Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/13/24 Max Blumenthal on How and Why the Washington Post is Going After The Gray Zone

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Max Blumenthal joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week. Blumenthal’s publication, the Gray Zone, was recently attacked by the Washington Post in a story designed to frame Blumenthal and his colleagues as paid agents of foreign regimes. Scott and Blumenthal debunk this characterization and review why establishment publications like the Washington Post are targeting the Gray Zone. Discussed on the show: “News site editor’s ties to Iran, Russia show misinformation’s complexity” (Washington Post) “UN finds at least 14 Israelis likely intentionally killed by own army on 7 October” (Middle East Eye) Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project and the author Goliath, Republican Gomorrah and The 51 Day War. Follow him on Twitter @MaxBlumenthal. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, June the 13th, 2024. I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, it is Anti-War Radio. And I'm the author of the book, Enough Already. time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 6,000 of them now,

going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all the other video sites and stuff, pod catchers and things. And, of course, I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK. And introducing today's guest, it's Max Blumenthal, again, editor of the Grey Zone magazine,

and author of a bunch of great books, including Goliath, the 51-day war, and the management of savagery. Welcome back to the show. How you doing? Hey, Scott. How's it going? I'm doing good. I appreciate you joining us today. I want to start off with the Washington Post and their humiliation at your hands and really their own in their failed attempt to character assassinate you and your great gray zone project here. So what's the deal with that?

Well, I mean, I don't know how you would define a failure when I don't know if they were actually trying to succeed in our understanding of success. I think what they were trying to do with this latest attack, which represents the second attack on the gray zone this year by the Washington Post, is to kind of set the stage for criminalizing the gray zone and the kind of journalism we do, getting our staff. federally investigated and jailed because they've failed to stop us through the normal means of discrediting us, you know, maligning us, marginalizing us. It's not working because so much of the public is turning to us as a source of news, analysis, information, and we're actually having an impact on the way people understand what took place on October 7th and everything thereafter. And so what they've done here is accuse our editor, Wyatt Reed, I mean, he helps me edit the site. He writes articles for us of violating U.S. sanctions because four years ago,

he contributed to press TV, which is an Iranian state broadcaster that performs the same role as like the BBC or Al Jazeera. And, you know, he did some, I mean, he listed himself on his Twitter bio at the time as producer for press TV. He would do coverage of like Black Lives Matter protests and fairly mundane stuff for them at the time. And he's accused in this Washington Post article of basically making Trump change for press TV over a fairly short period at a time well before he worked for the gray zone. And then they say that there is an overlap in funding and it shows the complexity of misinformation in a world where Iran and Russia, are seeking new sources of influence in the U.S. at a time when misinformation threatens to

interfere with the U.S. election. And they use all that language, but there's no evidence that we have done any of that at the gray zone. And the gray zone is not funded by Iran or Russia. We have nothing to do with them. So this was the sleazyest kind of smear piece possible, but also represents a major escalation in the tactics that they're deploying against us because they're actually open. trying to criminalize our staff. And what's taken place since is everyone who wants us to

be silenced has said, and now says that we're funded by Iran and Russia. They have no evidence for it, but they're using the way that the Washington Post obfuscated its language and used innuendo and smears. In order to assert this matter-of-factly, I-24 in Israeli publication just stated in its headline, Iran and Russia funded gray zone. Zone must be investigated. So what are you going to do about that? It's in a foreign country. I have to go to Israel to sue them for liable.

And the damage that they wanted to do may have been done. At the same time, Aaron Maté, who works with us at the Gray Zone, approached Washington Post editors and declared that the first line of the article was false, which said that leaders of the Gray Zone have taken payments from the Iranian and Russian governments. And he said, which leaders, and they couldn't point to any leaders, so they actually had to retract that line, which means they retracted the central thesis of the entire article. But at the same time, you have all of these neocon think tankers and spooks spreading straight up lies about us based on this article.

So that was the point of the article. It really shows how desperate our ruling elites, our foreign policy elite is at this point, that they would take these kind of measures against us, whereas the previous Washington Post smear just accused us of miss and disinformation around October 7th, something they also failed to prove. All right, it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Max Blumenthal

about the Washington Post and the smear piece that they ran on June 2nd. The article at the post is called News Site Editors, Ties to Iran, Russia, show misinformation's complexity, as Max mentioned there. But then there's a giant picture of Vladimir Putin and some TV screens, subliminally brainwashed in you there, I guess. But then it says, correction.

