Biden will never fail the Military Industrial Complex!
Posted by te2ataria on March 31, 2022
Sent by a reader
“Biden FY 2023 budget puts war before human needs
“President Biden’s FY 2023 budget request once again prioritizes violence, the military and war over peace and human needs. But more spending on militarism can’t address the nation’s or the world’s problems.
“At $813 billion, the President’s request for the Pentagon exceeds even the $782 billion budget that Congress just passed by $31 billion. The increase alone is twice the amount that Congress refused for ongoing COVID aid for antivirals, vaccines and tests, after nearly one million Americans have died of the virus.
“The U.S. military budget is already more than the next 11 countries combined, 12 times more than Russia’s, and higher than at the peak of the Vietnam War or the Cold War. If more militarism were the key to a stable and secure world, we would already be there.
“Domestically, the U.S. has deported more than five million people over the last 20 years. The president’s budget request also continues the precedent of militarizing immigration policy, so that immigrants are met with violence, detention and surveillance. It maintains or slightly increases funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agencies responsible for family separations and abusive detention conditions for immigrants.
“There are some bright spots. The request cuts the number of beds dedicated to detention of immigrants, an inhumane policy that has subjected immigrants to abusive and dangerous conditions. It also cuts the request for the troubled F-35 jet fighter by one third, slowing the flow of money to a behemoth weapons system that has failed to meet the Pentagon’s standards. These cuts show some willingness to break with policy that is immoral and doesn’t work. Congress should maintain both of these cuts.
“Military intervention can’t fix the world’s problems, but that won’t stop contractors and hawks from calling for more military spending. Half of Pentagon funding in a typical year goes to for-profit contractors. Stock prices for weapons contractors have soared since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and weapons company leaders have spoken of the invasion as an “opportunity.”
“The U.S. has relied for far too long on a false equation of military might and higher military spending with security. U.S. military spending is already 12 times as high as Russia’s, but that did not prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Instead of doubling down on this broken model, the U.S. should reinvest in diplomacy and humanitarian aid, and recognize increasing militarization as the escalating factor it too often is.
“As a candidate and as President, President Biden has called for a diplomacy-first foreign policy, a more humane immigration policy, more investment in public health, child care, elder care, clean energy, ending poverty, higher education, and more. Americans support those priorities. Unfortunately, this budget does not deliver. ” [March 28, 2022]
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2022/biden-fy-2023-budget-puts-war-human-needs/
Zombie Democracy - Apartheid Fort NZ 
DW said
The MIC (the billionaire-war-profiteer circle) also has CNN, especially its “queer chickenhawks”, to thank for egging on their “héros du jour” in Ukraine.
Search: “films about the military industrial complex”
GN said
William Hartung and Julia Gledhill, Ukraine and the Profits of War
Posted on April 17, 2022
Back in September 2008, Senator Joe Biden offered a bit of wisdom while running for vice president on Barack Obama’s ticket. In a speech criticizing the Republican presidential campaign of senatorial colleague John McCain, he claimed to be quoting his own father when he said: “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”
Almost 14 years later, how apt his father was when it comes to the country his son now presides over (more or less). After all, Joe’s $1.75 trillion domestic social-spending package, the Build Back Better bill, is in a ditch at the side of some West Virginia road. Meanwhile, as TomDispatch regular and Pentagon expert William Hartung and Julia Gledhill, a defense analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, make all too clear today, the next Pentagon budget, at an astronomical $813 billion dollars, is heading for passage by a humongous congressional majority. (To put that figure in perspective, it’s $75 billion more than Donald Trump’s last “defense” budget.) Worse yet, numerous representatives, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, are already demanding yet more of the same. In fact, in think-tank Washington and beyond, there are now even calls for a future Pentagon budget that would top one trillion dollars annually. Imagine that, in a country already spending more on what’s still called “national security” than the next 11 countries combined, even as crucial elements of the domestic budget that would actually keep so many Americans more secure increasingly end up in that West Virginia ditch.
