Mark Ames was right about Bellingcat

I was blocked by Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat two weeks ago. I discovered that when Jeet Heer was quote tweeting over just how bad of hasbara he was spouting:

I remember when the hasbara was better. They're not even trying anymore. https://t.co/nKCvUmi9h5

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 2, 2024

And realized I couldn't see just how bad it was.

Obviously, Higgins hadn't blocked Jeet. I don't know if he's yet blocked Mark Ames, who, in me talking a few weeks ago on Twitter about the Texas Observer jumping in bed with Bellingcat to find that aklt-right white nationalists were active in Parker County (shock), referenced two Ames tweets about Bellingcat, though neither was a quote-tweet of Higgins or other top brass. 

For the unawares, Bellingcat is, contra how the Observer describes it, a Cold War 2.0 and Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ facilitator. See this Mark Ames Tweet, for example. Or see this retweet by Ames, noting that Bellingcat has gone radio-silent over Gaza. Wiki glosses over most of the challenges to Bellingcat reporting. Shock me; in related news, Wiki also glosses over Alexei Navalny's alt-right nationalism, Islamophobia and more.  In addition, per this Ames Tweet, yep, Bellingcat hunting down left-wing German grannies instead of talking about Gaza is a hoot. Yes, per the NYT story, Daniella Klett was a fugitive. But, she'd done nothing in 40 years. Bellingcat could have bigger fish to fry if it wanted. And, a response Tweet to Ames notes that Bellingcat employs an ex-Stasi agent.

On Bellingcat in general? Read this for more. Even the New Republic notes that Bellingcat gets money from The National Endowment for Democracy, for doorknob's sake.

That said, per the official Bellingcat Twitter account, yeah, as of the start of March, it was radio-silent indeed. Plenty to say about Russia, naturally, with the likes of Fukuyama being advisors. Nothing about the Gaza Genocide. One post in the first half of February about Rafah and .... using tools adapted from Ukraine to track bombing in Rafah. No moral comment at all. A post at the start of February about a Beeb show talking about the "disinformation war" in the Middle East. No use of the word "hasbara" in the tweet.

The Beeb podcast itself at least tilt toward he said, she said twosiderism. As part of that, Higgins himself calls out specific social media accounts after that, for repackaging false claims. And, of course, this pivots almost immediately to Russia-Ukraine.

And, that's the only two tweets about Israel-Gaza going back to before Christmas 2023. Before that, on Dec. 20, there was a tweet with the gist of the Feb. 13 tweet about Rafah, but before the creation of the Rafah pocket. A Dec. 18 tweet talked about the "environmental damage" Israel was causing in Gaza. No, really.

Dec. 15 had a Tweet about a Russian anti-immigrant project — ignoring Alexei Navalny's own anti-immigrant, alt-right past, shoved under the rug by him, but never repudiated. 

Before that? A Dec. 12 tweet about "unraveling" the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Her death had been unraveled well before that, given that she had been killed seven months earlier. The piece itself has a big data cram, lots of videos, analysis, etc., then says, in essence, "it appears," without making a call. This itself looks like hasbara, in that somebody prodded Bellingcat to do "something.