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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 month

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 30, 2024

On Wednesday the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War published a long essay explaining that Russia’s only strategy for success in Ukraine is to win the disinformation war in which it is engaged. While the piece by Nataliya Bugayova and Frederick W. Kagan, with Katryna Stepanenko, focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine, the point it makes about Russia’s information operation against Western countries applies more widely.

The authors note that the countries allied behind Ukraine dwarf Russia, with relative gross domestic products of $63 trillion and $1.9 trillion, respectively, while those countries allied with Russia are not mobilizing to help Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West, they write, if the West mobilizes its resources.

This means that the strategy that matters most for the Kremlin is not the military strategy, but rather the spread of disinformation that causes the West to back away and allow Russia to win. That disinformation operation echoes the Russian practice of getting a population to believe in a false reality so that voters will cast their ballots for the party of oligarchs. In this case, in addition to seeding the idea that Ukraine cannot win and that the Russian invasion was justified, the Kremlin is exploiting divisions already roiling U.S. politics.

It is, for example, playing on the American opposition to sending our troops to fight “forever” wars, a dislike ingrained in the population since the Vietnam War. But the U.S. is not fighting in Ukraine. Ukrainians are asking only for money and matériel, and their war is not a proxy war—they are fighting for their own reasons—although their victory could well prevent U.S. engagement elsewhere in the future. The Kremlin is also playing on the idea that aid to Ukraine is too expensive as the U.S. faces large budget deficits, but the U.S. contribution to Ukraine’s war effort in 2023 was less than 0.5% of the defense budget.

Russian propaganda is also changing key Western concepts of war, suggesting, for example, that Ukrainian surrender will bring peace when, in fact, the end of fighting will simply take away Ukrainians’ ability to protect themselves against Russian violence. The authors note that Russia is using Americans’ regard for peace, life, American interests, freedom of debate, and responsible foreign relations against the U.S.

The authors’ argument parallels that of political observers in the U.S. and elsewhere: Russian actors have amplified the power of a relatively small, aggressive country by leveraging disinformation.

The European Union will hold parliamentary elections in June, and on Wednesday the Czech government sanctioned a news site called Voice of Europe, saying it was part of a pro-Russian propaganda operation. It also sanctioned the man running the site, Artyom Marchevsky, as well as Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch, saying Medvedchuk was running a “Russian influence operation” through Voice of Europe.

The far right has been rising in Europe, and Nicholas Vinocur, Pieter Haeck, and Eddy Wax of Politico noted that “Voice of Europe’s YouTube page throws up a parade of EU lawmakers, many of them belonging to far-right, Euroskeptic parties, who line up to bash the Green Deal, predict the Union’s imminent collapse, or attack Ukraine.”

Belgian security services were in on the investigation, and on Thursday, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo added that Russian operatives had paid European Union lawmakers to parrot Russian propaganda. Intelligence sources told Czech media that Voice of Europe paid politicians from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland to influence the upcoming E.U. elections. Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper said the money was paid in cash or cryptocurrency.

Czech prime minister Petr Fiala wrote on social media: “We have uncovered a pro-Russian network that was developing an operation to spread Russian influence and undermine security across Europe.” "This shows how great the risk of foreign influence is," Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte told journalists. "It's a threat to our democracy, to our free elections, to our freedom of speech, to everything."

There are reasons to think the same disinformation process is underway in the United States. Not only do MAGA Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine, but Russian disinformation has also been a key part of the House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden.

Republicans spent months touting Alexander Smirnov’s allegation that Biden had accepted foreign bribes, with Representative James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) calling his evidence “verifiable” and “valuable.” In February the Department of Justice indicted Smirnov for creating a false record, days before revealing that he was in close contact with “Russian intelligence agencies” and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.”

On March 19, former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas testified about the investigation into Biden’s alleged corruption before the House Oversight Committee at the request of the Democrats. Parnas was part of the attempt to create dirt on Biden before the 2020 election, and he explained how the process worked.

