Representative Stacey Plaskett, who called Michael Shellenberger and me "direct
threats to people who oppose them," is now threatening me with prison - over
Mehdi Hasan's uncorrected error.
By Matt Taibbi
April 22, 2023:
Information Clearing House-- The Biden administration’s Department of
Justice has just charged four members of the
African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for
conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using
speech and political action in ways the DOJ says
“weaponized” the First Amendment rights of
Americans.
Federal authorities charged four
Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign
campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in
Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous
case that charged a Russian operative with
running illegal influence agents within the
United States.
The FBI signaled its interest in the
alleged activities in a series of raids last
summer, at which point authorities charged a
Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov,
with working for years on behalf of Russian
government officials to fund and direct
fringe political groups in the United
States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly
advised the political campaigns of two
unidentified candidates for public office in
Florida.
Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly
directed and supervised by officers of the
FSB, a Russian government intelligence
service.
Now, authorities have added charges
against four Americans who allegedly did
Ionov’s bidding through groups including the
African People’s Socialist Party and the
Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in
Georgia, and an unidentified political group
in California — part of an effort to
influence American politics.
AFP
reports that the conspiracy charges carry a
sentence of up to ten years, with three of the
four APSP members additionally charged
with acting as unregistered agents of Russia
which carries another five years.
“Russia’s foreign intelligence service
allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights
– freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to
divide Americans and interfere in elections in
the United States,” said Assistant Attorney
General Matthew G. Olsen in
the DOJ’s press release regarding the
indictments, adding, “The department will not
hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow
discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of
hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether
the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign
individuals abroad.”
Looks like the United States has decided to
dispense with those freedoms as well.
The
superseding indictment containing these
charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics
to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is
prosecuting US citizens for speech and political
activities in the United States which happen not
to align with the wishes of the US government.
The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned
Ionov “directed” these Americans to “publish
pro-Russian propaganda” and “information
designed to cause dissention in the United
States,” which is about as vague and amorphous
an allegation as you could possibly come up
with.
For the record Omali Yeshitela, the founder
and chairman of the African People’s Socialist
Party and one of the four Americans named in the
indictment, has adamantly denied ever having
worked for Russia. Earlier this month before
charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay
Times
quoted him as saying,
I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never
ever ever ever. They know I have never
worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve
never worked for them.
But it’s important to note that this should
not matter. Under the First Amendment the
government is forbidden to abridge anyone’s
freedom to speak however they want and associate
with whomever they please, which necessarily
includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they
like and promoting whatever political agendas
they see fit, whether that happens to advance
the interests of the Russian government or not.
The indictment alleges that the four Americans
engaged in “agitprop” by “writing articles that
contained Russian propaganda and
disinformation,” but even if we pretend that’s
both (A) a quantifiable claim and (B) a proven
fact, propaganda and disinformation are both
speech that the government is constitutionally
forbidden from repressing.
It’s not reasonable for the government to
just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds
that it is being “weaponized”. You can’t have
your government dictating what speech is valid
and what counts as “agitprop” and
“disinformation”, because they’ll always define
those terms in ways which benefit the
government, thus giving more power to the
powerful and taking power away from the people.
You can’t have your government dictating what
political groups are legitimate and which ones
are tools of a foreign government, because you
can always count on the powerful set such
designations in ways which benefit themselves.
There’s also the brazen hypocrisy of it all.
The US government is constantly engaging
in foreign influence operations with outfits
like
the National Endowment for Democracy, which
was set up to help foment coups and color
revolutions and advance US information interests
overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly.
The US through the National Endowment for
Democracy has created armies of
organizations carrying out malign influence
operations around the world including here
in Thailand. When the Thai government
attempts to stop this activity, the US
embassy shouts ‘free speech.’ Thailand’s
government and others around the world could
easily cite this move by the US Justice
Department to target and uproot US-funded
organizations doing exactly this and worse.
So for the US government to now claim it’s
legitimate to start throwing US citizens in
prison for a decade because they published
“propaganda” for another country is absurd, and
more than a little scary. The most powerful
government in the world needs more
political dissent at home, not less, and here
they are trying to turn it into a crime.
When they claim the members of the APSP
published “propaganda” and promoted
“dissention”, what they really mean is that they
engaged in speech and political activism that
the US government does not like. The
spinmeisters will try to spin it, the legal
mumbo-jumbo will try to obfuscate it, but that’s
what’s happening. Don’t let them conceal this
from you. They’re not worried about Russian
propaganda, they’re worried you’ll stop
listening to US propaganda.
Views expressed in this article are
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reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. in this article are
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reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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