I know we definitely don't agree with this group on certain subjects but i think this was still important to share. This is what happens to anyone who poses a real threat to the imperialist narrative and by extension to the hegemony. Anyone who still thinks that the US has any sort of free speech or is in any way more "democratic" than the supposed "authoritarian regimes" that the imperialist media attacks and demonizes is deeply delusional.
What it also shows is that most of those purportedly "leftist" channels and all those "communist" twitch streamers (with far larger audiences than these anti-imperialist channels that have been getting shut down as of late) who have not been the target of such attacks and are still allowed to operate do so precisely because they pose no threat to the system of capitalism; they do so because they are compatible with imperialism.
They exist to serve as sheepdogs to reign in those with nascent leftist sentiments before they develop a real anti-imperialist consciousness and bring them back in line with political positions acceptable to the ruling class, whether this is in the form of convincing them to vote for one party of genocide over the other, or whether it's by giving them "leftist" sounding reasons to not stand in solidarity with those forces currently most actively fighting against the empire.
"Dear comrades,
Over the past couple months, you may have noticed a significant downturn in our video content output and a complete drop-off in our previously weekly live-streams. I intend to explain the reasons for TheRevolutionReport’s lack of presence, which truly are of colossal domestic and international importance, as well as the conclusions I have been forced to come to as a result of their accompanying developments.
In early September, the US Justice and Treasury Departments launched a new array of sanctions against the Russian media outlet RT, a company at which I am employed, as most of you are aware. Both government organs have combined these sanctions with criminal charges against a number of RT employees, which carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Moreover, the Treasury Department’s report on the new sanctions appear to forbid even associating with RT in any official capacity on American soil.
According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, RT was conducting “covert attempts” to “sow division and trick Americans into unwittingly consuming foreign propaganda [which] represents attacks on our democracy.” Wray claims that $10 million of RT money was funneled into a Tennessee company that failed to register as a foreign agent and committed the heinous crime of making videos containing, “commentary on events and issues in the U.S., such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy.” Shockingly, Wray even admits that the videos in question were not actually Russian propaganda, qualifying his accusations by acknowledging that “the views expressed in the videos are not uniform.”
Nevertheless, these new measures amounted to the beginning of a wave of FBI terror against anyone associated with RT within the United States.
Several days after these new sanctions were imposed, the FBI burst into a Florida woman’s home early in the morning, seized some of her property, interrogated her for 5 hours, and beat her. Her crime? She worked as a producer for RT.
For former UN-weapons inspector and long-time RT contributor Scott Ritter, these sanctions were the straw that broke the camel’s back. He was forced to publicly sever ties with the media outlet, following years of harassment from US authorities.
These events even ran parallel to the trial of a number of activists from the socialist Black Nationalist Uhuru group, in which they were found guilty of apparently, “conspiring to act as foreign agents,” after they had cooperated with Russians on a UN petition. They could face up to 5 years in prison.
As for myself, I was in the United States when all this began, having returned to the land of my birth to care for my cancer-ridden mother. All of the sudden, TheRevolutionReport’s TikTok account was deleted alongside those of RT and Sputnik, following FBI pressure on the social media giant. A fleet of random vehicles appeared in front of my house overnight. When I called the township for an explanation, I was told my new friends started showing up because of construction work that made a neighboring parking lot inaccessible to them – something that had never happened throughout my entire childhood living at that address.
About a week after this campaign of FBI terror, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced at a State Department press conference that RT was, “a fully fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government.”
At that point, after days of trying brush off the severity of this situation and a subsequently sobering conversation with my lawyer, I decided it was time to leave the country.
The highest organs of state-power clearly have no problem arbitrarily enforcing vague laws against individuals unable to defend themselves in the US legal system. After all, those indicted could be accused of further violating sanctions if they were to challenge their prosecutors, using money and legal support from their already sanctioned employer in American courts.
It goes without saying that this renewed campaign against “Russian propaganda,” more aptly described as another war on freedom of speech, is obviously politically motivated. In part, the liberal-dominated state-apparatus will have a convenient scapegoat if Donald Trump emerges victorious from the fast approaching US presidential election. But the terror people like myself are now facing likely has far more to do with a candid admission from the US State Department than anything else.
At a press conference addressing these newly imposed sanctions, James Rubin, coordinator of the department’s Global Engagement Center, which is an agency essentially charged with telling people what they should believe, declared that, “the broad scope and reach of RT...[is] one of the reasons why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be.” The writing is on the wall – Vladimir Zelensky’s clique in Kiev is holding on by a thread for which American and European taxpayers are footing the bill.
EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel estimates Kiev could hold out for a mere two weeks without Western support at this point. Bloomberg is reporting that Vladimir Zelensky’s administration is beginning to consider territorial concessions behind closed doors. Media reports suggest the DPRK will soon enter the conflict on Russia’s side.
All this is clearly driving those governments most invested in Ukraine into desperation; and when the state becomes desperate, it employs terror and repression.
Therefore, based on the politicized nature of the US government’s decision making and my recent experiences described in this letter, I believe that TheRevolutionReport has been incorrectly flagged by US authorities as a covert Russian influence operation.
Although TheRevolutionReport Information Collective has received no support whatsoever from sanctioned entities or anyone other than our loyal paid-subscribers, I have no faith in the US Justice system’s capabilities to protect me, or anyone else for that matter, from the intrigues of the FBI and US State Department.
And so, with the safety of those in the US who have helped out over the years and my own in mind, it is with a heavy heart that I must declare this media project to have reached its conclusion.
[...]
I can only hope that Americans will one day realize that constitutional amendments about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc., do not present, and have never presented, any obstacle to state repression against political opponents in the United States. Those who know our country’s history know this – and those who are now living with the consequences of this reality know it even better."