For as long as it’s been in conflict with America and its democratic allies, Russia has tried to defeat them from within. It used any number of propaganda techniques over the decades to foment division, sow dissent, and undermine the consensus around democratic principles and ideals. And then, long after it looked like the cold war had been won by the West, social media came along and inadvertently handed Vladimir Putin his most powerful weapon yet.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s indictment of two employees of RT for covertly financing and directing a Tennessee-based online content creation company is just the latest example of how that weapon works. While neither the company nor the content creators it hired to do Russia’s work were named, the facts laid out in the indictment point toward Tenet Media and right-wing influencers like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, and Canada’s own Lauren Southern. Indeed, the co-founders of Tenet Media, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, are both Canadians.
Russia has long relied on so-called “useful idiots” to carry its ideological and political water, but these particular idiots belong in the useful idiocy hall of fame. Using the nearly $10 million provided by the Russians, Tenet paid the six influencers as much as $400,000 a month for their work, which involved producing content that focused on topics like inflation, immigration, and foreign policy. The goal, according to the indictment, was “amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine.”
So far, their defence has been either that they didn’t know who was behind the wildly excessive payments for their work or that — get this — they were actually the real victims here. It’s not clear yet whether any of them have returned the money they were victimized with, or if they even plan to. But as The Line’s Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney wrote on their Substack, ignorance isn’t much of a defence here. “What this suggests to us is either that many of these personalities have been groomed by Russian intelligence for years prior to the existence of Tenet; or that this funding scheme was consciously directed toward personalities whom Russian agents felt could be reliably swayed or influenced. This hardly absolves anyone, now does it?”
This underscores a pretty big weakness in our increasingly influencer-oriented intellectual ecosystem, one where people with no real background or training in journalism often command the largest audiences. It’s bad enough that we have a growing roster of propaganda-curious podcasters, YouTubers, and other social media entrepreneurs who seem more interested in feeding the algorithms with outrage and controversy than pursuing the truth. But with Twitter’s transformation from a digital public square into a clearinghouse for conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods, the dogs of digital warfare have truly been unleashed.
That’s as true here in Canada as it is south of the border. We may not be Russia’s primary target, but we are still in its crosshairs. As former CSIS director Richard Fadden told the CBC, "The Russians' overarching objective is to increase the level of discontent in our institutions — and institutions in all of the Western countries. There is no rational reason that I can think of why Canada would be exempted."
Press Progress editor Luke Lebrun noted in a recent piece that the Russian-funded Tenet Media influence campaign yielded 50 videos on Canada, with the majority produced by — you guessed it — Lauren Southern, the Rebel Media alumnus who traveled to Russia in 2018 to meet with a neo-fascist philosopher and Putin ally named Alexander Dugin. Southern’s videos, unsurprisingly, focus on the very same red meat that feeds the rest of Canada’s far-right online ecosystem, from paranoia around “mass” immigration and trans rights to inflation, housing and the innumerable evils of Justin Trudeau.
None of this is to suggest Southern or any of the right-wing Canadian influencers that appear in her videos (convoy enthusiast Katrina Panova and True North personality Harrison Faulkner) are knowingly taking cash from Russians to hold and share their views. It’s to suggest something potentially worse: that they never needed to be paid to hold and share them in the first place. As American Sunlight Project co-founder Nina Jankowicz told the New York Times, “they chose influencers who were already engaging in rage bait, exploiting the pre-existing fissures in our society for clicks.”
This indictment and the small handful of influencers it appears to implicate is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg. RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonian, has said that her organization has built “an enormous network, an entire empire of covert projects,” all with the aim of influencing western audiences. There’s also a separate FBI affidavit unsealed last week that shows a sanctioned Russian company called Social Design Agency (SDA) has a list of 2,800 people who are active on social media in the U.S. and 80 other countries, one that includes “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors and comedians.”
It’s safe to assume that there are at least a few Canadians on that list. Some may even be familiar to us. So what can we do? First and foremost, we need to be absolutely clear about the fact that foreign interference isn’t just an issue when it comes to our elected officials. There are clearly efforts underway to influence the broader intellectual environment in which they operate, and the ongoing collapse of the mainstream media has created a void — and an opportunity — that the Russians and other state-level operators will happily exploit.
