Sputnik’s Lee Stranahan just revealed on Twitter that the FBI was called to his apartment by Augustana University after he asked them whether they’d be interested in hosting him on a panel alongside former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a notorious Russophobe who was recently embroiled in an anti-Semitic hate speech scandal after he casually spewed Holocaust revisionism on live TV, upon news that the former diplomat was invited to speak at that educational institution. Stranahan said that the FBI was satisfied with his explanation and concluded that he didn’t constitute a threat to McFaul, but the incident confirms how crazy the anti-Russian witch hunt has gotten in the US following the commencement of Moscow’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.

The FBI itself can’t be faulted per se no matter how tempting it might be for many of its critics to do so since it was obligated to respond to what Augustana University presumably misportrayed as a so-called “imminent threat”, nor can McFaul be condemned either since he likely didn’t even know that his hosts did this. The blame lies entirely with that educational institution that decided to de facto function as a brainwashing apparatus of the American elite by declining to allow Stranahan to participate in a panel alongside the US’ former Ambassador to Russia in order to present a diversity of views on the Ukrainian Conflict. Instead of simply ignoring that journalist’s well-intended request, they called the country’s secret police on him in order to intimidate Stranahan for sharing his proposal.

He, like every American, has the constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech and it’s not illegal to simply suggest participating on a panel alongside a public figure with the intent of bringing balance to the discussion. Nevertheless, Augustana University wanted to thuggishly intimidate him because they presumably disagree with the way in which he expressed his freedom of speech, which speaks to that institution’s embracement of the liberal totalitarianism that nowadays serves as America’s unofficial ideology and that of the US-led West more broadly as well. No American should ever be questioned by their country’s secret police for doing what Stranahan just did and this incident should infuriate anyone who sincerely believes in the freedom of speech enshrined in the Constitution.

It’s very likely that there have already been or at least soon will be many more such incidents like Stranahan’s but the public might not be made privy to them since the people who they involve(d) might not be as well known as he is. It’s every patriotic Americans’ duty to stand in solidarity with Stranahan irrespective of whether they support his interpretation of the Ukrainian Conflict. It’s his right to believe whatever he wants and to publicly express it, including by offering to debate his country’s former Ambassador to Russia. What just happened to Stranahan is yet another of America’s growing list of shames that became all the more frequent since the onset of the Russiagate hysteria over half a decade ago revealed that this self-professed “democracy” is really a liberal totalitarian dictatorship.