Friday 6 September 2024

Russian efforts to see Trump win in November revealed

The FBI have published a 277-page affidavit outlining Russian efforts to influence the US election in favour of Donald Trump and sow disinformation and division across the USA and Europe. The Department of Justice has also indicted two former employees of RT (formerly Russia Today) and seized over 30 internet domains that have been used in the widespread and long-established campaign to destabilise the West. This ought to be a stunning revelation but it isn’t since most of us assumed that is what’s been happening for years. It is the policy developed under Putin and known as ‘Active Measures’.

RT has been banned in the US and Europe since 2021-22. Still, they have simply continued to pump out Kremlin propaganda and talking points through paid ‘influencers’ using front companies to funnel the money to useful idiots on social media.

The whole thing has been remarkably cheap and had the Ukrainians not resisted Russia’s invasion in 2022, it would have resulted in a huge expansion of the Russian Mir at very little cost. Putin obviously still hopes to salvage something, taking the Donbas and parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provided he can get Trump in the White House in November.

The details are fascinating. One method was to create identical copies of well-known online news outlets, mainly The Washington Post, Fox News and an American Jewish outlet called Forward, but with slightly altered domain names like Washingtonpost.pm instead of Washingtonpost.com. The fake sites contained navigation menus and links that would take the reader smoothly to the genuine websites.

Apart from fake American, German and French newspaper domains, the so-called ‘doppelgänger’ operation also created Dailymail.cam, Dailymail.cfd and Dailymail.top.

Fake stories would be created using the actual names and pictures of real journalists. The stories were essentially Russian government propaganda used to influence readers who would believe they were seeing US opinion formers. RT would then have links to the fake stories posted on social media and employ people to comment and automated bots to amplify the stories across platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

It is confirmation of all we have suspected for years. 

I was particularly interested in a couple of things that stand out for me. Brexit is explicitly mentioned in the indictment on page 3. An RT journalist recalls asking his or her editor what RT’s ‘line’ was in 2016 on the UK leaving the EU and the answer was: “Anything that causes chaos is RT’s line.” This story came from an academic researcher.

Remember, it was (and still is) an explicit Russian foreign policy objective to weaken and divide the EU.

Next, in the affidavit on page 203, the FBI seems to have obtained internal RT documents that talk of identifying potential conflict situations on social media and monitoring to see how they unfold. It didn’t matter what sort of conflict. It could be social, economic, political, religious, ethnic, etc. The team was supposed to identify the stages and the potential for escalation to push Russia’s foreign policy objectives.

They were to introduce narratives favourable to Russia and encourage escalation using all available tools like influencers, traffic redirection, fake news, articles, media mirror outlets, etc to “destabilise the societal situation.”  When I look at the USA and the UK, it's hard not to conclude Russia has had a measure of success.

You would also need to be pretty stupid or a committed Brexiteer (or more usually, both) to deny that Brexit was something of interest to Russia. In 2014-15 it must have looked like a gift-wrapped opportunity to damage both Britain and the EU economically, socially, and politically when Cameron talked of holding a referendum. You can imagine Putin rubbing his hands in glee.

Given what we now know, it is inconceivable that the Kremlin would not have put a lot of effort - time as well as money - into making sure Vote Leave won. If Russian Today supported anything that caused chaos in the West, Brexit was an irresistible temptation.

One of the vehicles that RT used to funnel money to influence public opinion in the US was Tenet Media in Tennessee, a firm that received around $10 million from Russia, about 90% of its operating revenues. That money was used to pay podcasters like Tim Pool who was getting $100,000 a week to promote Russia and denigrate Ukraine, but claimed not to know where the money was coming from. He was just one of the 'useful idiots' in the West who was happy to become rich by any means possible, including betraying your country.

The $10 million by the way came from an unnamed UK shell company.

And bad as that all was, one of the people promoting Tenet Media was none other than Elon Musk:

Musk has close to 200 million followers on Twitter and is happy to peddle fake news wherever he finds it, as long as it supports Trump and Putin.

And anyone who follows US politics will know one of the foremost Russian propagandists and Trump supporters is Tucker Carlson who used to work at Fox News. Carlson has admitted privately that he 'hates' Trump but has still promoted and supported him at every turn.

In the indictment, Carlson is referred to as "a well-known U.S. political commentator" but we all know it's him. 

Carlson's visit to a Russian grocery store was seen as over the top, even for these secretly funded advocates of the Kremlin line.  One can only guess how much Russian money has gone Carlson's way or perhaps his disloyalty to America comes for nothing, difficult though that is to imagine.

And finally, let us come to the Farage links to RT. He has appeared on the channel and was once offered his own show.  As recently as June this year Farage has maintained that the West 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine, a common Kremlin talking point.

We still have much to learn about Brexit, Russia, and Nigel Farage.

I think if Putin was to die or be deposed and Russia was to develop into a relatively 'normal' democracy, 90% of the world's conflicts would be resolved peacefully and we could get on with solving urgent problems like climate change and deprivation.

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