#also against people who spread russian propaganda

[unhonestlymirror]

Me: genocide is bad

Anons from hetalia fandom: how can you spread hostility and be bigoted?

[kelluinox]

One day I will draw a venn diagram between Russian vatniks and pro hamas supporters

[mariacallous]

Earlier this week, journalists at WIRED and The Washington Post reported that a “Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos” appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote false sexual misconduct allegations against vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

At WIRED, David Gilbert wrote that researchers have linked a group they’re calling “Storm-1516” to the campaign against Walz. “Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West,” Gilbert explained. A few days earlier, NBC News also reported on Storm-1516, citing its work as demonstrative of Russian propaganda’s growing utilization of artificial intelligence and more sophisticated bot networks.

Two days after the WIRED report, Washington Post journalist and Russia expert Catherine Belton reported on another bad actor implicated in spreading the allegations against Walz: John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop with a long and winding record that includes internal affairs investigations, early discharge from the Marines, and a penchant for posting confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents, and judges on his blog, which led to 21 state charges of extortion and wiretapping. To escape that indictment, Dougan fled to Moscow, where he soon put his conspiratorial blogging skills to work, effectively enlisting in the Russian intelligence community’s “Internet war” against America.

Records show and disinformation researchers argue that Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with deliberately misleading names like DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. Lately, he’s reportedly started using a GRU-facilitated server and AI generator to create phony videos like the deepfake video showing one of Walz’s former students accusing him of sexual abuse.

With a little more than a week until the U.S. presidential election, Meduza spoke to Renée DiResta — the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality and an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy — about Russian propaganda, how it’s evolved over the years, and how American social networks are responding (and not responding) ahead of the November 2024 vote.

Timestamps for this episode:

(5:00) The Role of Social Networks in Identifying Fake Accounts

(9:35) Government and Platform Collaboration on Inauthentic Behavior

(16:46) A Case Study: Maxim Shugaley and Russian Influence in Libya

(21:45) Twitter’s Public Data Dilemma

(24:25) Bespoke Realities and Content Moderation

(25:57) The Tenet Media Case

(27:28) The Role of Influencers in Propaganda

(35:26) Marketing and Propaganda: A Historical Perspective

(38:27) The Democratization of Propaganda

(39:36) Name Your Poison: Tyranny or Chaos

[mesetacadre]

Hello! In one of your posts you mentioned Anna Louise Strong's The Soviets Expected It, where she describes that Belarusians did not turn on their Jewish neighbors when Nazis invaded the USSR. Then you said that in 30 years the USSR managed to extirpate antisemitism from the general population. Was this something Strong said in the book explicitly? I'm interested in the topic and I was wondering whether Strong's book is worth reading for her analysis on how the USSR managed to eliminate antisemitism or whether she only mentions it briefly. Thank you!

Hello! After searching for it, @komsomolka helped me find this quote. It wasn't by ALS as I remembered, but rather by Vic L. Allen in his book The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism:

It was German practice as they entered Soviet territories to encourage the local populace to engage in pogroms against the Jews as a first stage in their genocidal policy. They had some success in those areas which had become part of the Soviet Union since 1939 but in the Soviet Union proper there was no evidence of spontaneous anti-Semitism. A Jewish historian commentated that "In Byelorussia, a conspicuous difference is evidenced between the old Soviet part of the region and the area which had previously belonged to Poland and was under Soviet rule from September 1939 to June 1941. Nazi and anti-Jewish propaganda drew a weak response in the former Soviet Byelorussia: we encounter complaints in Nazi documents that, "it is extremely hard to incite the local populace to pogroms because of the backwardness of the Byelorussian peasants with regard to racial consciousness" Another view of the cause of the racial attitudes in Byelorussia was given in a secret memorandum by a collaborator to the chief of the German army in August 1942. He wrote: "There is no Jewish problem for the Byelorussian people. For them, this is purely a German matter. This derives from Soviet education which has negated racial difference... The Byelorussians sympathize with, and have compassion for the Jews, and regard the Germans as barbarians and the hangman of the Jew, whom they consider human beings equal to themselves...".

The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism (pages 144-145), Vic L. Allen, via ebook-hunter.org

This book goes into some detail regarding jews in the USSR, the sixth chapter, in part II, is dedicated to this.

Anna Louise Strong also wrote about antisemitism in the USSR, although just like almost any other subject in her books, she tackles it through a collection of anecdotes and observations, though I still think she paints a clear picture that's corroborated by Allen's book, for example:

Acts of race prejudice are severely dealt with in the Soviet Union. Ordinary drunken brawls between Russians may be lightly handled as misdemeanors, but let a brawl occur between a Russian and a Jew in which national names are used in a way insulting to national dignity, and this becomes a serious political offense. Usually, the remnants of national antagonisms require no such drastic methods; they yield to education. But the American workers who helped build the Stalingrad Tractor Plant will long remember the clash that Lewis and Brown had with the Soviet courts after their fight with the Negro Robinson, in the course of which they called him “damn low-down nigger.” The two white men were “deported” to America, disgraced in Soviet eyes by a serious political offense; the Negro remained and is now a member of the Moscow City government. The devotion of long-suppressed peoples and their willingness to die for their new equality is the prize that the Soviet national policy won for the present war. The Jews in the Soviet Union especially know that they have something to fight for as they see beyond the border Hitler’s destruction of the Jews and the anti-Semitism that spreads from country to country. When I last visited Minsk, which under the tsar was a ghetto city, and under the Soviets was the capital of the Byelo-Russian republic, with more than one-third of the population Jews, I asked the young Intourist guide, “Don’t you yourself, as a Jewish woman, ever encounter racial feeling in your daily contacts?” “I haven’t for years,” she answered. I wonder what she encountered when the Nazis entered Minsk.

