to understand that most Russians living in Tsarist Russia were poor, mostly uneducated and unable to participate in politics. In such a context, the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1918, undemocratic though it seems to us now, might have been the only way for the industrial and peasant working classes to hold onto what gains they had achieved under Menshevik rule. In Tsarist Russia, representative democracy, had it not been shunned by the Tsar, was mostly restricted to the upper and middle classes to enjoy.

Class warfare as Karl Marx saw it existed (and still exists) because the upper classes wage war against the lower classes through theft of the wealth the lower classes produce through their labour. If there is hatred in Marxism, it comes from those identified by Marxism as its enemies.

Posted by: Jen | Jan 28 2023 20:43 utc | 70

While the Hamilton Dashboard has been even more debunked, there is still a problem Tabbi told Glenn Greenwald--which even Twitter realized was a problem. And that is the rise of mostly academic based disinformation centers such as the Clemson Media Forensics Hub. They and others of their ilk are funded under the rubric of objective, measurable truth and lies. Groups like this produce impressive graphs such the linkage of various groups, particularly suspected Russian sites.

Posted by: Erelis | Jan 28 2023 20:50 utc | 71

Jen, that was elegantly stated, now you are my hero.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 21:53 utc | 72

Susan @ 61

This kid (at age 71 a 42 year od is seen as a kid) is by any measure very stable. He is very well integrated into his community, husband, homeowner, well regarded by all. His community is simply ready to start killing who they see as enemies. Most of his community is completely out of reach. As in they aren't going to ever speak to an old white cisgendered man. It is a bit soon for open calls to kill appear in print. But my guess is this is widespread.

His mother was standing right there when this was said. I know her better than I know most of my blood family. Can't give an exact quote because I was in shock from what had just been said. Something on the lines of 'You should understand young people have strong feelings and you should respect that and act on that'. I said "Really? I should respect the feelings of those who have expressed a wish I be dead'. And walked out.

It has turned nasty in US. I won't say these people are irredeemable. Even as an atheist I find that sentiment blasphemous. I do not expect there is an easy path to redemption, it would be decades before we were there and would require social behavior changes I can't even imagine. Historic changes. I do expect it will get much worse before it gets better.

Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 28 2023 21:59 utc | 73

Will enough people ever care enough about dis/misinformation that lies us into war to do anything about it? The WMD fraud that preceded the Iraq war is well known and millions of people took to the streets to protest prior to that war starting in an effort to prevent it yet the majority just put that information into the ‘who cares’ file and move on.

The iron like grip the national security state has over all mainstream media and social media will result in future generations having no awareness at all about the narrative management exerted over all information they are allowed to access. The continued and ever increasing suppression of alternative media sources will see that information return to the printed magazine and book format and covertly distributed which will of course be made an offence. That is if printing presses haven’t been criminalised and destroyed!

Economically destroying or heaven forbid militarily destroying the hegemony of the US led Western Empire is the only way that l can see the world reorienting away from a dystopian future towards a healthier world. The stakes are indeed high in Ukraine.

Posted by: John G | Jan 28 2023 21:59 utc | 74

Another interesting Twitter feature was nicknamed "GodMode"

https://www.engadget.com/amp/twitter-second-whistleblower-godmode-security-musk-221101124.html

https://fortune.com/2023/01/25/musk-twitter-whistleblower-godmode-allows-engineer-tweet-from-any-account/amp/

Funny how the second source starts the headers with Elon Musk, while discussing the problem that was created years and years before him.

The problem is that there was and still is

1. A simple, single checkbox, interface

(not the complex and hard to learn direct database connection, that only can be used by few highky experience techies, and that inevitably exists everywhere, but a spwcially designed nobrainer)

2. Which was granted to many "engineers" world-wide

3. Which gives power to manipulate everyone's accounts, even writing fake Twitter messages under anyone's name

4. Which was made "invisible" to the system: No any logging or a counting is made, who when from where and what was doing via this very dangerous interface.

For many years unknown list of Twitter employees used it no one knows how often and for which purposes. But now that Musk boight it they suddenly got so very honest and started blowing the whistle...