A previous version of this article incorrectly said that leaders of the online news site, Grayzone, had received payments from Iranian media. According to recently unearthed documents, the documents show that only one of the site's editors receive such payments and the article has been corrected. So it is quite a climb down. They don't mention about the Russia part that's implied in the headline for whatever reason

they're not climbing down on that claim yet. But I don't know what the numbers are, but it must be max in the dozens of people in, well, yeah, surely in American media who have worked for RT or press TV on contract or whatever, been reporters for them or stringers for them or copy editors for them. or whatever it is. Has anyone before this Washington Post article ever made a real claim that that was a violation of sanctions? And then much less the whole question of somebody doing so, now that Tars anyone who ever employs them again as somehow a foreign agent or some kind of crap. I mean, that's some pretty thin gruel from the Washington Post. Yeah, I would say hundreds of people

have done work for RT in the United States. Press TV, maybe score. of people, they're stating matter-of-factly that anyone who has ever worked for press TV since 2013 or received anything from press TV is a de facto criminal and should be prosecuted by the federal government. I mean, again, Wyatt Reed, whatever he did for them was public. He stated that he was producer for press TV on his bio. And the Washington Post didn't say payments from Iranian media. They said payments from the Iranian government and they relied on, said that they had hacked documents that unearthed these payments. I mean, I don't know personally what payments why it got, but you know, you would assume that if he was doing, if he was saying

he was a producer for press TV, that he was getting paid for it. And then what they say he got was a very small sum, and they're calling for him to be jailed. And then they're implicating us, even though we have nothing to do with it. And it happened four years ago, then they use this very general, vague language about leaders, like Anya Parampil, she's my wife, she works with me at the gray zone, has been with us there for years. Prior to that, she was at RT. That's where she launched her career. She was a correspondent and anchor at RT. So should she go to jail now? Is she a leader? I mean, what she was doing was very, very public, like she was on air all the time. What's the issue here?

But the gray zone is not funded by Russia or Iran. This is something they never mentioned, why it's positioned at the gray zone through a public crowdfunding campaign. And we're crowdfunding again on the basis of this attack. And it really showcases how much public support we have. I think that's the reason they're doing this piece is because we have public support, you have public support. The public is seeing increasingly outside of the imperial. echo chamber that the Washington Post owned by one of the three richest men in the world is created. And Max, is there any other leader of the website than you? You're the director

and the editor-in-chief, correct? I mean, they could say, I don't know, Aaron Mate, I mean, who, but, but yeah, I have very prominent writers on your staff for sure. I mean, Aaron is obviously a big deal. I mean, they pointed to me like going to RT's, what was it, it's 10th anniversary, like 10 years ago. But that was it. it and they were like they were in the same room with Putin one day a really big room but yeah i mean i didn't really get very close to him at all and i didn't receive your instructions from it oh and like michael flyn got 40 grand for being there um because he didn't actually really have any personal interest in being there i guess the rest of us were interested i was just like well it could

be a interesting event to attend and uh i was in finland at the time on a speaking tour so i said i'll just take an hour flight over there. I didn't know much about it. I didn't meet any Russian officials. No one offered me anything. And now they've spun out this whole conspiracy that that's where the gray zone was born. And the very end of the article, they say,

oh, this guy, Blumenthal, by the way, yeah, we know him. Actually, his father was an advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he's written for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He's not exactly some kook. But anyway, the rest of the rest of the time,

of our article still stands though yeah i mean the i think the most one of the most insidious parts of the article was how they tried to accuse us of misinformation for what we've written about for example october 7th in which the israeli military deployed the hannibal directive which you've oh max you ruined it i was going to ask you what did you ever do to them but i think we clued in on it here Yeah. And this is another reason why the piece had to be written is I was one of the first in English to expose how Israel went Mass Hannibal on October 7th and killed it and targeted it and killed its own citizens because its own citizens were held hostage. And Israel has this doctrine of killing Israeli soldiers and Israeli citizens if they're hostage or if they're taken

captive by Palestinian militants to prevent Palestinian factions from gaining leverage through capturing Israelis. That's what they did. They went bonkers on October 7th. And then we demonstrated precisely through witness testimony that top Israeli general, Barack Hiram had ordered a tank to shell a home filled with Israelis because they were held captive by Hamas militants there in Kibbutzbury on October 7th. Many vehicles were shelled as well heading back into Gaza containing Israelis. That piece that I wrote went viral and really opened up this scandal. Aritz attacked me over it. A lot of Israeli media attacked me over it. Yesterday, the United Nations report appeared corroborating everything I wrote or nearly everything I wrote about the