The Soviets Expected it, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

I recall across the years one of the Birobidjan leaders who went on the same train with me to Moscow. His energy and teasing laughter made him the life of the train. He frequently sat in the compartment with two Red Army commanders, joshing them about the quantities of edibles they consumed and declaring that he would have them arrested for upsetting the food balance of the country. Later he told me that these two commanders gave him more delight than anything on the train. He told me of his own early life in the Ukraine amid constant pogroms. He repeated the discussions with the two Red Army commanders. They had been asking whether the Red Army gave adequate help to the Jewish settlers. “We hear they made you a road. Was it a good one? Do they help you properly with your harvest? How are relations developing between the Red Army and the new immigrants?” “Can you imagine what those questions mean to me, a Jew of Birobidjan?” he asked. “No, you can never imagine it, for you cannot live my life. Those Red commanders are the sons of the Cossacks who used to commit the pogroms! And now it is all gone like a dream! They want to know if they help us adequately! They are too young even to remember pogroms. But I remember; I am old enough.”

The Soviets Expected it, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

How much discrimination there was against Jews in educational institutions is hard to tell. It was never general but certainly there was some. It was evasive and struggles always developed against it. My best friend felt for a time undermined in her university job because she refused to yield to the anti-Semitism which seemed to be promoted by the Party secretary at the university. One day she came home exultant. “Now I know the Party doesn’t stand for anti-Semitism,” she said. “They removed A… He was in charge of universities here for the Central Committee and was behind much of this anti-Semitism.” This anecdote shows the confusion that existed. Anti-Semitism was sometimes promoted by people high in office, but always with evasion. The basic law that made it illegal was never attacked, challenged or revoked. The disease of anti-cosmopolitanism passed, and anti-Semitism with it. Not by law or decree, but because of three facts. In 1950, the USSR reached the highest production in its history, with comparative abundance of goods. The USSR also attained the A-Bomb — the threat of America’s monopoly was gone. And, also in 1950, the Chinese People’s Republic was established in Peking, and at once made alliance with the USSR. The sick, excessive patriotism bred by the cold war could not survive close contact with an eastern, equal ally, whose inventions began a thousand years before Russia’s, and whose present intelligence and achievements even the most successful Russians had to acclaim.

The Stalin Era, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

In simple oratory the worker and peasant deputies to the new National Assemblies told of their tortured past and of their happiness when the Red Army arrived. Women told how in former days young boys had been held on anthills by landlords’ agents in order to break the spirit of rebellion, how a mother picking up fuel in the woods to heat water for a newborn baby had been caught by the lord’s forester, beaten, and afterward turned over to the attack of fierce dogs. It was a gruesome account of medieval conditions. Deputies from Grodno told how the Jewish and ByeloRussian workers of the city had organized their own militia before the Red Army came and had rushed out and helped build a bridge for it into the city under the fire of Polish officers. “As soon as the Red Army came,” said a carpenter from Bialystok, “we asked them to set up Soviet power for us. But they told us: ‘Soviet power is the power of the people. Organize it yourselves, for now you are the bosses of your lives’.” A simple peasant women deputy said: “Let the priests pray to God for Paradise, but for us the daylight is already come; the bright sun is come from the East.” Letters telling a similar story reached America from Jews in the occupied regions. They especially commented on their rescue from death, for they had been threatened both by German bombing and by anti-Semitic bands of Poles. “If the Red Army had been a day later, not a Jew in our town would have been left alive,” wrote a man from Grodno. Other letters marvelled at the new equality. “To the Bolsheviks everyone is equal; there is no difference between Gentile and Jew.” There was a grimmer side to the story. Poles in fairly large numbers were deported to various places in the Soviet Union. Letters received by their relatives in Europe and America showed that they were scattered all over the U.S.S.R.; the sending of the letters also indicated that they were not under surveillance but merely deported away from the border district. The Soviet authorities claimed that former Polish officers and military colonists had done considerable sabotage and kept the people disturbed by rumors of imminent invasions by Rumanian and British troops. After the conclusion of the Soviet-Polish alliance against Hitlerite Germany, these Poles rapidly joined the Polish Legion under the Red Army High Command. Most of them then stated that they fully understood the necessity of the Red Army’s march into Poland.

