New McCarthyism

Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider

At a Berlin security conference, hardline neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the recent coordinated purge of alternative media.

By Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague

This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like Rachel Blevins.

Facebook claimed that these pages had “broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.” However, sites like The Free Thought Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to Free Thought, accused Facebook of “favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices.”

In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.

“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO. “They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”

Fly went on to complain that “all you need is an email” to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance.

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jill stein russia investigation
New McCarthyism

Senate Investigation into Jill Stein Reveals Xenophobic, Anti-Democratic Direction of Russiagate

By Max Blumenthal

The Senate Intelligence Committee has demanded all of Jill Stein’s campaign communications with “Russian persons.”

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has turned over a large tranche of emails and documents to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating unfounded rumors that Stein was part of a Russian plot to subvert the 2016 US presidential election.

However, she has refused to oblige a series of demand that that the Green Party hand over “all communications with Russian media organizations, their employees, or associates, from February 6, 2015.” The committee also insisted it turn over “all communications related to the campaign’s policy discussions related to Russia” and “all communications with Russian persons.”

These requests provide one of the most revealing examples to date of the government’s exploitation of Russia hysteria to suppress independent politics and alternative media in the US. In its demand for communications with “Russian persons,” the Senate committee has weaponized xenophobia to implicate Stein and intimidate other public figures against associating with anyone of Russian origin. With a few notable exceptions, this escalation of the Russiagate investigation has gone largely without notice by American media.

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New McCarthyism

Why Is YouTube Censoring Content Critical of Israel?

In November 2015, Abby Martin’s Empire Files interviewed me about the Israeli right’s consolidation of control over the country’s institutions and the predominance of racist attitudes in Jewish Israeli society. It was a fairly straightforward discussion that covered many of the same subjects I touched on in my book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.

The video published by Empire Files did feature a shockingly genocidal tirade, but not from me; it concluded with footage of an Israeli soldier barking through a megaphone to the residents of the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar in the occupied West Bank: “Go home, or we will gas you until you die!”

Last week, I learned that YouTube had blocked Martin’s interview of me in 28 countries, asserting some vague legal mandate to do so. It also limited the sharing functions of the video in many others, but without explanation.  Continue reading “Why Is YouTube Censoring Content Critical of Israel?” →

Jill Stein
New McCarthyism

Jill Stein on Senate Investigation of Her Campaign for ‘Russia Collusion’: ‘There Is No There There’

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein calls the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into her campaign for supposed “Russia collusion” evidence of a “new McCarthyism.”

By Max Blumenthal

This article was originally published at AlterNet.

This late November, the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered a request for internal communications and documents to Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein. According to former members of Stein’s 2016 presidential campaign, the request arrived through intellience commitee chairs Sen’s Richard Burr and Mark Warner, who are seeking information for the ongoing Russiagate investigation. While the Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to make the details of its inquiry into Stein’s campaign public, Republican Sen. Richard Burr told reporter Emma Loop that he is looking for evidence of Stein’s “collusion with the Russians.”

In recent weeks, the bipartisan investigation into Russian meddling has strayed from its focus on Trump and begun targeting left-wing political figures. Last month, the House Intelligence Committee sent a subpoena to Randy Credico, a retired comedian, noted prison reform activist and local New York political gadfly, seeking information on rumors that he had served as a go-between for right-wing operative Roger Stone and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. And now, Senate investigators have trained their sights on Stein, a veteran anti-war activist and pediatrician despised by Hillary Clinton partisans, who blame her for throwing the election to Trump.

I spoke to Stein immediately after the news from BuzzFeed leaked of the Senate inquiry into her campaign. She characterized the demand for Green Party documents as clear evidence of a “new McCarthyism, which is the flip side of a military madness that is stronger than ever in this country.”

“This is the continuing focus of empire and austerity and the assault on democracy that goes with it,” she continued. “The silver lining is we will get a chance at the microphone. A lot of people will be screaming at us but some people will hear us.”

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Randy Credico
New McCarthyism

House Intel Committee to Subpoena Leftist Comedian and Civil Rights Activist Randy Credico in Russia Investigation

Renowned activist Randy Credico says he is facing an investigation into supposed “Russia collusion” because of his contacts with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

By Max Blumenthal

This article was originally published at AlterNet.

The House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation has taken an unexpected turn, with investigators homing in on a New York City-based comedian, radio host and renowned civil rights activist named Randy Credico.

Credico received a letter this month from the Committee ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Michael Conaway, the Republican leading the investigation. The lawmakers requested that Credico “participate in a voluntary, transcribed interview at the Committee’s offices” during the first half of December.

Credico informed the House committee through his legal counsel that he would not submit to the voluntary interview. Soon after, his lawyer told him that the committee planned to issue a subpoena.

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communist flags
New McCarthyism

US Gov. and Media Whitewash Nazi Holocaust Citing Debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’

The Trump White House and corporate media are whitewashing the Nazi Holocaust by citing the bogus debunked “Black Book of Communism” to tout Marxism as history’s worst crime.

By Ben Norton / AlterNet

The Trump administration, U.S.-funded fact-checking websites, prominent non-governmental organizations and leading media outlets including the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are spreading discredited death counts that diminish the crimes of Nazi Germany in order to demonize communism.

These mythical figures rely on outlandish claims from The Black Book of Communism, a propagandistic tract that has been widely criticized for trivializing the Holocaust, sympathizing with Nazi collaborators and enabling neo-fascist political forces to rewrite history.

November 7 marked the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which ushered in a century of communist revolutions and movements. On this centennial, the Trump administration declared the creation of the National Day for the Victims of Communism, and in a statement, rehashed an utterly false claim: “Over the past century, communist totalitarian regimes around the world have killed more than 100 million people.”

Though the 100 million death estimate has been discredited again and again, it continues to be repeated by right-wing ideologues seeking to brand communism as history’s worst crime. While large numbers of people died under the watch of governments that identified as communist, this fake statistic includes the tens of millions of Soviets who died in World War II during Nazi Germany’s genocidal onslaught as supposed “victims of communism.”

Continue reading “US Gov. and Media Whitewash Nazi Holocaust Citing Debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’” →