Whistle-blowers: the real villains?

Submitted by AWL on 16 October, 2019 - 9:01 Author: Dale Street
TandZ

On Monday 7 October, the Morning Star carried another article by Zoltan Zigedy (pen-name of Greg Godels, American blogger and regular contributor to the website “Marxism-Leninism Today – The Electronic Journal of Marxist-Leninist Thought”).

The article first appeared on Godels’ own blog and then on the “Marxism-Leninism Today” website before making it into the pages of the Morning Star.

The headline asks the question: “TelephoneGate: Who Looks Worst?” The strapline give an indication of the answer: “Zoltan Zigedy reports (sic) how the drive to impeach Trump has masked the sinister dealings of the Democrats in Ukraine.”

Trump, the reader learns from the article, is not without his faults.

In his phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky in July of this year, when he asked Zelensky to dig up dirt on presidential rival Joe Biden and his son, Trump displayed a “vulgar directness and childlike simplicity” and a “lack of any finesse”.

But, Godels tells us, “it is not people in the US who are shocked and appalled” by Trump’s behaviour. It is only “the cable TV chatterboxes, the Democratic Party hitmen and their addicted acolytes.”

In this affair Trump himself is the victim – of the American ruling classes. His personal objectives “clash with the ruling class’s perception of its own interests … (and) the global vision embraced by most of the ruling class establishment.”

More likely than not, writes Godels, the TelephoneGate “whistleblower” (inverted commas in original) was not a lone intelligence agent but “the secret service leadership” and “the highest echelon of the intelligence apparatus bent on keeping Zelensky under its thumb.”

Godels omits to explain how leaking the contents of the phone call helps achieve that aim. But never mind.

According to Godels, the media show “a puzzling lack of interest” in identifying the “whistleblower”. “Maybe”, he muses, “they know there really isn’t one.” Or maybe because identifying a whistleblower kind of undermines the concept of whistleblowing?

Godels also takes the media to task for their self-serving forgetfulness. “How soon they forget”, he writes, how Richard Nixon sabotaged the bid by Hubert Humphrey to stand as a presidential candidate.

But that was 40 years ago. Over half the world’s population wasn’t even alive then. Hardly surprising, therefore, that it’s not front-page news.

As for “the sinister dealings of the Democrats in Ukraine” referred to in the article’s strapline, these refer to the old chestnut that the 2014 ousting of Ukrainian President Yanukovych was not a popular uprising but a US plot run by Biden: “His fingerprints are on the ousting”.

This is consistent with earlier articles by Godels in which he claimed that the US “funded, trained and encouraged the most xenophobic, nationalistic, even fascist elements to stage a coup against the elected president.” (August 2014)

This US-instigated coup brought to power “a motley crew of foreign agents, corrupted officials, oligarchs and neo-Nazis.” (March 2015).

Godels also asks questions about the appointment of Biden’s son to the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest energy company:

“Could it have been that Zlochevsky (who appointed Biden’s son) saw Biden Jnr. as a free pass for being on the wrong side of US-written history? Was Biden Jnr’s appointment a down payment on forgiveness for his support of Yanukovych?”

Unfortunately, Godels does not even attempt to answer his own questions. Nor does he explain how the exposure of Trump’s phone call in July “masks” such “sinister dealings”. Surely it thrusts them back into the spotlight?

Godels is very angry about what he claims is the Biden-led US “interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country.” By contrast, he says nothing about the Russian annexation of the Crimea or the Russian-organised military uprisings in Donetsk and Lugansk.

Godels’ conclusion is that the impeachment proceedings are simply a distraction: “It promises to distract US voters from the real crisis facing most US citizens… TelephoneGate will accomplish that task.”

Backing hardened right-wingers under the cover of denouncing the liberal elite might seem to be a new low for the Morning Star. Until you remember its line on Brexit.

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