The Stalin Era, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

The new people’s government of Lithuania had appointed as governor of Vilna an able Communist, Didzhulius, not long since out of prison. Prison had injured his health and he had gone to a rest home, but had not been able to take the time to get well. People were needed for Vilna, and so he came. When I saw him he had held office only three days. “We must end this evil process whereby first Poles suppress Lithuanians and then Lithuanians suppress Poles,” he told me. “Under Smetona only thirty thousand people here had the vote. We have given it at once to everybody. “There were one hundred thousand unemployed here. We at once began road-building and other public construction; we are setting up public relief. The old Polish pensioners had buildings and funds which Smetona did not let them touch. We have made their possessions available to them for the relief of those most in need. We have done more to relieve the misery of starving people in three days than Smetona did in six months.” One of the first decrees passed was that government officials must hear citizens’ requests in whatever language the citizens choose. For this purpose officials are sought who can speak as many languages as possible. Schools also are to be in all the local languages. “Under the Poles education was only in Polish; under Smetona it was only in Lithuanian,” said Didzhulius. “Now we shall have to have schools in our languages since there are four chief languages in this district: Polish, Jewish, Lithuanian and Byelorussian.”

The New Lithuania, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

Overall, I think the picture ALS paints is a nuanced one. The USSR made a lot of progress removing racism and nationalism from its population, although it was not perfect and some decisions like the deportations were negative for the moved population (though not as genocidal or malevolent as most like to paint it), they did an outstanding job at the task of removing prejudice from their society at a time where that was not happening anywhere else, and this was reflected both in laws and in action. We have a lot to learn from their policies, both their many (even to this day) unparalleled achievements as well as from their flaws.

To these third party accounts I'll also add Stalin's own words:

In answer to your inquiry: National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty. J. Stalin

Anti-Semitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States . J. V. Stalin, 1931. First published in the newspaper Pravda, No. 329, November 30, 1936

[qqueenofhades]

Is it normal that I’m legitimately so scared of saying pretty morally tame things like “I don’t want to talk about genocide because it makes me severely uncomfortable” or in general expressing my political opinion.

Like i’m not even kidding when I say that all my drafts are just my possibly offensive (probably not) political takes i’m just so scared of everyone leaving me it’s not even funny.

Anyway i also think that if you talk about Palestine but not Ukraine you are a victim of Russian Propaganda™️

I’m sorry I don’t know why i did this have a nice day ok baiiiiiii

Here's the thing. You and every other average social media user should not have to masquerade as a sudden in-depth expert on every single social, political, humanitarian, etc. crisis that we are dealing with in this wretchedly miserable excuse for a timeline. It should not be a baseline expectation on you that when you log onto your little social media in your little average life, you have to come up with The Correct Opinions on everything and if you don't, you're "perpetrating oppression" by not vigorously spreading misinformation, instead of simply admitting that you don't know what to do, you as an average citizen are not in a position of making this change and therefore don't actually have to spend every waking minute obsessing about it, and that maybe, just maybe, you'd like to spend more time informing yourself until and/or IF you decide you want to talk about it. This is the same as the Instagram Activists (TM) who traumatize themselves to the point of PTSD by constantly consuming torture and/or war porn and/or graphic content about murdered children because they "don't have the right to look away." Actually, you do. You are able to make choices to control your personal social media use and to set boundaries as to what you do and do not want to do and/or see, rather than insisting that the only moral choice is to literally mentally destroy yourself with all the weight of human suffering in the world and then expected to act as a de facto expert on all of it, on pain of being Cancelled. This is a stupid, irrational, unhealthy, and generally idiotic expectation. You should not have to take part in it. Nobody should.

Likewise, I think that this is a large part of why people are so scared to voice any opinion that goes against the Prevailing Groupthink: they are afraid of losing friends, of having nasty bad-faith internet trolls say mean things about them, being accused of being a "bad person," or otherwise being guilt-tripped, shamed, and blamed for not centering their entire existence around something that they cannot actually do anything about. Once again, people think the only way you can be Known to Oppose Something Problematic (tm) is if you post on social media about it all the time. Forget whatever you might be doing offline, in your real life, or otherwise; it "doesn't count" if you don't make a big virtuous display of your Rightthink, or you will be viciously harassed. Now, look, I am old and/or tired enough that I don't give a shit what stupid internet users say about me, but I can tell you that I sure did when I was younger, it was incredibly painful to be on the end of those kinds of attacks, and it's (again!) not something you should just have to expect as a baseline level of gaslighting and harassment. As I have said. This is Tumblr. It is a stupid blue website mostly for fandom and/or three in-jokes. This is not a platform where we are expected To Do Social Justice all the time, nor should it be. As for Elon Musk's Twitter: yeah. No.

Also: yes, if you do spend all your waking moments obsessing over Palestine, but say nothing whatsoever about Ukraine and/or openly support Russia, you are in fact very much a victim of Russian Propaganda and you 100% support genocide when it's done by an "anti-western" state that you support for that reason alone. You only care because you can use the cause to make yourself look morally superior, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with opposing genocide on a basic, universal, or fundamental level. The end.

(I hope you have a nice day too. The anger in this is not directed at you. I support everything you've said here and hope that you're able to set healthy boundaries and protect yourself.)

