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The New
York Times's Outrage at Trump's Refusal to Demonize
Russia
By Matt
Peppe
August 02,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- After baseless allegations from the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) that the Russian government
was behind a hack of the DNC's emails, Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump sarcastically
quipped that he hoped Russia would find and release
the deleted emails from Hillary Clinton's private
server from her time as secretary of state. The New
York Times failed to note the sarcasm and treated
the comments as evidence of high crimes against the
state. It was an example of the modern day
red-baiting against Trump, who is portrayed as being
in league with Russian President Vladimir Putin to
conspire against the United States itself.
The
Times said Trump was "essentially urging a
foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against
a former secretary of state." While Trump is such a
narcissitic buffoon that it is often difficult to
discern when he is being facetious, he was clearly
making a joke.
But treating the comment in the spirit it was
intended would mean passing up a golden opportunity
to bash Trump for what has become common knowledge
in mainstream political analysis: Trump is
anti-American for being diplomatic instead of
vilifying Russia and Putin at every opportunity.
They scrutinize and make a point of every statement
Trump makes that fails to antagonize Russia for
actions the US government doesn't antagonize other
countries for.
While they merely imply "urging" cyberespionage is
treasonous rather than state it explicitly, the
Times finds it so important that they place it
in the lead paragraph. This is curiously prominent,
much more prominent that when President Barack Obama
literally joked about incinerating a family with a
remotely guided missile.
At the White House Correspondents' Association
dinner in 2010,
Obama said:
"The Jonas
Brothers are here. (Applause.) They're out there
somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But,
boys, don't get any ideas. (Laughter.) I have
two words for you - predator drones. (Laughter.)
You will never see it coming. (Laughter.) You
think I'm joking. (Laughter.)"
Unlike Trump's
joke, which warranted its own headline ("Donald
Trump Calls on Russia to Find Hillary Clinton's
Missing Emails"), Obama's joke wasn't mentioned in
the Times' headline about the event ("Obama
and Leno Share a Time Slot") nor the lead. Their
summary of the night's newsworthiness noted "jokes
about Representative John Boehner's tan, Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s lack of restraint
and the Fox News-MSNBC divide."
You had to go all the way down to the eighth
paragraph to find the briefest possible mention of
Obama's obscene drone murder joke/threat:
"Mr. Obama
noted the presence of the Jonas Brothers, who
can count Sasha and Malia Obama among their
fans. But the First Father warned the band: 'Two
words: predator drones.' "
If
another world leader hypothetically ran a global
assassination campaign under which he unilaterally
assumed the power to kill anyone he wanted in the
world, anywhere, any time, with the only criteria
needed to order someone's death being internal
deliberations within the executive branch, it would
produce such a frenzy in corporate media they would
devote themselves nearly exclusively to beating the
drums for regime change, much as they did leading up
to the Iraq War.
If that hypothetical leader then joked about people
he was killing, it would undoubtedly be a banner
headline on the front page for days or weeks. There
would certainly be apoplectic outrage, and you most
definitely wouldn't have to scroll down to the
eighth paragraph to learn about it.
Mark Karlin wrote in Buzzflash at Truthout in
2014 that Obama's mock threat to the Jonas brothers
"evoked the US indifference to those persons killed
overseas by drone strikes. That is because the
guffaws of the corporate media were based on the
subconscious premise that Obama's boasting of his
power to authorize kill strikes is limited to people
of little note to DC insiders, Middle-Eastern
civilians (collateral damage) and persons alleged to
be terrorists or in areas where terrorists allegedly
congregate."
As Jeanne Mirer, president of the International
Association of Democratic Lawyers, writes in
Drones and Targeted Killing: "If the person
against whom lethal force is directed has not been
convicted of a crime for which a death sentence is
permissible in the state where the killing occurs,
the targeted killing is also an 'extrajudicial'
killing, outside of any legal process. Targeted
extrajudicial killing is, by its very nature,
illegal." [1] But corporate media like the New York
Times could care less that Obama is violating
international human rights law and the US
Constitution itself by assassinating people.
What produces the greatest moral outrage in the
Times and the media elites is perceived attacks
on the American state, or perceived threats to
American supremacy. Thus the Times calls
Trump's joke "another bizarre moment in the mystery
of whether Vladimir Putin's government has been
seeking to influence the United States' presidential
race."
What is supposedly bizarre is unclear. What is
dubbed a "mystery" is really nothing more than a
conspiracy theory. The Times cites the DNC's
accusations that Russian intelligence agents hacked
the committee's emails. The DNC's frantic finger
pointing at Russia are a transparent tactic to
distract from the damning content of the emails
themselves, as
Nadia Prupis has written at Common Dreams.
WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange noted in an interview with
Democracy Now that any such claims are "simply
speculation" and when Hillary's campaign manager
Robby Mook was asked in a TV interview to name the
experts he was citing as evidence, Mook refused
flatly.
The Times validates the DNC's objective
evidence-free accusations by saying American
intelligence agencies have confirmed with "high
confidence" the Russian government was behind the
attack. They have not publicly presented any
evidence at all, but their word at face value is
good enough for the Times to consider it
damning proof.
American intelligence agencies and the military have
a motive to hype the Russian "threat" to justify
their own budget requests and advance the US
government's policy of global hegemony, presumably
unaware that the Cold War ended 25 years ago.
In case Russia's transgressions are not self-evident
enough for Times readers, they call attention
to Trump's refusal to condemn Russia's "seizure" of
Crimea and willingness to consider whether to lift
sanctions against the Russian government as a
"remarkable departure from United States policy."
It would be a departure from US policy against
Russia. But it is not US policy to sanction
countries for incorporating territory outside their
recognized borders in general. Quite the opposite in
fact. Unlike Crimea, which voted with roughly 97
percent support to join Russia in a peaceful
transition to re-integrate itself into the country
it had been part of for several centuries, Israel
seized the Palestinian territories nearly 50 years
ago through violent military aggression against the
unanimous wishes of both the Palestinians themselves
and nearly the entire Middle East and beyond. In the
subsequent half century, the US has showered Israel
with more than $150 billion in aid while fighting
tooth and nail any attempt in the United Nations to
hold Israel to account for its indisputable
violations of international law.
The US has also generously gifted millions of
dollars in aid to countries like Indonesia after
they had seized East Timor and carried a genocidal
assault against nearly one third of the country's
population and sponsored France's attempts to
reconquer their former colony Vietnam after World
War II (before stepping in directly and unleashing
the most horrific military assault on a country's
people and environment in modern times.)
But policies of supporting other country's human
rights and international violations are not of
interest to the Times if those countries are
seen as allied with US "interests" or "values." It
is only when someone questions whether it is
necessary to continue treating another government as
an enemy that they are called on to take a hard-line
in standing up for international law.
The Times calls Russia "often hostile to the
United Sates" while NATO continues to encircle the
country from all sides and Obama has ordered what
amounts to a permanent
buildup of NATO personnel and weapons along
Russia's borders and instigated a new nuclear arms
race by spending
$1 trillion to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal
and make weapons more usable, i.e., more likely to
be employed.
In another article titled "As
Democrats Gather, a Russian Subplot Raises Intrigue,"
the Times asks what they purport to be a
widespread question: "Is Vladimir V. Putin trying to
meddle in the American presidential election."
While this is merely another conspiracy theory
without any actual evidence supporting it, it is the
case that countries often do meddle in the elections
of other countries. But it is almost always the US
government itself doing it to others, which explains
why it is ignored by the Times and the rest
of the media establishment.
In
Rogue State, William Blum lists twenty cases
of US interference in the elections of sovereign
countries (including Russia itself) [2]:
Philippines, 1950s
Italy, 1948-1970s
Lebanon, 1950s
Indonesia, 1955
Vietnam, 1955
British Guyana, 1953-64
Japan 1958-1970s
Nepal, 1959
Laos, 1960
Brazil, 1962
Dominican Republic, 1962
Chile, 1964-1970
Portugal, 1974-75
Australia, 1974-75
Jamaica, 1976
Nicaragua, 1984, 1990
Haiti, 1987-1988
Russia, 1996
Mongolia, 1996
Bosnia, 1998
But the actions themselves are not the issue. Not
all violations of international law or subversion of
state sovereignty are created equal. If the US
government is the perpetrator of such actions, they
are glossed over or ignored entirely. But when the
US itself is seen as the subject of such violation
(even when it is purely in the imaginations of
conspiracy theorists and others seeking to demonize
official enemies, as appears to be the case in the
current moment) any one who doesn't join forcefully
in the demonization is vilified relentlessly, as
Trump is experiencing in the pages of the Times and
across the mainstream media.
Matt
Peppe blogs at
http://mattpeppe.blogspot.com
References
[1] Cohn,
Marjorie.
Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and
Geopolitical Issues.
Olive Branch Press, 2014. Kindle Edition.
[2] Blum, William.
Rogue State: A
Guide to the World's Only Superpower.
2016. Kindle Edition. |
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