Posted by: Arioch | Jan 28 2023 22:09 utc | 75

Susan @35:

"Both parties have trained their puppets to hate and they do it well. I have worked at various levels for the d party and watched it devolve into a I hate Russia party and I hate china party and mostly I hate Republican Party with trump hate beyond anything I have ever seen. The republicans: Hate anyone who threatens gun rights. Democrats, and women, and brown people. Immigrants in particular , China. They hate hillary almost to the level Ds hate Trump"

I think you are wrong to see an equivalency here. That is, this is a false equivalency. I happen to have come to interact with significant numbers of right wing rednecks (moved to Redneckistan late in my life to try to "make a difference" in education among America's underserved youth in the Deep South). Unlike most liberals, who are certain with almost religious zeal of their own intellectual and moral superiority, I made an all-out effort to actually listen to the concerns of the local redneck population without filtering what they say through the elitist auto-translate that most liberals are blinded by. For example, when a redneck tells a gay or Black joke, I don't employ the liberal auto-translate to reach the conclusion that means they hate gays and Blacks and want to go about murdering them.

With that broken liberal auto-translate turned off I have discovered that local "right wingers" (scare quotes used because I don't think they align with the capitalist elites at all) don't actually hate very much of anyone. They may ridicule a guy pretending to be a woman, or a Black dude trying to look cool by wearing his pants around his knees, but acknowledging the ridiculous is very far from hate.

The difference is much more graphic in the political party people identify with. Many of the rednecks dislike Clinton, but I have never met a single one who reacts with the gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes and pulling of hair that is a fairly typical reaction among faux (and now pro-war) left.

One reality we should keep in mind is that in 2015-2016 (and beyond) the capitalist mass media uniformly demonized Trump and deified Clinton. A discussion of why it was such an imperative at that time to guarantee a Clinton presidency with that kind of behavior would be informative, but the key in this current discussion of "hate" is that the Trump-hate was very heavily marketed by the Establishment mass media. Even Fox News mostly cooperated with the demonization of Trump. The canonization of Clinton was likewise surprisingly uniform in the capitalist mass media. Keep this in mind because the portion of the population that went berserk after 2016 were the ones who were more in tune with the false narratives that the capitalist mass media was doing the hard-sell of.

The "deplorables" who were accused of misogynist and racist hate were actually the ones who correctly saw the full court press by the Establishment to force Clinton down everyone's throat. The more the Establishment pushed the more they resisted. This wasn't because they hated Clinton, and certainly not because they hated women in general, but because they were offended by the possibility that their choices were being made for them by people they don't agree with.

There is genuine disintegration in American society, but there is no equivalency between the "sides". Like the American Empire's global authority is crumbling as multipolarity develops, the moral and intellectual authority America's middle class used to enjoy is crumbling in parallel. Incompetence, deception, delusion. The "deplorables" can see it but the "liberal" Professional/Managerial class, with their certainty in their sense of superiority reinforced by their participation trophies, cannot see past their own delusions. Because of their ignorance and incompetence, the only thing these "liberal" Professional/Managerial class folks can attribute their failure to successfully gaslight the "deplorables" to is that the "deplorables" are just unusually mean and hateful people. That is simply not so.

Now if only the "liberal" Professional/Managerial class can take down the American Empire with their delusions and incompetence before the nukes fly we might have time to see the "deplorables" finally stand up again in the US and assert themselves. It would be a nice development to see plumbers and bus drivers running the country for a change.

Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 28 2023 22:33 utc | 76

"Not everyone who twits a content that was twitted in Russian-related network is Russia-related". While true, this is an example where the "framing of a problem" is as toxic as the falsifications about the problem. Can a democracy tolerate "Russia related" or "Russia aligned" individuals, and how far this tolerance can go? Can they be allow to twit, and if yes, twit without warning and "added context"?

In those difficult times (ALWAYS APPLICABLE) we need higher vigilance and err on the side of caution blah blah. Perhaps the methodology was a wee bit off, but creeps like Hamilton 68 at least tried to do something for this terribly important problem, doesn't it count for something? Why such negativism toward them? Dare I say, Russia-align? And the punch-line, "It would surely make Putin happy".

