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The Grayzone

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The Grayzone: Conspiracy theories and recycled Russian government disinformation on War and Empire
—Everything you need to know about the Grayzone[1]

The Grayzone is a webshite founded by Max Blumenthal (1977–), a contributor to RT. It purports itself to be "a news and politics website dedicated to original investigative journalism on war and empire",[2] but it mostly promotes Assadist, Russian, Venezuelan, and Chinese propaganda. Especially after Blumenthal's trip to Moscow.[3][4] The Grayzone is known for using ad hominem attacks by calling critics neocon shills,[5] or McCarthyites.[6]

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.[note 1]

Views[edit]

Conspiracies/pseudoscience[edit]

  • The Grayzone has spread nutty conspiracies about George Soros,[7] 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.[8]
  • The Grayzone rejects Russiagate.[9]
  • They believe in Big Pharma.[10] In the same article, they promote anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree.
  • They are pissed that people don't like Michael Moore's propaganda Planet of the Humans.Wikipedia[11] They also complain about its supposed "censorship" by billionaires.
  • They whine about how Wikipedia has "censored" them.[12] They try to paint Wikipedia editors as neocon shills because The Grayzone was deprecated as a usable source by the community for being a pro-Kremlin propaganda blog. The Grayzone claimed: "At no point has this cabal of editors pointed to a pattern of errors or fabrications by The Grayzone. Instead, they have argued for its blacklisting on the grounds of the political views of its writers". In fact, examples of false propaganda by The Grayzone were discussed (e.g. on the subjects of Syria and Nicaragua), along with its status as a kind of self-published blog rather than an established news organization with a serious editorial policy. The community discussion is publicly archived, meaning the thought process behind this decision can be openly verified by anybody.[13][14] Similarly, Press TV and TeleSUR were also deprecated.[note 2] They attack Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder, for being a libertarian and admiring Ayn Rand.[14] Ironically, they are completely fine with Zero Hedge, a libertarian webshite, promoting them. On the other hand, The Grayzone at all attempting to link Jimmy Wales to the community decision to deprecate their website as a source further demonstrates either their ignorance or propaganda regarding the decision, since Wales had no involvement in the discussion.[note 3]

China[edit]

Eastern Europe[edit]

COVID-19[edit]

  • 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.[33]
  • Unfortunately, this didn't last as they were still hoping that it came from the US instead.[34][note 7][note 8]
  • They claim that Taiwan didn't warn anyone about COVID-19, which was misleading.[35][note 9]
  • Blumenthal talked on RT about Bill Gates's COVID-19 simulation.[36] This is completely false.[37]

US politics[edit]

  • Max Blumenthal spent an hour badgering members of The SquadWikipedia[38] 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.[39]

See also[edit]

In a nutshell[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. As Max Blumenthal has ties to RT and the Kremlin, and The Grayzone is rather opaque about its sources of funding, some believe that the Russian government funds it
  2. Doesn't Press TV promote Holocaust denial? BTW They have shit ratings on Media Bias/Fact Check.
  3. Further, Wales's personal political views have trended more centrist in recent years. He described himself as a centrist in 2017, was a staffer on Lawrence Lessig's brief 2016 presidential campaign, and in 2011 even expressed sympathy for Occupy Wall Street. If they were aware of these facts, The Grayzone has evidently chosen to omit them when describing Wales's ideology because it does not fit their narrative.
  4. While indeed there are numerous alt-right opportunists hijacking a popular cause for their own ends, their mostly only online support is used invalidate and distract from the fact that millions of Hongkongers protested.
  5. The Grayzone thinks it's a Chinese sounding name.
  6. They are not exactly wrong though. Wikileaks claims that CANVAS has US government funding.
  7. Note that the top comment cites Globalresearch. A reminder of the average intelligence of Grayzone readers.
  8. The reason why the Wuhan lab theory was stupid was because it had natural DNA. The US lab theory is just as stupid.
  9. While the Taiwanese government technically didn't warn anyone from the onset, and rather asked WHO for confirmation of human to human transmissionWikipedia but was ignored, it is used in a way to dismiss Taiwan's successful containment of the virus.

