{"id":21006,"date":"2024-10-31T17:50:23","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T21:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21006"},"modified":"2024-10-31T19:06:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T23:06:42","slug":"do-i-look-like-a-russian-propagandist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/31\/do-i-look-like-a-russian-propagandist\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I Look Like a Russian Propagandist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Do I Look Like a Russian Propagandist?<\/a><\/h2>\n
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James Bovard , American Conservative<\/a><\/div>\n
Oct 31, 2024<\/span> 5:00 PM<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Getting online Thursday morning, I did the usual Google vanity search. I was mystified to see a link for a hit piece by the Atlantic Council, a top DC think tank funded by the U.S. State Department<\/a>, foreign governments, and other donors.\u00a0And then I discovered that my article in The American Conservative<\/em>, \u201cThe Democrats\u2019 Three-Decade War on Honest Voting<\/a>,\u201d had turned me into a shameless tool of Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n

Where did I go wrong? Were the years I spent as a Boy Scout all for naught?<\/p>\n

Looking more closely at the article, I recognized even more rascality than I expected to find on Halloween. The article was posted by the\u00a0Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), a branch of the Atlantic Council that boasts that it \u201chas operationalized the study<\/a> of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and fake news.\u201d The piece, slugged \u201cRussian Outlets Amplify Conspiracies,\u201d warned:<\/p>\n

Russia-linked outlets are also copying election conspiracies from US publications verbatim. ZeroHedge, a known promoter<\/a> of conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda that republishes RT content<\/a>, is actively reprinting content from fringe sources that claims the establishment is manipulating legal and electoral system to \u2018steal\u2019 the election. Examples include an article<\/a> by James Bovard originally published<\/a> in The American Conservative<\/em>, which alleges legal efforts to protect voting rights are part of a Democrat conspiracy to enable fraud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cLegal efforts to protect voting rights\u201d?<\/p>\n

Like the unmanned ballot drop boxes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled were illegal after<\/a> the 2020 election?<\/p>\n

Like the torrent of unverified mail-in ballots, although the New York Times<\/em> warned in 2012 were \u201cfraud in voting by mail is\u2026 vastly more prevalent<\/a> than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention\u201d?<\/p>\n

Like the controversies over whether people casting a vote should be required to show personal identification like they do when taking a flight, buying\u00a0a beer, or renting a car?<\/p>\n

My piece ridiculed a banner front page New York Times<\/em> headline one week after the 2020 election: \u201cElection Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud.\u201d How did the Times<\/em>\u2019 reporters confirm there was \u201cno fraud\u201d? They asked government officials and then dutifully reported what they were told.<\/p>\n

And now a federally-funded think tank is claiming that anyone who warns of election fraud is a Russian tool.<\/p>\n

DFRLab presumes my guilt-by-association is established by stating that ZeroHedge, one of the most popular news websites, reposted my article. And how do they prove that ZeroHedge is a Russian tool? By linking to a 2021 Atlantic Council piece<\/a> slamming that website for publishing allegations that the Covid-19 virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That was heresy three years ago, but is now an accepted account at numerous federal agencies, including the FBI.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic Council\u2019s DFRLab is a formal part of the Election Integrity Partnership that was condemned by federal judges for censoring social media during the 2020 election. In 2018, Congress created a new federal agency\u2014the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA realized that it would be politically and legally perilous to directly muzzle Americans, so it relied on \u201ccensorship by surrogate.\u201d The feds evaded the Constitution by subcontracting the destruction of freedom of speech. CISA partnered with federal grantees and the DFRLab to form the Election Integrity Partnership a hundred days before the 2020 presidential election. That project, along with the efforts of other federal agencies, created an \u201cunrelenting pressure\u201d with \u201cthe intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens,\u201d according to a ruling last year by federal Judge Terry Doughty.<\/p>\n

CISA targeted American citizens who complained about elections, and any criticism tacitly became a threat to the nation\u2019s election infrastructure. Contractors composing the Election Integrity Partnership filed endless objections to Americans\u2019 online posts with social media firms. Most of the censorship during the 2020 election cycle targeted posts \u201crelated to delegitimizing the election results,\u201d the court decision noted. Once the government began censoring, the definition of misinformation mushroomed. The Election Integrity Partnership bragged about targeting social media posts merely for being \u201cout of context\u201d or \u201cexaggerating issues.\u201d Many of those alleged factual infractions were piddling compared to the sweeping falsehoods proclaimed by both Trump and Biden. As Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online<\/strong> observed, \u201cthe censorship focus<\/a> was always and consistently foremost targeted at speech casting doubt on mail-in ballots,\u201d devastating \u201cthe ability of concerned citizens to pressure their state representatives to take legal action on changing voting procedures\u201d to prevent fraud.\u00a0Those mail-in ballots delivered the presidency to Joe Biden. Federal Judge Terry Doughty on July 4, 2023 condemned the Biden administration for potentially \u201cthe most massive attack<\/a> against free speech in United States history.\u201d That verdict was ratified in September 2023 by a federal appeals court ruling slamming the White House and federal agencies for actions that resulted in \u201csuppressing millions<\/a> of protected free speech postings by American citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the third presidential election in a row in which the Washington elite have screamed RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!<\/em> to shroud their machinations.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Special Counsel John Durham reported last year that, in mid-2016, after the shellacking she suffered from her email scandal, \u201c[the Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary] Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.\u201d President Barack Obama was briefed on the Clinton proposal \u201cto vilify Donald Trump<\/a> by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.\u201d FBI officials relied on the \u201cClinton Plan\u201d to target the Trump campaign even though no FBI personnel apparently took \u201cany action to vet the Clinton Plan intelligence,\u201d the Durham report noted. The first three years of Trump\u2019s presidency were haunted by constant accusations that he colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election. In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally admitted that there were no grounds to prosecute Trump or his officials for colluding with Russia.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop revealed vast corruption by the Biden family influence-peddling operation. Antony Blinken, then a top Biden adviser, orchestrated a letter from 51 top intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop<\/a> was nothing but a Russian disinformation campaign. That letter helped torpedo potential political damage from the laptop and assure Biden victory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And now a federally-funded think tank is taking to the barricades to denounce warnings about voter fraud as another Russian disinformation campaign. Is DFRLab seeking to \u201cpre-bunk\u201d any reports of election fraud as a foreign disinformation? In reality, \u201cdisinformation\u201d is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods.<\/strong><\/p>\n

American elections have seen fierce disputes over the legitimacy of votes going all the way to Thomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in 1800. When did ballots\u2014or even alleged ballots\u2014become sacred? Perhaps when the ruling class decided that elections themselves must be hallowed to place a halo over winning politicians. How else can Americans be swayed to unquestioningly submit to ever-greater subjugation?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The efforts to \u201csave democracy\u201d become more perverse with every election.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n