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 22:34 utc | 77

Jen@67
Any doubts as to whether Kautsky or the Bolsheviks were in the right ought to have been dispensed with in the past twenty years.
What the Bolsheviks realised was that the imperial system, which reached its bloody climax in the slaughter of the World War, needed to be crushed. And that nine out of ten members of the world's population would benefit from imperialism's demise.
The Bolsheviks hoped, but without much optimism, that the working class of western europe and america would rise up and, following the Russian lead, kill the empire in its headquarters. But the main energy of the revolution was directed eastwards where opposition to imperialism was a precondition of any political life. And it was in the east and in the empires, among the subject peoples, that the revolution spread fastest and deepest.
The Soviet Union, betrayed by its governing caste, is thirty years dead. But the impetus of the 1917 Revolution and the fruits of the insights of those Bolsheviks who understood that, before anything more could come into existence, before socialism the empire musty be effaced from the earth. And that is what, unconscious agents of history, despite their tastes and offensive to the ideas that govern them, the Kremlin's leadership is assisting the world in doing.
As to Kautsky Scholtz is his lineal descendant, just as Europe's social democrats are the descendants of the traitors of 1914.

A century is a short time in politics, what is reaching fruition today is what was left hanging in the air at Brest Litovsk.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 28 2023 22:47 utc | 78

Re the Internet intended to spy on us... Well, not the Internet per se in my opinion.

Google definitely was. Here's the classic expose on that:

How the CIA made Google
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’

The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.

As for the topic of this thread, this next article I'd like to reference isn't directly related but it does deal with how Russia is perceived, so "I'll allow it".

Scott Ritter has a new Substack up with describes his recent interview with Victor Bout, the accused Russian arms dealer who was recently released from prison and swapped for athlete Brittney Griner:

Fourteen Years and Nine Months: The Revelation and Redemption of Viktor Bout
https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/twelve-years-and-nine-months-the

Over the years I’ve met several famous individuals. I’ve met a few infamous individuals as well. But I’ve never experienced the range of emotions that I did when I was called by Peter Ermolin, the producer of the Scott Ritter Show, a weekly podcast I host in collaboration with Solovyov Live!, the online channel of the popular Russian talk show host, Vladimir Solovyov.

The Scott Ritter Show is a live interview format, and Peter and I coordinate on the guests that appear. The main idea behind the show was to create a platform that could bring Russian voices to an American audience that otherwise might remain unheard.

In this regard, the show has been a great success, and in the first 19 episodes, I have had the opportunity to interview military commanders on the frontlines in Ukraine, Russian politicians, military analysts from around the world, and Russian arms control experts. For the 20th episode, Peter said he wanted to do something “big,” and I agreed. Why not?

But when Peter called me and said the Viktor Bout had agreed to come on the show, I hesitated.

- RSH

Posted by: CharlesLutherThanos | Jan 28 2023 22:48 utc | 79

Testing again. The goddamn filter dropped my post - again...

Posted by: CharlesLutherThanos | Jan 28 2023 22:50 utc | 80

As the British comedy show line went, "I'm sorry, I'll read that again". This time I'll post in two parts.

Goddamn filter.

As for the Internet being created to spy on us, I don't believe that. However, Google definitely was. Here's the classic expose on that:

How the CIA made Google
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’

The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.

Posted by: CharlesLutherThanos | Jan 28 2023 22:53 utc | 81

Now the goddamn filter is dropping post made under my alternate ID!

Jesus Christ, b, can we FIX THAT GODDAMN THING? I'm not making up new email addresses every other day just to post here.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jan 28 2023 22:54 utc | 82

Looks like the site is just being EXTREMELY slow again. Took a couple minutes for those posts to show up.

Didn't take my own advice to wait that long.

The hell with it. I won't bother posting what I was going to. Wasted enough time as it is.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jan 28 2023 22:56 utc | 83

But you Mr. Colin lumped Marxist all together as one big bundle of "hate."

Would you have the chattel slave love his master, even while undergoing terrible beatings.

Posted by: Ed | Jan 28 2023 18:44 utc | 43

By pointing out that Marxism is mainly about hate and not love and supporting Marxism, I was obviously encouraging slaves to hate their masters very much, even if the masters were nice to them, rather than the other way around.

These pseudo-leftist insanity double speaks here just show the success of the psyops of Imperialism on the pseudo-"left"ism.

