“Russian Talking Points” Look An Awful Lot Like Well-Documented Facts

in #russia6 years ago

Things aren't looking great for the Democratic establishment, which recently admitted that it stacks its primaries against progressive candidates and is currently engaged in a desperate, hail Mary lawsuit against WikiLeaks for its factual publications about the party. So of course you know what that means.

That's right! It's time for Democratic pundits to begin down-punching Jill Stein.

"Jill Stein is on @NewDay right now repeating Russian talking points on its interference in the 2016 election and on US foreign policy," tweeted CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto today, without shame or self-reflection.

Sciutto was referring to comments Stein made on a CNN interview today about America's undeniable, entirely factual and well-documented history of meddling in other countries' elections, including a citation of an ex-CIA Director's recent admission that the US has interfered in foreign electoral processes and continues to do so to this day.

Because that's what constitutes a "Russian talking point" these days: raw, easily verifiable facts.

Stein's interviewer, Chris "It's illegal to read WikiLeaks" Cuomo, echoed a similar sentiment in response to her points, in essence arguing that only Russians should be stating these blatantly obvious and extremely relevant facts.

"You know, that would be the case for Russia to make, not from the American perspective," Cuomo said. "Of course, there's hypocrisy involved, lots of different big state actors do lots of things that they may not want people to know about. But let Russia say that the United States did it to us, and here's how they did it, so this is fair play. From the American perspective and you running for president, more than once of this country, shouldn't your position have been, this was bad what they did, they're trying to do it right now and we have to stop it?"

Right. Because you have so many Russians on your show making that case, do you Chris?

This is absolute lunacy. The implication here is that it isn't ever okay for Americans to talk about Russia in any other context than how awful and evil its government is; that nobody can speak about how America's behavior factors into the equation in a very real and significant way. Not because it's not factual, not because it's not relevant, but because it's a "Russian talking point", and only Russians should be saying it.

And this sentiment being promulgated by these establishment pundits is being swallowed hook, line and sinker by the rank-and-file citizenry who consume such media. Every single day, without exception, I am accused multiple times of being a propagandist for the Kremlin. Not because there's any evidence for that, not because I'm writing anything that is untruthful, but because I'm writing "Russian talking points", i.e. arguments that have ostensibly been made at some point by Russians.

And it is, to be perfectly honest, infuriating. These people are actively making the case for willful ignorance and stupidity. They're actively arguing that facts which don't support the narratives being promulgated by the CIA and the State Department should be completely excluded from all discussion within the western hemisphere, and that only Russians should be making them. They do this while simultaneously arguing that Russian media is dangerous and should be avoided by Americans. Only Russians should argue against CIA/CNN narratives, and we should never, ever listen to those arguments.

They're arguing for the deliberate omission of relevant facts from dialogue. They are arguing that we should all be morons, on purpose.

Of course it's relevant to the discussion that the US interferes with foreign democratic processes far more than any other government on the planet! Are you nuts? Yes, obviously if yours is the primary country responsible creating a climate wherein governments meddle in the elections of other nations, that undeniable fact must necessarily be a part of any sensible analysis of what's happening and what should be done about it. Anyone who tries to argue that that fact shouldn't be a part of the conversation is making an argument in favor of stupidity.

That's not a "whataboutism", as empire loyalists like Eric Boehlert habitually claim. It's crucial factual information.

The environment that these pundits are creating is itself hostile to democracy. If all "talking points" are excluded from the conversation other than those which lead to continually escalating sanctions, proxy wars, nuclear posturing and brinkmanship, then there's no way for activism or democracy to tap the brake on the west's ongoing trajectory toward direct military confrontation with a nuclear superpower.

In her interview, Stein outlined this quite clearly:

"You know, I think that kind of position which says that we're in a totally different category from the rest of the world is not working. This century of American domination, you know, sort of didn't play out the way we thought it would, we're embroiled now -- we have the military in practically every country around the world. In the recent taxes that people pay, the average American paid almost $3,500 that went into the Department of Offense, I would call it, not the Department of Defense, $3,500, whereas we put $40 into the EPA.

"You know, 57 percent of our discretionary dollars now are going into the military. It's part of a mindset that says, we're always right and they're always wrong and we're going to be dominating militarily and economically. We're in a multi-polar world right now and, you know, we need to behave as an exemplary member of the community and that is by upholding ourselves and leading the way on international law, human rights and diplomacy. That approach is really paying off on the Korean peninsula right now. I think we should be using it more broadly."

Cuomo, who as the son of a New York Governor and brother of the current New York Governor is as much Democratic Party royalty as a Clinton, had some very interesting facial expressions in response to Stein's arguments. Whenever an interviewee makes strong points which go against the establishment grain he always looks like he's taking a really uncomfortable shit:

There have been far too many cartoonishly absurd responses to Stein's interview for me to address in a single article without putting my laptop through the wall in a fit of rage, but this tweet from MSNBC and Atlantic contributor Natasha Bertrand is really something else.

