Max Blumenthal (born December 18, 1977) is an American journalist, author, blogger, and filmmaker. He was a writer for The Nation, AlterNet, The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, Mondoweiss, 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 also a contributor to Sputnik and RT.

Blumenthal is the editor of The Grayzone website, described by many as fringe and known for its criticism of US foreign policy and its positive, often apologetic coverage of the Chinese, Russian, Venezuelan, and Ba'athist Syrian governments, including its denial of chemical attacks by the Syrian government and of human rights abuses against Uyghurs.. The source Ross cites is: He has written extensively about Israel, and is sharply critical of the conduct of its government.

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. He is Jewish. His father is a journalist and writer who served as an aide to President Bill Clinton. Blumenthal attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.

Affiliations Prior to 2015, Blumenthal's articles and video reports were published by Washington Monthly (in 2003 and 2005), The Nation (2005–2015), The Daily Beast (2008–09), The Huffington Post (2009–2011), The New York Times (in 2009 and 2014), the Los Angeles Times (2009), Columbia Journalism Review (2011) and Al Jazeera English (2013).

In late 2011, Blumenthal joined Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper primarily to write about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and foreign-policy debates in Washington, D.C. 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.

Since his visit to Moscow, 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 Russia's state owned Sputnik radio, as well as to Iran's state owned Press TV and China's state-run CGTN. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone website within a month after his visit to Moscow. In an October 2019 article for New Politics magazine, London-based Lebanese academic 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".

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 "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.

Blumenthal testified as a prosecution witness for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in their civil suit, known as Vicente v. Barnett, against Arizona businessman Roger Barnett. Barnett was ordered to pay $73,000 in damages for assaulting a group of migrants near the US–Mexico border.

In 2014, Blumenthal covered hunger strikes by undocumented migrants held in the privatized Northwest Detention Center for The Nation.

American conservatism In June 2007, Blumenthal attended the Take Back America Conference (sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future), where he interviewed both supporters of Barack Obama (D-Illinois) and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Blumenthal said that conference organizers were angered by the video, and refused to air it.

Blumenthal made a short video titled Generation Chickenhawk (2007). It featured interviews with attendees at the July 2007 College Republican National Convention in Washington, D.C. Blumenthal asked why they, as Iraq War supporters, had not enlisted in the United States Armed Forces.LaSalle, Mick. "Maximum Strength Mick." San Francisco Chronicle, July 19, 2007.

In August 2007, Blumenthal made a short video called Rapture Ready, about American Christian fundamentalists' support for the State of Israel.

Republican Gomorrah (2009) Blumenthal's book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party (2009), was a bestseller on both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestsellers lists. The work was inspired by the psychologist Erich Fromm who analyzed the personality of those "eager to surrender their freedom" via an identification with authoritarian causes and powerful leaders.

For Blumenthal, a "culture of personal crisis" has defined the American "radical right". In a 2009 interview with CNN, he commented: "The GOP has become subsumed by dysfunctional personalities with no capacity for restraining themselves, either from acting out hysterically or from their most devious urges. For these internally conflicted figures, who will continue to produce new and increasingly bizarre scandals, right-wing political crusading is simply a form of self-medication."

Israel and Palestine Feeling the Hate (2009 video) In early June 2009, Blumenthal posted a 3-minute video on YouTube, titled Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on the Eve of Obama's Cairo Address. The video was recorded the day before President Barack Obama's Cairo address on June 4 and showed man-on-the-street interviews with possibly drunk Jewish-American young people in Jerusalem. According to Tablet, the Americans interviewed "spewed racist vitriol about the president while asserting a strikingly meatheaded brand of Jewish pride". Some of those interviewed used obscenities and racist rhetoric about President Obama and Arabs, referring to Obama as a "nigger" and "like a terrorist". According to The Jerusalem Post, the video "garnered massive exposure and caused a firestorm in the media and the Jewish world". A Bradley Burston op-ed in Haaretz described the video as "an overnight Internet sensation".

Blumenthal's video gained 400,000 views before YouTube removed it for unspecified terms-of-use violations. The Huffington Post had refused to publish it, and its Tel Aviv sequel was briefly on that website, before it resurfaced on Mondoweiss. Referring to the Jerusalem video, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency quoted Blumenthal as stating: "I won't ascribe motives to YouTube I am unable to confirm, but it is clear there is an active campaign by right-wing Jewish elements to suppress the video by filing a flood of complaints with YouTube".

Referring to death threats he had received for publishing the video, he ascribed individuals "emotional need to stop this video by eliminating" him as "a feature of right-wing psychology around the world". Blumenthal saw his interviewees as part of the "indoctrination" of Taglit-Birthright tours intended for diaspora Jews, in which he had himself participated in 2002. Around 2009, he described himself as a "non-Zionist" liberal, and considered the identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism as a "cynical ploy by the Israel lobby".

Dispute with Karen J. Greenberg (2011) In 2011, Blumenthal wrote in The eXile that Israeli occupation forces and Bahraini monarchy guards trained American police departments in anti-protester techniques, including torture, and quoted Fordham University Law Professor Karen J. Greenberg. Contacted by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Adam Serwer of Mother Jones, Greenberg told Goldberg that while she "never made such a statement", Blumenthal "was looking for corroboration but I told him I didn't have any." She told Serwer that "I did not intend to assert these allegations as fact ... the entire sense of the quote is inaccurate."

Blumenthal said that he had quoted Greenberg accurately, accused her of denying she had made the statement, and believed that she had since been "intimidated by Goldberg and the pro-Israel forces he represents." Greenberg had made the same comments to Adam Serwer of Mother Jones.

Goliath (2013)

Blumenthal has written two books based on the periods of time he spent in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank. He documented what he said were Israeli and Palestinian war crimes in two books: Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel (2013) and The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza (2015).

Goliath, published by Nation Books, outlines what Blumenthal characterizes as Israel's aggressive shift to the far-right, and its crackdown on local activism. In the preface, he writes: "Americans' tax dollars and political support [...] are crucial in sustaining the present state of affairs" in Israel. The book consists of 73 short chapters. Chapter titles include "To the Slaughter", "The Concentration Camp", "The Night of Broken Glass", "This Belongs to the White Man" and "How to Kill Goyim and Influence People".

The book received a positive review from Nancy Murray in Race & Class, calling it "a work of unsettling but scrupulous and courageous truth-telling". It was also positively reviewed in the Journal of Palestine Studies by Steven Salaita, who called it "one of the most important titles published on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the past few years".