Thread by @jrschlosberg

So this is how it works. THREAD.

In 2020 I shared an article from @thenation, one of the oldest and most respected weekly news magazine in the US. The article raised questions about the @OPCW's official report into the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria...

https://twitter.com/RabbiZvi/status/1502984875242053637

These questions were not invented by the journalist. They were based on concerns raised by two senior OPCW officials themselves involved in the investigation...

At no point did either the article, or my original tweet, imply a defence of the Russians or Assad regime, or claim that they were not responsible for a chemical weapons attack...

The article in fact states clearly that "skepticism of Western claims should not be equated with support for the [Syrian] regime."

On the basis of my 2-year old tweet, the journalist @OzKaterji last weekend called my partner a 'lying piece of shit', triggering a pile on by his troll followers.

She obviously doesn't need me to defend her against such blatant misogynistic abuse...

Nor do I feel the need to defend myself against @OzKaterji's repeated labelling of me as a 'lying war crimes denier', as he has labelled anyone else who dared to ask any questions about US/UK pretexts for military action in Syria (notwithstanding the legacy of Iraq WMDs)...

But I do think this kind of derogatory labelling of anyone questioning the official narrative is a useful illustration of how a wider system of repression works. In a nutshell, it serves two purposes:

First, it avoids the need to engage in any kind of constructive debate on the actual evidence. If you attack someone personally, then by definition you are bypassing the facts...

Second, and more importantly, it serves to delegitimise the very act of asking questions - the job of journalists - especially if the label is repeated often and widely enough to become established and unquestionable 'truth'...

Note that it especially helps if the label has resonance with something as abhorrent as 'holocaust denial'. It may be unconscious, but the choice of language is no accident. It is an attempt to establish a parallel with racist extremism...

This is exactly how @jeremycorbyn and many others on the left were successfully delegitimised by the time of the last election. Facts and evidence never mattered...

It was the repeated allegations - not questioned or challenged by journalists - which successfully turned Corbyn from an affable and principled leader in 2017 to a sinister and menacing one in 2019...

Oz and his trolls do not do this intentionally of course. They are idealogues so blinded by their fixed, narrow worldviews that it simply doesn't occur to them that such journalistic scrutiny could be legitimate...

Either that or they are perhaps driven by an unconscious fear that their worldview rests on very shaky ground, prompting them to reject the slightest challenge with all out symbolic violence...

In any case they are a fairly minor piece of the puzzle. Much more important are the softer, subtler and more 'mainstream' journalists and commentators that continually either ignore dissenting voices, or give an unchallenged platform to their critics...

It is ultimately the failure of flagship news orgs like @guardian or @bbcnews to ask the necessary questions about Douma and other issues which gives force to the repression...

Their newsroom culture is shaped in part by the agenda setting influence of commercial newspapers (who in turn reflect the shared interests of their owners), but is also nurtured by elements of the deep state (eg #IntegrityInitiative)...

And in the end, this repression works so well that there is rarely a need to imprison people for dissent. That's always been the cornerstone of 'free speech' in Britain: the freedom to express dissenting views without fear of punishment...

so long as such views are, most of the time at least, effectively contained: either marginalised or delegitimised.

But the threat of more authoritarian forms of repression is never far away...

@defence_truth

Assange has been languishing in UK prison for nearly 3 years and been subject to 'torture' according to the UN. And there is currently a criminal investigation into the alleged 'leakers' of a report that exposed rampant institutional corruption within the Labour Party...

sombre reminders that even basic rights and freedoms can't be taken for granted here or elsewhere.

Whatever our political leaning, if we really care about speaking truth to power, we should be as vocal and passionate in our defence of #MarinaOvsyannikova as #JulianAssange