American Disinformation
The top ten most dangerous media falsehoods about Russia.
With widespread calls for the US to proclaim a no-fly zone in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s recent “off-the-cuff” call for the overthrow of Russia’s popular, democratically-elected president, Vladimir Putin, the specter of nuclear annihilation looms over the world. The critical nature of the present geopolitical situation cannot be overstated: before our eyes, climate change is all but fading from relevance.
To counter this potentially world-ending threat, a strong domestic antiwar movement is urgently needed. After all, the war in Eastern Europe is not between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and the United States and its NATO allies: make no mistake, supplying the Ukrainian army is an act of war; economic sanctions are an act of war; calling for regime change in a sovereign nation is an act of war.
To be precise, this is what is called a “proxy war”, in which the US is using Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Russia and protect its spheres of influence in Europe. The basic logic was explained by US congressman Adam Schiff back in January, 2020—well before the Russian invasion—when he said that
“The United States aids Ukraine and her people, so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here."
Thus, we cannot rely on the Russian people alone to end this war for us: as citizens of belligerent nations, we must build a strong antiwar movement here in North America, too: one that does not merely condemn “Putin’s war” but also—and far more importantly—condemns the shameful role our own countries are playing in it.
To help facilitate the birth of such a movement, in my own small way, I have compiled here my top ten most egregious pieces of misinformation about Russia that the American and Canadian media have spread in recent years. Together, these falsehoods have contributed greatly to the demonization of Putin’s Russia (a regime which, admittedly, hardly requires falsehoods in order to be thoroughly demonized, much like the American government itself). And in listing them here, I hope to remind readers that Putin is not Hitler, as is being widely-suggested; that America, indeed, is even worse; and that immediate peace talks between the US and Putin’s Russia are absolutely imperative. Barring nuclear annihilation or a giant stroke of luck, this is going to happen at some point anyway. The only question, in my view, is how many people will die in the meantime.
With that, here are my top ten worst media myths about Russia.
“Putin’s War”
Although Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine, the term “Putin’s war”, widely-used by the media, is nonetheless misleading enough to make this list. It is, at the very least, evidence of a pervasive media bias against Putin and Russia that affects everything from the information they report to the language in which they report it.
For one thing, approximately 14,000 people were killed in Ukraine—many of them ethnic Russians—over the eight-year-long “Donbas War” that proceeded Putin’s invasion. Although this war was largely ignored by Western media, the reality of it means that Putin did not so much start a war as he joined and dramatically escalated one.
For another thing, the United States and NATO have undeniably played their own role in creating this conflict, too. Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of this comes from a classified cable written in 2008 by William Burns—then-US Ambassador to Russia and currently serving as Director of the CIA—that was published by Wikileaks. In the cable, Burns warned that the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO was an “emotional and neuralgic issue for Russia”—not just for Putin—and one that
“could potentially split [Ukraine] in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
This, he added, is
“a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Yet in spite of this stark warning, or perhaps because of it, the United States and NATO failed to explicitly take Ukrainian membership off the table for 14 years after Burns sent this cable—not until just after Putin had already invaded. This does not absolve him for doing so, of course. But it reminds us that a multiplicity of people and factors are responsible for this war—as indeed is always the case—and that the blame is certainly not Putin’s alone.
Russian Poison
The poisonings or alleged poisonings of Putin critics Viktor Yushchenko (2004), Anna Politkovskaya (2004), Alexander Litvinenko (2006), Sergei Skripal (2018), Pyotr Verzilov (2018), and Alexi Navalny (2020) are serious and suspicious, but the media are on untenable ground when they suggest that this constitutes “a long history of Russian poisonings”. For while these cases might seem to clearly implicate Putin when considered together, there is enough uncertainty in each individually to warrant far more cautious language: none of them to my knowledge have been conclusively linked to Russia’s security services. This is also true of the very recent “suspected poisonings” of close Putin ally Roman Abramovich and members of the Ukrainian negotiating team, which—together with this “Russian poisoning” media narrative—has cast a pall over peace talks.
This is not to suggest that Putin is incapable of such a thing, of course; nor even that he is innocent. But the bottom line that six unproven allegations hardly constitute “a long history”—arguably, they still wouldn’t even if half of them were proven.
Moreover, only one of these alleged Rusian poisonings (Litvinenko’s) was fatal, suggesting at the very least that poison has been of limited usefulness to Putin; the fact that Politkovskaya was later shot and killed is a reminder that much more effective means are at his disposal. It is a reminder, too, that words like “poison” and “bioweapons” evoke intense emotions, even more so than “guns” or “airstrikes” or “drones” (which, incidentally, are the American Government’s preferred methods of assassination). These are important things to remember: precisely for these reasons it is important to emphasize that the association between Putin’s nuclear-armed Russia and poison is largely speculative—and why the media should be called out for failing to do so.
