Russiagate Was The Opening Salvo In A War Against Russia
In early 2017, Keith Olbermann began his show with the words “We are at war with Russia.” He then continued: “Or perhaps more correctly, we have lost a war with Russia without a battle. We are no longer a democracy, are no longer a free people. We are the victims of a bloodless coup. So far, a bloodless coup, engineered by Russia with at best the traitorous indifference of the Republican Party.”
This monologue goes on for nearly seven minutes, invoking World War II along the way, even using the words “…will live in infamy”. It ends with him in a fit of paroxysm, shouting: “The military operation of the country is about to be handed over to SCUM, who are beholden to SCUM, RUSSIAN SCUM! HE (Trump) IS NOT A PRESIDENT, HE IS A PUPPET PUT IN POWER BY VLADIMIR PUTIN. AND THOSE WHO IGNORE THE ELEMENTAL EXISTENTIAL FACTS — DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN — ARE TRAITORS TO THIS COUNTRY AND WILL IMMEDIATELY AND FOREVER AFTER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!”
He ends his speech with the words: “Resist. Peace.” Ironically, the closed caption translates it as “Resist peace.”
While Olbermann was at this point no longer part of MSNBC, his following on YouTube is an impressive 7.28 million people, suggesting his reach is comparable to what he might receive at any of the cable news networks. Regardless, his message was mirrored by the entirety of non-rightwing corporate news, his zealotry matched by his former colleagues at MSNBC. Comparisons to Pearl Harbor were not infrequent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnnSKIJDaJA , https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/a-consensus-emerges-russia-committed-an-act-of-war-on-par-with-pearl-harbor-and-911-should-the-u-s-response-be-similar/ .
Olbermann was quite right when he said the U.S. is at war with Russia, though not perhaps in the way he meant it. Since the 1918 military intervention into Russia by the U.S., Britain and others — excepting World War II where the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies — the U.S. has been in almost non-stop war with Russia. Mercifully, it has been for the most part a cold war, but quite often it has broken out into proxy wars such as Korea and Vietnam. It wouldn’t be a stretch to view Syria and Yugoslavia as proxy wars either, where the U.S. has attacked countries friendly to Russia.
It was only shortly after the dissolution of the USSR that the United States was for a time willing to loosen its concern over Russia in order to focus on other goals, such as growing NATO and NATO-linked military alliances around the world. But even as the U.S. was seemingly preoccupied with Afghanistan and Iraq, it should be noted that the Secretary of State at that time was Condoleezza Rice, who was a specialist on the Soviet Union, not terrorism.
NATO was created in response to the threat posed by the communist USSR, and as such, it might have made sense to disband NATO when the Soviet Union ceased to be. Instead, NATO went on an expansion binge, always pushing closer to Russia’s borders but always claiming the missile systems that they placed in countries (that were once buffer states against the horrors Russia experienced in WWII) were there to protect Europe from attacks from Iran.
In light of what we now know, we can view Russiagate as an opening salvo in a newer, hotter, war against Russia. In World War I, days-long artillery bombardments were used before an offensive to numb the minds and weary the nervous systems of the opposition troops. In the same fashion, a years-long bombardment of civilian minds was perpetrated in order to numb the populace to the danger of a war between two nuclear armed countries.
What was not initially obvious to those who wanted to believe the whole Russian Hacking Narrative should be obvious to them now: an unwillingness to admit that they have been duped is all that’s stopping them. The story of Hunter Biden’s laptop we now know was true, and not a Russian disinformation plot as was attested to by 50+ intelligence agents and countless talking heads on television. The Intercept, the journalism site that forced co-founder Glenn Greenwald to step down because they would not permit him to run his story on Hunter’s laptop, has now itself admitted that — in their words — Russian Twitter Bots Didn’t Do $#!% in 2016.
It’s not merely that Russian Twitter Bots did not influence the election, at all. As is being revealed in the Twitter files, they did not even exist. Internal memos being released by Twitter show those in charge of the Russian influence investigation could not find what they had been tasked to find, and in turn they were berated by outside influences such as Congressman Adam Schiff and the group Hamilton 68 for not coming up with enough evidence to back the Russian interference narrative. If this was the case at Twitter (it was), we can say with relative confidence that the situation should not have been too different at Facebook and elsewhere.
It should be stunning to anyone who uncritically accepted the Russian Interference Narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real despite the overwhelming political and media messaging that it was Russian disinformation. That Russia did not have “any meaningful influence” on the election, and that nobody at Twitter was able to point definitively to an account that was a fake Russian account. These three uncontestable and admitted truths should cause everyone to pause and ask themselves what the Russian Influence Narrative was all about.
Add to that Joe Biden admitted that there was no evidence of any Russian bounties being offered to Taliban fighters, a year after the story broke.
Add to that the fact that Havana Syndrome was not caused by a secret sickness-inducing Russian weapon but was in fact crickets that U.S. envoys were hearing.
Add to that the fact that the Christopher Steele dossier — a collection of rumors paid for by the DNC — was the basis for much of the investigation and spying done by the FBI against most everyone in the Trump administration and much of those on the Left whose positions were not in line with the Democratic Party’s. Add to that the fact that Russia was being loudly accused of trying to influence the French election, only for French intelligence to say there was no evidence for it after the more NATO-friendly candidate won.
I ask you again, what is to be made of a narrative that has always borne little to no resemblance to reality? One that has been pushed at an unprecedented volume with absolute certainty for over six years now? This is a question that has needed to be asked since day one. Which many of us have been asking since day one, though the establishment media will never permit a single one of us to ask from their platforms. Let the facts alert you to a reality that common sense should have alerted you to long ago: Russiagate was never a reality but a narrative pushed to heighten tensions against a nuclear power. What should we make of this?
More importantly, what should the Russian government make of this? How would we expect our own government to behave if such a vehement attack was made against it? I can only imagine that the nukes would have flown a long time ago.
I do not seek to claim that Russia is right or that the Russian government is more sane than ours. I only hope that they are, because if not, the world is in for a lot of hurt. There is, unfortunately, nothing that I as an American, can do to influence the Russian Government or its actions. Nothing other than full-throatedly supporting my own government’s intention to threaten it into submission. But given the fact that I cannot help but see my own government as incapable of dealing with reality, I do not see that as a viable option. Keith Olbermann is not some outlier but is indicative of the madness that has overtaken a nation that for too long has had no need or desire for self-reflection. My only choice, then, is to try to bring some sanity here at home, and do my best to awaken others to the truth as it is.