[icantturnthisthingoff]

okay i don’t want to give that one person more attention than necessary because they aren’t very reasonable so im just gonna put in my final opinions on this topic on my own post.

no singular civilian person is at fault for the actions of their government or their military. that is the fault of the people at the top of that decision tree alongside those who knowingly and willingly choose to spread propaganda.

its also a bad faith argument to suggest that it is the fault of the russian people due to their silence and inaction when we know that those who have spoken out against the kremlin have been assassinated and imprisoned. we also know that there is little to no democracy in russia.

russians who oppose the invasion of ukraine are not silent, they have been silenced.

and those who have left russia because they did not wish to be drafted or involved in said invasion in any capacity have been pretty fucking vocal about it offline at least from my experience living in hotspot area for slavic immigration.

but even without all that : just being from a country does not make you inherently bad or good or anything really because thats not how it works?? yes environmental factors can greatly impact the way somebody thinks politically and morally etc but its not inherent. like if you look within peoples families a set of siblings may all be raised the same in the same area by the same people with the same rules, regulations and beliefs but you will find that very often sibling 1 has a wildly different worldview to sibling 2 or 3 and so on. thats the beauty of human complexity we make up our own minds ultimately.

anyways i’ve ranted enough

tl;dr - the person at a JO concert singing UM in russian has no real say in the actions of their country and is not a bad person just because they are from russia, they might be a lovely person they might be awful, but whatever they are its not just because they are born in russia and to say so would be xenophobic

[dontforgetukraine]

#if a fucking propaganda movie is allowed in a film festival it just proves the west doesn't care

I wouldn't necessarily say that people in the West don't care. This is a failure occurring at multiple levels.

-First is the recognition that RT (and its current and former employees) is an arm of the Kremlin and is used for psyops. The Dept of Justice in America is finally showing some awareness about that, but this needs to happen at the government, business, and civilian level everywhere. -Second is how this film got sponsors and taxpayer money to be made in the first place. What oversight is currently there and how can it be made sure this doesn't happen again? -Third is what oversight is there at these cultural and art events? -Fourth is making sure people are educated and are able to recognize any form of propaganda.

Generally speaking, it's more likely people in the West, especially America, don't know how to recognize Russian propaganda.

I'll speak from an American perspective since that's where I am. We're uninformed due to it not being covered in our education system and media landscape. In addition, our leaders have been too slow to act on psyops. While Russian psyops flood the information space of news and social media, and some of us can recognize it, the propaganda about Ukraine we encounter is different from what's in "Russians at War" with some exceptions (ex. "Whataboutism"). A person that is only vaguely aware of the war and doesn't closely follow what's happening won't necessarily recognize the context and content. That's not an excuse. That's just reality. This is something I have to keep reminding myself, that the people around me don't know how to recognize it unless they are deliberately following the war and looking to educate themselves by listening to Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans.

There needs to be more education on forms of propaganda and media literacy, and how to build up cognitive resilience. Propaganda doesn't always look like propaganda. I'll refer to a quote I posted from Dietmar Pichler. We typically think of propaganda coming from social media and talk shows, although now in this age its a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos. These are easy to overlook, including film at a cultural and arts festival.

I'll also refer to this quote from Pekka Kallioniemi.

Transparency should be our key weapon against individuals on the fringes who promote Kremlin propaganda… Highlighting and discussing these issues openly can help. Raising awareness about individuals spreading Kremlin propaganda, especially those in positions of power, is vital… Most countries, even those strongly opposed to the Kremlin, will have one or two such pro-Kremlin voices. It’s important to acknowledge that in a democracy, everyone has a voice, even if it’s frustrating to hear Kremlin propaganda. This underscores the importance of education. If people are equipped with cognitive resilience against such misinformation, it loses its impact on society as a whole. Building cognitive resilience through education is crucial. It’s a long-term investment, but it’s an essential competence also for our children’s future, well-being, and security.

So, please, don't automatically assume the West doesn't care. There's a long road in this fight for the information space and to educate that needs to happen on multiple fronts. It's going to take all the resources and people we can get against an enemy that is very good at what it does and has been doing it for a long time. I know it's frustrating and it sucks, but there are those of us here that care and I want to reassure people about that. Remember, the enemy wants you to despair.

[fate221]

My homeland is drowning

On June 6th r*ssian army blew up Kakhovska HPP in Ukraine after it being mined by them since autumn. It’s not only another russia’s terroristic crime against humanity - it’s a global catastrophe, one of the biggest ecological and humanitarian disasters in the east of Europe. The consequences can be compared with the explosion of the nuclear bomb. It’s still hard to believe that my people have to go through of this, civilians specifically on the east have been bombed, occupied, stolen from, had to spent months without electricity and now a flood made them lose their homes. This is so damn unfair and my heart hurts for them every day, these people have been through too much pain and evil already. My relatives house was also flooded, just month since russia killed their daughter on Easter. And not only people suffer, a lot of animals and pets died because of the flood, a lot of cultural heritage - destroyed. And that’s only the beginning of the problem. The consequences to ecology are huge and horrifying, some of them we don’t even acknowledge yet.