So, give Joe Biden’s dad a little credit. He was all too on target. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you do indeed value. Is there any question about that in the America of 2022? As retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore wrote recently, this country has “reached the point in our collective history where we face three certainties: death, taxes, and ever-soaring spending on weaponry and war.” And that should be the definition of “insecurity.” If you doubt me, just let Hartung and Gledhill fill you in on the ever more militarized “gold rush” this Ukrainian moment of ours represents. Tom
https://tomdispatch.com/the-new-gold-rush/
The New Gold Rush: How Pentagon Contractors Are Cashing in on the Ukraine Crisis
By William D. Hartung and Julia Gledhill
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one group is already benefiting from it: U.S. arms contractors.
Even before hostilities broke out, the CEOs of major weapons firms were talking about how tensions in Europe could pad their profits. In a January 2022 call with his company’s investors, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes typically bragged that the prospect of conflict in Eastern Europe and other global hot spots would be good for business, adding that “we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales… [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”
In late March, in an interview with the Harvard Business Review after the war in Ukraine had begun, Hayes defended the way his company would profit from that conflict:
“So I make no apology for that. I think again recognizing we are there to defend democracy and the fact is eventually we will see some benefit in the business over time. Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD [the Department of Defense] or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the next coming years.”
Arms to Ukraine, Profits to Contractors
The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.
Indeed, direct arms transfers to Ukraine already reflect only part of the extra money going to U.S. military contractors. This fiscal year alone, they are guaranteed to also reap significant benefits from the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, both of which finance the acquisition of American weaponry and other equipment, as well as military training. These have, in fact, been the two primary channels for military aid to Ukraine from the moment the Russians invaded and seized Crimea in 2014. Since then, the United States has committed around $5 billion in security assistance to that country.
According to the State Department, the United States has provided such military aid to help Ukraine “preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO.” So, when Russian troops began to mass on the Ukrainian border last year, Washington quickly upped the ante. On March 31, 2021, the U.S. European Command declared a “potential imminent crisis,” given the estimated 100,000 Russian troops already along that border and within Crimea. As last year ended, the Biden administration had committed $650 million in weaponry to Ukraine, including anti-aircraft and anti-armor equipment like the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin anti-tank missile.
Despite such elevated levels of American military assistance, Russian troops did indeed invade Ukraine in February. Since then, according to Pentagon reports, the U.S. has committed to giving approximately $2.6 billion in military aid to that country, bringing the Biden administration total to more than $3.2 billion and still rising.
Some of this assistance was included in a March emergency-spending package for Ukraine, which required the direct procurement of weapons from the defense industry, including drones, laser-guided rocket systems, machine guns, ammunition, and other supplies. The major military-industrial corporations will now seek Pentagon contracts to deliver that extra weaponry, even as they are gearing up to replenish Pentagon stocks already delivered to the Ukrainians.
On that front, in fact, military contractors have much to look forward to. More than half of the Pentagon’s $6.5 billion portion of the emergency-spending package for Ukraine is designated simply to replenish DoD inventories. In all, lawmakers allocated $3.5 billion to that effort, $1.75 billion more than the president even requested. They also boosted funding by $150 million for the State Department’s FMF program for Ukraine. And keep in mind that those figures don’t even include emergency financing for the Pentagon’s acquisition and maintenance costs, which are guaranteed to provide more revenue streams for the major weapons makers.
Better yet, from the viewpoint of such companies, there are many bites left to take from the apple of Ukrainian military aid. President Biden has already made it all too clear that “we’re going to give Ukraine the arms to fight and defend themselves through all the difficult days ahead.” One can only assume that more commitments are on the way.
Another positive side effect of the war for Lockheed, Raytheon, and other arms merchants like them is the push by House Armed Services Committee chair Adam Smith (D-WA) and ranking committee Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama to speed up production of a next-generation anti-aircraft missile to replace the Stinger. In his congressional confirmation hearing, William LaPlante, the latest nominee to head acquisition at the Pentagon, argued that America also needs more “hot production lines” for bombs, missiles, and drones. Consider that yet another benefit-in-waiting for the major weapons contractors.
The Pentagon Gold Mine
For U.S. arms makers, however, the greatest benefits of the war in Ukraine won’t be immediate weapons sales, large as they are, but the changing nature of the ongoing debate over Pentagon spending itself. Of course, the representatives of such companies were already plugging the long-term challenge posed by China, a greatly exaggerated threat, but the Russian invasion is nothing short of manna from heaven for them, the ultimate rallying cry for advocates of greater military outlays. Even before the war, the Pentagon was slated to receive at least $7.3 trillion over the next decade, more than four times the cost of President Biden’s $1.7 trillion domestic Build Back Better plan, already stymied by members of Congress who labeled it “too expensive” by far. And keep in mind that, given the current surge in Pentagon spending, that $7.3 trillion could prove a minimal figure.