Hannibal Directive. And this article accuses me of spreading misinformation about that and the sources, Israelis. Israelis say that he misrepresented what happened. Yeah. I mean, it's so transparent, really, like, possibly even to a Washington Post reader that like, well, that doesn't really mean he's wrong and especially when although i don't know if this made the washington post but here it is in middle east eye as you said u.n finds at least 14 Israelis likely intentionally killed by their own army on the 7th of october so you you kind of you know briefly mentioned it there but why would they do that if you think about it it makes total sense like the only leverage that hamas could can ever gain to to establish diplomatic lines is by capturing israelis and in

In 2006, they captured one Israeli soldier who was in a tank outside Gaza, maintaining the siege of Gaza, Gilad Shalit, through a very complex operation where they tunneled to a kibbutz right next to his tank, broke into the tank, and dragged him to Gaza. Five years later, Hamas was able to get 1,100 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are just, you know, just captives, people who are held by Israel without charges, out of Israel's prisons in exchange for Gilad Shalit, who they treated well and kept alive. And that became the model for October 7th. And who led the October 7th attack or helped devise it? Yahya Senwar, who is the Prime Minister of Gaza, who freed himself from an Israeli prison by directing the negotiations

over Gilad Shalit from an Israeli prison. So it makes perfect sense that Israel would not want all these Israelis to be in Palestinian hands and that they would say, hey, kill everybody, including the Israelis, because they're worth more to them alive than dead. The only reason to not believe it is to believe that Israel is not a completely vicious, ruthless killing force that indoctrines its soldiers who come from the heart of Israeli society into a culture of mass killing, but just look at what they're doing across. the Gaza strip, and you can clearly see that. They're just killing anything that moves. People say to me, Scott, how do you get so much work done all the time? Coffee. It helps keep me

from falling asleep. And it tastes really good because I get it from Moondose Artisan Coffee at Moondoseartisan Coffee.com. Moondos is kind of the anti-starbucks, in that their coffee tastes real good. They have lots of great choices, representing all kinds of regions, blends, and flavors. I'm drinking the Ethiopian presently. Hey, wait, also, do you like saving money on good tasting coffee? Right now you can get 10% off and help support this show if you just go to Moondoseartisancoffee.com slash Horton. Find the link and the QR code in the margin at Scott Horton.org.

That's Moondoseartisan coffee.com slash Horton. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II,

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II. Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org, or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Hey, let me ask you this.

As I had read about this before, it seemed like the idea was that, you know, if a soldier got kidnapped, that they, you know, as in your example, that they would, kill him. But then is it that on October 7th, they just sort of panicked and kind of on the fly, some guy on a microphone, you know, on a CB radio just commanded Mass, Hannibal, go ahead

and apply this same doctrine to anybody? Like, do we know that Netanyahu gave that order? Or do we know that that already was a policy that they had different kinds of Hannibals and this was one of them? Or was it really an ad hoc thing?

I don't know what difference in makes. which is the top Israeli or the most popular Israeli newspaper investigated this. It's popularly known as Wynette. Their security reporter Ronan Bergman, who also writes for the New York Times, co-bylined this investigation. And they found that the Israeli army authorized explicitly Mass Hannibal on October 7th. Over 70 cars were hit by Israeli Apache helicopters and drones going towards Gaza, many containing Israeli citizens, the Israeli home I mentioned was hit, people on foot were shot,

and all firing regulations were abandoned. I quoted in my piece early on Israeli Apache helicopter pilots who had stated that they had no idea who was who on the ground and they were just told to empty the tank, empty all their ammunition on the ground and hit everything, and that they didn't have any intelligence and were just given like they they were not even at full capacity until noon and the attack began at daybreak so it's pretty obvious what took place and then you look at all these cars piled up outside the nova electronic music festival how could Hamas have destroyed that many cars that comprehensively and burned them all with the weapons they had. It's simply impossible. I mean, these were cars that were being hit by

hellfire missiles. And you see many charred Israelis. Or incendiary rounds, yeah. You also see in all these footage and the photos that the Israelis were promoting, these kind of snuff films to horrify the world and to supporting Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, that many of the people who were singed and charred were not even Israelis. They were Palestinians, because many Palestinian average Palestinians and, like, rabble from the Gaza Strip flowed in because the border wall, the frontier wall, had broken open and they wanted to go see what it looked like in there. Some of them were just taking selfies. Some of them were up to no good and wanted to loot.