It honestly drives me crazy to see people who actually easy swallow russian propaganda and think Ukraine did it with its own citizens, while Ukrainian officials literally YELLED that russians mined Kakhovska HPP since freaking november. While russians keep ignoring the danger telling that everything is okay but meanwhile shelling people who try to evacuate. While the whole zoo of 300 animals was flooded, caused terrible death to all of them, but russian media just said that “there was no zoo in Nova Kakhovka”. This is beyond evil and I have no idea how there’re people who still didn’t understand it. Their military came to our land destroying everything, killing people and animals without a thought, they blew up the dam because they were afraid Ukrainian army will kick them out, without caring about civilians or ecology. Well, why should they care, they can’t even care about their own people, their nature. Freaking monsters.

I beg you please share the info about what happened, tell the world that russia did it, this is the only way to justice, they have to pay for all the pain of Ukrainian people. Currently russian propaganda works fast and tries to hide the facts, but the dam was under russian occupation since last year, and mined by them for more than half of the year. The world has to see who did all of this and make them to pay.

Here’s the full info about the consequences of this disaster

Help us spread the word!

[emotionaldisaster909]

It’s New Year.

Just a few hours left for me.

And my country is bombing another country.

And yesterday one of our cities was bombed in response.

Our propaganda never shows any images of Ukrainian streets on fire.

Because they call them all “fakes”.

And people are regularly arrested for spreading “fakes”.

For saying anything against the war.

For even calling it “war”.

For going out on the streets with an empty sheet of paper.

A girl was sentenced to 7 years in prison for putting anti-war stickers on price tags in a store.

While murderers and rapists are being freed from prisons, sent to war and given amnesty when they come back.

Along with a status of “Heroes” for doing what they do best in another country.

An orthodox priest who raped children was given a suspended sentence and is still free.

While government preaches for “christian values” and calls LGBT movement an extremist organisation.

And this attack on one of our cities.

It won’t be delivered by our propaganda as a call to stop the war.

No, just the opposite, to intensify the attack on Ukraine in return.

Our government doesn’t care about children who died in this city.

Just as it doesn’t care about the ukranian children.

Because it NEVER cared for common people.

They say that the main reason for war is the oppression of russian-speaking citizens in Eastern Ukraine.

And while I met and talked to many of the refugees from there

You don’t fucking save people by killing and putting at a huge risk MUCH MORE PEOPLE.

Ironically enough, our government supports Palestine.

Which is good, but also what a fucking hypocrisy.

It’s mainly because America supports Israel, while also supporting Ukraine.

And what a fucking joke this whole geopolitical situation is.

Two of the hugest forces play chess with each other using other countries and their citizens as figures on the board.

And make money on people’s deaths.

Hey, America, why don’t you, fucking, I don’t know, assassinate our politicians, starting with the main psychopath??? If you want the war to stop so much?????

Why don’t politicans just go one on one UFC style and we all will watch and see who wins, like Remark suggested in his book about WW1???

Why start fucking WW3?

It feels so incredibly weird, watching and reading scenes about wars in TGCF.

They are perfectly depicted, you know.

It felt so striking, to watch Yong An and Xian Le people live happily together in the 9th Episode.

I hope one day we’ll be able to end up like this again as well.

But I have no hopes for tomorrow.

It’s gonna be centuries untill Russia might be able to live in peace with the world.

Just because one psychopath decided to go in history forever.

And if other psychopaths will ever let us live in peace.

Because every single participant of this war does not give a fuck about people.

I don’t believe they do.

Because they have power.

They could’ve stopped it.

They could’ve never let it happen.

And we?

We can’t. We can’t decide anything in this totalitarian fucking country.

Tell me, what can I do? What can I do to make this next year better?

I used to be a journalist.

I hoped my words could reach people.

They never did.

But I hope this little post just might reach… i don’t know, at least someone.

Will it make a difference?

Can anything make a difference?

Tell me, people of the free world.

Please.

[hacked-wtsdz]

When it was Russia vs Ukraine it was hundreds of sanctions against Russia, months of protests on the street, half of western companies closing in the country, Russia eventually being disconnected from SWIFT, planes no longer being allowed to fly into Europe/USA out of Russia, no more visa privileges, people fired from work and expelled from universities simply for being Russian, Ukrainians getting help with getting into universities, being accepted as refugees in many European countries, millions in financial and military aid sent to Ukraine, Zelenskyy making speeches on every political and non-political worldwide event, Russia being banned from the Olympics, Facebook and Instagram officially allowing hate speech against Russian soldiers, Ukraine being talked about by the western press non-stop.

When it is Israel killing Palestinian civilians, it is the banning of protests for Palestine, social media (aka regular people) being the biggest source of awareness, millions sent to Israel from the USA, misinformation spread by the biggest western journals, major western companies supporting Israel, “it’s not all Jews, antisemitism is still awful” and “if you talk badly about Israel now, you’re an antisemite”, Instagram and TikTok allowing videos of Israelis mocking the dying Palestinians to stay up, USA sending billions in military aid to Israel. BILLIONS IN MILITARY AID. Dehumanising articles about Palestinians. No place for the Palestinians to speak. And more and more and more.

It takes a glance at a history textbook to understand why, of course. It benefits the USA if Ukraine wins and if Palestine gets destroyed. As simple as that.

But to say that you are against the war in Ukraine and support Israel or ignore Palestine is hypocritical. You are either against violence or simply repeating the trendy slogans. Your support of peace might be genuine but if it doesn’t extend to Palestine then it is hollow.

