The Unz Review Earlier this month, Russia banned 29 British journalists, including several from the BBC and the Guardian, on the grounds that they were âassociated with the defense complexâ. That claim was not, at least in all cases, quite as preposterous as was widely assumed.
In part one of this two-part series, we saw how the Guardianâs Luke Harding â one of the journalists banned by Russia â has promoted entirely unsubstantiated smear stories that have hewn closely to the agenda of Western intelligence services. Harding even wrote a prominent Russiagate book and could not defend its basic claims when challenged by independent journalist Aaron MatĂ©.
Although Russiaâs ban provoked a predictable, self-righteous backlash from the UK media â and was adduced as further evidence of Russian president Vladimir Putinâs authoritarian tendencies â Moscow was, in fact, mirroring earlier bans by the British authorities and the European Union on Russian state-sponsored media. None of the British journalists now barred from Russia raised their voices in protest at the banning of the English-language broadcasts and the websites of RT and Sputnik…v
