The Unz Review Earlier this month, RussiaĀ bannedĀ 29 British journalists, including several from the BBC and the Guardian, on the grounds that they were āassociated with the defense complexā. That claim was not, at least in all cases, quite as preposterous as was widely assumed.
InĀ part oneĀ of this two-part series, we saw how the Guardianās Luke Harding ā one of the journalists banned by Russia ā 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 whenĀ challengedĀ by independent journalist Aaron MatĆ©.
Although Russiaās ban provoked a predictable, self-righteous backlash from the UK media ā and was adduced as further evidence of Russian president Vladimir Putinās authoritarian tendencies ā Moscow was, in fact, mirroring earlier bans by theĀ British authoritiesĀ and theĀ 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
