“Enter Grayzone, a supposedly leftist crew of “journalists” with opaque financing and Russian support.”
“This all-caps charge against responsible journalism is led by son of a wealthy Clinton advisor, Max Blumenthal and his zany “never met a Human Rights violation we didn’t like” cohorts at Grayzone ². They receive helping hands from a number of shady media organizations and fringe voices that include Russian disinformation network RT, TeleSur in South America, reknown racists Richard Spencer, Tucker Carlson, a nazi school shooter and even ex-KKK wizard David Duke.”
“Though they claim to write from the left, their digital fog-machine defies political boundaries, incorporating anti-semetic smears about Soros that have white-supremacist origins, genocide denial tricks pioneered by European fascist parties and the “always discredit or insult rather than respond to fact” tactics of sociopaths like Alex Jones.”
“These fearless champions of state-violence cheer police forces brutalizing protesters, deny well-documented death squads and rationalize oppression at every turn.”
“Max Blumenthal got his start writing about Syria in 2011, where he was staunchly on the side of rebels against Assad. He spoke passionately of atrocities committed by the Assad regime, even resigning from a Beirut paper in 2012 because he claimed they were “Assad apologists”, who “paid me pathetically, barely enough to pay rent in my New York apartment.””
“Suddenly, in 2015 Max and his pet mustachio [Ben Norton] flipped sides. It just so happens that they became pro-Assad after attending a Moscow luxury Gala; the same event that got Jill Stein and Trump appointment Michael Flynn (who was paid $40,000 for attending) in hot water. They were new true-believers in the Assad regime, and enthusiastic apologists for the murderous actions they had previously railed against.”
“Was it a Russian buy-out that changed their views? That’s hard to say [as] the funding for Grayzone is completely opaque.”
In Nicaragua, at the time of “a fiercely violent government oppression of protests that killed hundreds, and injured thousands […] Max Blumenthal and the Grayzone crew were portraying Daniel Ortega as a hero, hyping his baseless assertions that the students weren’t a legitimate protest movement, but rather a CIA front in a series of articles claiming international conspiracy. These claims were as without evidence as those of the government. Their effort culminated in an absolutely exhausting and fawning hour-long interview with the Nicaraguan president, in which Ortega blamed the hundreds of student deaths on everything from “crime” to “car accidents”.”
“Before Grayzone left Nicaragua, they would attack a number of journalists and protesters who presented accounts that didn’t fit their pre-conceived narrative.”
“As China reels from viral outbreak, ongoing protests in Hong Kong approaching their year-anniversary, a low-simmering trade war with the United States and controversy over Uighur re-education camps, [it is] an amazing opportunity for disinformation to thrive — which dishonest personalities take advantage of to promote themselves through questionable narratives [, such as] journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, who have created their own brand of pro-state disaster journalism and human rights violation apologia.”
“When a political crisis erupted in Venezuela in 2019 the government found it’s increasingly brutal tactics under the international media spotlight. President Nicolas Maduro found himself in dire need of a public relations firm that could spin his atrocities to an English language audience”
“The mercenaries of Grayzone are specialists in the field of disinformation — Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Dan Cohen, Anya Parampil and their associated minions milk exposure from the suffering of people in conflict zones and sell it for clout.”
“For them, the sudden media attention on Venezuela was a godsend. Another opportunity to use their Kremlin-amplified misinformation network to silence, discredit and dehumanize victims of state violence under the cynical guise of “anti-imperialism” — a way to get more eyeballs on their disinformation network.”
Read more: Grayzone, Grifters and the Cult of Tank, Enter the Dragon and The Venezuela Hustle
2021-week15
