The Grayzone

The Grayzone is an American far-left[13] news website and blog[17] founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal.[14] The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project,[18] was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018.[1] A fringe website,[23] it is known for misleading reporting[24] and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes.[1][15][25] The Grayzone has denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs,[29] promulgated conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria and other regions,[30][31] and promoted pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[28] The Grayzone has been described by Commentary as a propaganda shop devoted to pushing pro-Assad, pro-Maduro, pro-Putin, and pro-Hamas narratives.[32]

The Grayzone
The homepage of The Grayzone on September 11, 2021
Type of site
News website, Blog
Created byMax Blumenthal
EditorMax Blumenthal
Key peopleBen Norton (until January 2022)
Aaron Maté
Anya Parampil
URLthegrayzone.com
LaunchedDecember 2015

History

The Grayzone was founded as a blog called The Grayzone Project in December 2015 by Max Blumenthal.[1][14][18] The blog was hosted on AlterNet from its inception until early 2018, when The Grayzone became independent of the website.[1][32]

Content

The Grayzone's news content is generally considered to be fringe[1][20][21][22] and the website maintains a pro-Kremlin editorial line.[33][34]

The website has supported the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria,[34] publishing content denying that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian civil war,[35][36][37] and accused the OPCW of a "cover-up."[38] The website has also denied the scope of the Xinjiang internment camps and alleged Uyghur genocide, downplaying widely reported abuses by the Chinese government against Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.[1][15][14][20] A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which studied 28 social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations, stated that Grayzone reporter Aaron Maté was the "most prolific spreader of disinformation" on matters concerning Syria amongst its study group, overtaking Vanessa Beeley.[39]

The Grayzone promoted the Nicaraguan government's narrative on the 2021 Nicaraguan general election and the 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests.[40][22][18] The platform also conducted an "unquestioning interview", according to The Guardian, with Daniel Ortega.[41][42] Blumenthal and Norton expressed their support to the regime dancing to "El Comandante se queda" (English: The Comandante Stays) a cumbia song composed in support of Ortega during the 2018 protests.[42] The Grayzone published an open letter, promoted by RT, criticizing The Guardian's coverage of Nicaragua and one of its contributors, Carl David Goette-Luciak. Goette-Luciak was later arrested and deported by the Nicaraguan government. John Perry, writing under the pseudonym Charles Redvers, published a "confession" on The Grayzone of student protester Valeska Sandoval.[18] The confession was false and Sandoval made it under duress while in prison.[22][18][40]

In February 2021, tweets concerning a Grayzone article by Blumenthal were the first to receive a Twitter warning label stating "These materials may have been obtained through hacking". The story was titled "Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office–funded programs to 'weaken Russia', leaked docs reveal". The story referred to hacked and leaked documents and alleged that a British Army unit has used "social media to help fight wars".[43][44]

The website consistently published pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the debunked claim that Ukrainian fighters were using civilians as human shields, and that the Mariupol theatre bombing was staged by the Azov Regiment to warrant NATO intervention.[28] The Russian fake news website Peace Data republished articles by The Grayzone in order to build a reputation as a progressive and anti-Western media source and to attract contributors.[45] False claims published by The Grayzone are referenced by many Twitter users who back Assad and the Russian government.[34]

After the documentary Navalny won an Academy Award, Grayzone published an article by Lucy Komisar criticizing the film. The article was shown to be written by the neural network Writesonic and to reference sources that did not exist.[46][47][48][49]

Reception

The Grayzone has been criticized for defending authoritarian regimes.[14][1][31][32] Bruce Bawer, writing in Commentary, described The Grayzone as "a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine".[32] Nerma Jelacic, writing in the Index on Censorship, described The Grayzone as "a Kremlin-connected online outlet that pushes pro-Russian conspiracy theories and genocide denial."[50] The Grayzone had previously claimed Jelacic's employer collaborated with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra affiliates.[50]

Writing in socialist magazine New Politics, Lebanese Marxist academic Gilbert Achcar described The Grayzone as "pro-Putin, pro-Assad 'left-wing' propaganda combined with gutter journalism", stating that the website has "the habit of demonizing all left-wing critics of Putin and the likes of Assad by describing them as 'agents of imperialism' or some equivalent".[51]

