Thread by @OzKaterji

In which Glenn Greenwald, a man who vehemently denies being a Putin apologist while defending Vladimir Putin at every given opportunity, panders to a literal White supremacist pro-Assad mouthpiece to distance himself from genuine open source investigative journalism.

Greenwald hates Bellingcat because Bellingcat do real journalism that exposes Russian war crimes. The closest thing Greenwald has ever done to journalism was when somebody leaked information to him, he is incapable of doing the kind of work Bellingcat do.

This exchange really exposes Greenwald's agenda for what it is. He will share the work of Russia Today propagandists, but wants to distance himself from the investigators that blew open the MH17 case, the Skripal poisoning and multiple Assad regime chemical weapons attacks.

The only conclusion I can come up with for this is that Greenwald is invested in keeping Russian war crimes hidden. He helped promote pro-Assad conspiracy theories and never once corrected his record once the investigations proved those theories wrong.

The idea that Greenwald has anything to do with journalism should be buried by this exchange. By the way, he has literally blocked Amnesty International staffers on Twitter, but is happily exchanging in a back and forth with an InfoWars contributor who speaks at far-right rallies

Greenwald hates adversarial journalism and supports pro-Kremlin propaganda. Let's drop the pretence once and for all. Thankfully his colleagues at The Intercept can recognise the incredible work Bellingcat have done.

What is hilarious is how angry Greenwald's pro-Assad allies are over this. These people are genuinely so stupid and so unable to do journalism of their own that they have to accuse Bellingcat of being fed information by intelligence agencies.

Bellingcat are not only transparent about their funding (unlike Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, who both lie about being paid by the Russian government to lie about war crimes), they are also transparent about their *method*. As in, you can genuinely peer-review it.

Bellingcat's journalism is *so good* that Russian propagandists have to accuse them of being handed information by MI6 or the CIA. The hours of trawling through footage and geolocating things done by tireless volunteers is totally ignored.

Don't forget for a second, these people are literally paid by Vladimir Putin to lie. The thing is, they are terrible at lying and have made absolutely no attempts to disprove any of the crystal clear evidence presented by Bellingcat.

So instead they have to rely on creating an image of the OSINT group as being stooges of intelligence agencies. The idea that this was remotely possible was put to bed when Bellingcat investigated and exposed US war crimes in Syria, with the al-Jineh mosque bombing.

Take a look through Max and Ben's work. Or even Greenwald's work for that matter. Since 2015 can you find a single example of a Russian or regime crime that they have worked to expose in the manner that Bellingcat did with the al-Jineh mosque? Nope. Not one example.

Bellingcat exposed identities of Mishkin and Chepiga as GRU agents, two men that tried to murder Sergei Skripal using Novichok. Blumenthal et al spent months trying to deny Russian involvement in that crime, they haven't even attempted to discuss the damning Bellingcat evidence

There is a clear difference between journalism & propaganda. Because Max and co are incapable of doing any journalism, they must instead try and reduce every instance of real journalism that exposes Russian war crimes to being the same kind of propaganda they disseminate.

They want you to have a binary choice, real journalism (which they call regime-change propaganda) and what they offer, which is denials and disinformation based on lies put out by the Russian Ministry of Defence. Take your pick folks.

In reality, these people accusing Bellingcat of being fed information by security services is the greatest compliment they could bestow on the group. It shows how utterly daunted they are by the prospect of carrying out a real journalistic investigation.

Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald look at Bellingcat's investigations in the same manner a dog looks at a quantum physics thesis.