The Real Smolensk Lie
The Washington Post is a fine newspaper. But even the best stumble at times, and they did so today in a way that made my jaw drop.
Here’s the headline: “New report rekindles questions about 2010 plane crash that killed Polish leader” The article then offers a he-said-she-said account of the “controversy” regarding what happened.
I was struck that this came on the very same day that Donald Trump actually acknowledged that President Obama really was born in the United States. The Post, along with every even vaguely respectable American news outlet, has consistently described the accusations about Obama’s imagined Kenyan birth as manifestly false babble. In fact, the Post itself has a piece by Aaron Blake today in which he demonstrates that even Trump’s flirtation with reality is couched in more lies. The American media has (with a few exceptions, sadly) come a long way since the days when it was typical to present global warming, evolution, Iraq’s sponsorship of 9/11, etc., as if these were “debates” on which intelligent people can disagree. And then this…
Let’s get this out of the way: there is no legitimate controversy about what happened in 2010. Sure, some minor details may yet tweak the story in inconsequential ways, but the airplane carrying those Polish dignitaries crashed in a tragic accident. If anyone wants a clear discussion of the issue, click here, here, here, here…I could go on, if you really need more.
The people pushing the Smolensk assassination legend are the same people who believe that Lech Wałęsa was a communist agent who engineered the events of 1989 to make it seem as if communism had fallen, while still allowing the same evil networks to manipulate Poland from behind the scenes. These are the same people who believe that Polish “independence” only came in 2015, when they were elected to office. In their imagination, the last quarter century in Poland has been dominated by foreign interests and a cabal of cosmopolitan, elite puppets who are not “true Poles.”
I did not want to have to write about this any more. Debunking conspiracy theorists is like playing whack-a-mole; if you try to refute their arguments, they just assume that you are part of the plot (or too naïve to understand the hidden truth). I’m never going to convince anyone who actually believes in the Smoleńsk mythology, and I don’t want to bother trying.
I don’t fault people unfamiliar with Polish affairs for hearing the announcement of today’s report, and assuming that a document from the Defense Ministry of a major NATO ally must have some validity. But I do fault the Post for not doing basic due-diligence before using that headline, and before printing a “balanced” discussion of the theories of such unbalanced people. There are plenty of excellent Polish studies experts in the US who could have clarified what was going on here, had the reporter bothered to contact any.
This is not a trivial matter, and not just another example of media bashing. Articles like the one in today’s Post are important, because now the backers of the conspiracy theories will be able to say that prominent international news organizations are finally coming to recognize that there’s at least room for legitimate debate here, for “questions to be raised.”
We must not allow a lie to get transformed into a difference of opinion.