There’s no better organization or group of people to support than the Libertarian Institute - Dave Smith

Great news, matching funds has been extended. A very generous donor has pledged an additional $15,000 in matching funds.

Double the impact of your donation and Support the Libertarian Institute Today!

$31,572 of $60,000 raised

Disinformation Pushers, Label Thyself

by | Jan 31, 2023

Disinformation Pushers, Label Thyself

by | Jan 31, 2023

propornot

Thanks to the latest release of the “Twitter Files,” we now know without a doubt that the entire “Russia disinformation” racket was a massive disinformation campaign to undermine U.S. elections and perhaps even push “regime change” inside the United States after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.

Here is some background. In November 2016, just after the election, The Washington Post published an article titled, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.” The purpose of the article was to delegitimize the Trump presidency as a product of a Russian “disinformation” campaign.

“There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders,” wrote Craig Timberg. The implication was clear: a Russian operation elected Donald Trump, not the American people.

Among the “experts” it cited were an anonymous organization called “Prop Or Not,” which in its own words claimed to identify “more than 200 websites as peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans.”

The organization’s report was so preposterous that The Washington Post was later forced to issue a clarification, even though the Post provided a link to the report which falsely accused independent news outlets like Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and even my Ron Paul Institute as “Russian disinformation.”

The 2016 Washington Post article also featured “expert” Clint Watts, a former FBI counterintelligence officer who went on to found another outfit claiming to be hunting “Russian disinformation” in the U.S., the “Hamilton 68” project. That project was launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a very well-funded organization containing a who’s who of top neocons like William Kristol, John Podesta, Michael McFaul, and many more.

Thanks to the latest release of the “Twitter Files,” Matt Taibbi reveals that the Hamilton 68 project, which claimed to monitor 600 “Russian disinformation” Twitter accounts, was a total hoax. While they refused to reveal which accounts they monitored and would not reveal their methodology, Twitter was able to use reverse-engineering to determine the 600-odd “Russian-connected” accounts. Twitter found that despite Hamilton’s claims, the vast majority of these “Russian” accounts were English-speaking. Of the Russian registered accounts—numbering just 36 out of 644—most were employees of the Russian news outlet RT.

It was all a lie and the latest Twitter Files release confirms that even the “woke” pre-Musk Twitter employees could smell a rat. But the hoax served an important purpose. Hiding behind anonymity, this neocon organization was able to generate hundreds of media stories slandering and libeling perfectly legitimate organizations and individuals as “Russian agents.” It provided a very convenient way to demonize anyone who did not go along with the approved neocon narrative.

Twitter’s new owner, who has given us a look behind the curtain, put it best in a Tweet over the weekend: “An American group made false claims about Russian election interference to interfere with American elections.”

The whole “Russia disinformation” hoax was a shocking return to the McCarthyism of the 1950s and in some ways even worse. Making lists of American individuals and non-profits to be targeted and “cancelled” as being in the pay of foreigners is despicable. Such fraudulent actions have caused real-life damages that need to be addressed.

This article was originally featured at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and is republished with permission.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul is a doctor, author, former member of Congress, Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute, and Chairman of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

TGIF: Say No to a Sovereign Wealth Fund

TGIF: Say No to a Sovereign Wealth Fund

Donald Trump wants to create a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). It's a bad idea if your standard is freedom, free enterprise, and free markets. That's not Trump's standard, but we already knew that. A sovereign wealth fund is a government-run investment program. Where...

read more
Contra Krugman (Redux)

Contra Krugman (Redux)

In a recent conversation with the Libertarian Institute’s Keith Knight, we broke down a 2012 article by everyone’s least favorite economist, the former New York Times pundit Paul Krugman. In it, Krugman makes all the familiar and mistaken arguments about why we...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This