Modern Operation Mockingbird: "Everyone Who Disagrees with Me Is a Russian Propagandist"

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net

SOTT.net recently had the honor of being smeared as a vehicle for Russian propaganda. The dubious, anonymous "PropOrNot" site listed us as one among 200 or so such websites - witting or unwitting dupes of the Kremlin's propagandists. Thankfully, we're in mostly good company. It's hard to know whether to take them seriously or not. The site gives the impression of perhaps being a too-clever hoax, which would be hilarious given that the Washington Post among others actually takes them seriously. I mean, come on, the first thing you see on their website is a fake interview, conducted by a comedian, with two actors pretending to be Russian propagandists!)

But leaving that aside, it's still rich. Pretty much every alternative news website you can think of is included on the list. PropOrNot's logic seems to run something like this:

1. Western governments and media say A. (A is true.)
2. Russian government and media says not-A. (Not-A is not true.)
3. Alternative media also says not-A.
4. Therefore, alternative media are either witting or unwitting peddlers of Russian lies.

First, this assumes that the western media and government are telling the truth. Second, it assumes that the Russian government always lies. So the alternative media is put in awkward and contrived position: anytime the Russian government tells the truth, and the alternative media makes the same claims, the latter can simply be written off as Russian propaganda. Which is total nonsense. The fact that the people behind PropOrNot, if they're sincere in their claims, think this is the case says a lot about what they think of their readers: they think they're idiots.

As Wayne Madsen (whose articles are carried by intrepidreport.com and strategic-culture.org, both on PropOrNot's list) put it recently:

The Post's article [regurgitating PropOrNot's claims] is worthy of the CIA-generated propaganda spun by the paper at the height of the Cold War-era MOCKINGBIRD.

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