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In a strange episode in the history of American media, news broke on June 6th that a Ukrainian NGO had released a study on media narratives skeptical or hostile towards the idea of American support for the war in Ukraine which included a list of over 300 individuals, news outlets and organizations spanning the entire spectrum of American political thought.
The study quickly garnered a reputation, mostly in jest, as an “enemies list,” but it’s now the target of a Congressional probe calling it “an excuse to smear a large group of Americans who have been skeptical of aid to Ukraine in one form or another”.
Entitled Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it, the study was published by Texty, a Ukrainian NGO that has received direct funding from the State Department’s TechCamp program that trains foreign journalists and activists, details Antiwar.com, one of the entities implicated in the study.
Coverage of the war in Ukraine and analysis of US foreign policy in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific from WaL has been re-printed over a dozen times on Antiwar by senior editor Eric Garris, who was also implicated by name in the Texty study.
On a nuts and bolts level, Texty’s study is about identifying who is spreading Russian propaganda, as they term it, and how the vast number of people and entities they claim are “contributing to political discordance within the decision-making establishment” are connected.
The scope is broad, and includes award-winning investigative reporters Matt Taibi, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Gareth Porter, Glen Greenwald, and Seymour Hersch, major media outlets like The Nation and American Conservative magazines, The Daily Wire, and all of Fox News; smaller or investigative outlets like Veterans Today, Common Dreams, The Grayzone, and Eisenhower Media Network; and a number of think-tanks and other advocacy groups including the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Bring Our Troops Home, the Quincy Institute, the Center for Political Innovation, Codepink, the Ron Paul Institute, and Concerned Veterans for America.
It also includes a variety of former US military and intelligence officials, and a sphere of entrepreneurial types including Elon Musk and Tim Pool.
In the political sphere, it includes former President Donald Trump, over a dozen current and former House and Senate members including Matt Gaetz, (R – FL) Tulsi Gabbard, (D – HW) and Sarah Palin; (R – AL) the Libertarian Party of the United States and its chairwoman Angela McArdle by name, former independent candidate Jill Stein; a variety of left-wing figures such as Noam Chomsky, Cornell West, UN-sponsored Colombia economist Jeffery Sachs, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the “Squad” of junior Congresswomen, and a host of socialist organizations and writers.
Left out
WaL, which has covered the Ukrainian war in depth since before its initiation, was not included as an entity on the list, nor was our founder Andrew Corbley, who has reported extensively on the mainstream media narrative of the war and analysis on the weapons deliveries.
Not left out was Rick Rozoff, a frequent collaborator with WaL, who was implicated in the study as adjacent to Antiwar.com.
“I was aware of it,” Rozoff laughs upon hearing of his inclusion, “If anything the way [the authors] write about me should exonerate me of these charges but they didn’t see the contrast”.
The understandable backlash and eyebrow-raising from the study’s publication saw the authors add a disclaimer to the beginning, stating unequivocally that it “is neither a ‘list of enemies of Ukraine’ nor a ‘kill list,'” and doesn’t “deny, condemn, or dispute the right of American citizens, media, and institutions to express any opinions or hold any political beliefs”.
Instead, the study merely tracks the activity of all those it included, and describes how, whether the authors intended it to or not, most of them are not pro-Russian but pro an end to the conflict as soon as possible. The other stream of continuity is the acknowledgment that NATO expansion and an unwillingness on the part of the US to consider the Russian Federation’s security concerns contributed to the war’s initiation.
To these, the study does attempt to smear these Americans of every stripe and background as Russian propagandists without feeling the need to explain why apart from linking to some fact-check websites and Wikipedia.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Senator J. D. Vance (R – OH) have formally requested a tranche of documents be released by the State Department regarding any grants, communications, or policy documents it was involved in either authoring, exchanging, or signing with Texty. WaL
We Humbly Ask For Your Support—Follow the link here to see all the ways, monetary and non-monetary.
PICTURED ABOVE: A screengrab of the interactive feature in the Texty study on Russian propaganda in American discourse. PC: Texty.org.ua
