From Consortium News
Hedge-fund executive William Browder
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As Russia-gate becomes the go-to excuse to marginalize and suppress independent and dissident media in the United States, a warning of what the future holds is the blacklisting of a documentary that debunks the so-called Magnitsky case.
The emerging outlines of the broader suppression are now apparent in moves by major technology companies -- under intense political pressure -- to unleash algorithms that will hunt down what major media outlets and mainstream "fact-checkers" (with their own checkered histories of getting facts wrong) deem to be "false" and then stigmatize that information with pop-up "warnings" or simply make finding it difficult for readers using major search engines.
For those who believe in a meaningful democracy, those tactics may be troubling enough, but the Magnitsky case, an opening shot in the New Cold War with Russia, has demonstrated how aggressively the Western powers-that-be behave toward even well-reported investigative projects that unearth inconvenient truth.
Throughout the U.S. and Europe, there has been determined effort to prevent the American and European publics from seeing this detailed documentary that dissects the fraudulent claims at the heart of the Magnitsky story.
The documentary -- "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" -- was produced by filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who is known as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin but who in this instance found the West's widely accepted, anti-Russian Magnitsky storyline to be a lie.
However, instead of welcoming Nekrasov's discoveries as an important part of the debate over the West's policies toward Russia, the European Parliament pulled the plug on a premiere in Brussels and -- except for a one-time showing at the Newseum in Washington -- very few Americans have been allowed to see the documentary.
Instead, we're fed a steady diet of the frothy myth whipped up by hedge-fund investor William Browder and sold to the U.S. and European governments as the basis for sanctioning Russian officials. For years now, Browder has been given a free hand to spin his dog-ate-my-homework explanation about how some of his firms got involved a $230 million tax fraud in Russia.
Browder insists that some "corrupt" Russian police officers stole his companies' corporate seals and masterminded a convoluted conspiracy. But why anyone would trust a hedge-fund operator who got rich exploiting Russia's loose business standards is hard to comprehend.
The answer is that Browder has used his money and political influence to scare off and silence anyone who dares point to the glaring contradictions and logical gaps in his elaborate confection.
So, the hedge-fund guy who renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of a British passport gets the royal treatment whenever he runs to Congress. His narrative just fits so neatly into the demonization of Russia and the frenzy over stopping "Russian propaganda and disinformation" by whatever means necessary.
This summer, Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and argued that people involved in arranging the one-time showing of Nekrasov's documentary should be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which carries a five-year prison term.
Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media helps reinforce Browder's dubious tale by smearing anyone who dares question it as a "Moscow stooge" or a "useful idiot."
Magnitsky and Russia-gate
The Magnitsky controversy now has merged with the Russia-gate affair because Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who traveled to America to challenge Browder's account, arranged a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign advisers in June 2016 to present this other side of the story.
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