 |
| "Independent news is a Kremlin conspiracy." WKM |
Convinced that Hillary Clinton's overwhelming defeat in the Electoral College was the result of undue Russian influence, many democrats in the United States have now embraced a level of paranoia not seen in America since the McCarthy era.
Unlike the McCarthy era, however, when individuals suspected of communism were publicly harangued by politicians and government agents, this time around accusations will be made by organizations with secretive membership rosters.
As Glenn Greenwald wrote for The Intercept, a "shady new group" promoted by the Washington Post has accused, without evidence, a large number of websites of hosting content by Russian agents. This new organization, PropOrNot, is formally calling on its website for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to open inquiries into whether Russian funds were dispensed to individuals who wrote independent articles which may have shaped the outcome of the presidential elections.
If it's one thing analyzing the media of countries with limited freedom has taught us it's that "anonymous petitions" calling for criminal inquiries in the free speech arena are often spread by the very government agents who will be conducting the investigations.
Although the fact that Donald Trump will be in the White House means that it is unlikely for the Executive Branch to adopt a formal policy of attacking writers perceived as being pro-Russian, there is near-certainty that the current paranoia which has begun to consume the democratic party could destroy America's political sanity in 2020, if not earlier through a manufactured crisis that leads to the impeachment of President Trump.
During World War II, democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged the Supreme Court to legalize the secret execution of citizens through military tribunals if they were suspected of being enemy combatants. The democratic-aligned media today is calling for the return of a radical Cold War mentality that has writers fearing that they could be legally gunned down by the government in broad daylight. In calling for writers to be investigated for espionage, the Washington Post has set American democracy seven decades back.
