By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
I'm getting so tired of Twitter, not only its 140 character limitations (sure, there is more space now and the Threads enables you to keep a set of tweets in one "package") but...
I'll assume that Morten Bay here, who is a scholar of disinformation, is in good faith, and not trolling when he asks:
Hey, @catfitz you know a ton about Russian/KGB history: Have you ever come across anyone writing about the parallels btw the KGB involvement in taking Franz Josef Strauss down in 1962 and the Wasserman-Schulz resignation in 2016? In my dissertation work, they look so alike.
— Morten Bay (@mortenbay) February 21, 2018
I have no idea what Morten Bay's "operating theory" or "theory of the case" is regarding disinformation in general or the US hack in particular.
I haven't ever really thought about the West German case, I saw it in its later stages (I was six years old in 1962 so not up on Soviet propaganda quite yet but when I was 7, my father, who was a US army linguist at one time in the Korean War, began to teach me Russian from Soviet children's books. We didn't get to the Strauss case then, however!)
Here's a fairly good summary of it from 1985, from the Christian Science Monitor which is on the liberal/left spectrum but pretty good in criticizing Moscow (as they stem from a religious worldview, I guess). And Elizabeth Pond, who I recall covering the Balkans wars quite well, is on this case in this particular instance. But...you'll see in a minute what was left out.
In 1985, she writes that this case "has been widely presented in Britain and the US as a classic exhibit of Soviet disinformation." I recall that.
But then at the end of her exegesis, she writes in 1985 - the Soviet era:
Certainly West German conservatives do not refer to it as such. And an exploration of the convolutions of the affair suggests considerable difficulties with the thesis of disinformation.
Well, I don't know. I'm not sure she is right about this. Because I know from how wrongfully the Soviet anthrax case was reported at the time and STILL reported (leaving out the 13 years of disinformation caused by an "unwitting idiot" -- an American scientist) that it's very hard to get liberals to admit when disinformation actually occurs. And again -- I speak as a Hillary voter, and a registered Democrat who staunchly opposes Trump.
In 1986, the left-leaning New York Times -- left-leaning then as now only not as much -- still found it possible to say Strauss was "about" the KGB
Not only "possible" -- which Elizabeth Pond, as good as she is, couldn't say in 1985, maybe she didn't have the information or maybe her worldview in some way didn't admit it or maybe her editors' worldview. But there was reporting from a defector -- which we don't get anymore as I keep explaining:
Mr. Dzhirkvelov said in an interview today that he personally had not ''co-opted'' any American journalists, although he said he knew indirectly of such cases in what he said was his career of more than four decades with Soviet intelligence and as a journalist. He did not provide any names.
Mr. Dzhirkvelov, who now lives in England, is in Washington to present the latest issue of Disinformation, a monthly newsletter published here that seeks to predict what themes the Soviet authorities will play up in their press campaigns and elsewhere. He serves on the advisory board of the newsletter.
Discrediting a Rising Leader
In the two-hour interview, Mr. Dzhirkvelov described how the K.G.B. carried out schemes to use the press in Africa, Moscow and elsewhere. He said he was present in 1960 when senior Soviet officials asked for suggestions on how the press could be used to discredit Franz Josef Strauss of West Germany, now the Premier of Bavaria and then a rising political star in West Germany who was seen as a contender to replace Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
As Mr. Dzhirkvelov recounted, ''They said, 'We have a very big problem in West Germany. It's very possible that after Adenauer, the Chancellor of Germany would be Strauss. We have to do everything necessary to compromise him. Who can compromise Strauss? Of course: journalists.' ''
The result, he said, was an article planted with the help of intermediaries in the West German magazine Der Spiegel, which had been a bitter opponent of Mr. Strauss.
Oh.
OK.
But then come over to Wikipedia, and you see the KGB isn't mentioned, and it ends with a prize to a journalist who talks about the "Deep State" in Germany and..oh, dear.
Wikipedia can be so uneven!
But wait, we just read this thing, in the New York Times even, about a planted...
