The Grayzone

The Grayzone is a left-wing[1] to far-left[11] news website and blog[15] founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal.[12] The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project,[16] was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018.[2] The website's news content is generally considered to be fringe.[2][17][18][19] It is known for its misleading reporting[20] and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes,[2][13][21] in addition to its denial of the Uyghur genocide.[25] The Grayzone has spread conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria, and other regions.[26][27]

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.[2][12][16] The blog was hosted on AlterNet from its inception until early 2018, when The Grayzone became independent of the website.[2][28]

Content

The Grayzone's news content is generally considered to be fringe,[2][17][18][19] with its content ideologically centered around the website's desire for a multipolar world.[2] Along this vein, the website has supported the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria,[29] publishing content denying that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian civil war,[2][30] and maintains a pro-Kremlin editorial line.[1][29] The website published propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the debunked claim that Ukrainian fighters were using civilians as human shields.[24] The Russian fake news website Peace Data promoted articles from The Grayzone.[31]

The website has also denied the scope of the Xinjiang internment camps and the Uyghur genocide, downplaying widely reported abuses by the Chinese government against Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.[2][13][12][17]

False claims published by The Grayzone are referenced by Twitter users who back Assad and the Russian government.[29]

Twitter hacked materials warning label

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".[32][33]

Reception

The Grayzone has been criticized for defending authoritarian regimes.[12][2][27][28] 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".[28] 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."[34] The Grayzone had previously claimed Jelacic's employer collaborated with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra affiliates.[34] Socialist academic Gilbert Achcar asserts that The Grayzone is an example of "pro-Putin, pro-Assad 'left-wing' propaganda combined with gutter journalism."[35]

It has also been sharply criticized for its characterizations of the Xinjiang internment camps and other Chinese state abuses against Uyghurs.[2][12][36] 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."[36]

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.[2][14]

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.[2][13][12][17] The site has been used as a vector to push Chinese Communist Party narratives on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.[37]

In order to dispute ongoing atrocities in Xinjiang, Chinese state media and Chinese officials have increasingly cited posts from The Grayzone in their public communications.[40] 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 human rights researcher Adrian Zenz.[17] 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.[22][17]

State-aligned coverage in Nicaragua

In Nicaragua, The Grayzone defended the government oppression of the 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests, in which hundreds were killed and thousands injured, as a justified response.[41] This was despite the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights documenting in detail the killings, torture and threats made by the government towards demonstrators.[41][42] The platform also lionized Daniel Ortega and parroted Nicaraguan government claims that the protest movement was not legitimate, but part of a Western-led international conspiracy.[41]

The Grayzone went on to publish misinformation about protestors, including Valeska Sandoval, as exposed in a 2018 report by Charles Davis at The Daily Beast.[41][16] The Grayzone also published a "lengthy, insinuation-infused attack" on the photojournalist Carl David Goette-Luciak, a freelance reporter for NPR and The Guardian, implying he was anti-regime.[41][43] This was accompanied by a photo of Luciak beside an armed soldier labelled as an opposition figure, when it was in fact a government-supporting Sandinista.[41] The false story nevertheless went viral, Luciak went into hiding, was eventually captured by state forces, threatened with torture and deported from the country.[41][43]

See also

References
  1. Carroll, Oliver (February 24, 2021). "Anger after Amnesty strips Navalny of 'prisoner of conscience' status". The Independent. Retrieved September 20, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. Thompson, Caitlin (July 30, 2020). "Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China's Uyghur oppression". Coda Story. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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)
  5. Bloodworth, James (December 11, 2020). "China's useful idiots". UnHerd. Retrieved September 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  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. 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)
  8. Werleman, CJ (March 29, 2021). "Why Does the Anti-Imperial Left So Often End Up Denying Genocide?". Byline Times. Retrieved April 17, 2022.
  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. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
  12. Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (August 11, 2020). "The American blog pushing Xinjiang denialism". Axios.
  13. Ross, Alexander Reid (July 27, 2021). "Meet 'Leftist' Grayzone's New Neo-fascist Allies in Denying China's Genocide of Uyghurs". Haaretz.
  14. Ross, Alexander Reid (June 19, 2020). "Russia's Disinformation War on America Takes Racist Aim at Black Lives Matter". Haaretz. Retrieved September 20, 2021.
  15. [2][3][5][6][12][13][14]
  16. Davis, Charles (October 4, 2018). "In Nicaragua, Torture Is Used to Feed 'Fake News'". The Daily Beast.
  17. 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.
  18. Chan, John (March 5, 2021). "Campaign to Discredit BBC Revealed as Media Conditions Inside China Continue to Deteriorate". China Digital Times.
  19. 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)
  20. 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, retrieved April 26, 2022, The Grayzone, a publication known for misleading reporting in the service of authoritarian states...
  21. 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)
  22. Xiao, Eva (March 30, 2021). "China Used Twitter, Facebook More Than Ever Last Year for Xinjiang Propaganda". The Wall Street Journal.
  23. 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)
  24. Ellery, Ben. "University of Edinburgh academic Tim Hayward accused of spreading propaganda". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  25. [2][12][22][17][23][24]
  26. Ross, Alexander Reid (November 8, 2019). "Fooling the Nation: Extremism and the Pro-Russia Disinformation Ecosystem". Boundary 2. Duke University Press.
  27. "Las mentiras de Daniel Ortega ante la prensa internacional". Confidencial (in Spanish). August 20, 2019. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  28. Bawer, Bruce (September 2019). "Useful Idiot: The Curious Case of Max Blumenthal". Commentary.
  29. 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.
  30. "Unpublished OPCW Douma Correspondence Casts Further Doubt on Claims of 'Doctored' Report". Bellingcat. October 26, 2020.
  31. Quessard, Maud (2020). "Quels dangers pour la démocratie américaine ?". Diplomatie (in French) (106): 81. ISSN 1761-0559. JSTOR 26983667.
  32. 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.
  33. 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.
  34. Jelacic, Nerma (July 1, 2021). "Spinning bomb". Index on Censorship. SAGE Publishing. 50 (2): 16–23. doi:10.1177/03064220211033782. ISSN 0306-4220.
  35. Achar, Gilbert (October 10, 2019). "On Gutter Journalism and Purported "Anti-Imperialism"". New Politics.
  36. Bloodworth, James (June 15, 2021). "Why are progressives still defending China's brutal dictatorship?". New Statesman.
  37. 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.
  38. "China pushes back against critics of its policies in Xinjiang". The Economist. May 8, 2021.
  39. Dudley, Renee; Kao, Jeff (July 30, 2020). "The Disinfomercial: How Larry King Got Duped Into Starring in Chinese Propaganda". ProPublica.
  40. [2][12][38][17][39]
  41. Joshua Collins (February 10, 2020). "Grayzone, Grifters and the Cult of Tank". Muros Invisibles.
  42. Gross Human Rights Violations in the Context of Social Protests in Nicaragua (PDF) (Report). Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. June 21, 2018.
  43. "Nicaragua deports reporter who covered anti-Ortega protests". The Guardian. October 2, 2018.
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