Clooney Foundation Dares the Russian Dictatorship
Finally, the West is waking up.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), a non-profit organization founded in 2016 by actor George Clooney and his wife, lawyer Amal Clooney, have finally done what the Western world should have done the day after journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Russia.
Unpunished murders create a climate of fear among local journalists, undermining press freedom and pushing real talent away from the industry.
On the one hand, the Western world silently watched as countless journalists were murdered by unknown assailants in Russia. On the other hand, Kremlin-supported propagandists, both inside and outside Russia, were encouraged by the Kremlin to fill the vacuum. The end result was a Russian society turned into a collection of misinformed individuals, with Kremlin’s propaganda successfully infiltrating conservative movements worldwide and pushing them towards the far-right.
The Kremlin has effectively killed journalism inside Russia, and now unchecked propaganda is beginning to undermine democratic structures globally. From QAnon and Holocaust denial to anti-vaccine sentiments and deep state conspiracies, the list of misinformation is extensive. The Kremlin has adapted Goebbels’ strategy for the 21st century. Despite having many tools at their disposal, the Western world is still hesitating to take decisive action to safeguard the fourth estate.
You cannot protect the fourth estate when it is being inundated with a torrent of sewage. The rise of corrupt actors must be stopped. Every industry has its bad apples, but allowing a murderous police officer to go unpunished simply because of his role in law enforcement is unacceptable. Justice must be applied universally, to everyone, including judges and presidents. No one is above the law.
The Clooney Foundation is trying to secure ICC arrest warrants for Russian state TV propagandists. They are also preparing to root out corrupt individuals among us, particularly those living in the Western world who spread lies and propaganda.
“We are focused on bringing to justice the most prominent Russian propagandists, the most visible ones, but I will deliberately not name them because we will ask prosecutors to issue appropriate orders,” said, Anna Neistat, a human rights activist and project officer of the Foundation.
According to Neistat, unlike the Russian military and their commanders, many propagandists like to travel around Europe, have residence permits, relatives and property in different countries, and can be detained on the basis of a warrant in Europol member states. ‘That is, in any European country, in theory, they can be arrested and extradited to a country that is investigating a criminal case against them under the same universal jurisdiction,’ the lawyer said.
Obviously, this strikes at the heart of the dictatorship system established in Russia. By dismantling their ability to spread lies and beginning to strengthen their fourth estate, the dictatorship will gradually become destabilized. It won’t happen overnight, but one day it will.
Russian propogandists will never feel safe in the nations that they attack every day on their shows. If the ICC issues an arrest warrant against these people, they will be arrested when ever they enter the western world.
Naturally, the Kremlin and its minions are up in arms.
Dimitry Medvedev, tweeted his fury: “A certain mediocre actor called George Clooney has decided to use his Foundation to hunt down Russian journalists all over the world and persecute them. The effort would be wasted, however: our professional journalists will find him first. They are very attentive and highly trained people. And they are going to have a chat “from dusk till dawn”
Russia should be the last entity in the world to lecture us about professional journalism. Just a few days before Reporters Without Borders was set to release its annual World Press Freedom Index, their website was blocked by the Kremlin.
The censorship of the entire rsf.org domain site began on 18 April. The Russian authorities took this decision on 15 April without notifying RSF, which has never had a branch in Russia. Neither the origin of the blocking nor the reasons have been given, according to the register kept by Roskomsvoboda, an NGO that monitors Internet censorship. RSF’s site has joined the more than 1.7 million URLs blocked in Russia, which include the sites of dozens of media outlets.
In late March this year, Czech government sanctioned a news organisation named ‘Voice of Europe,’ who were part of Kremlin’s pro-Russian influence operations.
Politico reporting on the developments said:
A Russian political influence campaign is shaking up Europe, as top officials warned Moscow paid European Parliament members to interfere in the upcoming EU election.
“This confirms what we have suspected: the Kremlin is using dodgy outlets pretending to be media [and] using money to buy covert influence,” European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová told Brussels Playbook, calling the revelations “very troubling.”
