It seems the establishment and its propaganda organs are still smarting after being exposed as fringe and weak this election. Now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is supposedly investigating whether popular alternative media outlets were involved in an alleged “Russian cyber operation” in the 2016 election to help elect Donald Trump, according to two supposed anonymous sources quoted by the left-wing McClatchy news agency. Among the alleged targets of the alleged federal probe are Infowars and Breitbart, two non-establishment news sites falsely characterized as “far right” by far-left journalists Peter Stone and Greg Gordon and the radical left-wing activists they quote as supposed “experts.”
Both of the conservative-leaning news agencies in question now have audiences dwarfing the readership and viewership of many increasingly discredited establishment-media voices. In fact, analysts suggest the two are among the most influential media outlets in the United States, if not the world. Critics dismissed and ridiculed the alleged FBI conspiracy theories involving the news agencies as ludicrous and potentially even “fake news.” The FBI would not publicly confirm whether or not the claim printed by McClatchy, based on supposed unnamed officials, was even real.
“Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say,” the McClatchy reporters claimed. The controversial story promptly sparked headlines — along with First Amendment concerns and accusations of “fake news” by McClatchy — around the world. After being posted on the popular Drudge Report, the McClatchy story’s comment section immediately filled up with hundreds of comments ridiculing McClatchy, its reporters, and its alleged sources.
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According to the story and its alleged “sources,” supposed “operatives for Russia” supposedly “appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as bots, to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive.” These supposed “bots” then helped get the Infowars and Breitbart stories spread across social media. Of course, the more likely explanation is that Americans, fed up with what polls show is almost universally viewed as the deeply dishonest establishment media, were simply sharing Infowars and Breitbart stories online. Also part of the alleged probe are the Kremlin-backed RT and Sputnik media agencies.
The widely ridiculed McClatchy report then goes on to claim, citing its supposed sources, that some of the stories were false or were a mixture of true and false information. Not a single example of an alleged false or mixed true-false story is provided, presumably because none existed. The story also quotes Obama-era officials and fringe left-wing extremists as impartial analysts, contrary to long-established standard journalistic practice and journalism ethics, to bolster the allegations by the alleged sources. It remains unclear whether the federal sources actually exist, and if they do, whether they are low-level bureaucrats or perhaps part of what analysts have called a “Deep State” operation to destroy Trump and his supporters.
Trump has previously suggested that globalist-establishment propaganda organs were inventing sources out of thin air and publishing blatantly fake news. Just last month, the president scolded the establishment media in a long press conference, ridiculing their extreme bias and highlighting the fact that surveys show virtually nobody trusts the press anymore. He even called much of the press the “enemy of the American people,” echoing increasingly widespread public sentiments about the widely despised and blatantly dishonest establishment press.
To deal with the problem, Trump has increasingly relied on social media and alternative media outlets to get his message to the American people and to bypass the anti-Trump establishment media. And that has journalists, globalists, bureaucrats, and others in a panic — possibly enough of a panic to manufacture fake news about “Russian bots” spreading alternative media stories. Indeed, the establishment press was caught concocting or hyping more than a few fake stories to damage Trump, including the phony “intelligence dossier” that CNN and Buzzfeed tried to push until it blew up in their faces.
Despite all the bluster about the “bots” and the alternative media, nobody is likely to be charged, McClatchy admitted. “The investigation of the bot-engineered traffic, which appears to be in its early stages, is being driven by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, whose inquiries rarely result in criminal charges and whose main task has been to reconstruct the nature of the Kremlin’s cyber attack and determine ways to prevent another,” McClatchy reported, adding that the FBI refused to comment on the alleged investigation. The report also noted that cooperation from Infowars and Breitbart were not necessary for the “bots” to supposedly spread the stories.
The fantastical allegations by the two supposed “sources” were published shortly after FBI boss James Comey, who has been widely criticized for protecting Hillary Clinton from serious criminal charges, told Congress that the bureau was probing alleged links between some Trump officials and the Kremlin. A number of Democrat lawmakers have also peddled wild conspiracy theories about Trump somehow being a stooge of the KGB, prompting widespread ridicule by critics who called on the conspiracy theorists to tighten their tin foil hats.
The McClatchy report also came after increasingly unhinged neoconservatives and warmongers in Congress began slandering their colleagues with similar smears. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, widely ridiculed by conservatives as a “Republican in Name Only” (RINO), claimed liberty-minded Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) “is now working for Vladimir Putin.” The reason for the bizarre outburst by the controversial lawmaker from Arizona was Paul’s opposition to allowing the government of Montenegro to join NATO.
Other establishment media outlets have also gotten so carried away with their conspiracy theorizing on Russia and the alternative media that they embarrassed themselves. The Washington Post, for example, which still refuses to disclose its owner’s massive financial ties to the CIA, ran a story in November headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ´fake news´ during election, experts say.” The story, based largely on unnamed sources, falsely suggested that virtually every non-establishment media source was involved in spreading Russian propaganda. After a backlash, the Post was forced to distance itself from the fake unnamed “experts,” their alleged “methodology,” and their conclusions.
The more recent McClatchy article, which was ripped to shreds in the comment sections with a deluge of critics ridiculing the “journalists” and their alleged sources, made other unfounded allegations as well. For instance, without actually saying it, the “journalists” attempted to paint Breitbart as a racist media outlet, saying the site “has drawn criticism for pursuing a white nationalist agenda.” Again, no examples of its alleged “white nationalist agenda” were provided, presumably because none exist. The one example of “racism” and “antisemitism” trotted out by fake-news peddlers was a headline calling neocon Bill Kristol a “renegade Jew.” What virtually every establishment media outlet failed to mention is that the Breitbart story was actually written by a Jewish man. In other words, the press was lying.