Gerson and Gurney suggest this might be an opportunity for those on the right to take a harder look at the information they’re consuming and sharing. “We at The Line actually have some small hope that the indictment in full will prompt at least some soul searching among the conservative information ecosystem.” I am not nearly so optimistic. As we’ve seen time and again, people — conservatives, yes, but also progressives — default to the sources that tend to flatter their pre-existing biases and beliefs. We’re not naturally wired to seek out competing or conflicting sources of information, and we’re not being properly equipped to sort fact from fiction.
The Russians, of course, know all this, and are using it to their advantage. What we need is a government that’s able to properly regulate social media companies in a way that maximizes the opportunities for free expression and minimizes the rewards associated with spreading conflict and division. Until then, we’re all just casualties in a digital war we never signed up to fight.
Comments
couldnt disagree more.
do you also rely on jen geeson for your climate crisis information? you relying on the g and m as reliable geopolitical news analysis is as shocking as thinking the n y t will be more than a mouth piece for
I. O F. lies , ya know, the 40 beheaded IZ babies and noone killed by helicopter gunships on that day in october….
come on. John Meirsheimer, Jeffrey Sacks Max Blumenthal must be on your rolladex.
Or try Laith Marouf and Dimitri Lascarius, or Justin Podur or Jon Elmer in Toronto for actual non c i a information
Our own Nazi girl dep p m with highranking Nz as gramps and dad. wouldnt possibly amplify the russo bashing position? or smilingly toe the usa master’s line as a vood client state!?
I think I like what you re saying a lot but am having a hard time with typos and abbreviations. Lord knows I make my share of booboos but in the interests of common communications and understanding, when there are so few writers I can actually buy any more, could you slow down and spell things out a bit more? I m pretty sure your points need to be emphasized, not ignored.
Speaking of "The Line," I agree with Valerie (who DOES seem to have something against capitalization, grammar, and clarity in her written expression, preferring to subvert rules as some sort of telling statement in itself that mainly just obfuscates unnecessarily, which is actually why there ARE rules, conventions, institutions, laws etc.) that Jen Gerson or anyone who still writes for that publication are no longer worth reading because they refuse to recognize or acknowledge the ACTUAL line that now exists in the aforementioned digital cultural war, the line that they're clearly on the wrong side of. That side is of course, the nightmarish, nihilist right wing, casually malevolent deniers of truth, even existential climate change.
Why are so many people loathe to admit that? Is it because it goes against everything they've ever learned about fairness and tolerance of others or is it because the line between fantasy and reality has now been almost completely erased?
As a society we HAVE refused to respect the truth above all else, despite that level of discernment being our ACTUAL highest calling as supposedly rational, intelligent beings, preferring to maintain our favorite lies/myths/stories to just as casually, and increasingly it appears, just as malevolently continue subverting it. But are we not continuously entertained?
Or is it also simply because so much that's happening of late feels wholly unprecedented?
Well it IS true that anthropomorphic climate change hasn't happened before but fascism sure as hell HAS, so everyone has to pick a side now.
Totally nonsensical or just out to lunch producing readable understandable comments.
Let's just say Russians are no match for the Canadian Conservatives leaders like Poilievre, Smith. Moe, Higgs and now Rustad who pump more misinformation, lies gaslighting , pure fabrication daily with the only purpose to sway voters.by creating an enemy. They have done well with Trudeau as the enemy. What's next? The black shirts take over the convoyists and pretend only they have a solution?
Max you are a beautiful stylist and I like it when we re on the same side, but there are a few flaws in your logic by times. Where, other than here, and the Tyee and The Halifax Examiner, none of which could stand as national msm or broadly seen, do you think people get to read progressive news voices any more? I long for someone to confirm my progressive biases. It s so lonely these days.
Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney
Speaking of useful idiots, Canada is home to a network of pundits, bloggers, lobbyists, industry propagandists, and influencers — people with strong opinions and a platform — but no apparent qualifications, credentials, or expertise. People famous for being famous. They gain credibility by attracting large audiences, getting likes, and quoting other members of the echo chamber, as Fawcett does here.
What are Jen Gerson's and Matt Gurney's credentials for speaking about anything? Or Max Fawcett's, Jesse Brown's, and Andrew Coyne's, for that matter?
