They were one small step away
from demanding that the election results be
nullified, indulging the sentiment expressed
by #Resistance icon Carl Reiner the
other day: “Is
there anything more exciting that [sic]
the possibility of Trump’s election being
invalidated & Hillary rightfully installed
as our President?”
So
what was wrong with this story? Just one
small thing: it was false. The story began
to fall apart yesterday when
Associated Press reported that
Wisconsin – one of the states included in
the original report that, for obvious
reasons, caused the most excitement – did
not, in fact, have its election systems
targeted by Russian hackers:
The
spokesman for Homeland Security then tried
to walk back that reversal, insisting that
there was still evidence that some computer
networks had been targeted, but could not
say that they had anything to do with
elections or voting. And, as AP noted:
“Wisconsin’s chief elections administrator,
Michael Haas, had repeatedly said that
Homeland Security assured the state it had
not been targeted.”
Then the story collapsed completely last
night. The Secretary of State for another
one of the named states, California, issued
a scathing statement repudiating the claimed
report:
Sometimes stories end up debunked. There’s
nothing particularly shocking about that. If
this were an isolated incident, one could
chalk it up to basic human error that has no
broader meaning.
But
this is no isolated incident. Quite the
contrary: this has happened over and over
and over again. Inflammatory claims about
Russia get mindlessly hyped by media
outlets, almost always based on nothing more
than evidence-free claims from government
officials, only to collapse under the
slightest scrutiny, because they are
entirely lacking in evidence.
The
examples of such debacles when it comes to
claims about Russia are too numerous to
comprehensively chronicle. I wrote about
this phenomenon many times and listed many
of the examples,
the last time in June
when 3 CNN journalists “resigned” over a
completely false story linking Trump adviser
Anthony Scaramucci to investigations into a
Russian investment fund which the network
was forced to retract:
Remember that time the Washington Post
claimed that Russia had hacked the U.S.
electricity grid,
causing politicians to denounce Putin for
trying to deny heat to Americans in
winter, only to have to issue multiple
retractions because none of that ever
happened? Or the time that the Post had to
publish a massive editor’s note
after its reporters made claims about
Russian infiltration of the internet and
spreading of “Fake News” based on an
anonymous group’s McCarthyite blacklist that
counted sites like the Drudge Report and
various left-wing outlets as Kremlin agents?
Or
that time when Slate claimed that Trump had
created a secret server with a Russian bank,
all based on evidence that
every other media outlet
which looked at it
were too embarrassed to get near?
Or the time the Guardian
was forced to retract
its report by Ben Jacobs – which went viral
– that casually asserted that WikiLeaks has
a long relationship with the Kremlin? Or the
time that Fortune retracted
suggestions that RT had hacked
into and taken over C-SPAN’s network? And
then there’s the huge market that was
created – led by leading Democrats – that
blindly ingested every conspiratorial,
unhinged claim
about Russia churned out by an army of
crazed conspiracists such as Louise Mensch
and Claude “TrueFactsStated” Taylor?
And
now we have the
Russia-hacked-the-voting-systems-of-21-states
to add to this trash heap. Each time the
stories go viral; each time they further
shape the narrative; each time those who
spread them say little to nothing when it is
debunked.
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None of this means that every Russia
claim is false, nor does it disprove the
accusation that Putin ordered the hacking of
the DNC and John Podesta’s email inboxes (a
claim for which, just by the way, still no
evidence has been presented by the U.S.
government). Perhaps there were some states
that were targeted, even though the key
claims of this story, that attracted the
most attention, have now been repudiated.
But
what it does demonstrate is that an
incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate
prevails when it comes to claims about
Russia. Media outlets will publish literally
any official assertion as Truth without the
slightest regard for evidentiary standards.
Seeing Putin
lurking behind and masterminding
every western problem is now religious
dogma – it explains otherwise-confounding
developments, provides certainty to a
complex world, and alleviates numerous
factions of responsibility – so media
outlets and their journalists are lavishly
rewarded any time they publish accusatory
stories about Russia (especially ones
involving the U.S. election), even if they
end up being debunked.
A
highly touted story yesterday
from the New York Times – claiming that
Russians used Twitter more widely known than
before to manipulate U.S. politics –
demonstrates this recklessness. The story is
based on the claims of a new group formed
just two months ago by a union of neocons
and Democratic national security officials,
led by long-time liars and propagandists
such as Bill Kristol, former acting CIA
chief Mike Morell, and Bush Homeland
Security Secretary Mike Chertoff. I
reported on the founding of this group,
calling itself the Alliance for Securing
Democracy, when it was unveiled (this is not
to be confused with the latest new Russia
group
unveiled last week
by Rob Reiner and David Frum and featuring a
different former CIA chief (James Clapper) –
calling itself InvestigateRussia.org –
featuring a video declaring that the U.S. is
now “at war with Russia”).
The
Kristol/Morell/Chertoff group on which the
Times based its article has a very simple
tactic: they secretly decide which Twitter
accounts are “Russia bots,” meaning accounts
that disseminate an “anti-American message”
and are controlled by the Kremlin. They
refuse to tell anyone
which Twitter accounts they decided are
Kremlin-loyal, nor will they identify their
methodology for creating their lists or
determining what constitutes
“anti-Americanism.”
They do it all in secret, and you’re just
supposed to trust them: Bill Kristol, Mike
Chertoff and their national security state
friends. And the New York Times is
apparently fine with this demand, as
evidenced by its uncritical acceptance
yesterday of the claims of this group – a
group formed by the nation’s least
trustworthy sources.
But
no matter. It’s a claim about nefarious
Russian control. So it’s instantly vested
with credibility and authority, published by
leading news outlets, and then blindly
accepted as fact in most elite circles. From
now on, it will simply be Fact – based on
the New York Times article – that the
Kremlin aggressively and effectively
weaponized Twitter to manipulate public
opinion and sow divisions during the
election, even though the evidence for this
new story is the secret, unverifiable
assertions of a group filled with the most
craven neocons and national security state
liars.
That’s how the Russia narrative is
constantly “reported,” and it’s the reason
so many of the biggest stories have
embarrassingly collapsed. It’s because the
Russia story of 2017 – not unlike the Iraq
discourse of 2002 – is now driven by
religious-like faith rather than rational
faculties.
No
questioning of official claims is allowed.
The evidentiary threshold which an assertion
must overcome before being accepted is so
low as to be non-existent. And the penalty
for desiring to see evidence for
official claims, or questioning the validity
and persuasiveness of the evidence that is
proffered, are accusations that impugn one’s
patriotism and loyalty (simply wanting to
see evidence for official claims about
Russia is proof, in many quarters, that one
is a Kremlin agent or at least adores Putin
– just as wanting to see evidence in 2002,
or questioning the evidence presented for
claims about Saddam, was viewed as proof
that one harbored sympathy for the Iraqi
dictator).
Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump
and the rest, nobody can possibly regard
this climate as healthy. Just look at how
many major, incredibly inflammatory stories,
from major media outlets, have collapsed. Is
it not clear that there is something very
wrong with how we are discussing and
reporting on relations between these two
nuclear-armed powers?