They even seems to think that social democracy and anarchism are about Marxism and not libNazis, which is part of the mind control.

As for how Lenin, Trotsky and Mao were mainly about hate, cruelty, war, division and terrorism, I've given many examples.

"Treat the enemy as ruthlessly as a harsh winter" is a famous quote in Mao's era. That is a very nice quote for us.

After I repeatedly pointed out that the right kind of hate is good, and not all hate is good, they still blindly denounced "lumped Marxist all together as one big bundle of hate", which is libNazis' Russiagate and "Trump = bad = Nazi" level of insanity.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 2:45 utc | 84

So what's the hangup on trying to frame (all) socialism as (only) about "hatred"?

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 28 2023 19:08 utc | 48

I said "mostly" not "only".

Real Marxists should love and unify their real friends and reveal & expand the real division of the society to destroy their enemies and build their own rule. The latter is the goal, not the former. Please read Gramsci’s article about The Prince.

https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/C14-Gramsci-The-Modern-Prince-1st-Printing.pdf

Pseudo socialism like social democracy or Humanist "Marxism" isn't socialism at all. They are just about centrist liberalism and nothing about socialism (aka socialism in name only)

Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao loved to fuck their enemies' feelings with their facts, logic and weapons. That's very nice.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 3:06 utc | 85

If there is hatred in Marxism, it comes from those identified by Marxism as its enemies.

Posted by: Jen | Jan 28 2023 20:43 utc | 67

Marx did not believe that the oppression of the ruling class against the ruled class came or had to come primarily from hatred, although there was clearly hatred of a high intensity and sadistic nature among the ruling class.

Even if masters did not hate but love their slaves, slaves would have to be highly hateful and destroy the solidarity of their masters with weapons and terror against their peace and antiterrorism to be good and right. Even the liberal scholar Foucault acknowledges this.

Limiting the opposition of the exploited class to the exploiting class to "opposing the hatred of the exploiting class against us" is precisely the deception of the exploiting class of imperialism.

Even if your boss is a true saint, you still need to hate him and his business.

Otherwise it is nothing more than the doctrine of Bernstein and Kautsky.

Liberal intellectuals come from reading too much and understanding too little, as exemplified by these pseudo-left-wing conditionings.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 4:03 utc | 86

@ oldhippie...

that is a sad story.. i am sorry this has happened to you.....i hope it changes for the better but it doesn't sound encouraging...

@ richard steven hack..

i am sorry you are having difficulties here..

@ susan and many others... thanks for the posts and commentary - humour is especially enjoyable..

Posted by: james | Jan 29 2023 4:28 utc | 87

"How to live with the bastards of the ruling class in harmony, love and peace"

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:13 utc | 37

A selfawarewolf here lmao

This is exactly the point of the pro-imperialist pseudo-left: solidarity, unity, harmony, love and peace with U.S. imperialism

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/11/09/dehr-n09.html

Within 24 hours of the appearance of the letter, in a demonstration of rank cowardice and subordination to the military/intelligence apparatus, the so-called “progressives” withdrew it and affirmed their support for prosecuting the war “until Ukrainian victory.”

The following day, Sanders, asked by a reporter about the letter and its withdrawal, said, “I don’t agree with that, and they don’t agree with it, apparently. It was withdrawn today, so it becomes a non-issue.” Thus the Vermont senator began his pre-election tour to hustle votes for the Democrats by declaring his support for war until “victory.”

Claiming to represent socialism while hysterically cursing and opposing the fact that socialism is primarily related to hate is nothing but a psyop to destroy socialism: the historical failure of the Soviet Union came directly from this: Gorbachev preached a so-called humanist socialism because he wanted to get more loans from the West.

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 5:38 utc | 88

"How to live with the bastards of the ruling class in harmony, love and peace"

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 28 2023 18:13 utc | 37

A selfawarewolf here lmao

This is exactly the point of the pro-imperialist pseudo-left: solidarity, unity, harmony, love and peace with U.S. imperialism

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/11/09/dehr-n09.html

Within 24 hours of the appearance of the letter, in a demonstration of rank cowardice and subordination to the military/intelligence apparatus, the so-called “progressives” withdrew it and affirmed their support for prosecuting the war “until Ukrainian victory.”

