Don't Ignore the Latest Media Scandal - Digital McCarthyism
Meet the Hamilton 68 "Dashboard," or how the left gaslit the media to push the Russia disinformation hoax in the name of "Democracy."
As someone who began his professional career as a journalist more than four decades ago, I’ve long pondered how today’s “legacy” media has devolved into a cacophony of propaganda, hysteria, and censorship. It long ago sacrificed its traditional role in our “checks and balances” system into a veritable mouthpiece for malevolent, self-serving actors within US law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and their well-connected political allies - the so-called “Deep State.”
I’ve never liked the term “Deep State.” It conjures up visions of East Germany’s Stasi dragging people from their homes during the dark of night, never to be seen again - but it aptly describes our newest, self-serving branches of government and their mission to protect their interests at all costs.
It started long ago, slowly but surely, with the politically and culturally tumultuous 1960s, starting with America’s “loss of innocence” and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It was followed by the horrific conduct of the Vietnam War by the Lyndon Johnson Administration. My friend, Vietnam veteran, former USA Today columnist, and historian, Dr. William Hamilton (no relation to the “Hamilton 68” project, but more about that later), has written the definitive analysis of all that went wrong during that conflict in his excellent book, War During Peace, A Strategy for Defeat.
The Watergate Scandal and the Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas juiced it, among other cultural influences within major American institutions, especially education. But it hit the afterburners with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, which radicalized much of the media and the Deep State actors who feed it constantly, even now.
And thanks to Elon Musk and the “Twitter Files,” we are continuing to find out just how insidious the censorious relationship between government actors and social media was - is - in what looks like a clear violation of the First Amendment. One result was how Congress and much of the public were gaslit with the false narratives of “Russian disinformation” and the “Russia Collusion Hoax.” It is increasingly obvious that the first Trump impeachment by the Democratic House of Representatives was predicated on lies, no matter what you think of Donald Trump personally or want to believe.
The latest installment of the Twitter Files, posted by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, exposes how a website designed by a left-leaning, deep-state-affiliated non-profit organization was used not just to gaslight the media on Russian disinformation but discredit and defame people on the center-right as Russian bots and agents. They did it through a website called the Hamilton 68 project, based on Alexander Hamilton’s authorship of Federalist Paper 68 regarding foreign influence.
I’ve pasted the first part of Taibbi’s below and encourage you to read all 42 tweets. “Threat to Democracy,” indeed. We should all know now where that threat really comes from. The Alliance for Securing Democracy has responded, but Taibbi has already debunked their response.
1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15
MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD
2.“I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.”
3.“Falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots.”
4.“Virtually any conclusion drawn from it will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”
5.These are quotes by Twitter executives about Hamilton 68, a digital “dashboard” that claimed to track Russian influence and was the source of hundreds if not thousands of mainstream print and TV news stories in the Trump years.
6.The “dashboard” was headed by former FBI counterintelligence official (and current MSNBC contributor) Clint Watts, and funded by a neoliberal think tank, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).
7.The ASD advisory council includes neoconservative writer Bill Kristol, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, ex-Hillary for America chief John Podesta, and former heads or deputy heads of the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security.
8.News outlets for years cited Watts and Hamilton 68 when claiming Russian bots were “amplifying” an endless parade of social media causes – against strikes in Syria, in support of Fox host Laura Ingraham, the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
9.Hamilton 68 was the source for stories claiming Russian bots pushed terms like “deep state” or hashtags like #FireMcMaster, #SchumerShutdown, #WalkAway, #ReleaseTheMemo, #AlabamaSenateRace, and #ParklandShooting, among many others.
10. The secret ingredient to Hamilton 68’s analytical method? A list: “Our analysis has linked 600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence activities online,” was how the site put it at launch.
11. Hamilton 68 never released the list, claiming "the Russians will simply shut [the accounts] down." All those reporters and TV personalities making claims about “Russian bots” never really knew what they were describing.