Nihilism And McCarthyism Behind Media’s Trump-Russia 陰謀論

Nihilism And McCarthyism Behind Media’s Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theories

Democrats have lost the plot

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is once again interfering in US elections and exercising control over Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, say the media and Democratic politicians. On Monday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC that Putin was blackmailing Trump with “something financial.” On Wednesday, Rep. Dan Goldman said, “Every election, it seems, the Republicans are used… either wittingly or unwittingly by Russian intelligence to try to interfere in the election.” And today, CNN notes, “Yet another US election appears to be falling prey to Russian interference…”

But there is no evidence that Putin is blackmailing Trump, that Russian intelligence services are using Republicans, or that Russia is interfering in the 2024 election. Justice Department special prosecutor Robert Mueller could not prove that President Trump or his campaign had colluded with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election. And multiple sources say that US intelligence found that Russia favored the election of Hillary Clinton, not Trump and that then-director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Brennan, worked with partisans of then-president Barack Obama to “cook the intelligence” to show the opposite.

To be sure, there is evidence that the Russian government spreads disinformation. For example, on Tuesday, Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss alleged that an FBI informant named Alexander Smirnov lied when he claimed a Ukrainian natural gas company had given millions of dollars in bribes to the Biden family. Weiss wrote that Smirnov admitted Russian intelligence officials “were involved in passing” him the story. The revelation proves that there is no evidence of Biden family influence peddling and that the Russian government is actively interfering in the 2024 election, concluded some journalists.

In truth, the allegations by Weiss about Smirnov prove no such thing. It is well established that President Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James, sold access. There are many emails and text messages, for example, showing the two men promising meetings and involvement from President Joe Biden in various business deals. And one of Hunter Biden’s business partners has testified that selling access to Joe Biden was at the center of various deals the men sought with investors around the world, from Ukraine to China.

While the claim that the Russian government is actively interfering in the 2024 election should be understood as a conspiracy theory, we know that Russian interference in the 2016 election was too trivial to have any measurable impact. As such, exaggerating Russia’s influence by conflating it with “interference” is a form of “disinformation,” defined as an effort to mislead people deliberately. No reputable political scientist has produced any evidence that Russia’s trivial social media advertising or its alleged involvement in the release of emails of Democratic officials, which is itself in serious question, had any influence over the outcome of the election.

What’s more, there is now strong evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been involved in disinformation efforts aimed at maligning Trump supporters as a dangerous and foreign threat to American democracy. The FBI last year was caught orchestrating a fake kidnapping of Michigan’s governor. FBI whistleblowers offered strong evidence that the FBI is hyping the threat of domestic extremism and terrorism as part of a broader counterpopulist campaign. And now the evidence is growing that the FBI is spreading false information about alleged January 6 pipe bombs and is, with the Secret Service, covering up the activities of its agents that day.

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