In Blumenthal’s world, truth is a function of geopolitics: if a claim embarrasses an enemy of the U.S., it’s dismissed as propaganda, even if backed by hard evidence. If it embarrasses the US or its allies, it’s amplified, even if false.
Replies
That’s why he’s spent years trying to discredit evidence of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, calling them “false flags” staged by rebels or the White Helmets, even as multiple investigations confirmed regime culpability.
aug 3, 2025, 7:37 am • 328 23 • view
It’s why he denied Russia’s bombing of a Mariupol theatre sheltering civilians, instead suggesting Ukrainian forces blew it up themselves, a claim rejected by survivors, investigators, and satellite evidence.
aug 3, 2025, 7:38 am • 314 20 • view
The pattern: if human rights groups report abuses by anti-Western regimes, Blumenthal attacks the messenger. He’s smeared Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the OPCW, Syrian rights monitors, and myself and Bellingcat.
aug 3, 2025, 7:39 am • 290 21 • view
Blumenthal doesn’t just argue, he delegitimises. He casts journalists as CIA agents, NGOs as Western fronts, and war crime witnesses as liars. It’s a strategy of epistemic destruction: if the facts don’t serve the narrative, destroy the facts.
aug 3, 2025, 7:39 am • 307 21 • view
This isn’t principled scepticism. It’s ideological selection bias. He doesn’t apply the same scrutiny to claims made by Russia, Syria, or China, only to those that challenge them. His bar for evidence shifts depending on political alignment.
aug 3, 2025, 7:40 am • 291 18 • view
He claims to fight propaganda, but frequently appears on Russian and Chinese state media, speaks at events hosted by the Russian UN delegation, and spreads narratives those regimes then use to deflect scrutiny.
aug 3, 2025, 7:40 am • 256 14 • view
This sounds a lot like how American journalists have treated Israel. Do you believe we should discount people who did this same thing for them too (like discrediting the Health ministry as "run by Hamas")?
aug 3, 2025, 10:28 am • 0 0 • view
Exactly, he is an op
aug 3, 2025, 4:39 pm • 0 1 • view
The result is a body of work that functions not as journalism, but as narrative laundering: taking authoritarian disinfo, wrapping it in leftist language, and feeding it back into Western discourse as “independent” critique.
aug 3, 2025, 7:40 am • 323 32 • view
Reminds me of Caitlin Johnstone, now gets quoted a lot by the pro-Palestinian side... completely forgetting/ignoring the fact that she was an Assad-apologist who denied his war crimes.
aug 3, 2025, 8:37 am • 12 0 • view
Blumental and Johnstone are very much cut from the same red-brownist cloth
aug 3, 2025, 12:11 pm • 3 0 • view
This is precisely what @realbaddiel.bsky.social called out about nine years ago now, aiming specifically at Trump (and acolytes) and Farage:
aug 4, 2025, 5:43 am • 5 0 • view
His framing appeals to people disillusioned with US foreign policy, understandably, but it replaces one distortion with another. It doesn’t expose power. It shields it, as long as that power wears the right uniform.
aug 3, 2025, 7:41 am • 289 18 • view
If your anti-imperialism requires denying atrocities, attacking victims, and shielding dictators, it’s not anti-imperialism. It’s just inversion, reactive, predictable, and morally bankrupt.
aug 3, 2025, 7:41 am • 311 54 • view
Hasan Piker also does this.
aug 3, 2025, 8:42 am • 1 0 • view
Was so depressing when Chomsky became a cheerleader for the Serbian regime.
aug 3, 2025, 7:43 am • 5 0 • view
Max Blumenthal is hardly unique in that approach, so its worth calling it out for what it is.
aug 3, 2025, 7:44 am • 214 8 • view