IMPERIAL APOLOGISTS & COLLABOS

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—“At long last there will be adults in the White House again!” goes the common refrain. And I couldn’t agree more! I think we’re all breathing a lot easier knowing that the US government will now be run by grown-ups who murder people instead of emotionally stunted children who murder people. We’ll all sleep so much better knowing that there are adults in the room who murder people, and that the insatiable US murder monster is under competent management once more. And make no mistake, murdering people is what the Biden administration will be doing. This will in fact be the only president in recent memory who actually campaigned on being more interventionist and attacking his opponent for not being hawkish enough.

JOAQUIN FLORES—Fundamentally, at the level of social ideology AMLO’s policies explode the myth that mass migration outside of natural disasters and calamities, is an inherent and positive feature of the human experience. It exposes the great lie that left to their own devices, people will inherently desire to uproot themselves and become a deracinated collection of individuals deprived of peoplehood and left only as atoms subject to consumerism. In reality, these are all negative aspects of globalization itself.

MoA—While it is relatively easy to have sock-puppets swamp the comment threads of such sites as this blog (which is why comments are strictly controlled), it is more difficult to have a real effect on social networks. These depend on multiplier effects. To gain many real “likes”, “re-tweets” or “followers” an online persona needs a certain history and reputation. Real people need to feel attached to it. It takes some time and effort to build such a multiplier personality, be it real or virtual.The U.S. election provided an excellent environment to build reputable online persona with large followings of people with discriminable mindsets. The political affinity was not important. The personalities only had to be very engaged and stick to their issue – be it left or right or whatever. The sole point was to gain as many followers as possible who could be segmented along social-political lines and marketed to the companies customers.

JOE LAURIA—Graphika seemed alarmed that on PeaceData’s Arabic-language site “some articles also attacked France in general and President Emmanuel Macron in particular, and accused them of an ‘imperialist’ approach toward Africa.” This is in line with the Times quoting Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika and an Atlantic Council fellow, as saying, “In terms of posting, they were clearly significantly left of the Biden-Harris campaign,” as if this were a threat to “national security” as the FBI contends. PeaceData had a mix of original and republished articles, Graphika tells us, from publications such as The Grayzone, which Graphika smears as a “pro-Kremlin site.”

MAX PARRY—Despite the obvious credibility and authenticity questions regarding the use of such controversial technology, it has not prevented critics from lauding it unquestioningly. Unfortunately, even some in alternative media have been regurgitating the film’s propaganda such as The Intercept, a slick online news publication owned by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar whose financial ties to the national security state and U.S. soft power institutions conflict with the outlet’s purported mission. Notably, The Intercept’s glowing review of Welcome to Chechnya was written by Mehdi Hasan, a journalist who also works for Al-Jazeera, a news agency owned by the ruling emirs of Qatar, a theocratic dictatorship where homosexuality is actually illegal.