It's here someone on Twitter will tell you that you are "a functional illiterate" (what Bershidsky calls me when I confront him over leaving out the $5 million settlement in the Prevezon case related to Magnitsky, and call out his moral equivalency between the US and Russia, which I think shouldn't have to be proven, it's obvious). Or they will say that you are "hysterical". Or "hopelessly mired in Cold War categories" or even "unhinged" (that's Neil Hauer's latest for me after he was done harassing Molly McKew for weeks, whom I tried to defend).
So all I can tell you here is that:
- there is the way Pond covered this in 1985
- there's the way the Times covered it once they had a defector
- there's the way Morten might cover it, I haven't seen that yet
- there's the Goldsmith statement claiming a KGB caper
And..the suit was withdrawn by Der Spiegel against Goldsmith.
What can I say about Der Spiegel? Der Spiegel publishes Jacob Appelbaum and worships Snowden, I have all this in my book. Does it also have other important stories, perhaps even exposing the Russian aggression in Ukraine? Sure. Let's look at all the stories, let's RATE THE MEDIA BECAUSE THAT IS OK TO DO!
But we'll leave this analysis for another day, and try to examine what Mort "might mean" when he links up this case "that some thinks isn't really disinformation" to...Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
I remember once seeing her live on Yahoo Live or something (I don't have a TV) and finding her really awful -- just too far left, too credulous of the tech left nonsense around copyleftism, just in general not someone I felt "ideologically compatible with". But here's the thing...Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whatever her "more leftist" positions was pro-Hillary. Either by job description, or Democratic Party mandate, or however you want to look at it. I remember thinking "she supports Hillary because they've told her to, but does she really?" based on seeing her interviews which were "not-like-Hillary".
I think she's worth actually studying in her own right, to see if she was quite on board with Hillary as much as seemed -- doesn't anybody remember when Samantha Power -- who got the UN ambassadorship then under Obama! -- called Hillary "a monster"? I could tell you stories. Hillary-hate was big, and to find an actual Hillary lover -- hmmm.
So Debbie then gets involved in this national meltdown where it is "outed" that the Party "was unfair" to Sanders. And that's usually how the story ends. No one looks past that. They say, yes, it was unfair, or well, too bad, politics is brutal, and Hillary was the ultimate candidate for the Party, so too bad, so sad.
But let's look at from the other end of the telescope, shall we? From the Sanders end.You know, from the end of the candidate who RAN FOR PRESIDENT AS A SPOILER, unlike Howard Dean or name-a-more-lefty-candidate still ran for president, taking votes away from Hillary and even swinging some Bernie-bro votes to Trump (12% changed to Trump, the number believed helped by the Kremlin trolls).
Why didn't Bernie withdraw earlier, because my God, look at the results! Because of Leninist "worse-the-better" ideology, that's why.
Bernie Sanders is not some unknown quantity for me, folks. I appreciate that Bernie-buster filibuster he made in which he cited many important things about labor rights, union rights, and not shipping jobs overseas and other socialist positions that in fact I share as a liberal Democrat who is NOT a socialist and NOT a progressive, and proud of it.
But Bernie Sanders, back in the Soviet era, was declaring Burlington, VT a nuclear-free zone.
Well, let's go back a little further. First, Bernie was in YPSL -- Young People's Socialist League -- summer camp. Having had a number of friends in YPSL, including the late Joanne Landy of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, I have heard many stories of YPSL over the years, its role in shaping ideology, its very rigid ideology that left life-long stamps (sectarian socialist ideology tends to do that, in my observation), its ideology that in fact was critical of Moscow but...well, not for every little grouplet in every little faction that might have even spun off from Max Shachtman.
The Shachtmanites, you will recall, would shout at meetings Max's famous slogan about the USSR: "Four Lies in Four Words!" It was not a union, not voluntary, it was not soviet, not really about authentic workers' councils (YPSL denizens tend to worship Lenin's workers' councils where people like me already see them as a fiction behind which terrorism and mass crimes against humanity proceeded, but that's a story for another day); not socialist (the USSR was communist) or not a republic -- it wasn't really so much a country with a proper constitution but a terrorist band that committed a coup d'etat, stayed in power, and used "revolutionary communism" and "expediency" instead of the rule of law or even a German rule-by-laws for the state. I don't know if Max would have put it that way, but you get the idea.
