{"id":14036,"date":"2015-04-17T00:57:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T00:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=14036"},"modified":"2015-04-17T01:19:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T01:19:30","slug":"conspiracy-theorists-bloggers-compared-to-isis-during-congressional-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=14036","title":{"rendered":"Conspiracy Theorists, Bloggers Compared To ISIS During Congressional Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>SOTN Editor&#8217;s Note:<\/strong><br \/>\nLiz Wahl&#8217;s transparently scripted comments before Congress in the video below reveal an obvious conspiracy between her and the U.S. Federal Government. Whether she was contracted by the CIA or the U.S. State Department will likely never be known. However, her sophomoric presentation and \u00a0thoroughly unprincipled stand completely laid bare her true intentions for going to work for RT.com.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, Liz Wahl is a traitor to the cause of truth and journalistic integrity. \u00a0Her presentation in Washington was as deceitful as it was mortifying. \u00a0Ms. Wahl&#8217;s outrageously untruthful and misleading statements against her former employer will forever taint any legacy she may have left behind at RT.com.<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"title\">Conspiracy Theorists, Bloggers Compared To ISIS During Congressional Hearing<\/h1>\n<p>by Paul Joseph Watson<br \/>\nPrisonPlanet.com<\/p>\n<p>Bloggers, conspiracy theorists and people who challenge establishment narratives on the Internet were all likened to ISIS terrorists during a chilling Congressional hearing which took place yesterday.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2LzvuiLbUvM\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">The hearing, hosted by the House Foreign Relations Committee, was titled \u201cConfronting Russia\u2019s Weaponization of Information,\u201d and accused Russian state broadcaster RT of weaponizing \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d to spread propaganda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">One of the speakers giving testimony was former RT host Liz Wahl, who made a public spectacle of quitting Russian state media last year in an incident <a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/how_cold_war-hungry_neocons_stage_managed_liz_wahls_resignation_20140319\">stage-managed by neo-con James Kirchick<\/a>, himself a former employee of Radio Free Europe \u2013 a state media outlet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Remarking that the Internet provided a platform for \u201cfringe voices and extremists,\u201d Wahl characterized people who challenge establishment narratives as a \u201ccult\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">\u201cThey mobilize and they feel they\u2019re part of some enlightened fight against the establishment\u2026.they find a platform to voice their deranged views,\u201d said Wahl.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Referring to <a href=\"http:\/\/rt.com\/news\/225543-rt-isis-us-broadcaster\/\">comments made in January<\/a> by US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) chief Andrew Lack, who characterized RT as a threat on the same level as ISIS and Boko Haram, Wahl said the comparison was justified.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">\u201cBy using the Internet to mobilize people that feel displaced, that feel like they\u2019ve been on the outskirts of society, and give them a place where they can find a sense of belonging, and maybe make a difference in their own way, and it\u2019s a problem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Wahl went on to bemoan the fact that conspiracy theorists were \u201cshaping the discussion online, on message boards, on Twitter, on social media,\u201d before asserting that the web had become a beacon of \u201cdisinformation, false theories, people that are just trying to make a name for themselves, bloggers or whatever, that have absolutely no accountability for the truth, that are able to rile up a mass amount of people online.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Committee Chairman Ed Royce then proceeded to accuse people on YouTube of using \u201craw violence\u201d to advance conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Peter Pomerantsev, of the London-based Legatum Institute, followed up by claiming that conspiracy theories were no longer \u201cfringe\u201d and were now driving the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, before lamenting the fact that conspiracy theories were challenging the \u201cglobal order\u201d and threatening to undermine global institutions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">All three individuals that gave testimony are staunch critics of Russia, leading Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to wish \u201cwe had at least one other person to balance out this in a way that perhaps could\u2019ve compared our system to the Russian system, to find out where that truth is, just how bad that is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Beyond the inflammatory rhetoric, the real story revolves around the fact that Washington was caught off guard by the rapid growth of RT, with Hillary Clinton and others having acknowledged the fact that the U.S. is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LyjnEm8DZkI\">\u201closing the information war,\u201d<\/a> which is why they are now desperately trying to denigrate the Russian broadcaster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m1p-E2xmpjA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">Without a doubt, RT puts out pro-Russian propaganda, but it also broadcasts truths about geopolitics and U.S. foreign policy that Americans will never see on mainstream corporate networks, precisely because those networks are also engaged in propaganda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">There\u2019s no mystery behind why RT has become so big \u2013 telling the truth is popular \u2013 but because Washington finds it impossible to compete on that basis, it has been forced to resort to ad hominem attacks and ludicrous comparisons to ISIS in a desperate bid to level the playing field.<\/p>\n<p class=\"unnamed10\" align=\"left\">As linguist Noam Chomsky said, \u201cThe idea that there should be a network reaching people, which does not repeat the US propaganda system, is intolerable\u201d to the US establishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SOTN Editor&#8217;s Note: Liz Wahl&#8217;s transparently scripted comments before Congress in the video below reveal an obvious conspiracy between her and the U.S. Federal Government. Whether she was contracted by the CIA or the U.S. State Department will likely never &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=14036\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}