But in general this situation shows how little western people care when tragedies happen “somewhere in the east”. As long as it’s not white people, European people, people who look like you and believe in what you believe and are not poor, not uneducated, not somewhere far away, you do not care.

But also this situation shows how eager people are to follow trends without researching the situation. Some research into the history of Russia and Ukraine will reveal the fact that this conflict is complex and is wider than just Ukraine and Russia. It will also reveal some pretty disheartening facts about the Ukrainian government. Some research into the history of Israel and Palestine will reveal the lies of the western media.

When it’s Palestinian HAMAS “starting the violence” (not true if you look at the big picture), then they are terrible terrorists all — even the children — and the Israeli bombing is justified.

When it’s the Ukrainian government bombing Donbass villages (on the border with Russia, inhabited by many Russians) for seven years, with enough children dead from it that they built an “alley of angels” for them, literally nothing is said about it.

This isn’t a justification for the war but another example of how differently people treat westerners and middle easterners.

The west, its media, its governments, its companies, care only for gain. They say that they care for people but only for certain people, only for regions in which it brings gain. And people buying into their propaganda is enraging to see. People supporting only European lives is enraging to see. People clearly not caring about Palestine because it is largely Muslim and Middle Eastern and poor is enraging to see.

Free Palestine.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Billboard project

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 07, 2024

One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.

In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 

“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”

According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 

SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 

YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 

Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.

Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 

The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 

Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 

Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 

He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.

Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 

Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​

Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       

One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

Israelis hate Palestinians, Poles, Roma, other Jews (For supporting Palestine), Holocaust survivors… They hate everyone, but of course we are the bad ones

Eden was persecuting Nemo (a non-binary person) and that dickhead was defending her anyway, so what if during Eurovision all the Israelis were persecuting everyone around them, no, they are victims…

Israelis are not victims, they are torturers who cry like victims when in practice they hurt others and they fucking laugh about it because people believe them

Yes, I admire Israelis who oppose Zionist propaganda, it's just a pity that they are closer to zero and it fucking sucks

Even the Germans opposed the Third Reich, even the Russians opposed Putin (People love to forget about strikes when they can see everything as divided into good and evil)

When I see Israelis striking for Palestine, it is extraordinary, but as I mentioned, the number of unbrainwashed people who are pro-genocide garbage is very low and it will depress me, even there were many Poles (Despite the rotten apples) who risked their lives, and people still they believe that Poles cooperated with the Nazis (When Poland was a victim of colonization), how do you imagine the future of Jews? Will they wear all the shit the Zionists gave them? I don't want them to deal with this shit, I don't want the Jews fighting for Palestine to be erased, Zionists will try but they won't succeed

I hate how Zionists (Mainly Israelis…) call everyone Nazis when Israel is the real Nazi, doing the same as the Third Reich, FUCKING GENOCIDE AND RACIAL SEGREGATION IS NAZISM

Being against Israel for its crimes IS NOT NAZISM OR ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL IS THE TORTURER, IT COMMITS GENOCIDE, IT'S LIKE SCREAMING THAT THE PERSECUTION OF THE THIRD REICH WAS XENOPHOBIC

Besides, the explanation "That Palestine is just as guilty" is sick, because that's what the fucking Nazis explained, according to them, Jews were also fucking evil, so they deserved to die, because they steal and are to blame for the fact that life in Germany is shitty (Because was not good at that time, but instead of caring what the reason was, it's always best to blame the whore on the group that can't defend itself…), because Jews are to blame for the existence of gays… Now the same is being done towards the Palestinians, to vigorously spread the narrative that either Palestine itself is to blame, or there's fault on both sides and it's fucking sick

I just hate that victim blaming still fucking works

Now that I have your attention:

-----------------------------------------------------

I know I've gone on and on, but it pisses me off, Roma and Poles were also victims of the holocaust, gays and homosexuals too, people with disabilities too, the fact that Israelis can hate other holocaust victims and think that they are "appropriating a Jewish thing" is fucked up

Just because the number wasn't big enough for you doesn't fucking mean that the other victims were less important, each of the victims is fucking important, so did the German ones (Because the Third Reich put them in concentration camps too), there were more Nazi victims, and we probably don't know about many of them yet, because society has decided that that they're not that fucking important and it sucks

Don't forget about the collections at the top

[mariacallous]

In an apparent attempt to boost birth rates, Russian lawmakers are considering a bill to ban “childfree propaganda,” and many private clinics across the country have “voluntarily” stopped performing abortions. However, experts interviewed by Holod agree that these measures are more symbolic and politically motivated than effective in raising birth rates.

Banning “childfree propaganda” won’t make a difference, says Aby Shukyurov, explaining that research shows childlessness in Russia is often due to personal circumstances, not ideology. Alexey Raksha echoed this, calling the ban purely ideological, with no real demographic impact.

Shukyurov also pointed to other measures, like reviving the Soviet-era “Mother Heroine” award for women with 10 or more children, “Conception Day" in the Ulyanovsk region, and requiring both a doctor’s and priest’s approval for an abortion in the Belgorod region, as equally ineffective. “On one hand, these measures seem almost laughable, but on the other, they’re clearly damaging because they make women’s lives harder,” he said.

