Nord Stream, Seymour Hersh and how disinformation works
Did the United States blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea? Spoiler: I don’t know.
And Seymour Hersh, a well known U.S. investigative journalist who made the claim last week, has managed to ensure that we may never know the truth. Hersh’s story is a case study in modern-day disinformation.
Published on Substack, a newsletter platform, the piece blew up like…well a bomb under a pipeline, claiming that the Americans conducted a secret operation last September to destroy Russia’s primary means of exporting its natural gas to Germany and the rest of Europe. Hersh’s apparently juicy scoop described a military operation that amounted to an act of war against both Russia and Germany, and was conducted with the full knowledge and active cooperation from the Norwegian government.
Oslo dismissed the accusations, Washington rejected them as “utterly false and complete fiction,” and much of my own journalistic bubble reacted with an equivalent of a collective digital eye-roll.