Why The Fake News Media Is Promoting Russian Hacking Hysteria

From Return of Kings:

The current year was the gift that kept on giving when it comes to pulling back the curtain on the powers that be. What we’ve seen since Donald Trump’s win has basically been the five stages of grief. 

The denial phase came with the “not my president!” shrieks. Denial became anger when “not my president!” led to large protests. Then came the bargaining phase. The first act of this was the “recount 2016” extravaganza that was little more than a fundraising scam by Jill Stein. When that effort collapsed, the second attempt at bargaining came with what is quite possibly the most visceral episode of mass hysteria I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying a lot): the moral panic over “muh Russian hackers.” The tales goes that “the Russians” were responsible for the releases of DNC and John Podesta’s emails. 

While “muh Russia” was used as a rhetorical device by the failed Hillary Clinton campaign for months prior to the election, the story picked up hysterical steam afterward. First came the Jeff Bezos’ blog’s (formerly the Washington Post) inflammatory post linking an aggregate of “fake news” sites to Russian propaganda… which was itself fake news. 

When that effort flopped around the end of November, the next outrage came in the form of a story, again from Jeff Bezos’ blog, centering on reports that a “secret CIA assessment” had concluded that Russia had indeed interfered in the election in favor of Trump. This unleashed a firestorm that has essentially become a meme with a sort of reactive evolution. 

What We Know 

First, there is no conclusive evidence (that we know of) that any agent of Russia “hacked” anything. All the buzz is based on hearsay and second-hand sources from entities that have routinely made mistakes, lie, and invented methods of propaganda to undermine the sovereignty of other nations. 

In other words, we hear from anonymous “sources” that say such reports exist, but we don’t know who these people are or what the reports are, and these “sources” are from entities that have a checkered history. 

We in point of fact don’t even know for certain that these “sources” exist. Wikileaks, which has never been found to release a false document, denies that they received any of the emails they released from Russia or any agent of the Russian government. Instead, it was purported to be a Democratic insider that was disgusted with what he saw. Such a scenario is typical in cases such as this. 

We also know that John Podesta had his emails compromised because of a phishing link. This was not an incredibly sophisticated operation that would require the efforts of the Russian equivalent of the NSA to pull off. 

To his credit, President Obama admitted this. It could well have been that infamous “400 pound guy in the basement” that Donald Trump so memorably spoke about, given what we currently know. 

Then things get stranger still.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.