African Stream's Pan-African, anti-imperialist journalistic perspectives made it the target of a state that colludes with corporate media to spread war propaganda.
Every accusation is a confession when war propaganda is being spread by the state and its minions in corporate media. That adage is especially true when corporate media in the west use the term “state controlled” when they want to make the case for wars of aggression and to discredit those nations they label “adversaries.” If anyone is controlled by the state, it is the networks and major newspapers that can be counted on to march in lock step and repeat every narrative that is used to justify U.S. actions around the world.
There is no stronger state control of media than in the United States and the collective west. The intentional destruction of the African Stream platform is just the latest example. On September 13, 2024, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended the ability of African Stream and the German-based website Red to create content and to raise money, making the continuation of their operations impossible.
Blinken claimed that both outlets were spreading Russian government propaganda, and African Stream was immediately removed from YouTube, the platform with the widest reach for anyone creating digital media. African Stream was also removed from TikTok and the Meta platforms, Facebook and Instagram, which are also of vital importance to media work. Google, YouTube’s parent company, even closed African Stream’s email accounts. The X platform allowed African Stream to post its stories, but demonetized the site. The accusation of being Russian agents impacted their ability to raise mone,y and African Stream, which once had 2 million followers across various platforms, will cease operations on July 1, 2025. Not only did big tech platforms hinder African Stream’s ability to continue its operations, but they proved once again to be partners with the United States government and readily followed their orders.
It is significant that while a site presenting excellent journalism will be closing its doors, corporate state controlled media continue churning out talking points that come straight from the State Department and the White House, a dynamic that is especially useful whenever this country wants to make the case for war. The U.S. is at war with Iran, and Israel’s attacks on that country, which began on June 12, 202,5 were followed by stories easily proven to be false, especially the claim that Iran has or will soon have a nuclear weapon. For many years, these media scribes have claimed that Iran has been just days away from nuclear weapon capability. The inconvenient truth, that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, was well known and was repeated in sworn testimony by Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. But Gabbard herself proved to be inconvenient, and she was very publicly dismissed by her boss, not once but twice. On March 25, 2025, she took part in what is called the Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) delivered by the Intelligence Community (IC). “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
Trump quickly shoved Gabbard under the bus, and she was excluded from intelligence briefings before the Israeli strikes. He bluntly said, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.” He wasn’t finished humiliating the one-time democrat and supposed peace candidate in the 2020 election. He added for good measure, “She’s wrong.” Instead of maintaining some self-respect and resigning from her job, Gabbard chose to stay and to defend her boss by walking back her comments. "The dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division."
Not only was the public rebuke given insufficient attention, but every claim about Iran was treated as fact. Unsourced stories of Iranian “sleeper cells” proliferated on the networks and in newspapers without question or skepticism. Every alleged expert appearing on the news predictably went along, giving credence to an obvious disinformation campaign. What better way to get buy-in for war than to make the public afraid of Iranian bogeymen?
If the media wanted to make the public afraid of Iran, they might have investigated more credible claims, such as the reported killing of David Barnea, head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. There are conflicting accounts of Barnea’s fate, but if sleeper cells can make the news, so can the question of whether or not the director of Mossad may be dead as a result of an Iranian missile strike.
But unlike networks and newspapers that spread lies, the African Stream site will soon be gone, after providing news about the African continent that was produced in Africa by Africans. Antony Blinken claimed that African Stream was controlled by the Russian-based network RT, and he was soon joined by the Stanford Internet Observatory, which made many bizarre allegations, including that “African Stream frequently reposts authentic content that has already demonstrated its potential to gain traction.” It is a tactic also employed by The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as anyone who posts on social media, but facts weren’t really the issue. Getting Meta and YouTube to ban RT was the issue, and Blinken decided to make an example of African Stream with his false statements.
Just a few weeks before Blinken dealt the death blow, the Voice of America (VOA) began the attack. African Stream reported, quite correctly, that every U.S. administration has bombed the African nation of Somalia. “It is now a bipartisan tradition for each new U.S. president, whether Republican or Democrat, to rain drone bombs down on the East African country in which millions of civilians are simply struggling to survive.” The fact of continued U.S. intervention is not in dispute, but VOA said, “That is false.”
The truth wasn’t really the issue. Getting rid of a media platform that presented news from a Pan-African and anti-imperialist point of view that was growing in popularity was the issue, and that meant the African Stream platform had to be taken out.
It must also be pointed out that the knives came out in the Biden administration months before Trump took office. Claims of disinformation were common in the Biden camp and were used to silence the media and critics of their policies. Censorship is very much a bipartisan exercise.
How can independent media survive when a presidential administration can work with their big tech partners in crime and disappear whoever they decide to target? African Stream's offense was to do the real job of journalism and find an audience who wanted a different perspective on Africa and on African people. Such information is dangerous because imperialism thrives on ignorance and passivity. If people know that the U.S. regularly bombs Somalia, a nation which remains in a state of constant destabilization because of Washington, then there may be questions about other foreign policy decisions, and the entire project may fall apart. Keeping the public confused and ignorant is a necessity of imperialism, and that meant African Stream’s journalism was very dangerous indeed.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at [email protected].
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