Why do we give these people a platform and a megaphone? Why do we care what they say? Why do we give them the time of day?
What does it mean for our democracy when we let other people do our thinking for us?
Beats reading or listening to the Conservatives, their leaders,nthrir propaganda and there constant criticism that Canada is broken. Bs, plain simple. We are capitalist progressive social democracy like the majority of Western democracies. The free market economy so bravely promoted by conservatives is really unregulated capitalism and our leaders of all political parties have abdicated our citizens in favour of corporations governing us. Neoliberalism 101. And has it worked? Yup profits never been higher, and problems with good and housing never be greater, yet we r told we need another 40 years to complete the task of having democracy disappear and authoritarian government tale over. That's the Conservative goal
These comments are fascinating.
My fascination specifically relates to Geoffrey Pounder's comments, in the context of his history of commenting on several sites with innumerable quotes and references which have left more than one of us wondering how he maintains such a vast database which offers him instant recall.
Why doesn't Geoffrey include himself in the list of people to which is addressed a host of questions, such as "Why do we give these people a platform"?
On the basis solely of his comments to this column -- his useful references to things done and said, notwithstanding -- I find myself sadly open to new, previously unconsidered, possibilities.
Fawcett: "None of this is to suggest Southern or any of the right-wing Canadian influencers that appear in her videos are knowingly taking cash from Russians to hold and share their views. It’s to suggest something potentially worse: that they never needed to be paid to hold and share them in the first place."
If the Russians and Chinese pay influencers to do what they were already doing and would continue to do regardless, what is the issue?
@Geoffrey Pounder wrote:
"If the Russians and Chinese pay influencers to do what they were already doing and would continue to do regardless, what is the issue?"
Why would Russia and China pay for something that they already got for free?
Fawcett: "For as long as it’s been in conflict with America and its democratic allies, Russia has tried to defeat them from within. It used any number of propaganda techniques over the decades to foment division, sow dissent, and undermine the consensus around democratic principles and ideals."
How is this any different from what the U.S. and its allies do?
Wikipedia: "Propaganda in the United States"
"International
"Through several international broadcasting operations, the US disseminates American cultural information, official positions on international affairs, and daily summaries of international news. …
"During the Cold War, the United States ran covert propaganda campaigns in countries that appeared likely to become Soviet satellites, such as Italy, Afghanistan, and Chile. According to the Church Committee report, US agencies ran a 'massive propaganda campaign' on Chile, where over 700 news items placed in American and European media resulted from CIA activities in a six-weeks period alone.
"In 2006, The Pentagon announced the creation of a new unit aimed at spreading propaganda about supposedly 'inaccurate' stories being spread about the Iraq War. These 'inaccuracies' have been blamed on the enemy trying to decrease support for the war.
"Psychological operations
"The US military defines psychological operations, or PSYOP, as: "planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals."
"Social media
"In 2011, The Guardian reported that the United States Central Command (Centcom) was working with HBGary to develop software that would allow the US government to 'secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.' A Centcom spokesman stated that the 'interventions' were not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and also said that the propaganda campaigns were not targeting Facebook or Twitter.
"In October 2018, The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook 'banned hundreds of pages and accounts which it says were fraudulently flooding its site with partisan political content – although they came from the US instead of being associated with Russia.'
"In 2022, the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika studied banned accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives. Vice News noted that 'U.S. leaning social media influence campaigns are, ultimately, very similar to those run by adversarial countries.', while EuroNews quoted Stanford researcher Shelby Grossman as saying 'I was shocked that the tactics we saw being used were identical to the tactics used by authoritarian regimes'. Meta claimed that 'individuals associated with the U.S. military' were connected to the propaganda campaign.
"The Intercept reported in December 2022 that the United States military ran a 'network of social media accounts and online personas', …"
The U.S. also exercises its military might and arms its allies abroad.
Our neighbour has a long history of suppressing democracies, assassinating opponents, installing dictators, supporting and arming odious regimes, and toppling them when they cease to be convenient. Also responsible for assassinations, illegal surveillance, torture, death squads, massacres, terrorism, and assorted war crimes. Disappearing and murdering civilians, journalists and academics with impunity. While infiltrating, undermining, and attacking protest groups at home.
