Greenwald: frivolous anti-Russian rhetoric comes from the old McCarthyist playbook.

By Glenn Greenwald, in The Intercept

For aspiring journalists, historians, and politically engaged citizens, there's nothing better than investing your time in the random reading of... IF Stone newslettersA fearless and independent journalist from the Cold War era who became, in my view, the first "blogger" in the US, even though he died before the advent of the internet. Frustrated with the corporate and oppressive environment of mainstream media and with your propaganda model in favor of the government And, eventually banned from mainstream media for his objections to the anti-Russian narrative, Stone created his own bimonthly newsletter, maintained exclusively by subscribers, and spent 18 years tirelessly debunking the propaganda of the American government and its media partners.

What makes Stone's work so valuable is not its elucidation of history, but its elucidation of the present. The most striking aspect of his reports is observing how little has changed in the propaganda and militarism of the US government and in the role played by the American media in sustaining it. In fact, reading his reports gives the impression that American politics eternally reproduces the same debates, conflicts, and tactics.

Much of Stone's writing, particularly during the 50s and early 60s, focused on techniques for maintaining Americans in a state of exaggerated fear of the Kremlin. One specific passage from August de 54 This work is particularly noteworthy. In it, Stone explains why it is impossible to stop McCarthyism in the US when Kremlin leaders are constantly characterized as serious and omnipotent threats, with the aim of defending American wars and militarism. Aside from the shift in Moscow's ideology—something that many of the... Most harmful current McCarthyists solemnly deny Stone's observations could be applied to the present day with the same accuracy.

If communists are a supernatural race of human beings, led by a mentor in the Kremlin, involved in a satanic conspiracy to dominate the world and enslave humanity — this is the thesis tirelessly defended by both American progressives and conservatives, repeated night and day by every radio station and newspaper — the thesis that no American will dare to challenge anything again without becoming suspect. So how do we fight [Senator] McCarthy?

If public opinion is to be conditioned by war, if it is being trained to consider the destruction of millions of human beings as natural, some of them contaminated by this terrible ideological virus, all supposedly begging for freedom, how can we claim that it would be serious if some men, possibly innocent, lost their jobs or had their reputations tarnished because of McCarthy?

Two key points to highlight: 1) the secret to keeping the population afraid of external adversaries is to portray them as powerful and omnipresent; and 2) once this characterization is ingrained, few will be willing to question the propaganda for fear of being accused of defending External Evil: "the thesis that no American will dare to challenge anything again without becoming suspect."

Read the full text at The Intercep