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Defeating Brozilla — Solidarity, reality, truth, and unity
We’ve been lost in the code.
Traveling through hostile internet turf, truth tellers stalked by gang brigades, who zero in on their targets, reality replaced with kayfabe, actors on all sides.
And the Brozillas grew, fed with foreign cash, fat with government contracts, and stuffed full with all our data, delivered to them by terms and conditions that no one ever read.
It was an extinction event in reverse — the dinosaurs regrew because we didn’t read the terms and conditions, only now they are bigger than our enforcement agencies. Bigger than governments. Our military that was supposed to protect our borders failed to protect our internet borders, so disinformation was delivered at scale to a population that had no antibodies.
My friends from Eastern European countries warned us — those who grew up under Soviet rule knew what was happening to the West, and they cried out in agony: “Wake up, America!” But Americans were turned against their own language, and even ‘woke’ was weaponized.
An alert population, educated on history books and writers with lived experience, are a danger to the Brozillas, who feast on our ignorance, demanding more and more ignorance, as they plot to steal Decency and Empathy to Profit Off Our Misery.
Medieval Times
Think of disinformation like a disease, spreading from country to country, too few leaders willing to offer inoculation at scale. Inoculation requires admitting the problem, spending money to solve it, shutting down platforms, calling out the lie superspreader factories of Russia — and potentially forcing disruption to all that cheap petrol used to bribes countries into submitting to the Kremlin fascist mafia state.
“Foreign covert influence activities are not journalism.”—US State Department
I wrote millions of words like stars in the sky, believing in a duty to warn, and I will keep writing. Your letters tell me my words make a difference.
I write of solidarity, reality, truth, and unity — key ingredients to navigate the false reality we will be forced to live in. Solidarity in our shared purpose to defend democracy, unity in being together as a whole.
2,960 people read my report A House United.
I need two million people to read it.
I need people to understand the degree of our infiltration and the techniques used to disrupt our trust in one another.
I need people to understand that accounts on the internet pushing to divide us may be Russian military intelligence, as provable in my above report.
I need people to trust women. I need women to trust women.
As noted in that report, teams of bloggers working in shifts for the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia, spent 18 months destroying the Women’s March movement.
We were denied our historic movement — tainted by the lie factory, and we were too ready to believe the worst about women — always ready to shoot our own.—Heidi Siegmund Cuda for Bette Dangerous
As I noted in the report above, celebrities retweeted Instagram accounts from St. Petersburg, Russia, created by bloggers pretending to be Black Americans.
I see all the same operations occurring again, but this time, on steroids, as they’re delivered from the richest man in the world, a foreign-born Brozilla, aligned with foreign war criminals to bring destruction to our land.
And although we have begged for help from our leaders, we are met with a chilling silence.
Abandoned on the virtual battlefields of cyberspace, we carry on because what else is there to do.
In July, I was on a panel at the Byline Festival where I offered my thoughts on what would happen if Trump were to return to the White House.
I answered it would be a thousand years of darkness. And I am an optimist.
I told the gathered crowd that it was perfect to be answering that question in a Medieval hall built in 1,388 because we would be entering a new feudalism, where the oligarchs have all the power and the people would be diminished to serfs, living lives that are nasty, brutish, and short.
I explained that the oligarchs know that global warming is real, and their plan is to extract all earth’s resources and live out their lives in their bunkers in Hawaii or New Zealand. The Christian supremacists already believe in dominion uberalles.
Lastly, I explained that what is missing from all the election coverage is the declaring that we are in an information war.
Too few knew Joe Biden was leading a strong economy, quietly doing the labor of democracy, too few knew an incumbent always wins in a strong economy. Too few showed solidarity, and too few acknowledged the reality of America’s untreated racism and misogyny vulnerabilities.
So, here we are.
We are the ones tasked with defeating the Brozillas.
The beasts grew too big for governments and our enforcement agencies, which rely on their tech to function, and that is their grave miscalculation.
Vive La France
France, however, is showing that it can be done — how you can take on the Brozillas and Putinists.
They arrested Russia’s Telegram CEO Pavel Durov for operating a criminal enterprise.
Prosecutors are trying to ensure corrupt Le Pen can’t run for political office.
The country that surrendered to Germany is now a century later standing up to fascism, and maybe it’s because they understand Resistance. They also have titushky mobs, sharpening their crooked fangs.
But at least they are doing what they can.
Our leaders could be doing the same — arresting the Brozillas for their myriad crimes — election interference, working as unregistered foreign agents, fraud, market manipulation, aiding and abetting a foreign enemy etc ad infinitum… As for Trump, his crimes are well documented and in plain site. National emergencies require an appropriate response, and Biden has been given the power of a monarch.
Lucid Dreaming
I interview brilliant people all week long, and my mind is filled with just the right quote for every moment.
When RadPod first interviewed author of The Undertow, Jeff Sharlet, I recall this passage from my Lucid Dreaming report:
The age of the surreal
We are in the age of the surreal.
I tell Jeff: “I've been thinking a lot about a Tom Stoppard quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. And I've watched that movie probably 30 times. But I continually think about the ending, where the quote is, ‘There must have been a moment - at the beginning - where we could have said no, but somehow we missed it.”
Jeff said: “I would say we are past the moment where we could say no. We've lost a lot, but we’re not doomed. We can't say no, because it's already here. But we can go through it, and we can make something good.”
“We can go through it, and we can make something good.”—Jeff Sharlet on RadPod
Consequences for Gravediggers
Less than 32 percent of all eligible voters voted for Trump, that means there’s a vast majority out there that needs to find courage.
Over dinner in 2018, I asked one of the authors of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump how this story ends.
He whispered: “It ends in revolution. Trump won’t leave.”
Two years later, we, the people, voted out a dictator in the middle of autocratic capture. And instead of acknowledging defeat, he incited a violent insurrection.
Revolutions are messy things. It’s far easier to defend a democracy than it is to get one back.
We have seen the writing on the wall — the projected cabinet picks:
Media creatures, common in authoritarian regimes for they are brand ambassadors. The brand is fascism.
Loyalists necessary to insulate him from usurpers of his power.
Amoral criminals brought in to destroy institutions in their shared project of staying out prison.
And still, history whispers… of gravediggers and consequences…
I am filling these pages with examples of successful Resistance. As a friend from Europe told me today, “This is the time for action.”
We are going through it. We need to make something good.
Join me in living in a fact-based world that cherishes and defends truth.
Join me in cherishing trust, and making it far more difficult to be divided from within. Know the signs of reality vs alternate reality, and do not get lost in the code.
When we have a shared narrative of truth, and we have trust in one another, we can make something good.
I need you to know that you are not alone.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, 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.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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We need a common hero. That we all can get behind.