Credulous Atheist Believes Evidence-Free Establishment Russia Narrative by Caitlin Johnstone – Medium
The other day RT reporter Dan Cohen flagged how New Atheism guru Sam Harris recently had a shady cold war manipulator on his podcast promulgating the establishment narrative that Russian hackers and trolls interfered in the 2016 US election, despite the fact that there is no more publicly available evidence for this than there is for the existence of biblical Jehovah. I find this both fascinating and hilarious.
Listen to New Atheist guru @SamHarrisOrg faithfully accept @NewKnowledgeAI disinformation warrior @noUpside‘s claim that there’s no doubt Russia meddled in the 2016 election because “the intelligence agencies know it happened” https://t.co/GHf94ZAEtB HT @Whtapl pic.twitter.com/Hgf4PQzTA9
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) January 16, 2019
Harris, author of The End of Faith and commonly mentioned in the same breath as atheistic thought leaders like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, once wrote the following:
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“While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.”
Belief in the establishment Russia narrative is very much the same. As Ray McGovern of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity recently documented in an excellent article for Consortium News titled “A Look Back at Clapper’s Jan. 2017 ‘Assessment’ on Russia-gate”, the entire election meddling narrative was built upon an ODNI assessment by two dozen analysts hand-picked and overseen by James Clapper. McGovern notes how Clapper, then the Director of National Intelligence, is notorious for having helped sell the lies that led to the Iraq invasion, for lying to congress about NSA surveillance, and for multiple instances of claiming that Russians are genetically predisposedto nefarious behavior.
We the public have never seen the evidence that led to this extremely shady assessment’s findings, yet those findings have gradually been integrated into mass media reports as infallible fact upon which the rest of the establishment Russia narrative has been built. Like belief in mainstream religions, the only reason its lack of evidence fails to come into question is because it has been made popular by mainstream politicians and credulous media talking heads who have been reporting it as fact day in and day out for two years, without adding any solid, tangible evidence to the equation beyond the unsubstantiated say-so of intelligence agencies with an extensive record of lying to the public to manufacture support for preexisting geopolitical agendas. It’s an entirely faith-based narrative, only instead of placing faith in the words of priests and books authored by long-dead men, faith is placed in the authoritative say-so of the imperial intelligence community.
