Honestly this all seems too good to be fully true to me, like a wish fulfillment fantasy. The NED’s new guard installed at this high a level can’t be this ignorant of the org’s purpose, right? Or perhaps they really can be. Perhaps senior NED staff will have to be re-replaced, or else the whole project scuttled and replaced by something else. Maybe this kind of work has to return to its clandestine roots.
RT has coverage as well:
https://www.rt.com/news/601856-ned-regime-change-grayzone/ (Archive link)
Just laughing my ass off imaging some seething and crying neo-con boomer chud being told to put pronouns on their business card by some pink-washing millennial girl-boss hire.
It is interesting given how the CIA and other parts of the deep state have gone all-in on pink-washing and CIA-feminism (yes women can be drone pilots, in fact they're our best, etc, etc messaging) given the agency's history and the types they typically attracted. I always wondered how much that was just surface level PR and marketing but it appears to be stirring the hornets nest of the old guard reactionary ruthless criminals who were directly trained by and worked with the worst (and best at their job perhaps) of the cold war era monsters.
It's like people have hypothesized many times in online left spaces, they drunk the kool-aid, they were raised on it so they don't understand the truth, the real purpose, they're true believers in liberalism and believe the propaganda, the truth of purpose has been lost behind the marketing and PR that everyone including their employees bought into and given that they can't effectively act because they're too earnest and don't understand how it works.
This is great though. They have to try and adapt and adopt progressive positions (and standing against the most obvious genocide in modern history is a very low bar and a necessary one for them to clear to have any credibility among their targets) or their mission to appear independent and to care about "democracy" and "human rights" will ring hollow not only to many western audiences but many global ones.
If they do they alienate and enrage these neo-cons (even turn them into enemies and risk some clueless politicians trying to go after them) while preserving the mission and utility of the org, if they don't then the org's utility diminishes and they become just a bunch of old boomers whining on about communism and other things in a tone and style that doesn't resonate with modern audiences (after all they never needed a massive propaganda effort to keep reactionaries convinced, to keep the racists and professional bigots part of the anti-communist crowd, it was the liberals, the ones who want to pretend to be progressive and civil who had to be kept in line, their concerns assuaged).
In other words let them fight!
I W A N T T O B E L I E V E
Aun came from Komen for the Cure, which was a racket, so if she’s as gormless as it seems, I’m surprised.
It’s absolutely incredible that the NED would even grant an interview to the gray zone in the first place! No wonder that old neocon is so mad at that unforced error. But there are no good people in this fight, so I hope the NED gives us more delicious drama before collapsing under the weight of the beef between the nonprofit industrial complex millennial ghouls and the bloodless neocon boomer ghouls.
She didn't even know what the phrase "CIA cut out" meant. Half way through, it dawns on her that they might be anti-american and she asks if they're pro lukashenko.
Is this how the empire collapses? All the hardline neocons on their way out are replaced with run of the mill neolibs who actually believe the propaganda they've been fed all these years. Who have no idea how to uphold the oppressive power of the institutions that they're taking over. If so, this is only going to get more and more hilarious to watch.
