The
campaign launched on the pretext of Russia's intervention in last
November's presidential election is now targeting the heart of the
free flow of information and ideas on the Internet. Democrats are the
protagonists, having to solve their own internal issues, while Trump
follows with enthusiasm, although theoretically he is being targeted
too.
American
senators, giants of social media, as well as agencies like the FBI
have been participating in recent weeks in the biggest witch-hunt
since the McCarthy era, under the guise of the alleged Russian
government's intervention in the US presidential election.
The
recent hearing held in Congress on the issue is a qualitative leap to
obscurantism, as the target is not only the Russian hackers
supposedly supporting the Trump election, but every journalist and
media that promotes "extremist content." This term
describes reports and messages circulated on the Internet that could
cause "social division", such as, reports of murders of
African-Americans by the police and analysis on social inequalities
within the United States.
Republican
senator Chuck Grassley had come to claim that Russia was behind the
protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Baltimore and
Cleveland. That is, the problem is not that the police in the US shot
and killed at least 1,000 people last year - the overwhelming
majority of them coming from marginalized and poor Black and Latino
communities - but that some have mentioned this fact!
Summing
up the spirit of the process in Congress, Democratic senator Adam
Schiff said that Russia is promoting 'divisional issues that trigger
reactions and anger' in the United States and in this way 'leads
American citizens to proceed with acts such as collecting signatures
and participating in demonstrations'.
It
is worth noting that the driving force behind the new McCarthyism is
not the Trump administration (which, of course, enthusiastically
follows), but the opposition of the "liberal" Democrats. At
the forefront we find the flagships of American liberalism, such as
the New York Times, as well as the largest companies of the Internet.
Recently, Twitter has also announced that it will no longer accept
Russian media Ads, such as Russia Today, while Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg clarified that he places his company at the disposal of
the US prosecution authorities to locate Russian "interventions
". For its part, Google has already been accused that under the
pretext of eradicating so-called "fake news" has promoted
changes to the search algorithm, which exclude left-wing media and
journalists.
The
campaign launched on the pretext of Russia is now targeting the heart
of the free flow of information and ideas on the internet. Democratic
senators have come to say that large social media tools should
intervene in their algorithm so that issues "that can cause
anger" would not appear at the top of the search list. Behind
the hysterical reactions of the American political establishment lies
the fear for articles and comments of social criticism that become
viral on the internet, that is, they are being transmitted at
lightning speed to social media.
Being
used to control completely the flow of information through the
dominant media for almost a century, the US economic and political
elites are now attempting to impose the same domination on the
Internet. Of course, they find supporters on the US companies that
exercise monopoly control over both social media (Twitter, Facebook)
and content search (Google). The three companies have already
announced that they are hiring thousands of employees to monitor the
flow of messages and intervene whenever necessary. In fact, Amazon
gave us, a few weeks ago, a foretaste of these interventions, when
its employees erased all the critical comments on its pages about
Hillary Clinton's new book.
Although
the silence of freedom of speech is coordinated at the highest level
of the US state and private companies, the Democratic Party seems to
have its own reasons for leading the witch-hunt. As revealed this
week by the former interim chairperson of the party, Donna Brazile,
Clinton proceeded in an internal "coup" to exclude Bernie
Sanders from the race for the Democratic nomination. In a secret
agreement with the National Committee of the party, she undertook
absolute control over the campaign's finances almost 15 months before
being formally nominated a candidate for the presidency. Relevant
information had come to light when hackers released parts of the
internal e-mail of her office. The Democratic Party, however,
disregarded the allegations in order to give the nomination to
Clinton and ... be defeated by Donald Trump.
The
Trump-Clinton confrontation can be found at the core of the new
McCarthyism, as the two politicians represent different approaches
for controlling social reactions. Trump managed to exploit the class
rage of society by distorting its content to climb to power. On the
contrary, Hillary Clinton believed she could hide this rage under the
carpet, promoting identity politics and "rightful" speech.
The new line of the American establishment seems to be closer to
Clinton's policy as it attempts to remove from the public sphere any
information about the real condition of the popular strata in the
United States.
As
we have seen recently, concerning criticism about sexual deviations
of Hollywood stars and producers (a topic that is particularly
serious indeed for the spectacle industry, but innocuous for the US
dominant class), the information can be freely circulated on the
Internet. However, when criticism gets political and, above all,
class characteristics, it will be cruelly prosecuted.
Article
by Aris Chatzistefanou under the title 'McCarthy returns to America',
translated from the original source:
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