Although I would never go so far as Jaron Lanier or Evgeny Morozov in
finding fault with the Internet, I continue to be dismayed by the
intellectual laziness it breeds—particularly when it comes to the sort
of “talking points” advanced on matters such as Syria or Ukraine. In
tandem with the steady decline of the print medium, especially books,
and the shorter attention span of the average adult fed on a diet of
Hollywood blockbusters, cable TV and video games, you see, for example,
a virtual ocean of articles on 9/11 making identical points most of
which originate on a smaller core of truther websites. It does not seem
to matter much to a conspiracy-minded blogger that they are repeating
points made by thousands of other bloggers. There seems to be some sort
of comfort in being part of part of a herd.
Much of the garbage that has been dumped into the Internet about Ukraine
since last November share the conspiratorial mindset of the 9/11
truthers. In fact Global Research, a website that is ranked 4,525 in the
USA (by comparison, CounterPunch is ranked 10,522), is both a 9/11
truther outlet as well as a prime purveyor of RT.com wisdom. While the
World Socialist Website is not quite into the 9/11 nonsense, it too can
be relied upon to serve as sounding board for the Kremlin. (It is ranked
35,687—whew, that’s a relief.)
This morning as I checked WSWS.org, a daily task that might be equated
to emptying the garbage or flossing my teeth, I noticed a talking point
that has begun to reverberate through the pro-Putin left prompted by the
police killing of a Right Sector goon named Alexander Musytchko:
The circumstances of Musytchko’s killing recall the Röhm putsch through
which Hitler eliminated the leadership of the SA storm troopers in 1934
after they had fulfilled their task, rather than any move towards the
rule of law.
As expected, Global Research ran an article making an identical point:
Ukraine’s “Brown Shirts”. Recalling Nazi Germany’s “Night of Long Knives”
And bringing up the rear is Alex Jones’s Infowars, a website cherished
equally by 9/11 Truthers, the more intellectually challenged
“anti-imperialists” and mouth-breathing American fascists: Ukraine’s
Night of the Long Knives.
full:
http://louisproyect.org/2014/03/28/night-of-the-long-knives-in-ukraine/
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