At What Point Do Left-Wing Political Narratives Become Soviet-Style Propaganda?

March 28, 2019

 I grew up in the 1960s during the height of the Cold War. I remember hearing news stories of Soviet-style propaganda from the news anchors of the day like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and others. Back then we heard about Soviet propaganda almost on a daily basis, but we never paid much attention to it. It was just Soviet propaganda; we knew it was Soviet propaganda, and we simply let it roll off our backs.  

Some of the rhetoric coming out of the Mainstream Media (MSM) during the last few years—and especially since Donald Trump became president—has been reminiscent of the days prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is not the purpose of this post to dwell on the dishonest and false narratives put out by President Obama and his lieutenants. I am, however, going to give a couple of examples of those narratives that I consider to be propaganda during his administration. 

President Obama’s signature legislation was the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). In an effort to garner public support for this healthcare plan, President Obama put out the following narratives on numerous occasions: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan”; “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”; and I’m paraphrasing here, the ACA will save every family in America $2500 per year on health insurance. Another misrepresentation of the plan was the name Affordable Care Act, which was a misnomer. To many people who were forced to buy this insurance, it was anything but affordable. Some families were able to afford the premiums. There were other families who were unable to afford the premiums and had to be subsidized by the government. In some of these cases, the deductibles were so high that the policyholders were unable to pay them. This made the insurance unusable. This plan was sold to the public as affordable healthcare insurance, but in many cases, it was not.

Another example of propaganda put out during the Obama Administration was the attempted cover-up of the Benghazi incident. The original narrative was put out by Susan Rice, who at the time was the US Ambassador to the UN. Ms. Rice stated on several occasions that the attack on our two consulates was the result of a protest of an anti-Muslim video which escalated into violence. This narrative was repeated numerous times, by several government officials, including Ms. Rice, until it was finally revealed that the attack was made by terrorists.  

In addition to the information put out by the Obama Administration, the story was picked up by the MSM. Whether they knowingly put out this false story or just didn’t bother to verify the facts, I am unable to speak to. But for an industry that prides itself on its adherence to journalistic integrity and reporting facts, their efforts in this case were totally inadequate.

In reality, those who attacked our two US consulates in Benghazi were members of an Islamist militant group called Ansar-al-Sharia. In this particular case an argument could be made that the MSM was complicit in the cover-up.

Why the government tried to cover up this attack is unknown to me. It has been reported that because of the political unrest in Libya at the time, Ambassador Chris Stevens had requested more security personnel. This request was turned down by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for reasons that have not been fully explained. The ambassador and three other Americans were killed during this attack. It has been suggested that the reason for this cover-up was to hide the fact that the request for additional security was turned down by Mrs. Clinton.

For the first two years of the Trump presidency, and even as far back as before his inauguration day, Donald Trump and the Trump Campaign have been the victims of a misinformation campaign and politically motivated Special Counsel Investigation. The purpose of this investigation was to look into the claim that candidate Trump, or members of his campaign, colluded with representatives of the Russian government in an effort to affect the results of the presidential election of 2016.

In addition to the investigation into Russian collusion, the president was also investigated for obstruction of justice namely, the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Both of these allegations are absolute nonsense. With regard to Russian collusion, the Mueller Report has stated that there was no evidence that the Trump Campaign colluded with the Russians. Also, the president was accused of obstructing justice when he chose to fire Director James Comey.  The president of the United States has the absolute authority, as the chief executive, to fire the FBI Director at any time, for any reason.

Over the course of the last two years the American public has been subjected to an onslaught of false narratives repeated on multiple occasions by multiple people using almost the same exact language. These people include members of Congress Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Jerrold Nadler, among others. To a man, every one of these people has said that there is evidence of Russian collusion.

For example, Congressman Adam Schiff stated, “There is evidence in plain sight.” Where is this evidence? Senator Blumenthal said, “The evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” Here again, where is the evidence? Congressman Nadler said, “I mean it’s clear that the campaign colluded and there’s a lot of evidence of that.” Mr. Nadler where is your evidence? DNC chairman Tom Perez stated, “There is a mountain of evidence of collusion.” Hey Tom, where is this mountain? Not one of these people has produced a shred of credible evidence to back up their claims.

Adam Schiff

One of the president’s greatest detractors is Congresswoman Maxine Waters. This is what Congresswoman Waters had to say. “Here you have a president who I can tell you, I guarantee you, is in collusion with the Russians to undermine our democracy.” Talk is cheap, Maxine. Where’s the evidence?

Some of the quotes stated above go back as far as one or two years ago. During that time, they have been repeated, ad nauseum, by these same politicians and by the left-leaning MSM. How many times must politically motivated accusations be repeated and reported before it evolves from a political narrative to propaganda? I don’t know what the exact answer to that question is, but it is my belief that the threshold has been met.

