[Neo-McCarthyism] The Literal Mueller Cinematic Universe

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Neo-McCarthyism] The Literal Mueller Cinematic Universe

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/JustTheNews/status/1276489647741337602?p=v

for those not paying attention to the actual substance of ukrainegate the main fig leaf used to argue that hunter biden joining burisma was no big deal in regard to joe bidens actions is because when he bragged about bullying ukraine into firing their prosecutor the reason given was that it was because he wasnt trying hard enough to crack down on corruption no one was ever able to actually substantiate that the prosecutor was planning to go after burisma

whereas according to this story a few months after hunter biden got the job big bidens energy advisor got burisma a secret payout for a renewable energy program when burisma both does not deal in renewable energy and was also even at the time under international corruption investigations and apparently the united states embassy didnt even know about it the whole thing was approved by some mysterious anonymous contractor

genuinely surprised right wing media not to mention trump himself isnt going harder on this not only does the whole thing stink to high heaven on multiple levels its ridiculously straightforward to explain compared to the usual russiagate bullshit

# ? Jun 28, 2020 06:32

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 05:53

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/JustTheNews/status/1276489647741337602?p=v

for those not paying attention to the actual substance of ukrainegate the main fig leaf used to argue that hunter biden joining burisma was no big deal in regard to joe bidens actions is because when he bragged about bullying ukraine into firing their prosecutor the reason given was that it was because he wasnt trying hard enough to crack down on corruption no one was ever able to actually substantiate that the prosecutor was planning to go after burisma

whereas according to this story a few months after hunter biden got the job big bidens energy advisor got burisma a secret payout for a renewable energy program when burisma both does not deal in renewable energy and was also even at the time under international corruption investigations and apparently the united states embassy didnt even know about it the whole thing was approved by some mysterious anonymous contractor

genuinely surprised right wing media not to mention trump himself isnt going harder on this not only does the whole thing stink to high heaven on multiple levels its ridiculously straightforward to explain compared to the usual russiagate bullshit

they're waiting until biden is locked in. expect the real shitstorm to start around september

# ? Jun 28, 2020 06:40

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/TIME/status/1276576341824069633

https://twitter.com/jsolomonReports/status/1276856568622039040

# ? Jun 28, 2020 06:50

Toplowtech: Aug 31, 2004

The Pussy Boss posted:

The media has been relentlessly pushing the russiagate narrative for three and a half years now, that's a big part of it. I have family members who I consider smart people who've completely bought into this poo poo.

More seriously, from a European pov, i know people talk about how Reagan gutted the US mental healthcare system in the 80s but it looks like there is something not mentally healthy floating in the US psyche and its really damaging people. I mean 911 and the giant army of capitalists deciding the fear and hate against Muslims was a good way to make easy money quick didn't help either but you guys have some sort of problem that keep making things worse.

cenotaph posted:

Living through the run up to the Iraq inoculated me against feeling like this.

Yeah, i have family in Florida and watching the effects of the US media on them was surely something.

Some Guy TT posted:

[genuinely surprised right wing media not to mention trump himself isnt going harder on this not only does the whole thing stink to high heaven on multiple levels its ridiculously straightforward to explain compared to the usual russiagate bullshit

They will only fire the silver bullets when they are 100% sure it's the right time. I still think the "grab her by the pussy" recording was released 2 weeks too soon because the dems believed Trump couldn't survive it. Well, they were wrong and it could have damaged him more if released closer to the election date.

# ? Jun 28, 2020 06:52

Woozy: Jan 3, 2006

The Pussy Boss posted:

The media has been relentlessly pushing the russiagate narrative for three and a half years now, that's a big part of it. I have family members who I consider smart people who've completely bought into this poo poo.

voracious consumption of media is very, very heavily weighted in any evaluation of american smartness

# ? Jun 28, 2020 06:56

Woozy: Jan 3, 2006

hmm i wonder why that is, though

# ? Jun 28, 2020 06:57

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Toplowtech posted:

More seriously, from a European pov, i know people talk about how Reagan gutted the US mental healthcare system in the 80s but it looks like there is something not mentally healthy floating in the US psyche and its really damaging peop

lol reagan started it but in my state our local dems closed a bunch of mental hospitals in mid 2000's, because both parties don't give a gently caress

# ? Jun 28, 2020 08:33

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

Toplowtech posted:

More seriously, from a European pov, i know people talk about how Reagan gutted the US mental healthcare system in the 80s but it looks like there is something not mentally healthy floating in the US psyche and its really damaging people. I mean 911 and the giant army of capitalists deciding the fear and hate against Muslims was a good way to make easy money quick didn't help either but you guys have some sort of problem that keep making things worse.

thats more because we've gutted our education system for 50 years and produced generations of morons rather than mental health

# ? Jun 28, 2020 13:02

ikanreed: Sep 25, 2009; I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!