So Bernie -- what can I tell you. Kind of critical of the Soviets, maybe on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? The Moscow trials? As some Trotskyists were. But not really thoroughly, to understand that the "other superpower" was always engaged in a mass crime against humanity (and in the 1980s, there was the war in Afghanistan which peacenikes like Bernie ignored).
So for Bernie to declare a "nuclear free zone" in a context where his Soviet "sister city" would never, ever do this, not even as a fake thing, but just...never -- in a world where most peace activists never criticized the SS20s, but only the Pershings and Cruises in Europe at the time (American missiles deployed to counter both Soviet tank superiority and their deployment of nuclear weapons) -- well...
I'm not aware that Bernie ever signed the END declaration denouncing both missiles East and West. I'm not sure he even endorsed the Freeze (freeze on both sides' nuclear weapons) of the 1980s, I'd have to look ("freeze and reverse the arms race" was a rather one-sided proposition as it froze Soviet superiority in Europe, but whatever, I endorsed it even myself then as a starting point).
Bottom line, Bernie was not critical of the Soviet Union. He went on his honeymoon on a boat trip up the Volga, friending up with the Soviets. How many critical pieces were written -- was it by P.J. O'Rourke? - about people going up the Volga on a ship of fools! And they were, as they were useful idiots being used by the Soviet Peace Committee (actually called the Soviet Committee for the DEFENSE of Peace which believed, of course, in SS20s fervently AND the war in Afghanistan) and the Soviet Friendship Committee.
I remember going to a peace conference in the 1980s in Burlington. That I was even able to speak about independent peace movements at this conference on some minor workshop panel or even be invited was a plus, I suppose, for the sectarians in the peace movement politically ruled by Bernie at the time. But Bernie himself was not supporting independent peace movements, you know?
Bernie was, well, what he was -- and is -- a sectarian socialism who had managed to take over a small town. (By a quirk of fate a Soviet dissident I knew well who recently died, Valery Nikolayevich Chalidze, often called THE OTHER SAGE OF VERMONT as he was on the left, as distinct from Solzhenitsyn, lived in Vermont, not that far from Burlington, and I know that Bernie was beloved even by non-socialists there for various reasons, maybe he got the garbage picked up on time and funded the schools properly.
BUT fast forward to our time! Bernie VOTES AGAINST THE MAGNITSKY ACT. One of two votes. Why? He has some doctor's excuse, that if we do this, we can't get Russia to help us on Iran. Hey, this was the Obama Administration's perennial whispered explanation from diplomats and officials at State if you ever complained about their silence on massive human rights problems remaining in Russia. BTW, it was the mantra of Bush's Administration, too, you know? "We need Russia for Iran". At a certain point, the US got off that, and not only because "they made a deal with Iran" but even BEFORE that when MOST NORMAL PEOPLE got it about Russian impunity and massive human rights abuses, the wars in Chechnya only being the chief among them -- and it was ONLY Bernie Sanders and hey, Rand Paul from the libertarian right that could vote against ending Russian impunity. Now WHY is that?
All of Bernie's votes -- and they aren't the wondrous thing you imagine even if you credit him with wondrous things in Burlington are not really all that. People have sometimes noted that. His main purpose in Congress was to spout the socialist line and have a presence for DSA -- that is, Bernie himself may have had his sectarian differences with DSA, but he and Conyers and other DSA regulars pushed that line.
So let us come to Debbie and the Democratic Party.
Have I explained enough about WHY BERNIE SANDERS HAS NO BUSINESS BEING IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AT ALL?