The following day, Sanders, asked by a reporter about the letter and its withdrawal, said, “I don’t agree with that, and they don’t agree with it, apparently. It was withdrawn today, so it becomes a non-issue.” Thus the Vermont senator began his pre-election tour to hustle votes for the Democrats by declaring his support for war until “victory.”

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 5:38 utc | 89

Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 28 2023 22:33 utc | 73

As always your comments give me food for thought. I, too, am in the deep south (geographically and politically) and there's some truth to what you write. But I think you may have lost touch with the PMC, liberals and progressives of whom you speak so snarkily as there is the same (or worse) level of vitriol directed at them from the so-called deplorables as there is the condescension coming from the PMC/liberals toward the deplorables. Except in my personal anecdotal experience it comes with a healthy dose of lizard people, Satanists, child sex trafficking and chemical harvesting conspiracy nonsense. I am personally a major "conspiracy theorist" when it comes to JFK, MLK and 9/11 to name just a few, so that's not a baseline pejorative from me; just the "nonsense" part. Are teachers and librarians counted among your PMC? How about paper pushers and managers for the fossil fuel industry (Exxon maintains a major presence of the PMC class right by us and I'd wager 89% were Trump voters)? I think you're being too narrow and focusing only on what you're seeing in the corporate MSM and from places like Portland and Wisconsin. While you're willing to give one 'side' a broad range of legitimate leeway and grievances, you're automatically dismissive of the other 'side' which is problematic in that 1) maybe there aren't just two groups of people in this discussion and 2) you ignore the range of opinion in one group but not the other.

I don't know, I think we're probably pretty closely aligned philosophically and, if conditions are right, politically, but you seem to focus too intently on the woke issue and throw the PMC class too much shade, especially by assuming they're all liberal/neoliberal/neoconservative when in fact a sizeable portion of them are Trump supporters and in fact anti-Empire.

Happy to countenance your response to this no matter the (gruff) tone. We probably have a lot in common in many ways and a good disagreement isn't a bad thing if it leads to enhanced understanding. And that's really what I'm looking for here - a touchstone of understanding the real world on the ground in the country we both inhabit, even more so if it can expand my views on class dynamics and struggle as someone who's never read a lick of Marx.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 29 2023 6:20 utc | 90

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 3:06 utc | 80

I think we may just have vastly different contextual interpretations and definitions of the word "hate"...do I hate the massive wealth gap and greed as a virtue ethos of the western ruling financial elite and their stupid water carriers? Yes. Do I hate the base, savage, wrongheaded imperialist notions of western chauvinist thugs currently represented in most conflicts by the US/UK and former colonial militaries? Yes.

But I'd appreciate some elaboration on who else us so-called leftists and socialists *should* hate and what that hate actually entails.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 29 2023 6:28 utc | 91

At this point I'd prefer the family values of the mafia to the unelected junta in charge of my country.

Posted by: Zach Wheat | Jan 29 2023 7:23 utc | 92

I didn't take the idea of Dims hating those actual left who argued that leftists who argued that fighting the primary opponents the ruling class on behalf of all working class humans has to be Rule Number One at all seriously until I got into a fiery debate with Paul Street a counterpunch journalist who repeatedly called me a trumpist and a fascist because I said the Dims were as fascist as the rethugs were.

Racism is evil because it is a ruling class tool used by them to oppress a particular section of the Working Class, when it manifests in that form it must be fought. However just as the use of Sexism to oppress half the members of the Working Class will be fought in a similar manner we should never be diverted by instances of racism, misogyny for other means, often as a type of 'false flag' operation:
eg beating up an unusual case into a major media issue merely to wreak division amongst the Working Class and perhaps even use the carefully cultivated outrage from some Working people the instance to convince people in the Working Class that using racism, misogyny, or whatever the current name is for people intolerant of those people who play with other people's pink bits in a way they do not approve, as a means to oppress a particular group of Working Class people is A OK with them dude.
It is an all too effective elite strategy - at worst that last move will knock a mob of citizens flat on their arses and keep 'em there for a while, at best it will create a permanent schism in the Working Class.