Indeed, Pentagon officials like Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks promptly cited Ukraine as one of the rationales for the Biden administration’s proposed record national-security budget proposal of $813 billion, calling Russia’s invasion “an acute threat to the world order.” In another era that budget request for Fiscal Year 2023 would have been mind-boggling, since it’s higher than spending at the peaks of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam and over $100 billion more than the Pentagon received annually at the height of the Cold War.
Despite its size, however, congressional Republicans — joined by a significant number of their Democratic colleagues — are already pushing for more. Forty Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have, in fact, signed a letter to President Biden calling for 5% growth in military spending beyond inflation, which would potentially add up to $100 billion to that budget request. Typically enough, Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA), who represents the area near the Huntington Ingalls company’s Newport News military shipyard in Virginia, accused the administration of “gutting the Navy” because it contemplates decommissioning some older ships to make way for new ones. That complaint was lodged despite that service’s plan to spend a whopping $28 billion on new ships in FY 2023.
Who Benefits?
That planned increase in shipbuilding funds is part of a proposed pool of $276 billion for weapons procurement, as well as further research and development, contained in the new budget, which is where the top five weapons-producing contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — make most of their money. Those firms already split more than $150 billion in Pentagon contracts annually, a figure that will skyrocket if the administration and Congress have their way. To put all of this in context, just one of those top five firms, Lockheed Martin, was awarded $75 billion in Pentagon contracts in fiscal year 2020 alone. That’s considerably more than the entire budget for the State Department, dramatic evidence of how skewed Washington’s priorities are, despite the Biden administration’s pledge to “put diplomacy first.”
The Pentagon’s weapons wish list for FY 2023 is a catalog of just how the big contractors will cash in. For example, the new Columbia Class ballistic missile submarine, built by General Dynamics Electric Boat plant in southeastern Connecticut, will see its proposed budget for FY 2023 grow from $5.0 billion to $6.2 billion. Spending on Northrop Grumman’s new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, will increase by about one-third annually, to $3.6 billion. The category of “missile defense and defeat,” a specialty of Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, is slated to receive more than $24 billion. And space-based missile warning systems, a staple of the Trump administration-created Space Force, will jump from $2.5 billion in FY 2022 to $4.7 billion in this year’s proposed budget.
Among all the increases, there was a single surprise: a proposed reduction in purchases of the troubled Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft, from 85 to 61 planes in FY 2023. The reason is clear enough. That plane has more than 800 identified design flaws and its production and performance problems have been little short of legendary. Luckily for Lockheed Martin, that drop in numbers has not been accompanied by a proportional reduction in funding. While newly produced planes may be reduced by one-third, the actual budget allocation for the F-35 will drop by less than 10%, from $12 billion to $11 billion, an amount that’s more than the complete discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since Lockheed Martin won the F-35 contract, development costs have more than doubled, while production delays have set the aircraft back by nearly a decade. Nonetheless, the military services have purchased so many of those planes that manufacturers can’t keep up with the demand for spare parts. And yet the F-35 can’t even be properly tested for combat effectiveness because the simulation software required is not only unfinished, but without even an estimated completion date. So, the F-35 is many years away from the full production of planes that actually work as advertised, if that’s ever in the cards.
A number of the weapons systems which, in the Ukraine moment, are guaranteed to be showered with cash are so dangerous or dysfunctional that, like the F-35, they should actually be phased out. Take the new ICBM. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because a president would only have minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, greatly increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war based on a false alarm. Nor does it make sense to buy aircraft carriers at $13 billion a pop, especially since the latest version is having trouble even launching and landing aircraft — its primary function — and is increasingly vulnerable to attack by next-generation high-speed missiles.