Cerebral Bore posted:

they're waiting until biden is locked in. expect the real shitstorm to start around september

Unless the Republican party is as bad at everything as the Dems

# ? Jun 28, 2020 20:50

shovelbum: Oct 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

We used to have approx as many people in mental institutions + prisons as we do in prisons now, lmao things were never good it was just a low key carceral state

# ? Jun 28, 2020 21:23

shovelbum: Oct 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Raskolnikov38 posted:

thats more because we've gutted our education system for 50 years and produced generations of morons rather than mental health

People always say this but have you ever like uh met a teacher

# ? Jun 28, 2020 21:23

HashtagGirlboss: Jan 4, 2005

shovelbum posted:

We used to have approx as many people in mental institutions + prisons as we do in prisons now, lmao things were never good it was just a low key carceral state

Ostensible �progressive� I went to school with keeps suggesting reopening the institutions to Waterhouse homeless people

# ? Jun 28, 2020 23:29

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1277266313933660162?p=v

# ? Jun 29, 2020 14:22

ikanreed: Sep 25, 2009; I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!

If Obama had shut down lovely freedom.eagle bullshit sites, he'd have been called a totalitarian crushing right wing freedom of speech and no one would have given a single poo poo about Russia and Hillary would have lost the popular vote too

# ? Jun 29, 2020 14:40

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/twidark1/status/1279531085857042432?p=v

# ? Jul 5, 2020 02:35

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/jsolomonReports/status/1279115181977743361?p=v

# ? Jul 5, 2020 03:00

1982 Subaru Brat: Feb 2, 2007; by Athanatos

cenotaph posted:

Living through the run up to the Iraq inoculated me against feeling like this.

And a bunch of neoconservative fearmongers just endorsed Biden the other day :thunk:

# ? Jul 5, 2020 06:43

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

a thread-relevant book recommendation is Guy Mettan's "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria"

the author goes deep in-depth into the history of Russophobia, but rather specifically the more contemporary demonization of Putin that was necessary to justify the Bush-era expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe and the Balkans

A couple of choice excerpts:

quote:

To justify their anti-Russian bias, Russophobes put forward an apparently irrefutable principle �no smoke without a fire� then use a tried and tested technique: Russia started it. It is vital to demonstrate that there is a fire and that it was lit by Russia, in order to give the impression that they are only reacting to provocations, to an invasion, or to Russian attempts against western rights. Throughout 2014, western leaders and media never stopped hammering home a single thesis: everything that has happened in Ukraine is the fault of the Russians. The corruption of the Yanukovych regime, the refusal to sign the agreement with the European Union, the Maidan violence, the �annexation� of Crimea, the crash of Flight MH17, the Donbass revolt: all these events were as projected as many fires lit by Moscow. Implicitly: the United States and the European Union had nothing to do with them, and neither had the Ukrainian nationalists, who were merely trying to douse the flames.

It is a clever gambit, consisting simply in taking the effect for the cause. Thus it is as though the Pravy Sektor Nazis� shots against the Maidan demonstrators, the betrayal of the 21 February agreement, the violation of the rights to language and culture of the citizens of the eastern provinces, the promise to give the Sebastopol naval base to NATO, the theft of Russian gas in Ukrainian pipelines, the total uncertainty as to the origin of the shot that downed the Malaysian Airlines flight, the bombing of civilian populations in Donbass in violation of the Geneva conference, the massive military aid provided by the Americans to the Ukrainian regime, had never occurred and were nothing but Russian propaganda. The trick is to project the view that Russia acted, whereas in reality she merely reacted to events she had in no way forecast or wanted.