That's really how you have to ask this question. The Democratic Party is not a Socialist Party, boys and girls. It's a Democratic Party with some social justice planks that is NOT unfriendly to business. It does NOT disavow capitalism. It does not, like Matt Taibi says of Goldman Sachs, saying about capitalism or even just Goldman Sachs that it is a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
Sigh. Matt is like Zero Hedges or any of the sites echoing Kremlin Troll talking points on this one and will endlessly insist on his utter independence and even his days of the eXile that was forced to close as proof that he is completely organically coming by these views all on his own. Sure. And the critique of Goldman Sachs is obvious.
But...
When Obama speaks at Cantor Fitzgerald -- the Wall Street law firm that lost so many people in 9/11! Our neighbours! A terrible thing! -- and gets twice more than Hillary at Goldman Sachs, it's ok, it's about a law firm (Obama's major contributions come from law firms which is why Trial Attorneys of America, his people, are always able to successfully crush any effort to cap malpractice lawsuits which add endlessly to health care costs in ways they need not do, to enrich lawyers -- hey, if you want to talk about socialism, and health care, guys.)
Lawyers for capitalism? Good. Actual capitalism firm doing trading? Bad.
Do you see how silly all this is?
Say, I don't see any Kremlin trolls complaining about Obama's big fees on Wall Street, only Hillary's, you know?
So again, Bernie -- socialists -- avowed socialists -- YPSL denizens - nuclear-free-zone declarers with absentee partners in the Soviet Union -- people who vote against Magnitsky, even (most Democrats voted for? There's a very few in the senate against but it's mainly Republicans) THEY DO NOT BELONG IN THIS PARTY, FULL STOP.
If there was more airing, debate, awareness, action around this point, we would all be in a better place.
But we're not, and we have Trump instead, like people who took the wrong off-ramp in Back to the Future and got Biff (who was modeled after Trump!)
So I think the Debbie W-S cases starts WITH THAT. A real thorough questioning as to why these socialists a) needed to barge into the Democratic Party b) the reality that as a Socialist Party which is what they need to call themselves for truth-in-advertising could NEVER get elected with that "brand" -- and that's why they use stealth and subterfuge to invade the Dems c) why even after they lot the nomination they continued to be -- in the words of Soviet ideologues -- "wreckers and splitters". Could we please examine that, people?
I know the preference is to keep wading through leaked emails and deciding if it was really the GRU who hacked the DNC -- and guess what, I firmly believe it is and I will explain why in another post.
But the reality is you have to ask why this aging YPSL summer camper had to barge into a party and lose the elections for the actual chosen candidate.
Was he helped in this from the start? You could argue perhaps he was 30 years ago but that's to look for "the hand of Moscow" or "Moscow gold" where it doesn't really exist or would be unfindable in any event.
You could argue that Kremlin Trolls could help this along without Bernie's participation at all (and he is silent about this) merely by getting to his chief lieutenants, his lesser-known cadres, even some touts of his on social media that are mere volunteers. Who are all those guys?
I'd be happy to have a four party system in America, with a Socialist Party that stops using subterfuge and invasions of the Democratic Party or invasions of single-issue NGOs or cadre-org invasions of mass movements not about socialism (as they have done with the Women's March, inserting the communist Angela Davis (!) and worse as leaders.
Then the Democatic Party might be social democratic or more liberal and Blue Dog depending on the candidate or season, but at least the stealth-socialists LIKE OBAMA would be gone from it to end the branding confusion. You lefty Insta posters, go over there, please, stop it with your waving around of Bernie flags when the gadgets in your own goddamn bedroom from the capitalist BIG IT firms would power a small third-world village. Be ashamed of yourselves. Stop telling me blandly at dinner tables that your parents still pay for that you want to "overthrow capitalism". Get a job, and PS get a hair-cut, too. Get a paper route. Oh, you can't get those anymore. OK, well, make a YouTube channel and collect ad revenue, there's a good boy.
Then on the right, we would have the existing GOP (shudders) which might reform itself. And then...a Christian Democratic Party? I just don't know. It's not my job to imagine this...thing for them.
But four would be better, and sort things out better. That we will never have this and are still doomed to third-party disruption and wild pendulum swings from left to right in my lifetime -- a great sorrow. Let's at least describe it correctly.
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