It has also been sharply criticized for its characterizations of the Xinjiang internment camps and other Chinese state abuses against Uyghurs.[1][14][52] James Bloodworth, writing in the New Statesman, commented: "[i]n an echo of the way dictatorships publish the flattery of credulous foreign dupes in their state newspapers, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespeople have approvingly tweeted articles from Blumenthal's online magazine The Grayzone which have sought to deny the persecution of China's Uighur population."[52]

In February 2019, when a humanitarian aid convoy on the border of Venezuela caught fire, The Grayzone published an article by Blumenthal in which he argued that the U.S. government and mainstream media had falsely reported pro-Maduro forces as the individuals responsible for sparking the flames, writing that "the claim was absurd on its face." Glenn Greenwald, writing in The Intercept, commented that the story "compiled substantial evidence strongly suggesting that the trucks were set ablaze by anti-Maduro protesters".[53]

In March 2020, the English Wikipedia formally deprecated the use of The Grayzone as a source for facts in its articles, citing issues with the website's factual reliability.[1][16]

The Grayzone's invitation to the 2022 Web Summit, the largest technology conference in Europe, was withdrawn over backlash against the website's anti-Ukrainian narratives amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[54][5][55]

Chinese state-affiliated entities

The government of China, officials within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Chinese state media have viewed The Grayzone's coverage of China positively.[1][15][14][20] The site has been used as a vector to push Chinese Communist Party narratives on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.[56]

In order to dispute accusations of ongoing atrocities in Xinjiang, Chinese state media and Chinese officials have increasingly cited posts from The Grayzone in their public communications.[59] According to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Chinese state-controlled media and affiliated entities began to amplify articles from The Grayzone in December 2019 after the website posted an article critical of Xinjiang researcher Adrian Zenz.[20] Chinese state-controlled media cited The Grayzone at least 313 times between December 2019 and February 2021, 252 of which were in English-language publications, the report said.[26][20]

Contributors

Former or current contributors to The Grayzone include Ben Norton, who served as assistant editor of the platform before departing from it in February 2022, Aaron Maté, Anya Parampil and Alex Rubinstein, the latter two being known for their work for the Russian state-owned television station RT.[36]