This is why western commentators and leaders avoid at all cost viewing the Ukrainian crisis as having started with the Kiev provisional government�s decision to forbid the use of the Russian language in the Russian-speaking parts of the country. Dating the crisis from its real cause would amount to legitimizing the secession of those provinces and would demolish entirely the laborious fiction of Russian aggression concocted by the communication spin doctors that manage the wording on Ukraine. This was how, permanently rewriting history as it unfolded, thanks to public relation experts that cluttered up western chancelleries and advised the new Ukrainian authorities, western newspapers very soon stopped mentioning events prior to March 2014, when the self-determination referendum took place in Crimea. After all, how can the Western press persuade western public opinion that Russia is guilty and the Crimean vote is illegal if the preceding February events are taken into account? It would in effect be admitting that the overthrow of Yanukovych was unconstitutional, that the 21 February agreement cosigned by the French and German foreign affairs ministers was just a rag and that the Ukrainian elections were organized in violation of in- ternational law by a government born of a military coup. In Africa, if a colonel seizes power with the presumed support of the street, he is forced to go back into his barracks. But not in Ukraine, where the West�s vital interests are presumed to be at stake.

We can remember that the US and the EU made a huge deal over "self-determination", as tied to native-language speakers, a huge deal when it came to the break-up of Yugoslavia and the independence of Kosovo and Slovakia, but then were completely mum about such issues when it came to the the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine.

Also, that Atlantic-Council-funded bellingcat was one of the biggest boosters of the prevailing narrative that the Russians shot down MH17.

Here's another excerpt, this time talking about the Beslan hostage-taking in 2004:

quote:

The toll of the attack is horrendous: dead are 331 children and teachers, 11 Special Forces and 8 police officers, 31 of the 32 hostage takers, and at least one civilian who took part in the fighting. On September 17, Shamil Basayev claims responsibility for the attack, which leaves no doubt as to the involvement of Chechen Islamists.

So much for the facts, in all their horror. During the first two days, as during the 9/11 attacks against the twin towers in New York in 2001, there is worldwide anguish at the fate of the hostages and the media remain fairly objective. The extent of the tragedy prevents any dispute. But as soon as the school is taken back, with blood hardly dry on the walls, the Western media will have a field day. Not against the Islamist butchers, which would be only natural, but paradoxically enough against the victims and their liberators! In this case, against the Russian government and law enforcement agencies, under suspicion of manipulation, intimidation, concealment of information, or even being the cause of the massacre!

As early as September 6, the campaign is launched. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty titles:

quote:
Troubling Questions Remain About Bloody Beslan Siege � The exact number of victims, the number of hostage takers and many other details have still not been revealed.

Interviewing a shocked young man in Beslan, the journalist quotes him as saying:

quote:
I had a sister here who died. My other sister is in hospital. What do I feel? Do you hear the people crying? That is how I feel.

And the journalist swiftly goes on:

quote:
But mixed with the tears are increasing questions about what exactly happened in Beslan, when the three-day-old hostage crisis ended in chaos. The idea that Russian forces decided to break the siege at the last minute in reaction to the militants� actions [sic] is a fabrication meant to cover up the disastrous out- come of what he [the young man] believes was a planned assault.

A few paragraphs further down, the article quotes the unavoidable expert, an opposition �military analyst� affiliated with the Jamestown Foundation named Pavel Felgenhauer, who, curiously, speaks in the same terms, word for word, as the young Ossetian.

quote:
The idea that Russian forces decided to break the siege at the last minute in reaction to the militants� actions is a fabrication meant to cover up the disastrous outcome of what he believes was a planned
assault. Just as in the hostage-taking drama at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002, he accuses the authorities of hiding the truth from the Russian public.

And on in the same vein:

quote:
It is perfectly clear that from the very start, from September 1, when the hostages were seized, the Russian authorities and the special services lied. They lied intentionally about what was happening.

On the same day, famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya, known for her antigovernment positions and support for the Chechen rebels� cause, commented in The Guardian: �The horror of Beslan was made still worse by the intimidation of Russia�s servile media.� She tells how, when trying to reach Ossetia, there was an attempt by the Russian secret service to poison her while on the plane flying to Rostov. Then how the Russian media deliberately hushed up former Ingushetia president Ruslan Aushev�s intervention to try and free the hostages, and she describes the distress of hostage families kept in a total information blackout:

quote:
They are desperate; they all remember the experience of the Dubrovka theatre siege in which 129 people died when the special services released gas into the building, ending the standoff. They remember how the government lied.

