Is Zerohedge.com anti-American propaganda?
Mitchell Paulin, M.S. Nuclear Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Lowell (2012)
Answered Mar 5
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This viewpoint can lend itself to an “anti-establishment” paradigm, and over time ZeroHedge began to take an approach more akin to today’s right-wing conspiracy theorists. This mirrors what happened to others like Alex Jones, who had a general, somewhat non-partisan approach to promoting paranoia and falsehoods but took a turn towards authoritarian rightism during the Obama years, when Obama became of the face of their hate. I wonder why?
In more recent years ZeroHedge began posting more and more paranoid, divisive, explicitly rightist material that mirrors the sort of material being injected into American political discourse by Russia to cause chaos and promote Putin-style nationalism and rejection of truth. It has become a parrot of Russian propaganda, and often posts forwarded material from RT, Russia’s official propaganda distributor, and other sources mirroring its views. So while it relays propaganda, is it in fact a propaganda outlet, or just disingenuous or gullible? That’s less certain, but let’s look.
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One name that is now known inside ZeroHedge is its founder Daniel Ivandjiisk. He is a Bulgarian immigrant who, while attempting to make his way in finance in the US, got busted for financial crimes, probably pushing him towards a view hostile towards American economics. It also appears that prior to immigrating, Ivandjiisk was a member of the security services in then-communist Bulgaria during its time as a satellite state of the USSR behind the Iron Curtain. It is possible he is personally connected to other veterans of communist bloc intelligence/security services, like Putin. The Prop Or Not article links to a number of investigations into ZeroHedge, one of which finds another name from inside, Colin Lokey.
Lokey stated that while well paid, he quit because he had a hard time churning out material that was explicitly instructed to be promoting the agendas of Putin and his allies like Bashar al-Asad using Russian government positions. ZeroHedge appears to be self-financed, so it’s likely not an operation of the Putin government, but it is acting intentionally as a relay point for Russian propaganda. This article from The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab examines how a number of nominally independent outlets like ZeroHedge, Global Research and Veterans Today often act as proxies for Russian propaganda. I highly recommend DFRL for articles about how information spreads on the internet.
Pro-Kremlin Outlets Rally Around RT – DFRLab – Medium
It’s one of a number of sites that aren’t explicitly propaganda themselves, but are laundering points that help it get into wider circulation in political discourse in America.
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