The few positives in the new budget like the Navy’s decision to retire the unnecessary and unworkable Littoral Combat Ship — a sort of “F-35 of the sea” designed for multiple tasks none of which it does well — could easily be reversed by advocates from states and districts where those systems are built and maintained. The House of Representatives, for instance, has a powerful Joint Strike Fighter Caucus, which, in 2021, mustered more than one-third of all House members to press for more F-35s than the Pentagon and Air Force requested, as they will no doubt do again this year. A Shipbuilding Caucus, co-chaired by representatives Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Rob Wittman (R-VA), will fight against the Navy’s plan to retire old ships to buy new ones. (They would prefer that the Navy keep the old ones and buy new ones with more of your tax money up for grabs.) Similarly, the “ICBM Coalition,” made up of senators from states with either ICBM bases or production centers, has a near perfect record of staving off reductions in the deployment or funding of those weapons and will, in 2022, be hard at work defending its budgetary allocation.
Towards a New Policy
Coming up with a sensible, realistic, and affordable defense policy, always a challenge, will be even more so in the midst of the Ukrainian nightmare. Still, given where our taxpayer dollars go, it remains all too worthwhile. Such a new approach should include things like reducing the numbers of the Pentagon’s private contractors, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are engaged in thoroughly redundant jobs that could be done more cheaply by civilian government employees or simply eliminated. It’s estimated that cutting spending on contractors by 15% would save around $262 billion over 10 years.
The Pentagon’s three-decades-long near $2 trillion “modernization” plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines, along with new warheads, should, for instance, simply be scrapped in keeping with the kind of “deterrence-only” nuclear strategy developed by the nuclear-policy organization Global Zero. And the staggering American global military footprint — an invitation to further conflict that includes more than 750 military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, and counterterror operations in 85 countries — should, at the very least, be sharply scaled back.
According to the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force and a study of alternative approaches to defense carried out by the Congressional Budget Office, even a relatively minimalist strategic rethinking could save at least $1 trillion over the next decade, enough to make a healthy down payment on investments in public health, preventing or mitigating the worst potential impacts of climate change, or beginning the task of narrowing record levels of income inequality.
Of course, none of these changes can occur without challenging the power and influence of the military-industrial-congressional complex, a task as urgent as it is difficult in this moment of carnage in Europe. No matter how hard it may be, it’s a fight worth having, both for the security of the world and the future of the planet.
One thing is guaranteed: a new gold rush of “defense” spending is a disaster in the making for all of us not in that complex.
Copyright 2022 William D. Hartung and Julia Gledhill
Julia Gledhill is an analyst at the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight.
William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex.
https://tomdispatch.com/the-new-gold-rush/
A. C. said
Biden asks Congress for new $33 billion Ukraine aid package
President Joe Biden on Thursday asked Congress to pass a proposed $33 billion Ukraine aid package, including more than $20 billion in military aid and other security assistance.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/biden-ukraine-congress-aid-russia-watch-live-stream-today-2022-04-28/
Security Council “Failed To End Russia-Ukraine War”: UN Chief
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “Let me be very clear: the Security Council failed to do everything in its power to prevent and end this war.”
The Security Council failed to go far enough in its efforts to “prevent and end” Russia’s war in Ukraine, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres admitted Thursday while visiting Kyiv. [AFP]
Russia accuses Nato of ‘proxy war’ in Ukraine as US hosts crucial defence summit
Russia’s foreign minister has accused Nato of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, as defence ministers gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a “very critical” few weeks.
Sergei Lavrov told Russian state media: “Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/26/russia-accuses-nato-of-proxy-war-in-ukraine-as-us-hosts-crucial-defence-summit
AD said
Baby formula for the US infants, or weapons for the Ukrainian mafia?
US Congress Decides!!!
WASHINGTON (AP)— The House emphatically approved a fresh $40 billion Ukraine aid package Tuesday as lawmakers beefed up President Joe Biden’s initial request, signaling a magnified, bipartisan commitment to thwart Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody three-month-old invasion.
The measure sailed to passage by a lopsided 368-57 margin, providing $7 billion more than Biden’s request from April and dividing the increase evenly between defense and humanitarian programs. The bill would give Ukraine military and economic assistance, help regional allies, replenish weapons the Pentagon has shipped overseas and provide $5 billion to address global food shortages caused by the war’s crippling of Ukraine’s normally robust production of many crops.
The new legislation would bring American support for the effort to nearly $54 billion, including the $13.6 billion in support Congress enacted in March. That’s about $6 billion more than the U.S. spent on all its foreign and military aid in 2019, according to a January report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which studies issues for lawmakers. It’s also around 1% of the entire federal budget.
