By Matthew Vadum MatthewVadum.com——Bio and Archives--March 25, 2018
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Shortly after its publication, we received complaints registered by or on behalf of several journalists mentioned in the article that it falsely described one or another of them as white supremacists, fascists, and/or anti-Semites, and falsely accused them of engaging in a conspiracy with the Putin regime to promote such views. Because neither we nor the article’s author intended to make any such accusations, we took it down while we re-examined its contents. That re-examination has caused us to conclude that, while the intent of the article, which we thought was clear at the time of publication, was to show only that individuals on the left share some policy views with respect to multipolarism that are also held by the far right and/or appear on far-right media and conferences advocating them, the article did not make that point as clearly as it could or should have. Accordingly, we have decided not to re-post it. In addition, we extend a sincere apology to those who believe they have been falsely described in it, including Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Tim Pool, Rania Khalek, and Brian Becker, and disclaim, as clearly as we can, any intention to suggest that any of them are white supremacists, fascists, and/or anti-Semites, that they hold such views, or that they are engaged in a conspiracy with the Russian government to promote such views or otherwise.Fellow journalist Glenn Greenwald was extremely skeptical. He tweeted:
Except the SPLC has proven on many occasions that they won’t retract stories or claims simply because someone threatens to sue, or even if someone does sue. So while it’s nice to claim this, they clearly need more than legal threats to retract & apologize[.]Moving along, Blumenthal is unquestionably a shameless apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Ross’s SPLC article doesn’t actually come out and say that. Read it for yourself here.
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The event was attended by Vladimir Putin and, it has since emerged, that Trump’s disgraced National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had received $40,000 for his appearance there. It is unlikely that a blogger for a marginal leftwing publication would have been paid a similar sum. But Blumenthal was obliging all the same. RT, he said, was providing an “alternative narrative to the drive to war on Syria” (never mind that the “alternative narrative” is a string of falsehood and disinformation).Weeks later Blumenthal founded something called the Grayzone Project at the leftist commentary website AlterNet. Grayzone soon became “a home for Assad and Kremlin-friendly outcasts from [the] leftwing blogosphere…” “It is Blumenthal, who with Alternet, has created an effective beachhead in the US for Kremlin propaganda,” the authors write. In September 2016, Blumenthal wrote two articles attacking the White Helmets, a group of volunteer first responders tending to the wounded during the siege of eastern Aleppo, Syria, that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Because the White Helmets were calling for a “no-fly zone to end the bombings by the Syrian and Russian air forces,” Blumenthal took it as evidence the group was part of a regime-change effort. Blumenthal appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News Channel show to defend RT and on Bloggingheads to justify his support for the Russian government as “part of the multipolar world.” “If you believe in a multipolar world,” Blumenthal said on Bloggingheads, “you believe in détente, you believe in diplomacy.” He also praised the Party for Socialism and Liberation and similar organizations, contending that they “tend to get all the major issues right regardless of their ideology or agenda.”
The emergence of this axis presents a case study in the ideological realignments that are being instrumentalized by the Kremlin with fellow travelers on both the left and the far right. Its mercenary character is betrayed by its sloppy methods.Thus the hateful pattern of the SPLC continues. Last summer, Guidestar announced it would use SPLC’s “hate group list” to help identify questionable nonprofits (that program was ended after a massive backlash). Now the organization is helping YouTube police content. (Ironically, a CRC video criticizing the sometimes hateful nature of identity politics and calling for free speech was temporarily banned from YouTube; it’s unclear whether SPLC contributed to that ban.) With this new scandal, SPLC is maintaining its tradition of ignoring the truth in order to pursue a political objective. Max Blumenthal’s voice, as distasteful as it may be, is too important to be silenced by the Left. Even the author of the SPLC article, Alexander Reid Ross, revealed in a series of tweets on March 14 that he is fine with the burying of his otherwise factually accurate article:
While I’m disappointed that my article was taken down, I respect the SPLC’s decision. The article was taken down [because] of legal threats based on misinterpretations of the claims in the article, not due to factual inaccuracies. I stand by the facts as they’re presented in the piece.He continues:
My article was vetted by six independent scholars, journalists, and researchers prior to publication, and drew accolades from a number of human rights activists and media professionals. I will say there is one small, incidental error in the piece, that wasn’t malicious at all. The SPLC is correct that I never called Max, Ben, or Rania a fascist or an antisemite, nor did I insinuate that they’re involved in some obscure conspiracy. In fact, the subtitle of my piece, “How Fascists Operationalize Left Wing Resentment,” suggests exactly the opposite.Ross concludes:
It’s a pretty sorry state of affairs when a well-connected journalist threatens legal retaliation against a civil rights media outlet [sic] in order to suppress factual information they find inconvenient.That’s the SPLC in a nutshell. It doesn’t care about the truth no matter the target. Scholars with sterling reputations such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Charles Murray have been explicitly targeted by the SPLC. But, because of their alignment with right-of-center policies, they have not been treated with the same courtesy that the SPLC extended to Mr. Blumenthal. Until the SPLC reconsiders its definition of “white supremacist” or “racist fascist,” the public should question its credibility.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.