DoJ Clampdown on Russian Media: ‘Authoritarian’ Move Proving US Empire Has No Clothes
The US Justice Department’s sweeping crackdown on Russian media on Wednesday to the thunderous applause of the legacy media will leave Americans a little less informed, less safe and a lot less free, observers including long-time Sputnik contributors say.
“It looks like the US Department of Justice is producing another election year spectacular. Sixty days before the election we are invited to suspend our disbelief and embrace ‘Russia, Russia, Russia: The Sequel.’ And once again the DOJ is rounding up the usual suspects: Trump, Russia and Democracy,” political commentator and Newsmax columnist Michael Shannon told Sputnik, commenting on the DoJ’s unprecedented crackdown on Russian media Wednesday over alleged “disinformation” and an election-related “malign influence operation.”
“I predict the audience for this lame sequel will be the remaining mask wearers, Clot Shot booster advocates, Trump haters, consonant crusaders and government employees. Anyone else with simple common sense will see it for what it is: The DOJ’s attempt to influence the election,” Shannon stressed.
The figures being alleged by the Justice Department are also laughable, according to the observer.
“Let’s put alleged Russian influence buying in perspective. The indictment says Tenent Media was given $10 million to ‘influence the election.’ I’ve got news for you. $10 million would barely influence a US Senate race. The amount is hardly a drop in the bucket for a presidential race. Donald Trump and Joe Biden combined spent $1.85 BILLION in 2020,” Shannon emphasized.
Silencing Speech
“I regret the actions of my government in silencing legitimate journalistic outlets, and look forward to the day when freedom of speech and a free press is not constrained by a dubious ‘Russian exception’ that is violative of Constitutional norms and values,” former US Marine intelligence officer, UN weapons inspector and commentator Scott Ritter wrote in a social media post.
Ritter, who has already suffered a campaign of blatant intimidation by the FBI, including a raid on his family home and the confiscation of his passport, announced the termination of his work for Sputnik and other Russian media after the DoJ and Treasury’s new restrictions were announced, fearing he would be further targeted.
‘Staggering Hypocrisy’
Former CIA analyst-turned whistleblower and author Larry Johnson highlighted the DoJ crackdown’s off the charts “hypocrisy that is staggering in its magnitude and its foulness,” telling Sputnik that the claims of Russian media attempts to “meddle” in the upcoming US presidential election are simply laughable when considering that the US government has allocated “almost $4 billion to interfere or meddle in the political affairs of other countries” in 2024 alone.
Popular independent media personality Jackson Hinkle says Americans looking for alternative perspectives and sources of information will the most to suffer from the DoJ’s move.
“We can topple governments. We can kill sovereign presidents of sovereign countries. But for a media company to be reporting on the facts…about what’s actually going on in the world, and then for the United States to sanction them, it’s absolutely insane,” Hinkle said. “I think millions of Americans want to hear that truth, and that’s why they’re going after companies like Sputnik so hard right now.”
Jackson Hinkle blasts US crackdown on Russian media: “millions of Americans want to hear that truth”
“What I find so interesting about all this is that when it comes to any other country, if it’s the United Kingdom, if it’s Israel, if it’s Canada or wherever, foreign influence… https://t.co/DKlqIZD0xx pic.twitter.com/7Gud6tVgbJ— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 5, 2024
America’s Empire Has No Clothes
Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. and ex-DoD analyst-turned whistleblower Karen Kwiatkowski agrees, saying the perception of the US both inside and outside the country has plummeted in recent years, and that Washington and its allies want to silence dissenting voices to try to get Americans to stop “asking uncomfortable questions” about the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere.
“Sanctioning information outlets is popular in authoritarian countries, but sanctions in general only attract attention to poor political decision-making and political fear and are easily worked around,” Kwiatkowski emphasized, echoing sentiments expressed by the Russian Foreign Ministry that the DoJ’s move signals a “decline of ‘liberal democracies’, where authorities resort to such primitive methods of influencing their electorate.”
?Falling Hegemon’s Last Gasps
Independent geopolitics expert Lorenzo Maria Pacini warns that Washington’s shortsighted move against Russian media is “ridiculous” and cannot stand and will inevitably backfire, “because they’re trying to force the other countries of the world to follow a kind of hegemony that is falling.”
Western efforts to enforce hegemony are failing in a new multipolar era — analyst
Lorenzo Maria Pacini, an associate professor of political philosophy and geopolitics and a member of the Multipolarity forum, sounded off on the US sanctions against Russian media companies… https://t.co/DKlqIZD0xx pic.twitter.com/vbdQXS5n1L— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 5, 2024
Finally, writer and historian Dr. Gerald Horne told Sputnik that the DoJ decision, when taken together with the recent spate of attacks on independent and alternative media personalities across the West, signals a “hysteria” gripping Western political elites over the emergence of a counterhegemonic bloc of nations willing and able to challenge US power as the nightmares of leading foreign policy architects like Zbigniew Brzezinski of countries like Russia, China and Iran forming a “de facto alliance” become a reality.