Ukrainian Bioweapon Labs
Underscoring its over-eagerness to report on “Russian poisonings” are the indignant denials with which the media have met reports that there are US-funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Indeed, these claims have been repeatedly “fact-checked” and deemed false by the media. This is even despite a recent statement made under oath by Victoria Nuland, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, in which she failed to deny that Ukraine has “chemical or biological weapons” but instead said
“uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.”
Nuland then added that the US was actually “quite concerned” about the Russians gaining control of these facilities.
Media “fact-checkers” like those at The New York Times have attempted to downplay this statement by making a distinction without a difference: Nuland wasn’t talking about bioweapons labs, they claim, but rather “biodefense laboratories” (my emphasis).
But it is an open secret that bioweapons are often produced for “research” and “defense” purposes. For example, according to the FBI, the deadly strain of anthrax that terrorized North America in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks was produced in Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA, in what The New York Times itself has called “biodefense labs”.
Despite Nuland’s admission, however, and the State Department’s clarification that she had in fact been referring to Ukrainian “biodefense laboratories”, The Times decided to chastise “Russian state media” for promoting “baseless claims” of Ukrainian bioweapon labs. The media have even widely-suggested that these claims are actually evidence that Russia is preparing some sort of biological or chemical attack, apparently on the ridiculous and dangerous premise that, in the words of Nuland,
“it is [a] classic Russian technique to blame [on] the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.”
Havana Syndrome
Since 2016, American diplomats and spies serving overseas have been blaming a medical condition called “Havana Syndrome” on Russian intelligence, and the media have proven receptive to these accusations—along with speculation that Havana Syndrome is being caused by some kind of mysterious new “directed energy” weapon.
This is despite the fact that numerous audio recordings of suspicious noises heard during these “Havana Syndrome incidents” have been thoroughly analyzed by teams of scientists who have independently concluded that they were emitted by crickets.
But although this obviously suggests that Havana Syndrome may be a psychogenic disease—related, perhaps, to the stress of working in a hostile country—the media and US intelligence officials continue to insist that unknown technology (microwaves? ultrasound?) deployed by unknown assailants (Russia? . . . Russia?) is actually the more plausible explanation—at the expense, of course, of Russia’s international reputation.
Afghan bounties
When Donald Trump finally moved towards bringing the 20-year-long Afghan War to a close, The New York Times reported that anonymous intelligence sources had suddenly surfaced indicating that Russia was paying bounties to Taliban soldiers who killed Americans in Afghanistan. The nonsensical allegations (which, among other things, presumed that the Taliban needed encouragement) made international headlines and became an issue of importance during the 2020 US presidential election, but were later retracted by US intelligence—albeit with far less media fanfare—just prior to the American Army’s disastrous withdrawal in 2021 and well after significant damage had been done to the American public’s perception of Russia and Putin.
Russian Freedom Convoy
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was quick to wonder whether Russia was somehow “manipulating” the trucker protest or “Freedom Convoy” that made international headlines last winter and provoked the Canadian Government into evoking the Emergencies Act for the first time ever (something even the CoViD pandemic had failed to do). This narrative was picked up even by more independent Canadian media like The Tyee, which recently pointed to the trucker’s occupation of Ottawa as its primary justification for declaring that “Canada Needs a Russian Propaganda Detox”. But neither outlet offered any evidence of a direct connection.
Few articles were written about the influence of America in encouraging the protest, moreover—despite the overwhelming influence of the US media in Canada and the fact that Americans appear to have provided far more funding to the convoy than any other foreign nationals put together. And by dwelling on the invisible role Russia might have played in the protests instead of the obvious role played by American media and funding, Canadian media not only de-legitimized the demands of the protesters but also likely contributed significantly to Canadian and American anti-Russian sentiment.
The Laptop From Hell
With very little fanfare, The New York Times recently acknowledged for the first time that Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop “from hell”, which apparently contained evidence of the Biden family’s sketchy business dealings in China and Ukraine, was actually not just “Russian disinformation”, as has been widely-claimed by the (“liberal”) media for two straight years. Upon this basis, in fact, many outlets refused to even cover the story. For example, The Intercept acrimoniously parted ways with its famous and influential co-founder Glenn Greenwald rather than publish his uncensored thoughts on the matter.