There’s also talk of reintroducing a “childlessness tax,” similar to the one from Soviet times. “It’s just another way for the government to collect more money,” Shukyurov commented. “People who don’t plan to have children aren’t going to change their minds because the government charges them 2,000 rubles [$21].”

Abortion bans and restrictions are another common talking point for Russian officials. However, with the spread of contraception, abortions are already less common in Russia, says Dmitry Zakotyansky. And history, he adds, clearly shows that these measures won’t stop people from ending unwanted pregnancies. When abortions were banned during Stalin’s era, maternal mortality skyrocketed — pregnancy-related deaths rose by 76 percent in the first year, and maternal mortality doubled within five years. After abortion was legalized in 1955, those numbers returned to previous levels.

Now, Zakotyansky notes, generations of Russian women have grown up with the right to abortion, and taking that away won’t be easy. And even though these rights are slowly being chipped away, “it’s clear this won’t improve the birth rate,” he argued.

Since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, anti-feminist rhetoric has become increasingly common in Russia. Lawmakers have called for a “legal ban” on feminism, claimed the “fight for equality is relegated to the archives” and said young women should “give birth, give birth, and then give birth again.” The Russian Orthodox Church has also weighed in, with programs on the religious Spas TV channel arguing that women who become pregnant from rape should give birth, while priests lament that the world is in a “difficult period in history” where women are “demanding equal rights with men.”

The Russian government has now officially incorporated patriarchal “family values” into its strategy to boost birth rates. However, Zakotyansky warns that this approach could backfire. He argues that modern women are more likely to forgo having children if they can’t balance family life with their careers, fearing it will hold them back professionally.

Russia is putting pressure on women to boost the birth rate — but demographers say the main problem is too many people dying

[redjaybathood]

It's killing me how pervasive russian propaganda is. Propals love to claim that the West is hypocrites bc they support Ukraine but not a variety of countries and people they, themselves being from the West more often than not, did not give a shit about before. They would rather blame anyone else: the government they voted for, the media they are reading, - than look into themselves.

This paradigm also ignores:

Massive anti-Ukrainian russian propaganda campaign that is running for ten years now. Chances are, all they heard about Ukraine before the full-scale invasion is Azov, Bandera, Nazis, and that's what they're running with it (especially leftists/tankies who think Greyzone is a reliable source of information). Despite chances are, there are more far-right in power in their country than there are far-right politicians in Ukraine. Despite the massive reform Azov underwent. Despite the voices of our Jewish citizens and academics, despite Muslim soldiers in Azov;

Massive support russia, russians, russian imperialism still gets. For one example (and there are numerous) Australian ABC TV station recently made a documentary based on the point of view of russian invading forces, and it treated everything they have heard from them or seen as a legitimate point of view. Bucha massacre denial, for example. This is not humanization, this is straight-up genocide denial. And I know that UK TV also showed this documentary, it's side by side on their website with the documentary about Ukrainian abducted children. The children - those of them who survived the deportation anyway - are being indoctrinated against Ukraine, right now, trained as soldiers. If you even care;

The obvious reality that after people realized that there's not going to be a WW3 or a nuclear war anytime soon, they stopped caring all that much, if they ever did. Look at tumblr: any Palestine or even Israel-related post gets 20+k notes easily. That's not something that we see nowadays with Ukraine, if ever. And there is more negativity about Ukraine here, or on other social media, than for Gazans. And this is even counting that Gaza is the base for legit terrorist organization that committed a massive terrorist attack against the civilian population and is currently holding hostages. Which is the justification Israel puts down for their attack, and for their massive infliction of civilian casualties - but it's also what happened. Whereas in Ukraine, what happened was a Revolution of Dignity, where the victims, the dead, were the people who protested against the corrupt government and won. They didn't attack civilians, they didn't kill russians, they didn't even ban a russian language. They just didn't want to live in a corrupt country, in a police state, where children can be beaten up by police forces and be sent to a hospital. That's how Euromaidan started, if you even care. And Euromaidan is exactly the justification russia put up for the invasion back in 2014. You get me? HAMAS terrorist attack spiked huge support for Gaza and the Palestinian cause even before there were 30K Palestinians murdered by Israel. Even before one such death. Ukraine's fight to protect its freedom was met with indifference if not hostility.

Nothing of the above means you should not care about Gaza and Palestine. But somehow, it means that people treat it as a morally superior position not to care about Ukraine, to blame their government, to blame their media, to blame schools and parents and corporations - and, of course, zionists. Which is their dog whistle for Jews.

It deserves another post, how quickly misinformation and antisemitism spreads on tumblr. Holy shit. You guys are fucked up.

[voidami]

The Holodomor

Marxists do not deny that a famine occurred in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933. Soviet archives, along with various Western historians, confirm this. What remains contested is the narrative that this famine was a deliberate, man-made genocide aimed specifically at the Ukrainian people. This portrayal, pushed by nationalist factions and later Cold War propaganda, finds its roots in the disinformation campaigns initiated by Nazi Germany to showcase the “terror” of the so-called “Jewish communists” to the world.