As I stated above some of these quotes have been around for well over a year. These claims have been investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, his team of nineteen so-called angry Democrat lawyers and forty FBI investigators. After twenty-two months of this thorough and intensive investigation, at a cost of $25M, no evidence of collusion has been found. These left-wing partisan politicians obviously don’t accept the conclusions reached by the Mueller Report. I believe this to be true because many of these same individuals are appearing on various news programs spewing the same false Soviet-style propaganda using, in some cases, the exact same wording. To further bolster my argument regarding the use of Soviet-style propaganda, the MSM is printing and broadcasting this nonsense to give credibility to these angry Democrats, almost on a daily basis. It’s almost as if the media is laundering these phony narratives to make them more acceptable to the public. Is this not what Soviet-style propaganda was all about? 

A major part of this collusion narrative was borne from the opposition research file known as the Steele dossier. This dossier was unverified, not fact checked, and much of the information contained in this dossier was obtained by Mr. Steele through contacts in Russia. This raw information, which was pushed by former CIA Director John Brennan, to be included in a classified community report, was given credibility by Mr. Brennan. One could say that it was laundered by him. When this information was leaked to the press, it became laundered again by the MSM. Mr. Brennan—who has accused the president of treason—is now “happy” that the information contained in the Mueller Report did not rise to the level of criminal conspiracy. That’s a one-eighty if I ever heard one. This tells me that the entire Russian collusion story was nothing more than made-up propaganda designed to overthrow the duly elected president of the United States, or at least delegitimize his presidency.

Robert Mueller

To accomplish this, high-level employees of the FBI and the Justice Department (DOJ) used the fake Steele dossier to open a counter intelligence investigation into the Trump Campaign, and later on President Trump himself. These high-level federal law enforcement employees were obviously politically biased in favor of Hillary Clinton and were quite upset when she lost the election. Since there was no way to change the vote, the only remaining option left open to these disgruntled federal employees was to delegitimize the election and therefore the president. Hence, we now have the Russian collusion story.

One of the text messages sent by Lisa Page to Peter Strzok stated, “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing.” At the time this text was sent, Barack Obama was POTUS. This leads me to believe that President Obama may have been aware of this sham investigation into the Trump campaign. To me, this message is pretty damning. It shows that people high up in the administration were aware of what was taking place.

The Steele dossier was the main source of evidence used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil Carter Page, a foreign policy advisor for the Trump Campaign. Mr. Page was surveilled because he was suspected of having ties to the Russian government. After two years of being investigated, no charges were ever brought against Mr. Page.

It has been suggested that the four FISA warrants used to surveil Mr. Page were obtained by a fraud being committed against the FISA court. The premise of this fraud was that those who applied for these warrants to this highly secret court were not completely honest with the FISA court judge. This alleged fraud is finally being investigated by the Inspector General of the FBI Michael Horowitz. Attorney General William Barr has stated that he will also be looking into these allegations.

When did this country become so divided that people in our most trusted law enforcement agencies (FBI and DOJ) would decide to try to overthrow a duly elected president of the United States? I am really at a loss to understand where this hyper partisanship came from. Does this all stem from the disappointment suffered by the liberal wing of the Democrat Party when Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2016? Did these FBI and DOJ employees think that it was their duty and therefore their right to interfere with the outcome of a presidential election? Did these same federal law enforcement employees think that they would be lauded for carrying a coup against the president? Maybe they thought that the country would erect statues of them and place them next to the Lincoln Memorial for “saving the republic.” I don’t know what was behind their reasoning for attempting to undermine our election process, but I do know that every one of these federal law enforcement officials violated their oath of office. There is one other fact that is relevant to this issue and that is that these people never expected to be caught. Hillary Clinton was heavily favored to win this election. If that would have happened, all of these bad actors in the DOJ and the FBI would have gotten away scott-free and the entire affair would have been swept under the rug. This entire affair would never have seen the light of day.

Another political narrative that evolved into propaganda was President Trump’s so-called Muslim ban that really wasn’t a Muslim ban. The president, who is responsible for the safety and security of this country, initiated a travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The ink wasn’t even dry on the executive order before the biased, Trump-hating, left-wing MSM was criticizing the president for this policy. They were all over the president constantly, 24/7. “Trump is a racist.” “Trump hates Muslims.” “He’s anti-Muslim.” “He’s banning all Muslims.” This hate-filled propaganda went on hour after hour and day after day. This was in addition to all the left-wing politicians who were stumbling over one another to get in front of a camera. This was a blatant example of politically motivated, media-supported, left-wing, Soviet-style propaganda. According to Pew Research, there are fifty predominantly Muslim countries on this planet with a total Muslim population of 1.5B. Of those fifty countries, citizens from seven of those countries were banned from entering the US. That represents roughly 14% of the predominantly Muslim countries. Of the 1.5B Muslims worldwide, 192M or about 13% live in those seven countries and were banned from entering the US. The other 1.308B or 87% of all Muslims worldwide were not restricted in any way and were allowed to enter the US unimpeded. Does that sound like a Muslim ban to you? It was, in reality, a travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, not a ban on Muslims. But that was not the way Democratic politicians and pundits or the politically biased MSM portrayed the president’s executive order. Again, the public was fed Soviet-style propaganda. This is what passes for news today in the left-wing MSM.