Saddam in Iraq. The Shah in Iran. Mubarak in Egypt. The Saudi monarchy. Suharto in Indonesia. Pinochet in Chile. Military dictatorship in Argentina. Marcos in the Philippines. The mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Death squads in Central America. The Zionists in Israel.
In 1953, the US backed a coup that toppled democratically elected PM Mossadeq in Iran. Iran had democracy, and the West took it away. The CIA put Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq and helped him eliminate his enemies. The U.S. has supported dictators in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Chile, and Argentina to name a few. It's hypocritical to criticize repressive regimes while sponsoring the repression.
Long list of war crimes and atrocities. From Korea to Chile, from Vietnam to Nicaragua, from Grenada to Iraq, from El Salvador to Iran, from Guatemala to Afghanistan, from Lebanon to the Congo… The U.S. has exported murder and mayhem around the world. No one else comes close.
The world's leading practitioner of state terror. With far more victims and casualties to its name than all four of the State Sponsors of Terrorism the U.S. thus designates: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
A rogue state.
The USA's bloated military budget is bigger than that of all other countries combined. With some 750 military bases in at least 80 countries. Exactly 0 foreign military bases in the U.S. Russia, China, and Muslim countries have no military bases in the West.
Living inside the U.S. empire makes it hard for us to see how massively we have been propagandized.
Not to disagree much re the USA s historic imperialism, especially if the coming election goes wrong, but are you seriously trying to justify Putin s incursions to this country?
I mean if that succeeds, I m boarding up all my windows and never going out again.
Where did I justify "Putin's incursions to this country"?
Pot, meet kettle.
The Russians and Chinese are amateurs, by comparison.
The greatest threats to our democracy reside within.
The U.S. and Canada long denied voting rights to indigenous people and blacks. Vote suppression tactics and gerrymandering continue to this day. Citizens are bombarded with domestic propaganda. Manufactured consent.
January 6 -- United States Capitol attack. Trump, not Putin.
2011 Robocalls scandal:
"The 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal (also known as the Robocall scandal, Robogate, or RoboCon) is a political scandal stemming from events during the 2011 Canadian federal election. It involved robocalls and real-person calls that originated in the Conservative Party of Canada's campaign office in Guelph, Ontario. Elections Canada and the RCMP conducted investigations into the claims that calls were made to dissuade voters from casting ballots by falsely telling them that the location of their polling stations had changed." (Wikipedia)
Harper, not Putin.
Not fighting your point, please dont forget women s suffrage wasnt long before, and we re on track to be pushed back barefoot into the kitchens again. Happening in the US now.
But you did kind of make the case " if you think the russkis are bad just look at the muricans..."
It s a scary world. We progressive thinkers need to step up and defend why we believe it s important. and get coherent messaging out there. Nobody s doing it.
Ha! I'm with you, but I note that a lot of men in particular seem to just like to argue for the sheer sake of it which often results in missing the forest for the trees shall we say, i.e. mansplainers abound. There is simply no word for women doing that.
(Personally I'm loving how all the brouhaha generally is obscuring one such forest, the exciting reality of a woman soon becoming the most powerful person in the world. )
The U.S. also wages war on domestic groups:
"COINTELPRO" (Wikipedia)
"COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements.
"… Later similar operations: While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, domestic espionage continued. Between 1972 and 1974, it is documented that the Bureau planted over 500 bugs without a warrant and opened over 2,000 pieces of personal mail. More recent targets of covert action include the American Indian Movement (AIM), Earth First!, and Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. … 'Counterterrorism' guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics. Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement.
"… Defending Rights & Dissent, a civil liberties group, cataloged known instances of First Amendment abuses and political surveillance by the FBI since 2010. The organization found that the FBI devoted disproportionate resources to spy on peaceful left-leaning civil society groups, including Occupy Wall Street, economic justice advocates, racial justice movements, environmentalists, Abolish ICE, and various anti-war movements."
Etc.
We are the civilized and the civilizers -- bringing light, freedom, democracy, and death from the skies to wedding parties, schoolchildren, grandmothers, aid workers, doctors, and journalists. And lying about it non-stop.
A whole lot of us aspire to more and better. We re being split by divide and conquer and mob stupidity.
Democracy does work even if slow and cumbersome. I remember a much harsher world in the 40s and 50s. We re headed back there fast. We have to stop that turn.