See also

References
  1. Thompson, Caitlin (July 30, 2020). "Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China's Uyghur oppression". Coda Story. The Grayzone has followed a similar path on Syria, challenging reports of atrocities by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. ...Based on a desire for a multipolar world, in which global military, cultural and economic power is distributed among multiple nation states and Western influence greatly diminished, they have been quick to argue on behalf of authoritarian regimes such as China and Syria.
  2. Lang, Marissa J. (August 1, 2019). "Activists who occupied Venezuela's embassy in Washington honored at ceremony in Caracas". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved September 20, 2021.
  3. Sebok, Filip (April 30, 2021). "Czechia: A Case Study of China's Changing Overseas Propaganda Efforts". The Diplomat. Retrieved September 20, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. Bloodworth, James (December 11, 2020). "China's useful idiots". UnHerd. Retrieved September 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. Foy, Simon (October 27, 2022). "Web Summit maverick accused of pandering to Putin". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  6. Van der Made, Jan (April 8, 2021). "China's state television risks losing broadcast licence in France". Radio France Internationale. Retrieved September 20, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. McGreevy, Ronan. "Web Summit cancels invitations to two speakers following 'pro-Russian' backlash". The Irish Times. Retrieved October 29, 2022.
  8. Cuffe, Danil; Simon, Chloe (November 4, 2021). "Fringe right-wing media and conspiracy theorists spread antisemitic disinformation about the Pandora Papers". Media Matters for America. Retrieved November 8, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. Antelava, Natalia (March 10, 2022). "No off ramp for Putin as Ukraine burns". Coda Story. Retrieved April 17, 2022.
  10. Dávid, Sajó (April 1, 2022). "I watched Russian propaganda for a whole day – even Hungary's public media is easier to stomach". Telex.hu. Retrieved April 17, 2022.
  11. Cheng, June (October 13, 2020). "Xinjiang deniers". World. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  12. Bloc, Ben (August 15, 2022). "Russell Brand slammed by antisemitism campaigners for platforming Corbyn apologist". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  13. Considered far-left by numerous sources.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
  14. Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (August 11, 2020). "The American blog pushing Xinjiang denialism". Axios.
  15. Ross, Alexander Reid (July 27, 2021). "Meet 'Leftist' Grayzone's New Neo-fascist Allies in Denying China's Genocide of Uyghurs". Haaretz. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  16. Ross, Alexander Reid (June 19, 2020). "Russia's Disinformation War on America Takes Racist Aim at Black Lives Matter". Haaretz. Retrieved September 20, 2021.
  17. "and blog":[1][2][4][6][14][15][16]
  18. Davis, Charles (October 4, 2018). "In Nicaragua, Torture Is Used to Feed 'Fake News'". The Daily Beast.
  19. Casalicchio, Emilio (August 28, 2022). "How a retired MI6 boss, his Brexiteer friends and a celebrity Marxist became targets in Russia's war on Ukraine". POLITICO. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
  20. Zhang, Albert; Wallis, Jacob; and Meers, Zoe. (March 2021) Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: The CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms. Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
  21. Chan, John (March 5, 2021). "Campaign to Discredit BBC Revealed as Media Conditions Inside China Continue to Deteriorate". China Digital Times.
  22. Davis, Charles (November 1, 2021). "Facebook says it just uncovered one of the largest troll farms ever - run by the government of Nicaragua". Business Insider. Retrieved November 6, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. "fringe website":[19][20][1][21][22]
  24. Wong, Vincent; Wong, Edward Hon-Sing (2022), Liu, Wen; Chien, Jn; Chung, Christina; Tse, Ellie (eds.), "How to Abolish the Hong Kong Police", Reorienting Hong Kong's Resistance, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 37–38, doi:10.1007/978-981-16-4659-1_3, ISBN 978-981-16-4659-1, S2CID 221671633, retrieved April 26, 2022, The Grayzone, a publication known for misleading reporting in the service of authoritarian states...
  25. Chik, Holly; Baptista, Eduardo (March 30, 2021). "The China-based foreigners defending Beijing from Xinjiang genocide claims". South China Morning Post. Retrieved September 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  26. Xiao, Eva (March 30, 2021). "China Used Twitter, Facebook More Than Ever Last Year for Xinjiang Propaganda". The Wall Street Journal.
  27. Kanji, Azeezah; Palumbo-Liu, David (May 14, 2021). "The faux anti-imperialism of denying anti-Uighur atrocities". Aljazeera. Retrieved September 20, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  28. Ellery, Ben. "University of Edinburgh academic Tim Hayward accused of spreading propaganda". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  29. "Denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs":[1][11][14][26][20][27][28]
  30. Ross, Alexander Reid (November 8, 2019). "Fooling the Nation: Extremism and the Pro-Russia Disinformation Ecosystem". Boundary 2. Duke University Press. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  31. "Las mentiras de Daniel Ortega ante la prensa internacional". Confidencial (in Spanish). August 20, 2019. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  32. Bawer, Bruce (September 2019). "Useful Idiot: The Curious Case of Max Blumenthal". Commentary. Archived from the original on March 9, 2022.
  33. Carroll, Oliver (February 24, 2021). "Anger after Amnesty strips Navalny of 'prisoner of conscience' status". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 18, 2022. Retrieved September 20, 2021.