GH said
Facebook Lifting Ban on Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion “Stunning”
https://accuracy.org/release/facebook-lifting-ban-on-neo-nazi-azov-battalion-stunning/
Meet the Head of Biden’s New “Disinformation Governing Board”
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/meet-the-head-of-bidens-new-disinformation-governing-board/
By Lev Golinkin – May 12, 2022
Nina Jankowicz is a veteran information warrior. But her “experience” working with StopFake should have set off alarm bells.
Late last month, the Joe Biden administration publicly confirmed that a “Disinformation Governing Board” working group had been created within the Department of Homeland Security. The news prompted a flood of concern about the impact of such an Orwellian organ on America.
But there’s no need to engage in hypotheticals to understand the dangers. One has to only consider the past of Nina Jankowicz, the head of the new disinformation board.
Jankowicz’s experience as a disinformation warrior includes her work with StopFake, a US government-funded “anti-disinformation” organization founded in March 2014 and lauded as a model of how to combat Kremlin lies. Four years later, StopFake began aggressively whitewashing two Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence, including war crimes.
The War on the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party
Today, StopFake is an official Facebook fact-checking partner, which gives it the power to censor news, while Jankowicz is America’s disinformation czar.
Blinken Ignoring Glorification of Nazis in Ukraine for Geopolitical Gain
[Secretary Blinken Faces a Big Test in Ukraine, Where Nazis and Their Sympathizers Are Glorified]
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/blinken-holocaust-ukraine/
If the Biden administration is serious about combating threats such as white supremacy, perhaps it should first reflect on the old Roman question: Who will guard the guardians?
StopFake was founded right after Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan uprising ousted the country’s president and swept a new, US-backed government into power. Formed by professors and students from the Kyiv Mohyla Journalism School, StopFake presented itself as a plucky, grassroots group wielding hard facts and semi-permanent smirks as it shredded Russian propaganda. It gained notoriety by producing slick videos hosted by dynamic disinformation warriors debunking the Moscow lies of the day.
Western reporters—and checkbooks—were paying attention. Shortly after its creation, StopFake began receiving funding from Western governments, including the National Endowment for Democracy—an organization mainly funded by the US Congress—and the British embassy in Ukraine. It was also supported by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. (StopFake has run numerous episodes that cover Soros but fail to disclose this potential conflict of interest—a violation of basic tenets of journalism.)
Among StopFake’s hosts was Jankowicz, a graduate of Bryn Mawr and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service who was already part of the burgeoning disinformation warrior industry while in Ukraine as a Fulbright Clinton Public Policy Fellow. On January 29, 2017, she hosted StopFake Episode 117, whose lead story dealt with a perennial obsession of Russian propaganda: Ukraine’s volunteer battalions.
These are the dozens of paramilitaries formed in 2014 to fight against Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region. From the beginning, Moscow focused on the violent and far-right nature of many of these units.
At the time of Jankowicz’s piece, the Russian press was bristling at Kyiv’s creating a new holiday to honor military volunteers—Moscow commentators depicted this as a celebration of far-right butchers. Jankowicz offered an emphatically different take.
“Volunteer battalions organized throughout the country and they supported weak Ukrainian armed forces and prevented further Russian separatist encroachment. Today the volunteer battalions are part of the official Ukrainian armed forces, overseen by the Defense and Interior Ministries,” she said in her StopFake debunking segment.
“The volunteer movement in Ukraine extends far beyond military service. Volunteer groups are active in supporting Ukraine’s military with food, clothing, medicine, and post-battle rehabilitation, as well as working actively with the nearly two million internal refugees displaced by the war in Ukraine,” she added.
While Janowicz extolled the battalions, an on-screen graphic displayed patches of four paramilitaries: Aidar, Dnipro-1, Donbas, and Azov. All four have a documented record of war crimes, while Azov is an outright neo-Nazi group.
On September 10, 2014, three years before Jankowicz’s warm portrayal of volunteer battalions, Newsweek ran an article titled “Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-style’ War Crimes.” The story, which covered a report by Amnesty International, featured Aidar, one of the battalions lauded in Jankowicz’s segment. According to Amnesty, Aidar fighters amassed a record of “widespread abuses,” ranging from kidnapping and torture to “possible executions.”
Three months later, Amnesty issued an urgent report about Aidar and Dnipro-1—another paramilitary featured in Jankowicz’s segment—blocking food from eastern Ukrainian towns and villages. “Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime,” Amnesty stated.