"Jill Stein just told @CNN that her presence at RT gala in Moscow Dec 2015 wasn’t controversial at the time because Obama 'was still on track for a reboot' with Putin," said Bertrand, adding that "Russia had already annexed Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, intervened in Syria for Assad, and hacked the DNC."

This is actual, real-life "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia" Orwellian revisionist doublethink. There was no public information about any Russian DNC hack in 2015, and the average American hardly ever thought about Russia at that time. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry personally met with Vladimir Putin in July of 2016 to discuss collaboration against terrorist forces in Syria. Only in the most warped, revisionist, funhouse mirror Orwellian reality tunnel can it be claimed that Stein visiting Moscow in December of 2015 would have been considered shady or controversial at the time.

The fact that Bertrand's tweet was liked and shared thousands of times on Twitter is extremely creepy and disturbing. Establishment media didn't start indoctrinating American liberals with Russia hysteria until the tail end of 2016, but it's been so effective that MSNBC mainliners are now gaslighting themselves into a revision of their own history.

This is why people like myself fight the CIA/CNN Russia narrative so aggressively. Not because we're propagandists, not because we're "useful idiots", not because of "Russian talking points", but because the US-centralized power establishment's nonstop campaign to manufacture support for its agendas of global hegemony are making us all stupid and crazy.

Stop playing along with this bullshit. Stop letting them make us stupid and crazy. Stop letting them manipulate us into consenting to escalations with a nuclear superpower. Stop. Turn back. Wrong way.


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You say it girl! The UK media are lamely trying to manufacture a story that the Russians intervened in the Brexit vote - clearly a vain attempt to get a new vote. Of course which country's leader did come here and tell the British people not to leave the EU? Oh yes Obama.

I'm still waiting for Russia to be blamed for the fall of the USSR.

I’m waiting for an elderly Putin to say,”Chelsea Clinton, tear down this wall.” /snark

"arguing that we should all be morons, on purpose" = CNN mission statement.

You are always such a joy to read.
You remind me of John Pilger. The journalist who is ineffable in their commitment and output to asking hard questions.
Life isn't meant to be easy, and even less easy is trying to understand the undercurrents and machinations beneath the veneer.
Even less easy is trying to write about them and educate others.
Such persistent incisive writing is invaluable and completely essential for today and now.

Your article is basically right, the democrats have lost their minds over this election loss. A lot of Americans know and realize that the US does meddle in foreign elections and if they don't want it done to them then don't do it to others.

It's far worse than you relate. Consider England, where a man was recently jailed for playing a joke on his girlfriend by training her dog to salute, where another man was jailed for flipping off a traffic camera, and where Alfie Evans was recently murdered by court order in a hospital that has recently admitted it strips the organs from children and sells them to pharmaceutical companies.

This infuriation you feel; this rage, is born of fear. For good reason.

This is not the end game. This is the setup.

What's coming next is that we are going to be legally nothing more than raw materials, not even chattel.

I am sure Alfie Evans organs were not stripped from his body...that's sort of misleading in this particular case.

I am not sure of it, and have no information other than that I related here.

I hope you're right, but don't see how I was misleading by pointing out that the hospital has a profit motive for killing kids, since that is the publicly available information regarding the matter.

What information has assured you the hospital didn't sell Alfie's organs? I'd be at least a little less outraged by his forced death if I had some indication they didn't profit from it.

Because he died of a mysterious illness or was inflicted with a mysterious supposedly neurological illness that even up to his death went un- diagnosed, they would never take a chance and place his organs in someone else under those conditions.

Well, you are quite correct--if there aren't other uses for organs. @benswann mentioned they sold them to pharmaceutical companies, not to transplant patients.

Well I guess I will never know what benswann said unless I want to spend twenty minutes trying to watch a five minute video in freeze frames. I wouldn't know why for the life of me a pharmaceutical company would want his remains....if you made it through the video I guess you could enlighten me. I'd still think parents have a right to remains over other entities.

It has been frustrating of late trying to watch Dtube, because of that =/

He didn't say why the pharmaceutical companies bought them, but he did mention that parents weren't informed, until the recent revelation.

I reckon you're right about parents rights, but I reckon they'd have the right to change hospitals too.

I think they have socialized medicine over there, I am sure you lose a lot of rights when given free health care.

A human as a unit of labour, or a unit that represents a cost/proft percentage to exploit.

Count Dankula is in Scotland btw.

I confess I am relatively ignorant of the UK's political structure. I am sure folks in the various political jurisdictions count them important, while the monarchy seems to supersede them when they are viewed from without. I don't know if it made a difference to Count Dankula in this matter.

I do hope we retain and increase our value to society beyond that of the sum of our parts. I count the least of us sacred in a way the sum of our parts cannot value.

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