Wow the Russian Sympathizers are out in force on this piece. Good for you! Using the same tropes that right wing politicians use: Whataboutism's, Who cares if they are paid because they were doing it anyway, The US does it, so it's ok. Fact of the matter is, Dictatorships around the world are actively using social media to break down democracy everywhere. If we don't pay attention we will be living under a dictatorship and then your whining and complaining will for sure fall on deaf ears as the head of state lives his best life.
John OGorman wrote: "The US does it, so it's ok."
Where did I say that? Straw man argument. Twist my words into a false argument I did not make and knock it down. Cheap tactics.
The anti-democratic forces and military-industrial complex within our own society predate Putin and pose a far greater threat, at home and abroad. They exist without Putin. They do not need Putin's help or support.
Meanwhile, the biggest military power, the biggest threat to world peace, with the blood of millions on its hands is none other than our next door neighbour. We have enemies within and without. Pointing out that fact does not make someone a "Russian Sympathizer".
No sympathy or support for Russia in my comments whatsoever.
But plenty of "whataboutism" that implies justification for a monster.
It's hardly whataboutism when domestic parties are already hard at work to undermine our democracy. Domestic parties are not only willing to subvert democracy, but have actively engaged in illegal actions, constitutional violations, political violence, and physical attacks.
Surely, one can acknowledge the wrongs of two sides without diminishing the responsibility of either.
I choose not to ignore the domestic threat. I choose neither to absolve Russia and China of their crimes nor to overlook the crimes of the West. I hold all sides to the same standards of conduct. What you call whataboutism is actually moral and logical consistency.
In this case, who constitutes the greater threat?
If I have already robbed ten banks, and Putin pays me to rob another, which I had already planned to do, where does the greater responsibility lie?
Context is everything.
To acknowledge the far more immediate, longstanding, and pre-existing threat of democracy's domestic enemies is not to dismiss, much less justify, threats from without. Putin's troops cannot storm the U.S. Capitol. But Trump's legions can.
Without the active participation of democracy's domestic enemies, from Trump to Harper to Tenet Media, Putin has little leverage.
Enemies of democracy reside within and without. To point out the existence of one is not to deny, downplay, or justify the other. I choose not to ignore the greater threats within. I acknowledge the full reality. The context of foreign attacks upon our democracy is not marginal, incidental, or optional, but central and necessary to our understanding.
Putin is a mass murderer and a war criminal. That verdict does not relieve us of our responsibilities for our own actions and history.
Of the 2,800 social media and mainstream media influencers connected by threads of Russian money in the investigation, 600 are located in the US. That begs the question, How many of the remaining 2,200 reside in Canada?
It's time to trace Russian funding to links to Canadian political parties. My guess is the lion's share will land on the Conservatives and their strongest online and media supporters, albeit through discreet and circuitous channels. And none of them will admit to receiving Putin's stolen money until presented with proof and genuine evidence.
To understand the scope of this influence read any of Bill Browder's books. He worked in finance and investments in Russia and experienced the theft of over US$200 million and the subsequent murder of his Russian business parter, a man named Magnitsky. Rather than shutup and go away, he got angry and dug deep to find Putin's fingers stuck in every nook and cranny of the case and many more. It is a huge network thar extends to RT News. He then lobbied, took Russians and their American lawyers to court and won most, but not all his cases. The biggesr result was the Magnitsky Law, something now adopted by several Western nations. The afterward in his 'Freezing Assets' book is very illuminating.
Those apologists for Poilievre's lack of concern for Russian influence even in the face of his cutting criticism for Chinese influence in Canadian politics, or online right wing rage meisters, Putin's ongoing mass murder of civilians in Ukraine while hammering innumerous historic American sins, and other well funded forces are being incredibly naive about the well fubded threat to democracy here and now. Show me one country that is without sin.
It would be nice to compare this revalation to the oil & gas industry's manipulation of Canadian politics. I suspect they would easily surpass the Russians and nobody ever talks about that.
Your are not wrong :)
Social media and in particular influencers spread nothing but garbage on social media and for the most part talk out of their asses. I have a relative who actually believes the garbage the Russian propaganda that this media outfit spewed. It shows that if left unchecked, how the generations that are incapable of fact checking anything are slowly being brainwashed with propaganda.