CHAPTER 1
Anti-Russian Hysteria in Propaganda and Fact
In the first part of this chapter, we will look at the new Cold War, reviewing recent accusations about Russia and its president Vladimir Putin as found in the New York Times, the âNewspaper of Recordâ and the most influential paper in the country. This virtually monolithic attack on Russia and its president by the Timesâ leading columnists, feature writers, and editorial board has been part of âone of the biggest fake news operations in U.S. historyâ according to best-selling author Dan Talbot, âcomparable to the yellow journalism promoted by the Hearst papers, which sold military intervention in the Spanish American War.â1
Re-invoking a historical Russophobia, the Times and media counterparts have consistently warned about a ânew Russian imperialismâ while casting Putin as a veritable âred devil,â as columnist Maureen Dowd termed him.2 Like all effective propaganda, there is a grain of truth to some of the allegations. However, many are unfounded or taken out of context. The U.S. role in provoking some of Putinâs actions is ignored, and inflated metaphors have been used, such as comparisons of the Russian annexation of Crimea to the German blitzkrieg and Anschluss during the Second World War.
The second part of the chapter will challenge the dominant narrative by presenting dissenting views from independent analysts who have placed the contemporary crisis with Russia in proper perspective. Unfortunately, their commentary has been confined to alternative media and hence has not been able to contain the growth of a dangerous âmoral panicâ that has helped precipitate the outbreak of a new Cold War.
PART I: THE OFFICIAL STORY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
Owned since 1896 by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, which enjoys close relations with many elements of the U.S. power elite, the New York Times relies on revenues from corporate advertisers and loans from banking firms, neither of which would be pleased if the Times took positions hostile to their interests or that of the corporate community at large. Though nominally liberal in its support for environmental and financial regulation, as well as social issues, the âNewspaper of Recordâ quite blatantly supports the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. During the 2016 election, even its most liberal columnist, Paul Krugman, frequently ridiculed Bernie Sanders, the progressive dissident. The Times has also supported CIA covert operations and U.S. military power abroad. Its Putin-bashing, defense of NATO, and fomenting of anti-Russian hysteria can thus be placed in the larger context of the paperâs history in âmanufacturing consent,â often by playing up the alleged atrocities of official government enemies while whitewashing those of its allies.3
After Putin was elected in March 2000, the Times mixed reservations about his KGB background with reassurance that he âseemed to harbor no nostalgia for the suffocating ideology of communism or the terrors carried out in its name.â It noted that he was âsmart and articulateâ and appeared to be âa skillful, pragmatic managerâ with âsome democratic credentials.â4 A June 2003 editorial stated that âPutin had done a lot to end the chaos of the Yeltsin yearsâ and bring stability to his country and that he was a âsober, Westernizing leaderâ who was âprepared to cooperate with the United States and Europe.â5
Subsequent editorials encouraged â[President] Bushâs instinct to befriend Mr. Putinâ and to âwrite a positive new chapter in relations with Moscow.â Former national security adviser and Iran-Contra felon Robert âBudâ McFarlane urged cooperation in the War on Terror, suggesting that the United States didnât have to âchoose between Russia and Europe. It [was] in Americaâs interest to cooperate with both.â6
When Putin opposed the Iraq war and U.S.-Russian relations soured, the Times predictably became more hostile. Columnist William Safire, who characterized Russia as âauthoritarian at heart and expansionist by habit,â launched the first shot in the anti-Putin movement with his December 10, 2003, editorial, âThe Russian Reversion,â which urged resistance against the budding âcult of Putinâ and his âone-party rule.â7 The Times subsequently denounced Putinâs âold-style KGB tacticsâ when he arrested oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky before he was to sell a majority of shares of his Yukos oil company to Exxon-Mobil.8 Columnist Nicholas Kristof suggested that the West had been âsuckeredâ into believing âPutin was a sober version of Boris Yeltsin,â when he was a âRussified Pinochet or Francoâ leading Russia to fascism. According to Kristof, a âfascist Russia was [actually] much better than a communist Russia, since communism was a failed economic system while Francoâs Spain, General Pinochetâs Chile and the others generated solid economic growth, a middle class and international contactsâ and âlay the groundwork for democracy.â The United States, nevertheless, needed to take its cue from the Baltic states and Ukrainians and âstand up to Putinâ and his âbullying tactics.â9
In February 2007, Putin delivered what Times correspondent Steven Lee Myers termed an âacerbic assault on American unilateralismâ at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, which roiled feathers in Washington.10 When Russia subsequently sent troops to defend secessionists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were invaded by the Georgian government of Mikheil Saakashvili with U.S. military support, Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote that Putin âdeserved a gold medal for brutish stupidity.â Many observers blamed Saakashvili, however, for starting the war, and the Russian intervention (orchestrated actually by President Dmitri Medvedev, whom Friedman called âPutinâs mini-meâ) prevented South Ossetiaâs absorption into a future NATO member state, restored pride in the Russian army, and prevented threatened ethnic cleansing.11
Anti-Putin Invective Grows in the Obama Years
The anti-Putin invective escalated throughout the Obama years, peaking in Obamaâs second term during the Ukraine crisis when the Times supported the U.S.-backed Maidan ârevolutionâ of February 2014 that resulted in the toppling of pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych.12 An article by C. J. Chivers and Patrick Reveel alleged Russian intimidation, military occupation, and electoral manipulation ahead of the March 16, 2014, referendum in which 95 percent of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia. The authors wrote that the referendum had the âtrappings of the election-season carnivals that have long accompanied rigged ballots across the old Soviet world.â13 These claims ignored that Moscow had thousands of troops in an agreement to protect its naval base at Sevastopol, and that the referendum results stemmed from longstanding ambivalence to Kiev and disdain for the post-coup regime among a majority of Crimeans, especially the many ethnic Russians.14
