Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump


The Intercept has the story Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump.

She now has a new article in the New York Review of Books – entitled “Russia: the Conspiracy Trap” – that I cannot recommend highly enough. Its primary purpose is to describe, and warn about, the insane and toxic conspiracy-mongering about Russia that has taken over not the fringe, dark corners of the internet that normally traffic in such delusional tripe, but rather mainstream U.S. media outlets and the Democratic Party. Few articles have illustrated the serious, multi-faceted dangers of what has become this collective mania in the U.S. as well as Gessen’s does.

So, I went to look at The New York Review of Books article Russia: The Conspiracy Trap.

The most solid part of the story to date is the hack of the Democratic National Committee, apparently carried out by people connected to Russian intelligence.

I find this ironic because I find the hack of the Democratic National Committee to be the flimsiest part of the story. I refer to a previous post of mine, Election Hack Report FAQ: What You Need to Know. Even the skeptics about the Russia story aren’t skeptical enough.

Even Glenn Greenwald, the author of the first article came to mention this at the end:

Indeed, even the most plausible plank of the story – that the Russians were behind the hacking of Podesta and the DNC – has been widely accepted as Truth despite no evidence from the U.S. Government.

However, there is not only a lack of evidence from the government, there even seems to be anti–evidence from the government. If anything, there “proof” offers more evidence that it is unlikely the work of Russian intelligence.

To make sure you don’t think I am saying that Trump is innocent, here is the conclusion of Greenwald’s and Gessen’s two articles.

As Gessen concludes: “What is indisputable is that the protracted national game of connecting the Trump-Putin dots is an exercise in conspiracy thinking. That does not mean there was no conspiracy. And yet, a possible conspiracy is a poor excuse for conspiracy thinking.”

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