So, there were two components to the Kremlin’s operations. First, there were state propagandists leading the charge from inside Russia, spreading lies. Then there were unscrupulous actors within the Western world, supported by the Kremlin, carrying forward the Russian agenda.
How can we break this cycle if we do nothing about it? Once again, there are two parts to the solution. On one hand, we need to leverage the powers that we, in the Western world, possess to push back against the propagandists operating inside Russia and those in the West aiding the Kremlin’s agenda. On the other hand, we need to encourage good journalism by protecting journalists wherever they are.
The second aspect, supporting journalists worldwide by shielding them from power, is something the Clooney Foundation has been committed to for a long time.
All over the world, courts have been weaponized against those who speak truth to power and stand up for the rights of the most vulnerable.
To reverse this trend, Co-Founders George and Amal Clooney launched TrialWatch in 2019. TrialWatch is the first global initiative that monitors criminal trials against the most vulnerable worldwide, provides free legal support to get innocent people out of prison, and advocates for the reform of unfair laws. TrialWatch has monitored trials in over 40 countries, focusing on journalists, women and girls, democracy defenders, LGBTQ+ people and activists, and religious and ethnic minorities. Using information we gather directly from courtrooms around the world, TrialWatch is building a Global Justice Index that will be the first to evaluate and rank countries on their justice systems through real-world data.
The foundation is doing what our governments should have done a long time ago. It’s only this year, after two and a half years of war, that Europe has woken up to this threat. How much collective effort have they put in over the last two decades to promote good journalism and weed out bad journalism? There might have been some assistance here and there, but it wasn’t impactful.
The reason I considered writing this story was because the Kremlin’s minions want to portray the Clooney Foundation’s efforts as something that goes against the grain of journalism. Sorry, but it’s anything but that.
CFJ Co-Founder, Amal Clooney, is one of the leading lawyers securing the release of imprisoned journalists, political activists and leaders around the world.
The Clooney Foundation has helped rescue many journalists around the world from power. In utter contrast, more than 300 journalists have been killed in Russia since the 1990s. The database created by the Glasnost Defence Foundation and the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations continues to grow every year. This ongoing tragedy only gained worldwide attention after the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She is a whole lot more than a journalist.
Putin, the Kremlin, and Medvedev should be the last three people in the world even to consider talking about press freedom. What they’re actually advocating for is the freedom to allow their minions to lie. They want the world to sit back and permit their Goebbels group to operate unchecked.
Their goal is to make us ignorant, flooding the zone with as much misinformation and disinformation as possible. They want us to be unable to discern truth from lies, to become fools. They rely on their propagandists to achieve this.
Should we allow the Goebbels group to operate without restraint? No, we should not. These are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Therefore, the Clooney Foundation is on the right track. They’re not opposing journalists but rather pushing back against liars who masquerade as journalists. A murderer, even if they’re a police officer, must be apprehended. It doesn’t matter if they’re in law enforcement; if they break the law, they must face justice.
The following is the kind of Journalism Russia wants
And who are these people to lecture us? They’re rallying against the Clooney Foundation because they are feeling uncomfortable. They case they are making, that the Clooney Foundation is stifling journalism, is a signal to the useful idiots in the west to align with the direction the Kremlin is indicating and run with it. They’ll exploit democratic principles to undermine democracy itself.
Kremlin is not trying to protect journalism. They are trying to protect their ability to spread propaganda. They want to shield their propagandists.
We might think these are just minor pricks against reality, but by allowing these propagandists to puncture it, little by little, over the years, the effects will eventually manifest.
The rise and persistence of the MAGA cult in the United States serves as a prime example of this. Corrupting journalism from within is just one, albeit a crucial, part of the Kremlin’s strategy to destabilize democracies and democratic institutions worldwide.
That’s why I appreciate the direction the Clooney Foundation is taking. Every industry will have its bad apples. It’s essential for the industry’s own well-being that these bad apples are identified, given an opportunity to prove they’re not rotten, and then removed if necessary.
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