The school is surrounded by people with hunting rifles. They are ordinary people, the fathers and brothers of the hostages who have despaired of getting help from the state; they have decided to rescue their relatives themselves. This has been a constant issue during the past five years of the second war in Chechnya: people have lost all hope of getting any protection from the state and they expect nothing but extra-judicial executions from the special services. So they try to defend themselves and their loved ones. Self-defence, naturally, leads to lynching. It couldn�t be otherwise. After the theatre siege in 2002, the hostages made this harrowing discovery: save yourself, because the state can only help to destroy you.

A lengthy disquisition on the �servile� Russian media follows, which ends on this final comment:

quote:
We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it�s total servility to Putin.

These two articles are only instances of the thousands of others that were published in American and European media in the days that followed the bloody hostage-taking, accusing the Russian government. As Andrei P. Tsygankov remarks in his study of American foreign policy and the anti-Russian lobby in Washington, �Perhaps the worst wave of accusations against Russia and its authorities took place immediately following Beslan, which could not fail to affect the official U.S. stance. Suddenly the American media was full of articles pressuring the Kremlin to negotiate with �moderates� or to �give Chechens a land of their own� and supporting a harder American policy toward Russia.��

On September 30, 2004, the western media published an �Open Letter to Heads of State and Govern- ment of the European Union and of NATO� written by PNAC and signed by 115 prominent political and intellectual American and European personalities. The authors of the letter accused the Kremlin of utilizing Beslan �to continue to undermine democracy in Russia and take measures preparing the next step toward a totalitarian regime.� Reinforced by the reactions of the radical Russian Atlanticists and in step with the Chechen terrorists� hopes, the lobby utilized the Beslan crisis to lambast Putin as an autocrat unable to negotiate and eager to break the balance of power in the country. In mainstream media, few observers were able to voice their objections to that interpretation of events. The list of countless articles written to revile the Russian government after Beslan is too long to be quoted entirely. Andrei P. Tsygankov provides a sample of it as an endnote to his book. Among the names found there are Robert Coalson, Richard Pipes, Peter Baker, Susan B. Glasser, Michael MacFaul, Khassan Baiev, Mark Brzezinski and Richard Holbrooke, in media as diverse as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

In Europe, the same theses are taken up to surfeit by all of the national media close to American and very much anti-Russian networks, such as Lib�ration, FAZ, Financial Times Deutschland, Neue Z�rcher Zeitung and, of course, Die Welt. The titles of their interventions are explicit: �A War on Terrorists or a War on Journalists?� asks Robert Coalson on Radio Free Europe on September 7, 2004. The same day, Ahmed Zakaev publishes in The Guardian an article with the eloquent title �Our dead and wounded children.� As for President Jimmy Carter�s former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, he did not hesitate to compare Putin to Mus- solini in the columns of the Wall Street Journal in September 20, 2004.

I highlighted Michael MacFaul's name in there specifically because Rachel Maddow LOVES to have him on her show to talk about Putin and Russia.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 11:41

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

gradenko_2000 posted:

Also, that Atlantic-Council-funded bellingcat was one of the biggest boosters of the prevailing narrative that the Russians shot down MH17.

I remember we had a Russia/Ukraine thread on these very forums (I don't think it was D&D, it was another subforum, and this was pre-CSPAM?) where they were active about emphasizing that the proof showed that it was Russia's fault.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 23:26

SSJ_naruto_2003: Oct 12, 2012

Dreylad posted:

I remember we had a Russia/Ukraine thread on these very forums (I don't think it was D&D, it was another subforum, and this was pre-CSPAM?) where they were active about emphasizing that the proof showed that it was Russia's fault.

Brown Moses posts still AFAIK

# ? Jul 7, 2020 04:05

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1280211511550541824

# ? Jul 9, 2020 01:20

Inceltown: Aug 6, 2019

Starting to get the feeling that this Russiagate business is just a way for people to push what ever line they want onto the public and not something actually happening to any real degree.

# ? Jul 9, 2020 01:31

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

so this entire putin afghan bounties poo poo might've been to stop trumping from withdrawing from afghanistan to help his electoral chances and now it might be used for sanctions? lmao
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1280831503879016448

# ? Jul 9, 2020 20:13

Toplowtech: Aug 31, 2004

This is impressively stupid. "Let's invade Irak" level of stupid to be honest. And it's the same perpetrators too.

