The Grayzone



The Grayzone: Conspiracy theories and recycled Russian government disinformation on War and Empire

The Grayzone is a webshite founded by Max Blumenthal, a contributor to RT. It purports itself to be "a news and politics website dedicated to original investigative journalism on war and empire", but it mostly promotes Assadist, Russian, Venezuelan, and Chinese propaganda. It is known for using ad hominem attacks by calling critics neocon shills, or Mccarthyites.

The website was formerly carried by Alternet, a liberal website that sometimes promotes pseudoscience about GMOs. In February 2018, The Grayzone became an "independent" news source.

Conspiracies/pseudoscience

 * The Grayzone has spread nutty conspiracies about George Soros, blaming him for regime changes and protests around the world. Blumenthal also blames Soros for supporting protests in Hong Kong, Latin America, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
 * The Grayzone rejects Russiagate.
 * They believe in Big Pharma. In the same article, they promote anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree.
 * They are pissed that people don't like Michael Moore's propaganda They also complain about its supposed "censorship" by billionaires.
 * They whine about how Wikipedia "censored" them. They try to paint Wikipedia editors as neocon shills because the site was deprecated, along with Press TV and TeleSUR. They attack Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder, for being a libertarian and admiring Ayn Rand. Ironically, they are completely fine with Zero Hedge, a libertarian webshite, to promote them.

China

 * The Grayzone denies that up to 1 million Uyghurs are in re-education camps in Xinjiang. They believe that there are only 2 studies that corroborate this number, but in reality there are many methods of obtaining similar results. They misrepresent CHRD's investigation by claiming that they only interviewed 8 people. In reality, they interviewed 8 people from 8 different villages, which means that their conclusion is much more accurate. Surprisingly, China's officials suggest that the interviewees' numbers are correct. They also discredit CHRD's research by stating that they received funds from the  Not only is this ironic and hypocritical, they did not bother criticizing his methodology. The only thing in the article that comes close to attacking his methodology is stating that the data comes from a separatist group in Xinjiang. However, Zenz cites other sources in his study, especially Chinese government documents. The article also fails to mention that it was a Chinese government official who gave them the numbers.
 * They also opposed the, asserting that the CIA, NED, and George Soros funded the Hong Kong protesters, and exaggerated the amount of alt-right support of the protests . They attempt to frame the protesters as literally Hitler by saying that the Neo-Nazi group Azov Battalion joined the protest. In reality, they only went for a tour in Hong Kong and went to places like Ocean Park (whose founder is Pro-Beijing). Also, the protestors have condemned the battalion as well.
 * They doxxed a Hong Kong activist named Brian Kern. His pseudonym is Kong Tsung-Gan, a Tibetan sounding name. They plagiarized The Standard's article about it (written 8 months before The Grayzone "exposed" him). They blame the mainstream media for using him as a source, but it's not like The Grayzone does it as well right? When someone talks about Brian, try talk about Charles Redvers.

Eastern Europe

 * They assert that the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies is funded by the NED, despite there being no evidence on their website.
 * They are extremely supportive of Alexander Lukashenko. They have spread fake news regarding the recent Belarusian Protests. For example, Ben Norton claimed that protestors were chanting "Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty"(US propaganda outlet), but they were chanting "Give us freedom".
 * Ben Norton claimed that the grenade was thrown by protestors. Since that was a lie, he deleted it. What a coward.

COVID-19

 * In a surprisingly stopped clock moment, albeit one resulting from pro-PRC bias, The Grayzone called Trump out for normalizing the lab conspiracy, comparing it to Saddam's WMDs.
 * Unfortunately, this didn't last as they were still hoping that it came from the US instead.
 * They claim that Taiwan didn't warn anyone about COVID-19, which was misleading.
 * Blumenthal talked on RT about Bill Gates's COVID-19 simulation. This is completely false.

US politics

 * Max Blumenthal spend an hour badgering members of at a protest related to housing evictions, "questioning them" why they didn't force Medicare4All through to be voted onto the Senate ground. This is a view that's known as "Force the Vote", and is considered to be generally politically unviable. In spite of being faced with multiple explanations as to why they didn't do this (it made no strategic sense and would burn the Squads goodwill and their ability to enact further change within the Democrats, it's important to first gather votes, none of the members of The Squad have the ability to bring the M4A bill to the Senate anyway), Blumenthal kept repeatedly asking the same question, seemingly ignoring the explanation. In response, Ilhan Omar pulled up Blumenthal's Twitter feed where she discovered that he'd been retweeting offensive memes about the Squad. When questioned, Blumenthal dismissed it as "just memes" before being removed by staff of the Squad. Blumenthal then uploaded a video to his own Twitter account which only showed him being removed after a short discussion with a single member, removing all context of the previous badgering to paint the Squad as the people unwilling to advocate for change.