Breitbart’s new chief, who took over after former Breibart leader Steve Bannon took a top job at the White House, did not respond to McClatchy’s publication of the conspiracy theories. Infowars chief Alex Jones (shown), though, one of the top radio talk-show personalities in America, answered McClatchy’s questions on air, calling the claims made by the reporters and their alleged sources a lie. “It’s as if we didn’t build InfoWars,” said Jones, who, ironically, is often attacked by the conspiracy theorizing establishment media over supposed conspiracy theories. “It’s as if we don’t have a huge audience.” His only “Russian connection,” he added, was that he had appeared on RT “probably 100 times or more,” as have countless liberals, Democrats, Hillary supporters, politicians, and others.
After McClatchy’s article ran, Jones continued to ridicule the claims. “To be called a Russian asset by McClatchy and by the LA Times and by a bunch of other publications today is funny, if it wasn’t so serious,” Jones said on his radio show Monday, the day the story was published. “I don’t personally take this as a threat … I’m threatened for the country. I mean if the Russians want to secure our borders, cut our taxes, not have us go bankrupt, rebuild our military, block radical Islam — well then, hell, I’m a Russian agent! But I’m not.”
On his Tuesday broadcast, Jones continued to ridicule the Russia conspiracy theories. At the start of his program, Infowars featured Russian-style music and its logo in Russian Cyrillic-style characters over the Soviet red star. The goal of the lies, he said, was ultimately to take over the Internet and to “overthrow the president, one way or another.” “They are intending to politically persecute those of us who have been trying to defend the country,” Jones added, noting that the establishment was falsely trying to link patriots and conservatives to Russia. “The globalists are here, and they’ve actually declared their plans.”
Jones, who has featured Trump as a guest on his program, called on the administration to fight back against the shadowy globalist and totalitarian forces trying to destroy America. “If Trump and his people don’t counter-strike when Hillary is openly on the Communist Chinese payroll, sold 30 percent of our uranium to Russia, got all these tens of millions of dollars for it, if they don’t start the indictments for these open crimes they’ve committed, they’re not going to stop,” Jones said on his Tuesday broadcast. “George Soros has doubled the amount of money he gave in the election cycle two days after the November election to double racial division and civil unrest.”
Hillary Clinton’s far-left globalist campaign boss John Podesta, whose leaked e-mails were cited by critics as evidence of his involvement in occult rituals and even pedophilia, once again spread the demonstrably false conspiracy theory that “fake news” helped Trump win the election. “We perhaps underestimated the strategy of pushing fake news out through social media and how it impacted the race,” he was quoted as saying by McClatchy. Disgraced former DNC boss Donna Brazile, who sparked a scandal by giving Clinton the debate questions beforehand, claimed the Democrat Party did not use “bots.”
The Kremlin, meanwhile, ridiculed the conspiracy theorists and their attempts to weave bizarre tales of collaboration between Trump, his allies, and Putin. “They are trying to find confirmation of their own conclusions but can’t find either proof or confirmation and are going round in circles.” said a Kremlin spokesman, adding that a U.S. intelligence committee is “confused” after hearing the testimony from FBI boss Comey.
Of course, there is no doubt that the Kremlin has improperly interfered in American politics and government. This magazine and its publisher, The John Birch Society, whose chairman, Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), was shot out of the sky on flight KAL 007 by Soviet fighter jets, have been at the forefront of exposing this fact for almost 60 years. Indeed, just a few decades ago, the establishment media was hyperventilating about the JBS for allegedly being overly concerned with Russian operations targeting the United States.
So, the Kremlin threat is very real. But in the real world, the most troubling links between U.S. individuals and the Kremlin tend to come from the Democrat side: the Clinton “Crime Family,” as critics call it, took what appear to be massive bribes from Kremlin sources to help transfer huge amounts of U.S. uranium to Kremlin entities. Obama even invited Putin’s troops on to U.S. soil for “terror” training with American forces, for the first time in history. And before that, Senator Ted Kennedy, a leading Democrat, was caught sending secret messages to Soviet mass-murderer Yuri Andropov plotting joint propaganda efforts to undermine President Ronald Reagan. The Clintons and the DNC were also caught taking money from Beijing in exchange for various benefits.
But the conspiracy theories peddled by Democrats and the globalist establishment media suggesting that Trump, Infowars, or Breitbart are Russian stooges appear to have literally no basis in reality. Instead, it seems to be another instance of an age-old tactic employed by countless immoral people — the Clintons included, according to their own longtime friend Dolly Kyle — of accusing others of what you yourself are guilty of doing. “Whatever she says negative about another person is about her,” Clinton friend Kyle said on the Larry Elder Show about Hillary.
In short, the McClatchy article and the subsequent reports based on it appear to be a nefarious disinformation operation aimed at smearing the surging alternative media and President Trump with libels that would be far more accurate if applied to Clinton and the globalist establishment she represents. Indeed, Putin himself has long been close to many of the very same globalists Trump campaigned against. But you can be sure that the establishment media will not be bringing those facts to light anytime soon.
Disclosure: This writer and others with The New American magazine, which has long warned about the Kremlin, regularly appear on the Alex Jones Show. This writer has appeared, in his personal capacity, on RT. Writers for this publication have also written for Breitbart.com.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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