Jul 18, 2018
For
over two years, the U.S. government has been investigating Russian
interference in the 2016 election - interference broadly considered
to be in favor of candidate Donald Trump. As a result, a bizarre
flip has occurred with the Right and Left: Polls show liberals now
trust the FBI and CIA, while many right-wingers – though by no
means all – suddenly act concerned about the so-called “deep
state.” Liberals have been turned into even more extreme hawks, not
just on the issue of Russia, but anything that shores up support
for American intelligence agencies broadly seen, fair or not, as a
check on the unhinged Trump administration.
Given
that so much of RussiaGate coverage is about the alleged
manipulation of Black activists, anti-fracking protesters, the
Green Party –and even Bernie Sanders supporters - to attack Hillary
Clinton and her campaign, the consequence has been the media, time
and again, framing Leftist dissent as de facto Russian propaganda.
Today
we ask: how does the fever pitch of Russia coverage, in the
aggregate, harm Black activists and movements? What are the
historical antecedents for these red-baiting attacks? And how can
Left solidarity work to dull the effects of these efforts to
marginalize and delegitimize voices for justice?
In
Part II of this two-part RussiaGate episode, we are joined by Anoa
Changa, host of The Way
with Anoa podcast.