This was also the basis for Twitter and Facebook’s decision to disable people’s ability to share news about the laptop during the election, thus systematically depriving American voters of legitimate and relevant and time-sensitive news.
The media have now pivoted on the laptop because it is part of an ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden—but not before doing untold damage to Russian-American relations.
Russian “Oligarchs”
As the journalist Alan Mcleod noted in 2019, although the United States is widely-regarded as an oligarchy—including by former US president Jimmy Carter—the media rarely refer to American businessmen as “oligarchs”. In fact, his research suggested that the term is reserved almost exclusively for Slavic billionaires.
Everyone hates rich people; but the point is that that through the selective use of these terms, the media systematically and unfairly biases people against wealthy and powerful Slavs—as well as the whole social, economic, and political structure they preside over. Even the infamous Koch Brothers were rarely described as “oligarchs” by the media, who, as Mcleod notes, greatly prefer descriptions like “philanthropists”. And if the Kochs don’t belong to the widely-acknowledged American oligarchy, it begs a billion-dollar question: who does?
Russiagate
For years, the claim that Trump is somehow under the influence of Putin has been loudly championed by major media figures like Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher, but a huge chunk of the foundation upon which this conspiracy theory was built, called the “Steele dossier”, has been quietly discredited.
The Steele dossier is a document written by a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele that was first published by BuzzFeed News in 2017 under the headline “These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia”. This bolstered prior claims by the CIA, the Democratic Party establishment that “Russian hackers” had been responsible for leaking politically-damaging emails and documents to Wikileaks during the 2016 election, as well as Hillary Clinton’s claim that Putin was personally responsible for her loss.
Largely for these reasons, a popular perception that Trump was a Russian stooge hung over him for his entire presidency, and played no small part in his impeachment for threatening the flow of weapons meant to kill Russians to Ukraine.
But this scandalous allegation, called “Russiagate” by its critics, is now on shaky ground with the loss of the Steele dossier. Proof that Russia was really behind Wikileaks publication of (authentic and perfectly relevant) information about Clinton and the Democratic Party has never been presented. Trump’s impeachment failed to turn up any “deep ties to Russia”. Moreover, his actions as president were not exactly accommodating of Putin For examples, he approved the sale of weapons to Ukraine and withdrew from the critical Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), allowing intermediate-range nukes to be positioned at Russia’s doorstep.
The truth is that Russia probably does try to influence American elections—as indeed many other states do. But their ability to do this probably pales in comparison to that other states, like, for example, Israel, which is famous for fielding one of the largest armies of lobbyists in the US (and, of course, no country in the world dabbles in effecting regime change as prolifically as America does itself).
Yet Rachel Maddow remains unrepentant, and Bill Maher is still getting laughs by referring to Putin as “Trump’s boyfriend”, ensuring that a large subset of Americans blame Putin for their four-year-long Trump nightmare and believe that American democracy is in a life-or death struggle with Putin’s Russia.
“Russian Disinformation”
Since the shock of Trump’s 2016 election win, North American media has been preoccupied with the possibility of Russia using the internet to spread disinformation and sow social discord. Today, we are told that that online free speech is no longer possible because “Russian bots”, and that we can no longer be trusted to hear certain things because “Russian disinformation”.
Recent events are a powerful reminder of the direction in which the online playing field actually tilts, however. Putting into perspective anxieties about “Russian bots” and “Russian hackers”, the American government has brought the full weight of Silicon Valley to bear in its escalating conflict with Russia. As I mentioned in my last post YouTube has removed all content from Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik Radio and has censored the Oliver Stone film Ukraine On Fire, while Facebook, not to be outdone, changed its hate speech policy to allow for deathwishes—so long as they are directed at Russian soldiers.
These clear statements of allegiance by the tech giants Alphabet (Google’s parent corporation and owner of YouTube) and Meta (parent corporation of Facebook) do not represent a sudden policy change. Indeed, these powerful corporations have always been aligned with Washington—as are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, and so on—and in many ways they can be viewed as an arm of US foreign policy: the American conviction that Chinese tech corporations like Huawei and TikTok perform a similar function on behalf of the Chinese state is virtual confirmation of this.
This is a terrifying existential threat to Russia that it actually has little answer to, as evidenced by the draconian measures recently taken by the Russian government to control information and curb dissent, including blocking Facebook and Twitter and labeling Meta an “extremist organization”.
The realization that it is Russia, not American, that is under siege online, does not excuse these draconian measures, of course, but it does help to put them into context.
More to the point, the realization that America is not under siege puts into context the “Russian propaganda detox” that has now dramatically reduced people’s ability to access information in “the free world”.
I am so guilty of buying into Russiagate.