– Socialist Musings. (2017). Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on Holodomor

Anti-Communists and Ukrainian nationalists have framed the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 as “The Holodomor” (which means “to kill by starvation” in Ukrainian). This framing serves two purposes:

It implies that the famine specifically targeted Ukraine.

It suggests that the famine was intentional.

The argument posits that because it was intentional and mainly affected Ukraine, it was, therefore, an act of genocide. This interpretation was first promoted by Nazi Germany during World War II, seeking to fracture the relationship between the Ukrainian SSR (UKSSR)and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic(RSFSR). Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, the Holodomor narrative has regained momentum, serving nationalist goals by reinforcing Ukrainian identity and fostering the country’s independence from Russia.

The Geographical Reality: Famine Across the USSR

A central problem with the Holodomor narrative is its assertion that Ukraine was the primary target. The reality is that famine spread across large swathes of the Soviet Union. Regions like Kazakhstan were, in fact, more devastated on a per capita basis than Ukraine, while Soviet Russia also suffered severe losses. This broader Soviet famine refutes the genocide argument, showing the effects of poor agricultural policies and environmental disaster across multiple Soviet regions, not just Ukraine (Tauger, 1992).

The rise of the Holodomor narrative in the 1980s coincided with Ukrainian post-Soviet nation-building. Some scholars, like Peter Novick, argue that this narrative reflects a form of “Holocaust Envy,” where nationalists attempt to downplay other atrocities (such as the Holocaust) to elevate their own experience as uniquely tragic. The Ukrainian scholar Lubomyr Luciuk has controversially claimed that the Holodomor was “a crime against humanity arguably without parallel in European history,” reflecting the extreme lengths taken to establish this narrative.

Second Issue

Labeling the famine “man-made” implies that it was deliberate, which was not the case. Although human factors contributed, the main causes of the famine were bad weather and crop disease, which resulted in poor harvests and pushed the USSR into crisis.

Furthermore, kulaks (wealthy peasants owning land, livestock, and tools) who resisted collectivization policies played a significant role in worsening the situation. In the early 1930s In response to the state-enforced requisitioning of grain, some kulaks engaged in active sabotage, burning crops, killing livestock and damaging equipment to resist the Soviet government’s efforts. Poor communication and delayed action across various levels of government also compounded the crisis, leading to greater devastation.

Quota Reduction

What undermines the genocide argument most significantly is the Soviet government’s response once the famine began. Contrary to the narrative that the USSR deliberately starved its citizens, evidence shows that the Central Committee reduced grain procurement quotas after realizing the gravity of the 1932 harvest failure. In May 1932, the planned procurement quota was reduced by 30%, and subsequent decrees further reduced the quotas for various agricultural products. Despite the challenges, Soviet authorities made active efforts to address the crisis, although their actions were far from sufficient (Mark Tauger. (1992). The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933).

Notably, revisionist scholars like James Mace and Robert Conquest have downplayed or entirely ignored these quota reductions, instead focusing on the famine as proof of Soviet intent to starve Ukrainians. Conquest’s work, for example, avoids any discussion of the lower grain procurement targets, despite Soviet records showing that the government tried to mitigate the famine’s effects (Davies & Wheatcroft, 2004 Link).

Rapid Industrialization

Soviet policies of rapid industrialization and collectivization contributed directly to the famine. However, had these efforts not been pursued, the Soviet Union would have faced far greater difficulties later. Stalin’s famous statement in 1931—”We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under”—proved eerily prophetic when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union just a decade later.

By 1941, the USSR had built a robust industrial base, which was essential in its defeat of Nazi Germany. The rapid industrialization of the early 1930s allowed the Soviet Union to produce the weapons, tanks, and planes that would eventually win the war. In Hitler’s own words from 1942,

“All in all, one has to say: They built factories here where two years ago there were unknown farming villages, factories the size of the Hermann-Göring-Werke. They have railroads that aren’t even marked on the map.”

– Werner Jochmann. (1980). Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944.

Thus, while the cost was heavy, including the famine, this industrial base saved the USSR from destruction during World War II.

Collectivization also built resilience among the civilian population:

The experts were especially surprised by the Red Army’s up-to-date equipment… Russians met the German blitzkrieg tactic by two methods, both requiring superb morale. When the German tanks broke through, Russian infantry would form again between the tanks and their supporting German infantry… The Germans found no “soft civilian rear.” They encountered collective farmers, organized as guerrillas and coordinated with the regular Russian army.

– Anna Louise Strong. (1956). The Stalin Era

Conclusion: A Tragedy, Not Genocide

While there is no doubt that the Soviet government mishandled the famine, leading to tragic and widespread suffering, evidence does not support the conclusion that the famine was an act of genocide. The conditions leading to the famine were driven by a mix of environmental crises, poor policies, and sabotage—not by a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Ukrainian population. The Holodomor narrative has been shaped over decades by external propaganda efforts and nationalist revisionism, but a balanced view reveals a broader Soviet tragedy, not an ethnic genocide.

Sources: https://voidami.wordpress.com/2024/09/08/the-holodomor/

[misfitwashere]

September 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 07, 2024

One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.

In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 

“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”

According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 

SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 

YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 

Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.

Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 

The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 

Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 

Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 

He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.

Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 

Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​

Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       

One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 

—