Aaron Maté is a Canadian journalist and a reporter. He currently works as reporter for The Grayzone, a fringe[2] [3] blog known for its sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes,[4] pro-Putin propaganda,[5] and denial of the Uyghur genocide.[6][7]
Aaron Maté | |
---|---|
Born | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
Occupation | Journalist |
Nationality | Canadian |
Education | Concordia University (BA) |
Genre | Political commentary |
Subjects |
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Years active | 2005–present[1] |
Notable awards | Izzy Award (2019) |
Relatives | Gabor Maté (father)
Rae Maté (mother) Daniel Maté (brother) Hannah Maté (sister) |
He is a former producer of Democracy Now! and a contributor to The Nation and RealClearPolitics. He hosts the show Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone[8] and as of January 2022 fills in as a host on the Useful Idiots[9] podcast.
Maté was born and raised in Vancouver[10] to Rae Maté, a visual artist and an illustrator of children's books,[11] and Gabor Maté, a Hungarian physician, author, and columnist.[12]
While a student, Maté was vice president of the pro-Palestinian student union at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and he was among the main subjects featured in the National Film Board of Canada documentary Discordia.[13][14] The film depicts Maté's struggle with his Jewish identity on campus while condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.[15] Maté was arrested during the Concordia University Netanyahu riot on September 9, 2002, after stepping between protesters and police,[16] for which he faced expulsion.[17]
From 2003 to 2005 Maté worked as a primary researcher for Naomi Klein, who wrote about their collaboration that he showed himself to be "a great intellect and terrific journalist".[18]
Maté has worked as a reporter and producer for Democracy Now!, Vice, The Real News, and Al Jazeera.[19]
Using the term "Russiagate", in much of his reporting for The Nation Maté criticized the mainstream media coverage of the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and links between Trump associates and Russian officials.[20][21][22][23][24]
In October 2017, Maté discussed the media coverage of the investigation in The Nation, stating that "unverified claims are reported with little to no scepticism ... developments are cherry-picked and overhyped, while countervailing ones are minimised or ignored. Front-page headlines advertise explosive and incriminating developments, only to often be undermined by the article's content, or retracted entirely." Maté said use of social media by Russia had no effect on the election: "To suggest 200 [Twitter] accounts out of 328 million could have had an impact is as much an insult to common sense as it is to basic math". "A $100,000 Facebook ad purchase seems unlikely to have had much impact in a $6.8 billion election".[25][26][27] In a July 2018 article in The Nation following the 2018 Russia–United States summit in Helsinki between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, he defended Trump against the statements made against him, such as the claim the summit had triggered an American "national security crisis".[28][29] In May 2017, Bob Cesca wrote on the Salon website: "Both Maté and [Zack] Beauchamp go to great lengths to characterize speculation about the Trump-Russia connection, which I would describe as small-C conspiracy theories, as being on a similar level as Alex Jones' loony big-C conspiracy mongering."[30]
In December 2017, Maté interviewed Luke Harding on The Real News about Harding's just published book about the Russian interference to help Trump, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. Vanity Fair described Maté as "a polite but dogged skeptic who administered a memorable vivisection" to Harding during the interview.[31]
Maté earned an Izzy Award in April 2019 for his work challenging press coverage of special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation.[20][21][22][24]
In November 2019, Maté suggested John Brennan, former director of the CIA, had suspicious reasons for the investigation into Russian links in a November 2019 article for Real Clear Investigations.[32][33] According to the Washington Monthly Brennan (and Maté)[32][33] had been open in a Congressional hearing in May 2017, which the Senate Intelligence Committee shared.[32][clarification needed]
In May 2020, Maté stated: "All of the available evidence showed just how baseless [Russiagate] was". He said those who resisted Trump's administration were distracted by the "conspiracy theory that he conspired with or was blackmailed by Russia".[34]
Maté has written about the claims made by two Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors that the OPCW doctored a report on the Douma chemical attack in order to place blame on the Syrian government and to justify missile strikes against Syrian government forces by the US, UK, and France.[35]
In September 2020, Maté testified at the United Nations at an Arria meeting hosted by the Russian Federation and China, about the alleged cover-up by the OPCW.[35]
In May 2021, he accompanied Paul Larudee and other members of the Syria Solidarity Movement to observe the 2021 Syrian presidential election.[36] Bellingcat wrote that the Syria Solidarity Movement supports the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which it described as "a rabidly anti-Semitic, fascist organization that advocates for a "Greater Syria," incorporating Lebanon and Palestine".[37]
Maté and The Grayzone, for which he reports, are recipients of the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees's Serena Shim Award, a cash prize administered by Paul Larudee and frequently given to supporters of the Syrian government, and individuals who promote conspiracy theories in support of Syria's president Assad.[38][39][36]
