this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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Richard Medhurst, Leading Gaza Reporter, Arrested and Charged with "Terrorism" in European Crackdown (www.mintpressnews.com)
submitted 1 week ago by o_d@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml
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“The Vienna state prosecutor accuses me of being a Hamas member, specifically the military wing Izzal Din Qassam Brigades, since at least July 2024 and working to ‘destroy Israel and establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate,’” he stated.

What an absurdly baseless accusation

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[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

And no mainstream media publication is going to say a word about this. They are not going to accuse Austria of suppressing free speech by targeting journalists (as they 100% would if this happened in a country like Russia or China), they are not going to call them authoritarian, repressive, dictatorship or totalitarian. There will simply be crickets, or if they do write anything it will be to take the side of the state and pile on to the slander against Richard calling him a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer.

As we have seen with the whole USAID saga now, there is no such thing as "independent media" in the West, at least not in the mainstream. They are all funded by Zionist billionaires, tech oligarchs, government agencies and shady NGOs. And the German language media are some of the worst in the world...the shit i have to read and hear every day from them makes me wish i didn't speak German.

[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I highly doubt that the western media will even criticize Austria because of this. They'll likely just slander him as a Russian bot or Hamas sympathizer or some racist shit.

[–] o_d@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The western media is in full support of what's happening here I imagine. They might slander him if this news becomes mainstream, but more likely they will ignore it entirely. I can't recall reading anything in the MSM about Ali Abunimah's arrest.

[–] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 1 week ago

Uncountable journalists have been killed in Israeli bombings and the "journalists" have not even pretended to give a shit about it. Western mainstream media does not have an honest bone in its body.

[–] o_d@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They are not going to accuse Austria of suppressing free speech by targeting journalists (as they 100% would if this happened in a country like Russia or China), they are not going to call them authoritarian, repressive, dictatorship or totalitarian.

Precisely. The USA is waging a second cold war and the parallels to the first can be easily drawn.

During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

[–] footfaults@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 1 week ago

In $BAD_COUNTRY reporters who don't toe the party line get arrested

[–] swaggyspinozista@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What's with this alt media journalist catch-and-release game they keep doing?

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Intimidation. And it works. Not many people have the public support that these bigger journalists do to be able to pressure the government to release them. So the whole thing has a chilling effect on anti-hegemonic, anti-imperialist speech in the West because the average person is scared to be the next target of the state and suddenly having the police at their door or being abducted off the street into a van under some trumped up charge. They are doing exactly what they have always accused their geopolitical enemies of doing.

[–] swaggyspinozista@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For sure but sometimes it feels like it's a way of building cred for assets like Max Blumenthal or the CodePink lady whatshername or Kiriakou. Maybe I just fail to understand the game, but you see people get dragged away forever and it doesn't boost their profile whatsoever like this. I feel like there could be something that I'm not seeing.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Maybe. And i'm open to evidence to back that theory up, but for the time being i personally don't believe it. I think that's too convoluted an explanation when a much simpler one fits perfectly well. We shouldn't ascribe more subtlety or intelligence to the ruling class than they actually have. Most of these people are not evil geniuses, they are just evil...and some of them are really not that bright at all.

Sometimes the only reason why they do things is the straightforwardly obvious one: they are desperately trying to reassert control in a situation in which they fear they are losing it, when they feel everything is spiraling out of control for them and they just don't care anymore about being subtle.

And sometimes it turns out that they can get away with it, which then emboldens them to go even further next time, but sometimes they can't, and they find out that they have underestimated the level of pushback they will actually get. It's the same phenomenon of arrogance and belief in their own omnipotence that we see the imperialists display over and over. But whether they succeed or not in this or that individual case is not very relevant, because the intimidation still occurs either way.

[–] swaggyspinozista@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Well, my reasoning for them being controlled opposition figures varies. I don't know much about Medhurst, but he gets a ton of attention, adding very little to the conversation, and is not a communist. (None of these alt media people are ever communists! There's only Ben Norton and some people associated with party organizations that have been turned into appendages of activism NGOs.) In addition, Medhurst seems to have a scandal following him around about DMs with minors.

The other people I mentioned are incredibly spooky. CodePink is part of the Veterans for Peace network, which is pretty closely connected with establishment figures and advocates for very minor reforms. They get away with holding Extinction Rebellion-style protests that end up almost looking like photo ops with Blinken. Blumenthal is suspicious not just because of his family ties and stalking of a former employee and associations with libertarians, but also becayse of the way he discredits a lot of The Grayzone's good work by veering into culture war nonsense. Kiriakou is wild, I will add more on this later, but he lied about being present at the torture of Abu Zubaydah, but records show that he was working at locations which did torture other people. His whole "inaccurate intel" framing of the problem with torture is weak, he never disavows the CIA, his whole framing is he wants the organization to be more morally upright. After his arrest he is still working right in Washington D.C. hosting a show on RT, which as an alt media outlet is a target for all kinds of US HUMINT assets.