References[edit]

  1. Before or after the head rub? by @axbIumenthal (parody account) (4:48 AM · Oct 6, 2019) Twitter (archived from October 6, 2019).
  2. https://thegrayzone.com/about
  3. Di Giovanni, Janine (October 16, 2018). "Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets". The New York Review of Books. "Blumenthal went to Moscow on a junket to celebrate RT’s tenth anniversary. We don’t know what happened during that visit, but afterward, Blumenthal’s views completely flipped." 
  4. Joshua Collins (February 10, 2020). "Grayzone, Grifters and the Cult of Tank". Muros Invisibles, via Medium.
  5. https://www.codastory.com/disinformation/grayzone-xinjiang-denialism
  6. https://www.axios.com/grayzone-max-blumenthal-china-xinjiang-d95789af-263c-4049-ba66-5baedd087df4.html
  7. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/george-soros/
  8. [1] by Matthew Dimitri (11:16 PM · May 17, 2020) Twitter (archived from April 9, 2021).
  9. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/russiagate/
  10. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/big-pharma/
  11. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/
  12. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censors-the-grayzone-as-regime-change-advocates-monopolize-editing/
  13. (December 2019). "RfC: Grayzone". Wikipedia.
  14. 14.0 14.1 https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/11/meet-wikipedias-ayn-rand-loving-founder-and-wikimedia-foundations-regime-change-operative-ceo/
  15. https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/
  16. https://thegrayzone.com/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher
  17. https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/features/where-did-one-million-figure-detentions-xinjiangs-camps-come
  18. https://www.nchrd.org/2020/08/chrd-stands-firmly-by-estimate-of-one-million-uyghurs-detained/
  19. P.P.S.: CGTN chides the @CHRDnet study for estimating 1 million detainees based on only 8 interviews. Indeed a tiny sample size. But ironically, the internment shares estimated by those 8 locals are not far off from the internment shares reported by 3 townships, also from Kashgar by Adrian Zenz (3:43 PM · Dec 30, 2019) Twitter (archived from January 1, 2020).
  20. Zenz is quite forthcoming about how he comes to his conclusions. His writing is standard for peer-reviewed academic work, which it doesn't seem like either Grayzone author has read much of. Most of his (dozens or hundreds of) references are gov. reports and state journalism. by Ben Mauk (6:09 AM - 27 Jul 2020) Twitter (archived from July 27, 2020).
  21. ウイグル絶望収容所の収監者数は89万人以上 by 水谷尚子 (Naoko Mizutani) (March 3, 2018) Newsweek Japan.
  22. https://chinalawandpolicy.com/2020/01/05/when-journalism-is-not-journalism-the-grayzones-faulty-analysis-of-what-is-happening-in-xinjiang/
  23. Actual swastika tattoos, just in case you were left in any doubt these are actual neo-nazis. by Hong Kong Hermit (6:31 AM · Dec 2, 2019) Twitter (archived from November 22, 2020).
  24. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/08/hong-kong-western-media-yellowfacing-amnesty/
  25. what is it with blumao and a general lack of knowledge? Kern's alias sounds Tibetan, not Chinese. by @OldChinaBland (6:46 AM - 13 Aug 2020) Twitter (archived from August 13, 2020).
  26. https://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news/section/21/214605/The-voice-of-Hong-Kong,-from-far-away
  27. https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-nicaragua-torture-is-used-to-feed-fake-news
  28. https://canvasopedia.org/about-us/
  29. https://www.ned.org/region/central-and-eastern-europe/serbia-2019/
  30. Anyone falling for this extremely stupid Belarus coup propaganda probably still thinks Saddam Hussein was hiding "WMDs" Because protesters often just "spontaneously" chant the name of CIA-backed US govt propaganda outlets. That's totally normal and organic. Nothing to see here! by Benjamin Norton (6:57 AM · Aug 16, 2020) Twitter (archived from August 16, 2020).
  31. That’s not what they are chanting.. they are chanting “give us freedom!”.. you might want to ask someone who speaks Russian to translate by Igor Sshatz (7:34 AM - 16 Aug 2020) Twitter (archived from August 16, 2020).
  32. https://thegrayzoneproject.wordpress.com
  33. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/20/trump-media-chinese-lab-coronavirus-conspiracy/
  34. The spokesperson from China's Foreign Ministry is publicly saying the US army might have brought coronavirus to Wuhan, which held the 2019 Military World Games in October, just before the outbreak began by Benjamin Norton (11:10 AM · Mar 12, 2020) Twitter (archived from March 12, 2020).
  35. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/17/us-taiwan-lied-warning-world-health-organization-coronavirus/
  36. On the Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, Max Blumenthal pushes conspiracy theory that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation predicted the novel coronavirus. by Matthew Dimitri (1:33 AM - 31 May 2020) Twitter (archived from May 31, 2020).
  37. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/new-coronavirus-wasnt-predicted-in-simulation/
  38. https://twitter.com/KristinMink_/status/1421712240558977025
  39. https://twitter.com/maxblumenthal/status/1421668812659830786