Antiwar.com

Antiwar news and viewpoints since 1995; has moved closer to official narratives over the years

 https://www.antiwar.com/   
Started: 1995

Member of: Poynter Institute/List, PropOrNot/List
Constitutes: independent media

Main focus: anti-imperialism, anti-war, war, libertarianism

Antiwar.com is a website that for several decades has been devoted to the cause of non-interventionism. Of a libertarian editorial stance, it publishes anti-war articles and viewpoints from across the political spectrum, and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents as well as many on the Right who agree with its opposition to imperialism.

While openly acknowledging that it has an agenda, the editors take seriously a purely journalistic mission, "which is to get past the media filters and reveal the truth about America's foreign policy, citing a wide variety of sources without fear or favor."

History

The founders of Antiwar.com were active in the Libertarian Party during the 1970s. Antiwar.com is a ward of the nonprofit Randolph Bourne Institute.

Antiwar's initial project was to fight against intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency in 1999, and then applied the same principles to Clinton's campaigns in Haiti and Kosovo and bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan.

Justin Raimondo was the main editor of Antiwar.com and over 20 years wrote about 3,000 articles, before dying of cancer in 2019. Jason Ditz eventually took over more of the editorial responsibilities.

Syria reporting in 2011

Antiwar writers have been criticized by readers for their reporting about the civil war that started in Syria in 2011. By then, the information war had shifted from the former Yugoslavia to the Middle East and North Africa, and Antiwar.com saw a distinct move closer to the corporate media narrative.

When Newsbud did a survey of 10 Antiwar.com news reports on Syria between December 14 and December 27, 2012, editor Jason Ditz linked to a total of 24 outside sources, 16 of which were from corporate media such as the BBC, New York Times and Haaretz; two were from Voice of America, the official external broadcast institution of the US government and a key instrument of its regime change agenda; two from Monsters and Critics, a web-only entertainment/celebrity news and review publication with political commentary and news; and one was from Human Rights Watch, to which billionaire hedge fund manager and prominent “pro-democracy” advocate George Soros (astutely described in an excellent February 2001 Antiwar column as a “False Prophet-At-Large”) pledged $100 million last year, enabling it “to deepen its research presence on countries of concern.” The remaining three were taken from SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency, whose claims were briefly mentioned only to be dismissed with a cynicism clearly absent in the credulous treatment of opposition sources.

Own Words

As American bombers and Cruise missiles descended on Serbian schools, hospitals, monasteries, homes, and other civilian sites, and the War Party agitated ceaselessly for the introduction of ground troops, it became the moral duty of every citizen of the United States to become an "expert" on the Balkan crisis. Since the United States has taken on the burdens of Empire while still retaining (for the moment) the forms of our old Republic, what Americans think about the actions of their government abroad has become literally a matter of life and death for the peoples of the world.

The battle in the sky over Yugoslavia had its equivalent here in the battle for American public opinion. Antiwar played a key role in that fight. As the quick victory envisioned by the NATO-crats continued to elude them, the tide of public opinion began to turn. Antiwar's goal was not only to inform but also to mobilize informed citizens in concerted action to stop the war. The war at home was an information war: an attempt by the government to both limit and shape the information that Americans had. It was, above all, a propaganda war, one in which the American government and its allies in the media were bombing and strafing their own people with hi-tech lies.

Forged in the experience of the first Balkan war, Antiwar.com has become the Internet newspaper of record for a growing international movement, the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of "human rights," "humanitarianism," "freedom from terror," and "global democracy." The totalitarian liberals and social democrats of the West have unilaterally and arrogantly abolished national sovereignty and openly seek to overthrow all who would oppose their bid for global hegemony. They have made enemies of the patriots of all countries, and it is time for those enemies to unite – or perish alone.

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