I mean, they're very poor people. And they were also hit in the mass Hannibal. And then they were dumped into trucks because there was no respect for, their bodies or their remains after they were basically torched in Apache helicopter attacks. And then the Israelis took photos of these piles of bodies and trucks and put them online, making everyone think that this was like the Holocaust and that Jews were like dumped in trucks after being burned alive by Hamas when these were mostly Palestinians. I remember when you called them out on that in real time when that happened, they had

posted a whole batch that included Israeli victims, too, and then included that. And I remember you immediately asking, wait a minute, who were all those people in that dumpster or whether, you know, maybe it was some kind of container, metal container. Certainly, just on the face of it, it seemed more likely that they were Palestinians who'd been killed by the Israelis and dumped that way than where would Hamas have even had the opportunity to do that to a bunch of people that they had killed. They weren't there long enough to transport everyone to a dumpster and throw them away. You know what I mean? All right. Now, when you're getting to the bottom of these type of issues, and especially in real time, you know, right, you know, in the month of October when it mattered the

most. And ever since then, I think they recognize, everyone listen to this who's interested in these kinds of topics recognizes that the gray zone you guys really are an important outlet with you know not just journalism but with who you are and your opinion pieces too you and Aaron and the rest at Kate Clarenberg I mean I interview this guy constantly he's like one of the best investigative reporters in the country right now on so many issues and you guys do such great work you're leaving them in the dust and they're terrified and angry you're like Julian Assange to them you're the enemy because you're leaving them in the dust. Everybody knows that the Washington Post can't be counted on. Just like they can't be counted on when they attack you and they got to issue a giant

retraction at the top of the dang article. Yeah. And I mean, the reporter Joseph Men still has the retracted claim on his Twitter account. There's a lot wrong with the piece. But the general point here is that they've attacked us over this what's being called October 7th denialism now. And it's really upsetting to them because they can't seem to consolidate their narrative of October 7th, no matter what they do. Part of the problem was they didn't just stick with the facts. Yeah, atrocities were committed there. People were killed. Some of them were killed in cold blood, but they wanted to introduce this hoax about mass rape, which has just been debunked again and again. Now mass mainstream media is picking up on the fact that it's bogus. The Times of London did it

take down using a lot of my research. And so did the UN. The UN has found that it was completely bogus. But they keep pushing this. They have this new exhibit in New York, a Nova electronic music exhibit, which according to friends who visited is kind of like an attempt at creating a new Holocaust museum, a high-tech Holocaust museum, using like live streamed footage to horrify people. It's all about two, there are two objectives here. Number one, manufacturing consent for genocide, that Israel must be allowed to do whatever it takes to destroy Hamas, and that includes killing tens and tens of thousands of children and civilians. Number two, this is the Holocaust. October 7th is a holy event, and we, in order to consecrate the holiness of the victims,

must not allow any critical thinking about why it took place, contextualization, discussion of occupation, or Israel's position vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and those who engage in October 7th denialism must be criminalized. They are criminals just like those who denied the Holocaust. Remember, David Irving, one of the premier, I would say the premier Holocaust Revisionist historian went to jail in Austria after he insisted on going to speak in Vienna. They jailed him and put him on trial, and I think he spent time in prison. So this is what they want to do with the rest of us over something that is, I mean, it's not the Holocaust.