# ? Jul 9, 2020 21:51

Percelus: Sep 9, 2012; My command, your wish is

everything sucks real bad but at least i can enjoy the tears of russiagaters for a day or two with roger stone getting his sentence commuted

i hate trump, stone, barr, just about everyone in washington but i have a special hate for russiagaters that tops all others

# ? Jul 11, 2020 02:17

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

The Pussy Boss posted:

The media has been relentlessly pushing the russiagate narrative for three and a half years now, that's a big part of it. I have family members who I consider smart people who've completely bought into this poo poo.

The thing I've come to realize is that correctness/reasonability is entirely an aesthetic to most Americans* (liberal or conservative*). How wacky/dumb an idea is has less to do with its contents and more to do with "who is presenting it and how are they presenting it." If a NYTimes article is citing facts about Russians retweeting things in a serious tone and then implies that it's part of some greater Russian propaganda that is helping to steal elections, liberals will believe that they've arrived at that conclusion as a result of "reading the facts and being informed." They've also been primed to view anyone arguing to the contrary as some sort of unreasonable contrarian (see: their reaction to someone like Glenn Greenwald; they've basically created this mental category of people that lets them tar anyone who disagrees with major media narratives).

The whole thing is pretty despair-inducing once you realize it. The number of people who aren't completely in the thrall of some subset of US media is pretty small.

* It's just more noticeably bizarre with liberals because liberals pride themselves on being reasonable and intelligent

# ? Jul 11, 2020 09:10

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

i think youve nailed it honestly i still cant get past how my parents raised me to be skeptical of all this cold war russophobic bullshit but any time i point out theres no functional foundation to the russiagate story they just treat me like a crazy person

its not like ancient loving history either obama was making fun of mitt romney for this crap back in 2012

# ? Jul 11, 2020 09:15

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

i think there�s probably a lot of people who don�t want to admit that the entire and government and media has been lying to them their whole lives and they�ve been buying it the whole time

# ? Jul 11, 2020 09:28

gimme the GOD DAMN candy: Jul 1, 2007

no one likes to think of themselves as a gullible rube, but pretty much everyone is.

# ? Jul 11, 2020 09:41

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

one of the worst parts of russiagate is if you assume it's all true and that putin directly ordered the dnc leaks, ordered the podesta email leaks, bizarrely needed to coordinate this with the trump campaign for some reason and received a bellicose foreign policy in return, and demanded russia have a paltry electioneering social media presence, it still should amount to shrugging your shoulders because of how tiny that all is

the mass in your face electoral propaganda from domestic and foreign 'allied' actors is so normalized people dont even recognize it as mass propaganda

# ? Jul 11, 2020 12:10

A4R8: Feb 28, 2020

Percelus posted:

everything sucks real bad but at least i can enjoy the tears of russiagaters for a day or two with roger stone getting his sentence commuted

i hate trump, stone, barr, just about everyone in washington but i have a special hate for russiagaters that tops all others

You should because RussiaGate has made libs and even some leftists sympathetic to decorum Christian fascists like this rear end in a top hat who is obviously taking advantage of the situation:

https://twitter.com/mittromney/status/1281937795616067586?s=21

Libs: we hate white nationalists, but not as much as Christian fascists from the Handmaid�s Tale!

# ? Jul 11, 2020 14:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

A4R8 posted:

https://twitter.com/mittromney/status/1281937795616067586?s=21

you motherfucker what do you think George HW Bush did for Caspar Weinberger and his co-conspirators in Iran-Contra?

# ? Jul 11, 2020 15:45

Peanut President: Nov 5, 2008; by Athanatos
(and can't post for 5 days!)

comedyblissoption posted:

one of the worst parts of russiagate is if you assume it's all true and that putin directly ordered the dnc leaks, ordered the podesta email leaks, bizarrely needed to coordinate this with the trump campaign for some reason and received a bellicose foreign policy in return, and demanded russia have a paltry electioneering social media presence, it still should amount to shrugging your shoulders because of how tiny that all is

the mass in your face electoral propaganda from domestic and foreign 'allied' actors is so normalized people dont even recognize it as mass propaganda

American-Israeli PAC = not foreign interference because Israel is our ally
Russain Gov saying America bad = foreign interference because Russia is our eternal enemy

# ? Jul 11, 2020 16:13