“The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas said, and was part of “a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States.” Politicians and right-wing media figures, including then-representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), The Hill reporter John Solomon, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, and other FNC hosts, knew the narrative was false, Parnas said, even as they echoed it. He suggested that they were permitting “Russia to use our government for malicious purposes, and to reward selfish people with ill-gotten gains.”

The attempt to create a false reality—whether by foreign operatives or homegrown ones—seems increasingly obvious in perceptions of the 2024 election. There has been much chatter, for example, about polls showing Trump ahead of Biden. But the 2022 polls were badly skewed rightward by partisan actors, and Democrat Marilyn Lands’s overwhelming victory over her Republican opponent in an Alabama House election this week suggests those errors have not yet been fully addressed.

Real measures of political enthusiasm appear to favor Biden and the Democrats. On Wednesday, Molly Cook Escobar, Albert Sun, and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times reported that since leaving office, Trump has spent more than $100 million on legal fees alone. He is badly in need of money, and his reordering of the funding priorities of the Republican National Committee to put himself first means that the party is badly in need of money, too.

Donors’ awareness that their cash will go to Trump before funding other Republican candidates might well slow fundraising. Certainly, small-donor contributions to Trump have dropped off significantly: Brian Schwartz of CNBC reported last week that “[i]n 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5% less money from small-dollar donors than it did in 2019, the year before the last presidential election.”

Billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein have recently said they will back Trump, and Alexandra Ulmer of Reuters reported on Tuesday that other billionaires had pooled the money to back Trump’s then–$454 million appeal bond before an appeals court reduced it. But Ulmer also noted that there might be a limit to such gifts, as they “could draw scrutiny from election regulators or federal prosecutors if the benefactors were to give Trump amounts exceeding campaign contribution limits. While the payment would not be a direct donation to Trump's campaign, federal laws broadly define political contributions as ‘anything of value’ provided to a campaign.”

Meanwhile, the fundraising of Biden and the Democrats is breaking records. Last night, in New York City, former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined Biden onstage with television personality Stephen Colbert, along with event host Mindy Kaling and musical guests Queen Latifah, Lizzo, and Ben Platt. The 5,000-person event raised an eye-popping amount—more than $25 million—and the campaign noted that, unlike donations to Trump, every dollar raised would go to the campaign.

In his remarks, Biden said that the grassroots nature of the Democrats’ support showed in the number of people who have contributed so far to his campaign: 1.5 million in all, including 550,000 “brand-new contributors in the last couple of weeks.” Ninety-seven percent of the donations have been less than $200.

Tonight, Adrienne Watson, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, the president’s primary forum for national security and foreign policy, pointed to Russia’s devastating recent attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid and called again for Speaker Johnson to bring up the bipartisan national security supplemental bill providing aid to Ukraine that the Senate passed in February. She warned: “Ukraine’s need is urgent, and we cannot afford any further delays.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#War in Ukraine #Russian disinformation #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Russia #Putin #Mike Luckovich #National Security #propaganda wars #Right Wing propaganda

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thefreethoughtprojectcom · 2 years

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This is a devastating blow to Ukraine’s ‘information war’ which has been in full swing since the Russian invasion as each side entered propaganda campaigns against the other seeking to sway world opinion.

#ukraine #the free thought project #propaganda wars

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intersectionalpraxis · 2 months

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The IOF lies. It's inherently part of their zionist settler-colonial agenda -literally. They are not to be trusted -everything they say is meant to distort and distract people from what is really going on. This is just another example of this.

