Max Blumenthal (born December 18, 1977) is an American author and blogger. He was a writer for The Nation, AlterNet, The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America, and has contributed to Al Jazeera English, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He has been a writing fellow of the Nation Institute. He is a regular contributor to Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT, and has frequently used his various platforms to spread Russian propaganda. In 2023, he was invited by Russia to address a UN Security Council briefing about arms supplies to Ukraine.
Blumenthal is the editor of The Grayzone website, which is known for its apologetic coverage of authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, and Venezuelan governments, including its denial of chemical attacks by the Syrian government and of human rights abuses against Uyghurs.
Blumenthal has written four books. His first, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party (2009), made the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestsellers lists. He was awarded the 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book for Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which was published in 2013.
Early life and education
Blumenthal was born on December 18, 1977, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Jacqueline (née Jordan) and Sidney Blumenthal. His father is a journalist and writer who served as an aide to President Bill Clinton. Blumenthal attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
Affiliations
In late 2011, Blumenthal joined Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper primarily to write about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and foreign-policy debates in Washington, DC. When he left the publication in June 2012 in protest at its coverage of the Syrian Civil War, he considered the newspaper to have a pro-Assad editorial line followed by such individuals as Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. He wrote that it "gave me more latitude than any paper in the United States to write about ... Israel and Palestine", but he had ultimately tired of "jousting with Assad apologists". He added: "In the end, Assad will be remembered as an authoritarian tyrant." Blumenthal formerly contributed weekly articles to the AlterNet website, serving as a senior writer from September 2014.
Blumenthal has contributed to broadcasts on RT (formerly known as Russia Today) on many occasions. In December 2015, during a visit to Moscow presumed by multiple sources to have been paid for by the Kremlin, Blumenthal was a guest at RT's 10 Years On Air anniversary party attended by President Vladimir Putin, then-Lieutenant General Michael Flynn of the United States and English politician Ken Livingstone. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News in November 2017, Blumenthal defended RT against "the charge that it’s Kremlin propaganda."
He has contributed on multiple occasions to Sputnik radio, as well as to Iran's Press TV and China's CGTN. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone website within a month after his visit to Moscow. In an October 2019 article for New Politics magazine, Gilbert Achcar wrote that Blumenthal's Grayzone, along with the World Socialist Web Site, has "the habit of demonizing all left-wing critics of Putin and the likes of Assad by describing them as 'agents of imperialism' or some equivalent".
Blumenthal's articles and video reports have been published by The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post (for which he contributed from 2009 to 2011), Al Jazeera English, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, and Columbia Journalism Review.
Reporting
Immigration (2002–2014) Blumenthal won the Online News Association's Independent Feature Award for his 2002 Salon article, "Day of the Dead". In the article, he concluded the homicides of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico were connected to the policies of corporate interests in the border city. Blumenthal wrote about the rise of the so-called "Minuteman" movement for Salon in 2003, describing its members as "border vigilantes" who "have harassed and detained hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrants suspected of entering the country illegally."
In 2010, Blumenthal covered the federal immigration enforcement program known as Operation Streamline for Truthdig. "The program represents the entrenchment of a parallel nonproductive economy promoting abuse behind the guise of law enforcement and crime deterrence", he wrote.