Why Are Internet Radicals Helping Putin’s Russia?

Glenn Greenwald, Caitlin Johnstone, and anti-American myopia

It was a big week for the Russia scandal. On July 13, the Department of Justice indicted twelve Russian nationals — identified as military intelligence officers — for stealing and strategically disseminating Democratic party and Clinton campaign emails and analytics. Three days later, Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and announced he believes Putin’s denials over the accusations endorsed by America’s Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats (who Trump nominated).

Many Americans responded the way they usually do to Russia scandal news: Doubling down on whatever they believed before it broke. Perhaps none did this more blatantly than people I grouped under the term “internet radicals.”

These are writers, activists, and others with perspectives outside the mainstream whose voices have been amplified by the internet. Many loudly doubt the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. There are left and right-wing varieties — and some that don’t map neatly onto that spectrum — but they tend to share the following traits:

1. They’re enlightened. Others are blind, duped, or in on it.
2. The media suppresses the truth in service to an…