This thread does a good rundown of why the whole pathogen biolab allegation is just a bunch disinformation. Like with many such claims, it’s appealing at first blush, but someone with more knowledge can spot that it’s misleading.

    • pingveno@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      He started going downhill in 2016, accepting material he knew was from Russian intelligence. It appears that the final straw was when he wanted to publish articles in support of some of the conspiracy theories around Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and China. The Intercept didn’t feel like they passed journalistic muster and refused to publish them. He parted ways for Substack.

          • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That, or blackmail. See also Matt Taibbi. You can actually pinpoint the approximate time when Taibbi suddenly went off the deep end; “Insane Clown President” and earlier is extremely insightful and makes sense, “Hate, Inc” and after is bonkers. There was no gradual transition or erosion of his good sense and logic.

            Taibbi switching over to Team Trump actually gave me this sort of whiplash of self-doubt that maybe I am the wrong one, and I took a little bit of time to really read in detail what he was writing about “Russiagate” and etc, to see if his sudden switchover was based in some kind of reality and I needed to learn what he was saying. Nope. It’s all just nonsense. He’s definitely not a stupid person though. Also, just like other people who went through this transition, he now has different weird opinions on all kinds of things, but on Russia / Ukraine his viewpoint is exactly the same as everyone else who went through the transition.

            Like I say, my theory is money or blackmail.