Truest statement of the week II

The Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) was established in 1938 as a means of fighting Nazi influence in the United States. The Russian funded cable network RT was recently forced to register under FARA in order to continue operating in the United States. The wave of ginned up anti-Russian hysteria has created a new and terrible precedent.
RT’s audience is small, so small that it doesn’t appear on the Nielsen rating service. It is estimated to be viewed by no more than 50,000 people per day. But facts don’t count when the Democrats need to excuse their failures and neocons in both parties want to wage war by any and all means.

The political attack on a news outlet is striking for another reason and that is the near complete absence of support for RT among American journalists. The acquiescence of the usual cohort of civil libertarians and others who think themselves progressive and enlightened is striking. The 21st century McCarthyite campaign has succeeded in convincing otherwise intelligent people that Russia is an enemy. Those who are unconvinced are generally too afraid to speak up. Their fear is legitimate.

-- Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider: Defending RT" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).