(Of course, almost every war crime charged against one side in this conflict has also been charged against the other; Russia has reportedly recently been blocking food in its siege of Mariupol.)
The Donbas Battalion—the third paramilitary in Jankowicz’s segment—is another unit notorious for torture, as documented by the UN, among others. The fourth group, Azov, not only has its own history of war crimes, but is avowedly neo-Nazi; indeed, the Azov patch shown in Jankowicz’s video has a stylized Wolfsangel (the “N” with the sword)—a popular white supremacist rune used by groups like Aryan Nations.
Azov—which is now a premier hub of transnational white supremacy—has been extensively covered by Western media outlets, including by me in The Nation. Its nature was well known by the time of Jankowicz’s 2017 StopFake video. (In a 2020 book, Jankowicz briefly acknowledged Azov is a “far-right group,” but immediately pivoted to portraying them as victims of a Russian hoax.)
During Jankowicz’s tenure with StopFake (her last known episode aired May 21, 2017), the disinformation site continued being touted as a pioneer in combating Russian propaganda. In March 2017, a fawning Politico story heralded StopFake as the “grand wizards” of the anti-fake news ecosystem. It was an ironically prophetic description, given that Jankowicz’s misleading “nothing to see here” report about the battalions turned out to be a mere fraction of what StopFake has done for Ukraine’s far right.
By 2018, StopFake started defending C14, a neo-Nazi gang that conducted horrific pogroms of Ukraine’s Roma. After media outlet Hromadske described C14 as neo-Nazi, one of StopFake’s founders tweeted “for Hromadske, C14 is ‘neo-Nazi,’ in reality one of them—Oleksandr Voitko—is a war veteran and before going to the war—alum and faculty at @MohylaJSchool, journalist at Foreign news desk at Channel 5. Now also active participant of war veterans grass-root organization,” as if the fact that the gang has a veteran somehow precludes it from being neo-Nazi.
In 2020, StopFake defended C14 in a press release. The same year, news broke that C14 was aiding Kyiv police in enforcing Covid quarantine measures; StopFake labeled this fake news, denying C14 is far-right, describing it as a “community organization” instead, and citing C14’s own denial of carrying out anti-Roma pogroms as “evidence” of its innocence.
In reality, C14’s ties to Ukrainian authorities have been verified by Radio Free Europe (US government–run media), among others. By now, even the US State Department classifies C14 as a “nationalist hate group.”
StopFake has also continued defending the Azov Battalion. Last month, StopFake tweeted that the unit—which was formed out of a neo-Nazi gang, uses two neo-Nazi symbols on its insignia, and has been documented as neo-Nazi by numerous Western outlets—“doesn’t profess #Nazi views as official ideology,” labeling stories about Azov and neo-Nazism as fake news.
This is particularly disturbing because in February, Facebook reversed its ban on praising Azov. Facebook had previously banned the Azov battalion’s account as well as posts celebrating the neo-Nazi organization. The reversal is stunning, given the platform’s professed commitment to combating far-right extremism.
It’s unclear whether StopFake played a role in Facebook’s decision to lift its Azov ban, but considering StopFake is Facebook’s official fact-checking partner, it’s hard to believe the group’s track record of whitewashing Azov wasn’t a factor.
The “grand wizards” of battling fake news have even dabbled with Holocaust distortion, downplaying WWII-era paramilitaries who slaughtered Jews as mere “historic figures” and Ukrainian nationalist leaders, while attacking members of the US Congress who had denounced Ukraine’s glorification of Nazi collaborators.
Astonishingly, when Jankowicz herself was quoted in a July 2020 New York Times story about StopFake’s going off the rails, the article failed to disclose the fact that the disinformation expert being quoted used to work with the group.
Painting neo-Nazi paramilitaries with an extensive record of war crimes as patriots helping refugees, all while working with a “disinformation” group that turned out to run interference for violent neo-Nazi formations—that’s the experience Biden’s new disinformation czar brings to the table.
Copyright: Author or thenation.com
BB said
Ukrainian mafia receives a massive windfall from their counterparts in the US
The Senate voted 86-11 in favor of the emergency package of military, economic and humanitarian assistance, by far the largest U.S. aid package for Ukraine to date. All 11 no votes were from Republicans. [Media]