Broad characterizations of political acts are themselves political in the sense that they emerge from views of the world that give them meaning. They can be descriptive, in which case why not let political actors speak for themselves? The contemporary fear of giving a ‘platform’ to disagreeable views begs the question, how do you know they are disagreeable unless you’ve heard people out? For instance, I’ve read Mein Kampf, and thought even less of Adolf Hitler and his theories after doing so. The goal so was to understand the man, not to agree with him. Why is the contemporary premise that people are too stupid to come to their own conclusions?
One of the reasons for this belief is that the Federal government and its agencies have been actively engaged in using disinformation and psychological manipulation to affect political outcomes that serve the purposes of the governing class for a century or more. While the case of Russiagate is still too raw for most Democrats to confront, it is a classic in the genre of merging fear with fake history to produce reactionary right-wing nationalism amongst the ‘sophisticated’ classes. However, and in contrast, right and left-wing political movements tie in history to material triggers. European fascism arose after capitalists destroyed the economies they had come to control.
To understand this point, Russiagate was widely dismissed as manufactured nonsense by the same people who in 2003 went willingly to Iraq to fight a war launched by a cabal of ex-
— source counterpunch.org | Rob Urie | Feb 5, 2021