Mondoweiss
Skeptics who see Russiagate as warmongering will never get respect in the
press
US Politics
Donald Johnson on February 25, 2018
A week ago I prepared a draft of a post about Russiagate, intending to
revise it and publish; but since then I was scooped by everyone-even in one
limited respect by freaking Ross Douthat who is the least obnoxious
conservative columnist at the New York Times. (Actually, on his best days,
or the others' worst, you could strike out the word "conservative").
In "The Trolling of the American Mind," Douthat made the point that if you
want to talk about Russian influence on the election (assuming all charges
are true for the sake of argument), the Democratic National Committee emails
were far more consequential than the silly Russian social media campaign,
because the information supplied was real and significant whoever obtained
it. Douthat doesn't put it this way, but the revelation that the DNC was
colluding with Hillary Clinton in the primaries might conceivably have
embittered enough Sanders supporters to make a difference. Of course people
who read far-left blogs would have also learned that an idiot Hollywood
billionaire named Haim Saban was treated with great deference as he voiced
his opinions re the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, BDS, aimed
at Israel. No; Ross didn't say that. What he did say, which should be
obvious to anyone who lives here, is that the social media campaign was
sophomoric and the Russians could pass it off as American because it was a
tiny drop of stupidity in a vast ocean of American nonsense.
The larger point about Russiagate hysteria has been made by Paul Street and
various other lefties. So what is there for me to say?
Well, there is this piece by Adrian Chen at The New Yorker: "A so-called
expert's uneasy dive into the Trump-Russia frenzy."
The piece is good and interesting in its own right and should be read for
what Chen argues. His strongest points are made in the first two paragraphs:
The Russiagate hysteria is the product of experts who have their own
interests- internet security types who hope for more business, thinktank
pseudo-intellectuals who make their living warning of deep dark threats,
journalists who need sexy headlines. And a journalist who wishes to fit in
has to go along.
The most important part of the piece is the subtext, which is so close to
the surface it might as well be text: journalists in the mainstream press
sometimes have to make a choice between being honest to the facts as they
see them and being mainstream. There is a narrative to be narrated, dammit,
and facts can get in the way. And if you naively choose the facts, you might
find yourself in this case demonized as a pro-Putin propagandist or find
your article cited by pro-Putin propagandists and lefty skeptics of
Russiagate. Though you will notice that Chen doesn't acknowledge that such
distinct categories exist; he can't fully validate skeptics of Russiagate.
Observe his treatment of Aaron Mate, the lefty journalist at the Real News
network who embarrassed Chen by citing his comments on MSNBC. Chen does not
want Mate's approval or, as he would put it, to be part of Mate's own
propaganda campaign. If Chen is to be a dissident, he wants to be alone on
the life raft of truth with Martha Gessen, the only skeptic of Russiagate
who can get away with it in the mainstream because of her long record of
Putin criticism. If Mate tries to join him, Chen will beat him off with an
oar.
I could feel my words slipping away, becoming the foundation for someone
else's shakily constructed argument. The fact that I had been given the rare
opportunity to share an opinion on national television seemed pretty much
cancelled out by the ways its online audience had put it to use.
In contrast, Chen mentions Rachel Maddow as the object of Mate's attacks-
she is "a strong advocate of the notion that the Trump campaign colluded
with Russia." But while Chen clearly disapproves of Mate, he is unable to
single out anyone in the mainstream by name for critique. They are all
simply critics of Trump- Trump critics who demonize anyone who disagrees
with the Russiagate narrative.
Chen's piece is valuable because it pulls away the curtain and we see
someone in the press admitting to the uncomfortable position of a mainstream
journalist who doesn't conform to the narrative on a given subject. Yet
there is something he doesn't sufficiently explain: why is there
near-unanimity in the mainstream about the enormous consequences of (the
farcical) Russian social media attacks? Yes, it is because of experts
drumming up business and because journalists favor sexy headlines, but why
warmongering sexy headlines?
To ask the question that way is to answer it. There are hundreds of billions
of dollars at stake. The mainstream press mostly goes along with what its
chosen experts tell it; and those experts seem to be people who invariably
justify more military intervention, more military spending and more money
spent on the intelligence community. And the passive readers are supposed to
fix our gaze on the malevolent intentions of Putin and never ask questions
about the military industrial complex, the Saudi lobby or the Israel lobby
or any other group with actual political influence on our foreign policy
because that is seen as either conspiracy thinking or as old stale rhetoric
that nobody in power has to take seriously.
For Chen, the larger foreign policy motivations behind Russiagate never seem
to arise. But there is an important distinction between people who criticize
the Russiagate hysteria because they see it as warmongering, and people who
criticize it because they are pro Trump. One never sees this distinction
made in the MSM, and Chen's piece is no exception.