#feminist #social justice #palestine #free palestine #free gaza #settler violence #settler colonialism #current events #israeli lies #israeli propaganda #israel is a war criminal #israel is a terrorist state #israel is committing genocide #gaza news #war on gaza #palestine news #news update #end the occupation #ceasefire now

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moonlayl · 5 months

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To the people who follow me, you’ll recall I predicted they would suddenly release images of dead unidentified bodies and claim it was from October 7th (which they for some reason decided to not release until 45 days later? Like they could at least try and be smart about it) and I made that prediction right after Palestinians started saying that the Israelis stole Palestinian bodies. Israel certainly doesn’t disappoint when it comes to their lies and propaganda.

#Israel #free palestine #palestine #Gaza #free gaza #ceasefire #propaganda #genocide #al shifa hospital #israeli propaganda #israeli war crimes #war crimes #current events #occupation #israel is a terrorist state #israel is an apartheid state #from the river to the sea palestine will be free

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news4dzhozhar · 7 months

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Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the bloodshed at Kibbutz Be’eri, near the boundary with Gaza, says many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces.

An Israeli woman who survived the Hamas assault on settlements near the Gaza boundary on 7 October says Israeli civilians were “undoubtedly” killed by their own security forces.

It happened when Israeli forces engaged in fierce gun battles with Palestinian fighters in Kibbutz Be’eri and fired indiscriminately at both the fighters and their Israeli prisoners.

“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she told Israeli radio. “There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.

The woman, 44-year-old mother of three Yasmin Porat, said that prior to that, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave.

A recording of her interview, from the radio program Haboker Hazeh (“This Morning”) hosted by Aryeh Golan on state broadcaster Kan, has been circulating on social media.

Notably, the interview is not included in the online version of Haboker Hazeh for 15 October, the episode in which it apparently aired.

It may well have been censored due to its explosive nature.

Porat, who is from Kabri, a settlement near the Lebanese border, undoubtedly experienced terrible things and saw many noncombatants killed. Her own partner, Tal Katz, is among the dead.

However, her account undermines Israel’s official story of deliberate, wanton murder by the Palestinian fighters.

Although it no longer appears on the Kan website, there can be little doubt about the recording’s authenticity.

At least one Hebrew-language account posted part of the interview on Twitter, now officially called X, and accused Kan of functioning as “media in the service of Hamas.”

Porat also gave her account to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

However, the Maariv story, published on 9 October, makes no specific mention of civilians being killed by Israeli forces.

And in a half-hour interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday, Porat speaks of intense gunfire after Israeli forces arrived. Porat herself received a bullet in the thigh.

Not only does Porat tell Kan that Israelis were killed in the heavy counterattack by Israeli security forces, but she says she and other captive civilians were well treated by the Palestinian fighters.

Porat had been attending the “Nova” rave when the Hamas assault began with missiles and motorized paragliders. She and her partner Tal Katz escaped by car to nearby Kibbutz Be’eri where many of the events she describes in her media interviews took place.

According to Porat speaking to Maariv, she and Katz initially sought refuge in the house of a couple called Adi and Hadas Dagan. After the Palestinian fighters found them they were all taken to another house, where eight people were already being held captive and one person was dead.

Porat said that the wife of the dead man “told us that when they [the Hamas fighters] tried to enter, the guy tried to prevent them from entering and grabbed the door. They shot at the door and he was killed. They did not execute them.”

“They did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely,” Porat explained to a surprised Golan in the Kan radio interview.

“By that I mean they guard us,” she said. “They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.”

“They were very humane towards us,” Porat said in her Channel 12 interview. She recalled that one Palestinian fighter who spoke Hebrew, “told me, ‘Look at me well, were not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.’ Thats what he told me, in those words.”

“I was calm because I knew nothing would happen to me,” she added.

“They told us that we would not die, that they wanted to take us to Gaza and that the next day they would return us to the border,” Porat told Maariv.

In the Channel 12 interview, Porat elaborates that although the Palestinian fighters all had loaded weapons, she never saw them shoot captives or threaten them with their guns.

In addition to providing the captives with drinking water, she said the fighters let them go outside to the lawn because it was hot, especially as the electricity was cut.