What's happening in Gaza is the Holocaust. And so the Washington Post, which is advancing the agenda. of the three-letter agencies and Israeli intelligence. You look at all the sources in their articles attacking us. They're all Israeli or U.S. intelligence. All of them. They are trying to make an example out of us because we have been the premier critics of the official narrative on October 7th. It's a badge of honor, but it's also terrifying to see how journalism and critical thinking itself is being criminalized right in front of our eyes. Yeah. Well, I mean, for the critical eye, the Washington Post article is

just junk. For those tuning in, it's, I'm talking with Max Blumenthal about this Washington Post hit piece on the gray zone where they already had to retract their central claim for crying out loud. But you know, one thing that really stuck out to me as

janky about the article was they have this whole side tangent about China and the Solomon Islands in there. Have you been mucking around in the Solomon Islands, Blumenthal, or what? Yeah, I don't think we've ever written about the Solomon Islands, but for some reason, there are several paragraphs dedicated to Chinese misinformation in the Solomon Islands, quoting the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

No note or no explanation to readers that that think tank, ASPI, is funded by the U.S. State Department in arms manufacturers and exists in Australia to push Australia into a war posture with China. We've previously exposed that think tank. But, you know, the Atlantic Council is quoted against us falsely claiming Wyatt Reed has deep ties to Iranian media. What is the Atlantic Council? It's funded by the U.S. government. Deep ties. To an Iranian media company. What do you do? He stood there with a microphone and he said things into a camera. Yeah, four years ago over the course of a few months. Makes it sound like he was the Ayatollah's man who ran press TV or something.

Exactly. I mean, it's it's, it's just absurd. And the Atlanta Council is not only funded by the U.S. government, it's funded by the UAE, which is in many ways an adversary of Iran. They're taking in tons and tons of foreign state money. We are taking in none. So the irony could not be more pronounced. But, you know, propaganda often succeeds through omission. Well, and I like the way you link right there to one. of the post-premier national security reporters, Greg, is it Jaffe, who is from CNAS, which is just the Democrats PNAC, right? As Robert Kagan and them created the project for a new American century for the Bush years, leading up to the Bush years, get prepared for all of that. And then his wife and friends created the center for a new American security to be the exact same thing for the Obama years. And, you know, these are, of course, the same thing. people in the Biden administration now and talk about a conflict of interest, man.

And if anyone can go and look at their website, they'll tell you how much money they rake in from arms manufacturers and so forth. Yeah, I mean, that was Victoria Newlands think tank. Then you got the $600 million deal that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, inked with the CIA to host its cloud at Amazon just days after he bought the Washington Post. Yep. and he had already had some before that i believe and then this was like expanding it but but it's like i mean i see what their fantasy is is to sort of like you know have like agents

show up at my door like to haul wyatt in and have me like line up next and you know what though max it's just like when they put the explicit lyrics label on an iced tea album it's just guarantees that we're all going to listen to it you know what i mean is to try to attack you all the time. It just makes people wonder why the post has got in for you. And then they go read the website and they're like, oh my God. You know, I never realize how close we were to invading Serbia. Yeah, yeah, completely. I mean, and it's as idiotic as Elon Musk is, the fact that Twitter is still relatively open to us, say whatever we want, is the source of the attacks on him from these same elements. It isn't about his idiocy or it really isn't about him being right wing

or anti-immigrant or anything. It's just about him. They want to shut down all possible channels of communication. Those of us who are complicating the objectives of the war state. And Twitter's one of them where we've been able to effectively respond to these attacks. They shut down our last crowd funder to create a position for Wyatt at GoFund. me. So we went somewhere else to a place called Spot Fund and we're raising money there. So maybe they'll be attacked next, but we have to just see what's taking place now. The propaganda model that Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky analyzed in manufacturing consent and Michael Parenti before that, it's kind of collapsing. And the sophistication behind that propaganda model required

that a consensus of the public believed that we lived in a liberal democracy and that censorship didn't need to take place in a way that it did in quote unquote authoritarian states where people were just arrested for challenging the government they could just be drowned out but then peer to peer media is what ruined that and then so now they have to clamp down on that that's where all this censorship comes from too many Blumenthal's out there man something's got to be done to stop them. That's their whole point of view. So it's like, you know, the velvet glove is coming off and now

it's the jack boot in the face. Yep. Then again, the more they tighten their grip, the more people slip through their fingers, too. So we'll see how it goes. All right, Max, I'm out of time. But thank you so much for coming back on the show. You always do such great work. Everybody, this is Max Blumenthal. He's at thegrayzone.com

with a whole great stable of journalists for you to read there, too. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Scott. All right, y'all, and that's it for anti-war radio. For today, I'm Scott Horton. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.