In June 2022, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue published an analysis of social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations who disseminated disinformation about the Syrian conflict. Maté was named as the most prolific spreader of disinformation about the Syrian conflict since 2020 among the 28 conspiracy theorists analysed.[40] In a footnote added to a London Observer article on 10 July (published the previous month), Maté was quoted as saying "neither the study or the Observer offer any evidence" for the assertion he is a spreader of disinformation and that the Institute for Strategic Dialogue "does not even attempt to refute a single claim of mine".[40]
In November 2020, Maté said that the appointment of Antony Blinken as Secretary of State and the possible nomination of Michèle Flournoy as Defense Secretary, showed that President-elect Joe Biden was "continuing with the hawkish playbook" he had followed throughout his career.[41]
In February 2021, Maté was the first to report that Amnesty International had removed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny's status as a prisoner of conscience "given the fact that he advocated violence and discrimination and has not yet retracted such statements".[2][42][43][44] Oliver Carroll wrote in The Independent that The Grayzone had "amplified" criticism of Navalny and "appears to have been privy to lobbying around the Amnesty decision".[42] Amnesty reversed its decision in May, issuing the following statement: "We recognise that an individual's opinions and behaviour may evolve over time. It is part of Amnesty's mission to encourage people to positively embrace a human rights vision and to not suggest that they are forever trapped by their past conduct. Some of Navalny's previous statements are reprehensible and we do not condone them in the slightest. By confirming Navalny's status as prisoner of conscience, we are not endorsing his political programme, but are highlighting the urgent need for his rights, including access to independent medical care, to be recognised and acted upon by the Russian authorities".[45]
Maté was critical of President Biden's response to Israel's attack on Gaza in May 2021. Maté said Biden's telephone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which Biden expressed his "unwavering support" for Israel's "right to defend itself", was "a green light for Netanyahu to continue massacring Palestinian civilians".[46]
NFB title:Discordia
Independent journalist Aaron Maté—formerly a Democracy Now! producer—consistently challenged the media's coverage of the Russia-Trump campaign collusion story,
Maté also spoke about the President Donald Trump and Russia conspiracy. He said he believes the mainstream media has been promulgating a false narrative that Trump colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.
As Aaron Maté recently noted in The Nation, the number of accounts under suspicion – 200 – pales in comparison to Twitter's 328 million users. "To suggest 200 accounts out of 328 million could have had an impact is as much an insult to common sense as it is to basic math", Maté wrote. The Facebook case offers an analogue: "A $100,000 Facebook ad buy", according to Maté, "seems unlikely to have had much impact in a $6.8 billion election".
For declining to endorse US intelligence claims that the Kremlin meddled in our election and faulting both countries for the poor state of US-Russia relations, Trump was roundly accused of 'shameful,' 'disgraceful,' and 'treasonous' behavior that has sparked a full-blown 'national security crisis'.
The Nation's Aaron Maté believes liberals are overreaching, and that's putting it mildly: 'From the outset, Russiagate proponents have exhibited a blind faith in the unverified claims of US government officials and other sources, most of them unnamed. ... The record of US intelligence, replete with lies and errors, underscores the need for caution. Mueller was a player in one of this century's most disastrous follies when, in congressional testimony, he endorsed claims about Iraqi WMDs and warned that Saddam Hussein 'may supply' chemical and biological material to 'terrorists'.'
Brennan, by his own account, has already outed himself as a key suspect.
All of the available evidence showed just how baseless [Russiagate] was, and it was pretty clear that once it collapsed, it would hand Trump two gifts. First of all, it would give him the gift of throughout however long it took this thing to end, Trump's resistance being distracted into this dumb conspiracy theory that he conspired with or was blackmailed by Russia. And two, when it collapsed, it would give him the gift of vindication. And then, as more and more evidence came out as to how this whole thing started, Trump would be able to exploit it and use it for his re-election campaign, and say, 'Look at how these people tried to stop me and how they tried to take me down.' And basically use it as an excuse for being so awful on everything else. And now we're seeing that third phase,” says Maté.
[Criticisms of Navalny] have been amplified in a broad network of Kremlin-sympathising media at home and abroad. These outlets include Grayzone, an opaquely funded leftist publication based in the United States, which appears to have been privy to lobbying around the Amnesty decision. It was an author of Grayzone, Aaron Mate, who first reported the rethink in a tweet showing a screenshot of an email sent from Amnesty to a redacted name. Mr Mate's editorial boss, Max Blumenthal, is a regular contributor to RT and Sputnik.
[In February, AI] said the decision [to remove the status] had been made internally and was not influenced by the Russian state. But in a new statement on Friday the organisation apologised and said their decision had been used to "further violate Navalny's rights" in Russia.