How can a travel ban that, according to the MSM, was supposed to ban all Muslims from the US allow 85% of all Muslims worldwide to freely enter the US? The premise put forth by the MSM that the president was banning all Muslims from entering the US was nothing more than purposely inaccurate, biased, political nonsense. In other words, it was nothing more than Soviet-style propaganda. This propaganda was disseminated by way of the MSM outlets. It was unfortunate than many people in the country were misled by this propaganda and to this day still believe it to be true.

As shown by the numbers, the idea that the president of the United States was biased against Muslims is ludicrous. Yet the MSM put out this false narrative knowing it was untrue. Is this why we have a first amendment? Should it protect rogue, biased MSM political narratives that are clearly untrue? It was obviously the intent of the Democratic Party, in conjunction with the MSM, to undermine the policies of the president of the United States. He signed this executive order with the hopes of protecting the US and its citizens. Why anyone would want to undermine that is a mystery to me.

Where does protection under the first amendment end and libel and slander begin? This question will be adjudicated shortly. There are currently two lawsuits, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars, being brought by individuals who believe that their reputations were harmed by false, unverified stories reported by major media outlets. Not only was the reporting alleged to be false, I believe the possibility exists that the purveyors of these stories knew that it was false when they were put out to the public.

 What constitutes propaganda? Where does fair and legitimate reporting end and propaganda begin? If a news outlet breaks a story with unverified information from “unknown sources” and it subsequently turns out to be false, would that be considered propaganda? Also, what if this same story is picked up by other media outlets, also with no verification, and reprinted or rebroadcasted, would that be considered propaganda? What happened to the journalistic norm of using multiple sources? Has getting the story out first become more important than getting the story factually correct? Is the publishing of unverified information from “unnamed sources” protected by the first amendment if it turns out to be false and harms the reputation of an individual? 

The definition of propaganda is biased information of a political nature disseminated to the public by government officials or bureaucrats and state-run media. This is the type of propaganda I remember from communist countries during the cold war.

Earlier in this post I gave some examples of politicians who voiced the same false narrative, namely that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government. That narrative has now been debunked by the Mueller report. This means that for over two years all these Democratic politicians and other political operatives, along with their accomplices in the media, have been spreading false propaganda against the president of the United States. In spite of the findings of the Mueller Report, these political hacks are still spewing this Russian collusion narrative.  Congresswoman Maxine Waters has gone so far as to suggest that Robert Mueller is covering for President Trump. Let us recall that when Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel twenty-two months ago, he was celebrated as the second coming of Jesus. This shows in very stark terms the lengths to which these rabid, foaming at the mouth Democratic politicians will go to overthrow, or at least undermine, a duly elected president of the United States.

The Democrats have become obsessed with bringing down President Trump to the point of being deranged. They have also put themselves in a very unenviable position politically. For over two years these fanatical Democrats have accused President Trump of colluding with the Russians. In some cases, they have even accused him of being an agent of the Russian government. Now that the Mueller Report has concluded that this Russian collusion nonsense has been found to be completely without merit, what are these angry Democrats going to do? How are they going to justify this twenty-five million dollar, two-year witch hunt to the American taxpayer? If they were to admit that they were wrong they would lose all credibility with the American public. They would therefore have no other choice than to double down on this worn-out fairy tale. This politically motivated false narrative was created by the upper echelons of the DOJ and the FBI, and then laundered by a complicit MSM. I would be willing to bet the farm that we will never hear any of these left-wing propagandists admit that they were wrong.

There are currently three investigations being pursued into the origins of this so-called Russian collusion conspiracy. Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the FBI is conducting an investigation into this very subject. The results of this investigation are due to be released in either May or June. The Senate Judiciary Committee, under chairman Lindsey Graham, will also be investigating what caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump Campaign. They will also be investigating why FISA warrants were issued to surveil Carter Page, a US citizen and a foreign policy advisor for the Trump Campaign. While speaking to the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William Barr informed the members of the committee that his office was going to be opening an investigation into origins of the Russian collusion narrative. Hopefully he will also look into how high up into the Obama Administration this attempt to undermine a political campaign of an opposing political party actually went.  

Since the Mueller Report was delivered to AG Barr, the Democrats have been clamoring for transparency. They want an unredacted version of the Mueller Report delivered to the House Judiciary Committee. They want this even though parts of this report are either secret grand jury testimony or classified information. They want AG Barr as well as Robert Mueller to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee. In the interest of “saving our republic” they are required to do oversight. Well hold on to your seats Dems, transparency is coming to breakfast. I hope you don’t choke on the cuisine.