The other point I wanted to make was the about types complaining "So What it is too late to make a difference so who cares?"

Setting aside whether this sort of white-anting was deliberate sabotage (after all we are talking about the fatuousness of dubbing anyone who disagrees to be a troll-bot) doesn't alter the fact that none of us truly know if we will witness a final tipping point much less when it was/will be triggered, so the obvious response must be to act as if we weren't there until the opposite was manifestly obvious and beyond debate.

So I know that within my family along with many others who caught up with their extended family discovered that views about the proxy war in Ukraine had shifted markedly.

Not all of them were ready to claim Russia's innocence but nearly all within my larger family have made a big move from where they were early in 2022 when they blathered about putin the imperialist.
Now I hear those people say "Yep there is no doubt that this war was dreamed up by amerika". Some still reckon Russia shouldn't have invaded even if they now claim to understand why Russia did but that will shift too.

Maybe amerika won't wake up enough before the war ends but in some ways that may help as once ordinary euros etc push their governments hard enough they will be forced to split with amerika and that will be enough to stop the madness in Ukraine as well as facilitate a much needed divergence.
That is unless you're silly enough to believe that the Russo-psycho states such as Poland & Lithuania are able to aid Ukraine with 3rd hand support from amerika sufficiently to not get pushed over by Russia.
Even with new tanks & f16 fighters Poland will lose, the Baltics surrounded & isolated. Wait how Germans react when the truth about Poland's role in sabotaging Nordstream 1&2 comes out - as it inevitably will.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jan 29 2023 8:27 utc | 93

Oops hit post too soon sorry bout any typos, mixed tenses etc.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jan 29 2023 8:29 utc | 94

‘Hatred’ [as with many emotionally laden terms, like ‘class warfare] predictably has posters in this thread disagreeing when really they are not far apart. Marx did write Capital in a ‘dessicated’, or dry style in the sense that he concentrated on the factual, in contrast to other writings such as ‘The Communist Manifesto’ which was an emotional appeal. ‘Capital, Vol. I’ [ I have not read the other two volumes, which are about circulation of money, and hence also dry] is a dispassionate history of the development of classes and the violent expropriation of the labor and property of the laboring classes by the capitalist class. So if there is any ‘hatred’ that socialists and communists should have, it is against that social relationship and all its consequences:poverty, homelessness, hunger, crime, etc. ‘Hatred’ is properly of the existing social relations, not the individual perpetrators. Capitalist roaders’ actions are hated, but not as individuals. Individuals can be re-educated, as by being sent to work in the fields as in the Chinese Cultural Revolution—-in theory—let’s not get into whether re-education of capitalists has ever worked in practice. Maybe this song clarifies what one might call ‘revolutionary’ hatred’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F5lxVko_EQ. [I hate the capitalist system, sung by Barbara Dane, recently deceased.]

Posted by: mjh | Jan 29 2023 8:42 utc | 95

Colin: Thanks for posting the Gramsci link. Something I’ve long intended to read

Posted by: mjh | Jan 29 2023 8:44 utc | 96

Posted by: mjh | Jan 29 2023 8:42 utc | 89

Class warfare is not a emotionally laden term in your definition because it is factual. However, Das Kapital wouldn't be dry only because it concentrates on the facts.

However, Das Kapital is not dry simply because it concentrates on facts, because it is also full of interesting passages.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm

As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour. [3]

Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.

...

Englishmen, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of abscesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients.

This is much more interesting to me than the Marvel comics, and I don't know why this is called dry.

In addition, you can see a better example of this kind of hatred in the international anthem.

The state represses and the law cheats

The tax bleeds the unfortunate

No duty is imposed on the rich

"Rights of the poor" is a hollow phrase

Enough languishing in custody

Equality wants other laws

...

Hideous in their self-deification

Kings of the mine and rail

Have they ever done anything other

Than steal work?

...

The kings make us drunk with their fumes,

Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!

Let the armies go on strike,

Guns in the air, and break ranks

If these cannibals insist

In making heroes of us,

Soon they will know our bullets

Are for our general

Posted by: Colin | Jan 29 2023 10:35 utc | 97

oldhippie | Jan 28 2023 21:59 utc | 70

Please forgive me for responding to a post that clearly was addressed to Susan, but I feel like I just have to ask this question: you talk about the "kid" and you talk about his mother, whom you know very well, and about his family background in general. What I'm asking myself now, does he have a father, too? And a grandfather?

Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Jan 29 2023 13:22 utc | 98

Tom_Q_Collins @84:

"I think you may have lost touch with the PMC, liberals and progressives of whom you speak so snarkily as there is the same (or worse) level of vitriol directed at them from the so-called deplorables as there is the condescension coming from the PMC/liberals toward the deplorables. Except in my personal anecdotal experience it comes with a healthy dose of lizard people, Satanists, child sex trafficking and chemical harvesting conspiracy nonsense."

The "lizard people" accusations are tongue in cheek. "Satanists" are a standard, ages old accusation by excessively religious people towards those they view as morally corrupt, and that corrupt shoe certainly fits the the PMC/liberals, at least from the redneck perspective. I don't know anything about the "chemical harvesting". Never heard of that. The child sex trafficking, on the other hand, is absolutely real, or do you imagine it was only high school aged teens who end up being pimped in the elite resort brothels like Epstein's Island?

Another massive and damning difference between the "deplorables" and the "PMC/liberals" is that the "deplorables" are not the trendsetters, discourse shapers, and narrative spinners in American society. The "deplorables" are not the indispensable right and left hands of the capitalist elites. The "deplorables"are just the despised labor that the capitalist elites dumped when they moved their productive capital overseas. It is entirely the "PMC/liberals" who are responsible for the lies, deception, and gaslighting coming from the capitalist mass media, whether those lies are about Russians flipping the US elections, imaginary "riots" at the US Capitol, or the victimhood of the definitely-not-Nazi Nazis in the Ukraine. That is 100% on the "PMC/liberals". While many "deplorables" might be fooled by the "PMC/liberal" lies, they are not responsible for those lies and don't have the resources to mass disseminate such falsehoods anyway. The "deplorables" are even regularly banned, shadowbanned, and otherwise silenced on social media as well, and the ones doing the silencing are the "PMC/liberals".

"Are teachers and librarians counted among your PMC?"

Absolutely! A huge part of the curriculum at every western university is heavy indoctrination of prospective teachers into "woke" delusions, and most of those students yearning to be teachers are exceptionally susceptible to the "equity" proselytization. Further, teachers can do nothing about the capitalist economic conditions that turn many of their students into criminals and cultural jetsam, but the "woke" nonsense offers them a way to pursue a simulacrum of "equity" right in their classrooms, so they embrace it with a kind of desperation.

"Exxon maintains a major presence of the PMC class right by us and I'd wager 89% were Trump voters"

Sure, there are no absolutes when we talk about these social classes. There are some "deplorables" who really do psychotically hate women and beige people. Not many but they do exist, mostly in prison. And there are also a few "PMC/liberals" who have had half a dose of the so-called "red pill" and so were willing to help throw a sabot into the political machinery with a Trump vote. These are exceptions though, and "PMC/liberals" in any positions of authority who go against Establishment narratives are sternly sanctioned (ie: fired and blacklisted from employment... this is capitalism after all).

It may seem unfair and "inequitable", but there is no equivalency between the "deplorables" and "PMC/liberals". The problems with American culture, economy, and foreign policy are entirely the responsibility of the "PMC/liberals". They are the ones executing their paymasters' desires: Spinning imperial narratives, firing organic (non-PMC) labor organizers, marginalizing critics of the Establishment, gaslighting the masses. There are no "deplorables" in the Senate, or the RAND Corp, or writing for the ~~New York~~ Langley Times or the ~~Washington~~ BezosPost, or appearing on people's "Plato's Cave" displays. That is 100% "PMC/liberals".

Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 29 2023 15:28 utc | 99

A lot of propaganda is about showing you who is reputable and who is not and should be despised or dismissed and ignored. Fact checking and fighting disinformation are recent 'styles'. Hamilton takes the 'hard data science' approach which reduces dissenting voices to objects for study. I see a lot of this 'data science' now. There is no confrontation of ideas, no debate , not even dismissal. The serious journalist now studies you as a social phenomenon. You can't reach them anymore.

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Jan 29 2023 15:48 utc | 100

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