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nomoresympathy-eh · 28 days

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According to zionists, Hamas are the UNRWA, Hamas are health workers, Hamas are journalists, Hamas are children and babies, Hamas are fathers risking the bullets and the bombs to bring food for their families, Hamas are hospitals, schools and places of worship, Hamas are ambulances and aid trucks...

So what zionists are saying is that Hamas is basically everyone innocent, heroic and good. We get what you're not saying out loud, you sly dogs, you.

#israel is a terrorist state #israel is a war criminal #israel is a liar #every accusation is a confession #israel is an apartheid state #israel is committing genocide #israel is committing war crimes #free palestine #free gaza #gaza #hamas #israeli propaganda

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varijacija · 8 months

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I havent watched a marvel movie in a million years so I must say it was insane seeing marvel controversy being only about how there arent many women or gay people in it and then hear the plot of most movies being like "villain is bad because a hero billionare stole his work and hes mad about it" "hero is good because he made a super war weapon" "villain is bad because he is against racism" "hero is again good because he made a super war weapon but feels a biiiit bad for killing but its justified ofc cus it saved america" "villain bad because he took it too far while fighting to save nature" etc etc

#likeeee #are youall serious #.mypost #ik its america war propaganda but i thought they were being at least a little subtle #and i heard A LOT of controversy about the first thing #it no one talking about the rest orrrrrr

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nesyanast · 3 months

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The State Department just published a 51 page report detailing over a century's worth of Russia's exploitation of antisemitism as a tactic to spread disinformation and propaganda

#jumblr #jewish #nesyapost #jews #jewish history #antisemitism #Russian History #Russian antisemitism #Russian jews #soviet jews #history #pdf download #propaganda #Ukraine war #can't wait to dive into this

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whereserpentswalk · 6 months

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Imagine what neoliberal propaganda articles look like in various evil empires.

"Women in Sauron's army. How female orcs have helped create a more inclusive global conquest." - The Mordor Examiner

"How the death star program is revitalizing the galactic economy." - The Coruscant Times

"Despite progressive cries to "Free Arrakis" situation with House Harkonnen more complicated then most people think." - The Corrino Fund

"How the anti imperial rabbit hole can easily lead to people to pro choas views." - Ultramar Today

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sayruq · 15 days

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Lmao they did! No scorch marks and all the dirt flew in one direction and arranged itself into a neat pile apparently

#yemen #jerusalem #tel aviv #current events #palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #news on gaza #palestine news #news update #war news #war on gaza #hasbara #israeli propaganda #iran #iran missile strikes #axis of resistance

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intersectionalpraxis · 5 months

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watching this without context, you'd think he came back from fighting Thanos... this is, by far, is a jarring example of how deeply pervasive and perverse indoctrination is for Israelis since their own births and the cognitive dissonance is just so alarming.

meanwhile how many Palestinian women (in the thousands, to be precise) are still not able to give birth with adequate medical aid and care in the coming months safely... i'm livid

#feminist #feminism #palestine #social justice #freepalastine🇵🇸#israel is an apartheid state #free gaza #free palestine #israel is committing genocide #israel is a terrorist state #israeli propaganda #israeli apartheid #ceasefire now #settler colonialism #settler violence #israeli war crimes

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moonlayl · 6 months

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They need more time so that they could plant more “evidence” to “prove” Hamas as operating from there, even though they’ve already very clearly searched every inch of the place, causing the death of plenty of civilians.

This posted by the official IDF account by the way…

If Israel releases new footage of “look at the corpses of Israeli civilians!” (6 weeks later) Now we know where they got the bodies from

Israel has also killed 30 civilians here AND arrested any Palestinian journalists around the hospital before storming in. They specifically attacked the maternity and kidney wards as well.

This entire operation is a sham, and the only thing they have as proof are untouched Islamic books, a laptop with fake info, and a table of weapons that includes less weapons than the average American household.