In April 2014, the Times published photos of Russian fighters in the Donbass and Luhansk regions that purportedly âprovedâ the charge of Russian aggression in the civil war that broke out in eastern Ukraine, though the photos were proven to be fakes and the Times had to issue a retraction. The Times editorial board still referred to Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine nevertheless, saying Putinâs actions revealed his âarrogance and contempt for international law,â which justified the levying of sanctions and possibly expelling Russia from the G-8 nations.15
The Times further violated journalistic standards when it published an unsubstantiated allegation by a conservative Russian oligarch that Putin had been provided advance warning of the pro-Russian Yanukovich governmentâs collapse, and planned in advance to exploit the ensuing chaos by annexing Crimea with the underlying goal of maintaining the gas supply routes that help Russia dominate European supplies.16 The Times subsequently helped cover up the massacre of thirty-eight pro-Russian demonstrators in Odessa after right-wing Nazi sympathizers burned the Trade Union House where they were taking refuge after their tent encampment had been ransacked.17
When Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, Times columnist Roger Cohen mimicked Secretary of State John Kerry in claiming there was âan enormous amount of evidenceâ pointing to Russian culpability, including âdamning audio and images that capture the crime.â Putin has been âplaying with fire,â Cohen wrote, as the shooting down of the airplane âamounts to an act of war,â with â193 innocent Dutch souls dishonored by the thugs of the Donetsk Peopleâs Republic.â The only viable response was to help âtransform Ukraineâs army into a credible force,â which âwonât happen. Europe is weak [and] Obamaâs America is about retrenchment, not resolve. Putin must be appeased.â At the time of these statements, however, no major criminal investigation had been conducted and Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence privy to all the relevant evidence, said there was âno smoking gun.â18 Cohenâs column was thus pure hyperbole and an incitement for war.
In August 2015, Andrew Higgins and Michael Gordon reported that âRussia had escalated tensions with Ukraine to the highest levels since its stealthy invasion of Crimea in the spring, sending more than 200 trucks from a long-stalled aid convoy into rebel-held eastern Ukraine over the objections of Kiev and, NATO said, conducting military operations on Ukrainian territory.â19 The latter operations, however, were unverified and the aid convoy was designed to assist local populations devastated from missile and other attacks by Ukrainian government forces. The Times furthermore omitted the United States, European Union (EU), and Canadian role in providing weapons, intelligence support, and training to Ukrainian regiments, which were led in some cases by neo-Nazi militias.20
Times writers Michael D. Shear, Allison Smale, and David Herszenhorn had invoked the Nazi blitzkrieg in referencing Putinâs âinvasionâ and âlightning annexationâ of Crimea, which, they said, âshockedâ the NATO countries because it revealed Russiaâs âabrupt abandonment of the rules of cooperation and territorial integrity that have governed East-West relations for decades.â21
Amy Chozick and Ian Lovett reported uncritically on Secretary of State Hillary Clintonâs comparisons between Russiaâs issuing of passports âto Ukrainians with allegiances to Russiaâ to what Adolf Hitler did before Germany began invading bordering countries.â Though differentiating Putin from Hitler, the assertion that he had to go into Crimea to protect the Russian minority there was said to be âreminiscent of claims made back in the 1930sâ when the Nazis asserted they had to invade Eastern European countries to âprotect German minorities.â22 In Crimea, however, Russians are the majority at 65 percent, while Ukrainians and Tatars are the minority. Crimea was historically part of Russia and sacred as the place where Vladimir the Grand Prince of Kiev brought Christianity to Russia and Russian troops heroically fought Britain, France, and Turkey during the nineteenth-century Crimean War.23
Supporting NATO Expansion
Just as the British press whipped up fear about Russian aggression on the eve of the Crimean War, the âNewspaper of Recordâ is creating a new Red Scare by echoing U.S. government officials warning about the âre-Sovietizationâ of Central Asia and Russiaâs âresurrection [under Putin] as a global disrupter.â24 Strong offense has been taken at Russiaâs âfuriousâ opposition to NATOâs expansion on its borders, despite the fact that Russia had been promised NATO would not expand there. In early 2017, the Times editorial board critiqued President Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis for calling NATO âobsoleteâ and suggesting the United States might not support NATO members that have not met their financial obligations at a âtime the Western alliance was again facing an assertive and aggressive Russia,â an âespecially worrisomeâ trend âgiven Mr. Trumpâs possible links to Moscow.â In the Times version of history, these are âfraught times for the Western alliance, which even after the Cold War remains a critical unifying bond among the democracies of North America and Europe and whose members have worked together to confront terrorism in Afghanistan and promote stability in several Middle Eastern countries.â25
Russian Interference in the Presidential Election
The official indictment against Putin holds that he ordered an âinfluence campaign aimed at the U.S. election,â with the goal of âundermining faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrating Hillary Clinton, and harming her electability and potential presidency.â The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), representing seventeen intelligence agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) determined with âhigh confidenceâ that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and leaked documents to WikiLeaks that showed efforts to undermine Bernie Sanders and exposed some of Clintonâs speeches to Wall Street high-rollers. DNI James Clapper testified that âRussiaâs alleged meddling in the 2016 campaign went beyond hacking, and included disinformation and the dissemination of fake news often promoted on social media,â with Putin being said to have âpersonally directedâ the operation.26
Like the good soldiers they are, the Times commentators reported the allegations as fact when conclusive evidence was lacking. Columnist Charles M. Blow asserted that Russian hacking made it âmore ⊠clear that ⊠Trumpâs victory [is] tainted beyond redemption.â He wrote: âA hostile power stole confidential correspondence from American citizens ⊠and funneled that stolen material to a willing conspirator, Julian Assang...