I can't say for sure, but do you see why I would be suspicious of these people?

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

See all of that just sounds to me like you think they are controlled opposition because you disagree with some of their views and tactics. I don't know this Kiriakou person but i will admit he sounds like a bit of a grifter. The rest of them i just think are not communists, that's all. And because they are not they will do or say things and associate with people that we don't like or agree with.

As for alleged scandals, a huge disclaimer that i have not looked into any of those allegations so they may very well be true, but a priori i always tend to be skeptical of when anti-establishment figures suddenly become embroiled in all sorts of allegations, as the intelligence agencies are known for planting dirt on people, creating infighting and discrediting people who pose a threat to the imperialist state.

I think it's good to be cautious and skeptical, but maybe we shouldn't let that turn into all out paranoia that makes us see ops in every corner, because that only benefits our enemies. Sometimes even people who are not communists can be useful, as sources of information, as situational allies on certain anti-imperialist causes, etc.

[–] o_d@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 week ago

the intelligence agencies are known for planting dirt on people, creating infighting and discrediting people who pose a threat to the imperialist state.

I just want to add that Jeremy Corbyn is a good example of this. He stepped outside the bounds of the compatible left. Then the media and the rest of the political class decided he was antisemetic and that the rest of the UK ought to know about it.

[–] swaggyspinozista@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

When I'm done with work I will try to find the time to write up the details of what I'm talking about in an actual post, as I am glossing over so much, but I just want to say if they were all communists it wouldn't change my mind. (It's just something which points to them being more agreeable to the form of nonviolent antiwar activism that was cooked up by the CIA in the late 1900s. The communist groups they feds are involved with have been kept the smallest and on the fringes compared to the DSA and more generic identity centered activism.) It's more about how they fit into the expansion of the dissident journalist whistleblower scene into the pure glitz, style, and repetition of social media influencing.

I agree with these people on all kinds of things, but what do they want me to do? Just go out and try to create a mass consciousness event. People already are acutely aware of how fucked things are. They are bereft of organization and tactics, and these people offer them nothing other than recruitment drives, marches, and high production value videos for communicating with other people.

I do think that there is the potential for organizations and people that are compromised to have a mixed outcome and be genuinely confronted by the feds. E.g. McCarthyism smashing everything up resulting in us having access to the docs revealing the fed funding and infiltration of New Left groups, or grow into something greater.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I agree with these people on all kinds of things, but what do they want me to do?

I don't think it matters what these people want you to do. We shouldn't be letting media people tell us what we should do anyway, even if they were all communists, they aren't political organizers, at best they are propagandists and information sources for our cause. We are communists and we have to decide what we should do based on our own world outlook and our own theoretical framework. You should just see these media personalities as simply one more asset to help you in educating, agitating and organizing the working class.

That's why i personally don't care whether the forms of activism that they engage in are ineffectual or misguided, because i don't take my cues from them.

[–] swaggyspinozista@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Other people are absolutely going to take their cues from them and even try to become influencers. (We may wish to only relay particular messages, but we are boosting their personal brand.) That could have utility to intel agencies as well, encouraging everyone to organize openly on platforms that are not just public and as open to interference and infiltration as possible, but also profitable data scraping sources for social research. Knowing there's no alternative or way around that, and this is what the majority of opposition media in the west consists of is why I am trying to find explanations. It's not like these kinds of people haven't been educational to me. I remember my whole pipelining from wondering why game developers can't do whatever they want & whether my VPN actually works all the way to this conversation.

I may be paranoid, but I'm scrutinizing what really is the difference between someone like Ben Norton and Russel Brand. It's considerable, but not as far as I'd like. I question whether the exceptions to the good takes of someone like Rania Khalek on Syria are organic, or a deliberate attempt to spend earned credibility and redirect political energy back into safe or beneficial avenues for the feds.

Of course, this isn't all cut and dry. The majority of this is accomplished through process of elimination on social media, controlling the academic and journalistic apparatus with funding. It naturally produces these people. There are a number of ways to look at the system of compatible left journalism I am describing that go way beyond "X person is an informant".

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In addition, he seems to have a scandal following him around about DMs with minors.

Do you have any sources on this?

[–] swaggyspinozista@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah let me pull it up. I encountered it randomly in his mentions. I shouldn't say that so flippantly.