  34. Fiorella, Giancarlo; Godart, Charlotte; Waters, Nick (July 14, 2021). "Digital Integrity: Exploring Digital Evidence Vulnerabilities and Mitigation Strategies for Open Source Researchers". Journal of International Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press. 19 (1): 147–161. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqab022. ISSN 1478-1387. Retrieved April 6, 2022. These grassroots communities are particularly evident on Twitter, where they coalesce around individual personalities like right-wing activist Andy Ngo, and around platforms with uncritical pro-Kremlin and pro-Assad editorial lines, like The Grayzone and MintPress News. These personalities and associated outlets act as both producers of counterfactual theories, as well as hubs around which individuals with similar beliefs rally. The damage that these ecosystems and the theories that they spawn can inflict on digital evidence is not based on the quality of the dis/misinformation that they produce but rather on the quantity.
  35. "Unpublished OPCW Douma Correspondence Casts Further Doubt on Claims of 'Doctored' Report". Bellingcat. October 26, 2020. journalists have seized upon the documents released by 'Alex' as evidence that the OPCW falsified its report on Douma in order to frame the Syrian government for the attack and justify missile strikes launched by the US, UK and France against the government of Bashar al-Assad. Peter Hitchens at the Mail on Sunday, and Aaron Mate at The Grayzone have both written extensively on the matter.
  36. Foresta, Matthew (April 29, 2022). "Meet the Sneakiest Defenders of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine". The Daily Beast. Retrieved June 13, 2022. The Grayzone, has consistently denied that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people when, indeed, they did.
  37. Davis, Charles (April 3, 2018). "An Inside Look at How Pro-Russia Trolls Got the SPLC to Censor a Commie". New Politics. Retrieved June 13, 2022. In a July 7, 2017 article for his self-funded Grayzone Project, Blumenthal and his associate Benjamin Norton likewise cast doubt on the guilt of the only party known to have possessed and used sarin in the Syrian conflict.
  38. Whitaker, Brian (November 4, 2021). "The 'Echo Chamber' of Syrian Chemical Weapons Conspiracy Theorists". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  39. Townsend, Mark (June 19, 2022). "Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified". The Guardian. Retrieved June 19, 2022.
  40. Deibert, Michael (January 12, 2022). "In Latin America, Backers of Leftist Dictatorships Look the Other Way". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved June 17, 2022. During the elections themselves...a carnival sideshow of figures descended on the country to be feted by [the] regime... ubiquitous was the U.S. journalist Ben Norton, affiliated with the website The Grayzone, which has made something of a cottage industry of defending dictators and their crimes. A reliable government booster nonetheless forced to admit on state television that there were no lines at polling booths, Norton was lampooned by the Nicaraguan blog Bacanalnica as a "cartoon … who hangs out with the most nefarious governments on the planet."
  41. "Nicaragua deports reporter who covered anti-Ortega protests". The Guardian. October 2, 2018. Retrieved June 20, 2022.
  42. "Periodistas que entrevistaron a Ortega rinden culto al dictador al son de "El Comandante se queda"". La Prensa (in Spanish). August 19, 2019. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved June 15, 2022.
  43. Binder, Matt (February 24, 2021). "Twitter is now adding a controversial 'hacked materials' warning label to tweets". Mashable. Retrieved February 24, 2021. UPDATE: Feb. 24, 2021, 9:34 a.m. EST According to Twitter, this instance is indeed the first time the "hacked materials" warning label has been used.
  44. Judson, Jen (September 10, 2019). "Virtual boots on the ground: British Army grapples with operating in the gray zone". DefenseNews; DSEI. Retrieved December 9, 2021.
  45. Quessard, Maud (2020). "Quels dangers pour la démocratie américaine ?". Diplomatie (in French) (106): 81. ISSN 1761-0559. JSTOR 26983667.
  46. "Связанное с российской пропагандой издание опубликовало статью с критикой фильма "Навальный". Текст написали с помощью нейросети, которая выдумала источники информации". Meduza (in Russian). March 14, 2023.
  47. "US media outlet with ties to RT uses AI-generated sources in article on Navalny's "fake poisoning"". The Insider. March 14, 2023. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  48. VanBrugen, Isabel (March 15, 2023). "Navalny Film 'Debunk' Partly Written Using AI, Investigators Claim". Newsweek.
  49. Gault, Matthew (March 16, 2023). "AI Injected Misinformation Into Article Claiming Misinformation in 'Navalny' Doc". VICE. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  50. Jelacic, Nerma (July 1, 2021). "Spinning bomb". Index on Censorship. SAGE Publishing. 50 (2): 16–23. doi:10.1177/03064220211033782. ISSN 0306-4220. S2CID 236179842.
  51. Achcar, Gilbert (October 10, 2019). "On Gutter Journalism and Purported "Anti-Imperialism"". New Politics.
  52. Bloodworth, James (June 15, 2021). "Why are progressives still defending China's brutal dictatorship?". New Statesman.
  53. Greenwald, Glenn (March 10, 2019). "NYT's Exposé on the Lies About Burning Humanitarian Trucks in Venezuela Shows How US Govt and Media Spread Fake News". The Intercept. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  54. Zuidijk, Daniel (October 26, 2022). "Europe's Web Summit Withdraws Invitation to the Grayzone Website". Bloomberg News.
  55. "Web Summit rescinds invitation to far-left website to attend 2022 conference". Irish Examiner. October 26, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  56. Brandt, Jessica (July 3, 2021). "How Autocrats Manipulate Online Information: Putin's and Xi's Playbooks". The Washington Quarterly. Taylor & Francis. 44 (3): 137. doi:10.1080/0163660X.2021.1970902. ISSN 0163-660X. S2CID 237597142.
  57. "China pushes back against critics of its policies in Xinjiang". The Economist. May 8, 2021.
  58. Dudley, Renee; Kao, Jeff (July 30, 2020). "The Disinfomercial: How Larry King Got Duped Into Starring in Chinese Propaganda". ProPublica.
  59. "China cites:"[1][14][57][20][58]
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