One of the articles is based on Senator Orrin Hatch’s remark about the wiretaps that led to the downfall of Michael Flynn as the national-security adviser. Another is based on Mark Levin, a conservative radio host, who recently accused Obama of “police state” tactics to carry out a “silent coup” against Trump.
.. One of President Trump’s most consistent rhetorical maneuvers is a fairly basic but often highly effective one—the diversionary reverse accusation. When he is accused of benefitting from “fake news,” he flips the neologism on its head; suddenly CNN, the Times, and the rest are “fake news.” When Democratic politicians such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi call for investigations of his campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, Trump posts pictures of those critics meeting publicly with Vladimir Putin and calls for an investigation.
.. Ironically, the Obama Administration, after being informed that the Russian government was likely behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee and that the effort was intended to undermine Hillary Clinton, did not act more forcefully for fear of appearing to favor its own political party.
.. The book describes Putin’s system as a “protection racket” in which he views himself as the “CEO of Russia, Inc.,” and is served by “crony oligarchs.” “In reality,” Hill and Gaddy write, “his leadership style is more like that of a mafia family Don.”
.. the methods used in the Russian secret services to discredit opponents. “Core individuals collect and amass detailed compromising material (kompromat in Russian) that can be used as leverage on every key figure inside and outside of government,”
.. They wanted to amplify someone like Trump because what he says is music to their ears.”
.. Also, this is not just two-way superpower. There is China, the rising powers. I almost see it as like the great power competition from the time before the Second World War.”
.. the Russians, partly because they “have” Edward Snowden, in Moscow, possess “a good idea of what the U.S. is capable of knowing. They got all of his information. You can be damn well sure that [Snowden’s] information is theirs.”
Wikileaks Isn’t Whistleblowing
Demanding transparency from the powerful is not a right to see every single private email anyone in a position of power ever sent or received. WikiLeaks, for example, gleefully tweeted to its millions of followers that a Clinton Foundation employee had attempted suicide; news outlets repeated the report.
.. Wanton destruction of the personal privacy of any person who has ever come near a political organization is a vicious but effective means to smother dissent. This method is so common in Russia and the former Soviet states that it has a name: “kompromat,” releasing compromising material against political opponents. Emails of dissidents are hacked, their houses bugged, the activities in their bedrooms videotaped, and the material made public to embarrass and intimidate people whose politics displeases the powerful.
Kompromat does not have to go after every single dissident to work: If you know that getting near politics means that your personal privacy may be destroyed, you will understandably stay away.
.. Dissent requires the right to privacy: to be let alone in our vulnerabilities and the ability to form our thoughts and share them when we choose. These hacks undermine that crucial right.
.. All campaigns need to have internal discussions. Taking one campaign manager’s email account and releasing it with zero curation in the last month of an election needs to be treated as what it is: political sabotage, not whistle-blowing.
.. These hacks also function as a form of censorship. Once, censorship worked by blocking crucial pieces of information. In this era of information overload, censorship works by drowning us in too much undifferentiated information, crippling our ability to focus. These dumps, combined with the news media’s obsession with campaign trivia and gossip, have resulted in whistle-drowning, rather than whistle-blowing
.. obsessively reporting on internal campaign discussions about strategy from the (long ago) primary, in the last month of a general election against a different opponent, is not responsible journalism. Out-of-context emails from WikiLeaks have fueled viral misinformation on social media.