Bette’s Weekly Roundup - Giddyap!
As the world churns - a roundup of the week in news
The world was on fire, and no one could save me but you.
True story.
I am humbled by the support I have received from this community in recent days - evidence that the war on kindness can and will be defeated.
I am burning to write new material so let’s breeze through this week’s Bette highlights.
For our new members, this roundup email is a Best of Bette for the week, so if you only have time to read one of my missives, this is it.
Bette Dangerous Podcast Ep3 - The Fascists Have No Clothes
I launched a podcast this week, which features audio versions of some of my print reports and features. I will be initiating original interviews as well.
Summary: In Ep3, I report on how the auditions have begun for the new avatar for the Koch-Kremlin cadre. Once you know the fascist playbook, it reduces the power of these extremist cult members. They are trying to be more extreme than Trump, who moved the Overton Window so far, he is now their center. They’ve normalized fascism.
I am hoping that if enough of us become scholars of how fascism works that we expose these cons for who and what they are - enablers of evil - before they gain another ounce of power.
The majority of Americans reject these strongmen and women. We have to stick together. Knowledge is armor against the fascist creep.
This is part of my Fight Fascism series: Read Books - Fight Fascism; Watch Films - Fight Fascism; Read Quotes - Fight Fascism; Defend Words - Fight Fascism; Read Threads - Fight Fascism.
The Fascists Have No Clothes - Print edition
Summary (see above). Author’s Note: I realize some people prefer the written word and some prefer listening to audio so I am trying to get hep and offer both on reports that I deem important and also palate cleanser memoirs from my Hollywood archives, which I hope offer a momentary reprieve from the sturm und drang.
Expose PsyOps - Fight Fascism - Print edition
Summary: A country led by a KGB spy sicced his goons on the brains of people in the West, and we have the bloody trail of rage, death, and psychosis to prove it. That KGB spy has Fifth Column enforcers, willing to contribute to American carnage - aligning with an NRA infiltrated by the Russians, photos ops with AR-15s at Christmas, Congressional trolls with AR-15 lapel pins.
Putin’s goons are injecting digital poison into anti-social media, and they’re being helped by a three-star general and traitors in Congress. Enforcers like Tucker Carlson spit propaganda into people’s homes nightly, and Kremlin-propaganda networks like OAN, Telegram, Newsmax, Rumble, and of course Twitter, are injecting weapon’s grade digital poison into people’s brains.
Psychological operations are military grade influence wars aimed at altering a country’s state of mind through non-combative methods. When minds are targeted, people can become combative. All those video clips of people who have lost their damn minds - caught on camera acting vile to immigrants and people of color, are emboldened by the rabbit holes they’re lured into where they are fed high doses of othering. It’s hard to see it, but they are victims, too.
As my friend Wes Clark Jr. wrote so brilliantly, “It's an oligarch insurgency riding on a wave of malcontents, religious zealots, incels, racists and other retrograde dipshits who operate under the mistaken belief that the very people responsible for the present dystopia will somehow fix everything if they have unchecked power.”
We need to create a massive campaign to combat disinformation and radicalization - following Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia models of combatting disinformation assaults. And following Germany’s lead in creating laws against hate speech.
Podcast version of this article available here.
‘The String that Unravels Everything’
“We have a long history of ignoring ugly and inconvenient truths in America.”-Craig Unger, bestselling author of American Kompromat, to the Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ audience, February 12, 2023
When Craig Unger spoke those words at our latest ‘Speakeasy’ in response to me noting that we memory hole so much in America that it puts us in grave danger, I began reflecting on the many lessons I have learned from him over the past few years.
Among them, that the things that infect American are often legal. And how that which is legal often endangers our national security. When former directors of the FBI take money from members of the Russian mob, there’s no walking that back. When a real estate developer takes money from the Russian mob, they own him. These transactions have put our country in grave danger.
But it was when Unger shared just one small detail about the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who appears repeatedly in the the various plots of the Trump-Russia scandal, that a bigger picture came into play…
“Boeing bought aluminum from Deripaska,” said Unger, referring to Boeing doing business with Rusal…
Deripaska has a long history of ties to the Republican Party.
When a member of the Bette Dangerous community asked Unger what he thought the Charles McGonigal arrest means in the scheme of things, he said:
“It could be the string that unravels everything.”
Summary: Just listen, lol.
Have a beautiful weekend, and as always stay kind, stay focused, and stay loud.
I need you.🤍
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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine and Substack bestseller. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you, as well, to those who support my work with coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. My reflection, Confessions of a ‘Fox Blonde’ was recently published in Byline Supplement. In a review of my latest ebook, the erotic novella Fox Undercover, I’ve been called “The punk rock Anaïs Nin” and author Greg Olear called it “The Big Sleep 2.0” except with “not so much sleep happening.”
Fox Undercover can be purchased here. 25% Discount Code: Undercover
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
(Photos courtesy of a Bette Dangerous member from New Mexico)
Exceptional week of work Heidi! America has no shortage of effete, pharisaic denizens, so easily corrupted by power and fortune. Russia simply recognized that fact, and here we are in a muddled mess of divisiveness... thanks for all you do!!