‘Hot Type: How Russia Weaponises Scandal So You Forget to Defend Democracy' - My Latest for Byline
In today's Hot Type column in Byline, I investigate how scandals are weaponised to destroy trust in democracies, paving the way for further authoritarian capture
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“I believe the constant sleaze parade is a toxin – more dangerous than invisible radiation because the short-term and long-term impacts are making it very difficult to mount a resistance to the criming in plain sight and ongoing erosion of democracies.”—hsc
Cold feelings in the night… a refrain from a Social Distortion song that runs through my mind when I’m investigating late into the night. Finding just the right words and having the courage to print them has been some trick in the past decade, made easier by an incredible support group of global, pro-democracy reporters, academics, and activists.
I’m inspired by some really brave people, like my podcast partner Jim Stewartson, who talked about his journey exposing the architects of QAnon on RadPod & Not So Chill last night.
As Croatian journalist Slavenka Drukolić told us last week, we just push on. We must push on.
Her words were heavy on my mind as I sat down to write my latest Hot Type column for Byline:
The topic, how Russia weaponizes scandal, was born from my cold feeling that the circus of sleaze was benefiting the fascists. A probe of RT’s latest headlines and tweets, and I found my evidence — one Epstein post after another, featuring pornographic pictures, exploitative images of young girls, tweets celebrating Massie and a constant spigot of posts denigrating the Clintons.
It’s difficult to know the right thing to do in an information war, but I push on.
Below is an excerpt from today’s Hot Type in Byline Supplement. Thank you as always for supporting our work.
Hot Type: How Russia Weaponises Scandal So You Forget to Defend Democracy
Political columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda investigates how scandals are weaponised to destroy trust in democracies, paving the way for further autocratic capture
The only thing people in democratic nations should be doing is trying to figure out how to remain democratic nations. That’s it. That’s the game. Defend every institution from the battering ram of propaganda and endless engineered sleaze.
Leaders and citizens alike in the world’s remaining democracies need to focus on strategy – too much scandal rubbernecking and this moment will slip away. Right now, it looks like the world is made up of pervy grotesques, but that’s not reality. The reality is most of this world is beautiful, and people everywhere are amazing.
The Russian-backed Jeffrey Epstein Paedophile Project, where deviant men were supplied with an endless supply of largely Eastern European girls, kompromat was gathered, and the tech and political worlds were infiltrated, was part of a very long game.
Before the latest email dump by a US regime working in lock-step with Russia, we already knew Epstein was a convicted paedophile working with the Russians. We already knew that Trump was a convicted sex felon. We’ve known for years that Trump’s orbit is filled with convicted paedophiles with ties to Russia. Thread after thread, year after year, I and others reported on this deviant bunch. We also knew some Democrats were closely tied to Epstein.
Sleazy Glitz
I learned from author Peter Pomerantsev, who worked in television in Moscow during the rise of Putin and political technologist Vladislav Surkov, that a Russian intelligence speciality is sleazy glitz parades. The idea is to break reality, break trust, demoralize, and destabilize nations.
In his book, This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures In the War Against Reality, he writes: “We live in a world of mass persuasion run amok, where the means of manipulation have gone forth and multiplied, a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft facts, deep fakes, fake news, ISIS, Putin, trolls, Trump…”
He makes the point that the Cold War has been replaced by the Information War. And because the deployment of information weapons ‘acts like an invisible radiation’ on its targets — those words lifted directly from a 2011 Russian manual on Information Psychological War Operations — the targets are often oblivious to the poison they are ingesting.
I believe the constant sleaze parade is a toxin – more dangerous than invisible radiation because the short-term and long-term impacts are making it very difficult to mount a resistance to the criming in plain sight and ongoing erosion of democracies.
In the US, Donald Trump is running a crime syndicate without oversight – from the DOGE hacks, to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Customs Enforcement agencies overpayments to Russian-linked companies for warehouses, to the $10 billion slush fund just announced for his global gangsters cabal, the Board of Peace.
This is not to say that this Epstein scandal is not an Achilles heel for Trump — it absolutely is. But my point is we’ve already proven that Trump — a deviant mired in corruption, abuse of power, treason, and a committer of crimes against humanity. Does no one think it’s weird that some members of the GOP to the right of Atilla the Hun are being heralded as heroes for pushing Epstein reveals?
We should at the very least be asking these questions.
The alleged information-leaking situation unfolding in the UK as part of the Epstein fallout – with the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his ties to the disgraced Lord Peter Mandelson, whose lobbying firm, Global Counsel, shuttered Friday – is important. Let it play out. But don’t let it take down the country.
As Ukrainian historian Tetiana Boriak taught me, Russia weaponizes everything.
“Everything is used as a weapon to reach their goals, to increase the territory of the state — all a fig leaf for Russian imperialism,” she told me.
Media Blitz
Constantly breaking Epstein stories cast a shadow over the four-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with reports that the decrepit empire may be planning involuntary reserve call-up as their battlefield losses increase.
To view the Epstein scandals as useful weapons of war, all you have to do is look at what’s playing on Russia media this week: image after image about the decadent West, claiming “Europe is the evil empire”, and blaming it for Russia’s dilapidated economy, according to the creator of Russian Media Monitor Julia Davis.
Here are just a few recent Epstein headlines from Russian state TV, RT, which is backed by Russian military intelligence, according to 2024 reports from the US State Department:
Epstein & Pizzagate!
Naked Women, sex toys and high-profile guests: What’s inside Epstein trove…
…Convicted sex offender nearly landlord to US government
A quick scan of RT’s X/Twitter feed, and you’ll find the propaganda outlet produces a heavy ratio of Epstein scandal content, with traumatic sexual photos of children, pornographic images of Epstein, and what appears to be an obsession of tweeting about Bill Clinton’s Epstein links.
Worth noting, RT on X appears to celebrate Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, the GOP congressman who pushed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, in posts about him taking credit for Prince Andrew’s arrest.
My point is: Russian-state sponsored media is basking in and exploiting the coverage of the Kremlin’s own conjured boogeyman, while often highlighting the sleaze factor. This can then be useful in its ongoing assault to take down democratic governments and institutions everywhere.
Go ahead and root out the pervs and spies, likely spotted, lured, and fed by KGB statecraft, but don’t let that lead you down the path of authoritarianism. Ensure those victimized by Epstein operations receive justice, while also defending democracy.
In Russia, with the Kremlin’s firm grip on media – and new promises to further ratchet up control on internet platforms in coming weeks – reality is treated like a rotting corpse, trotted out on rare occasions. Fiction, scandal, and nationalistic fervor are ever present, always benefiting Putin.
As Pomerantsev wrote in his book Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible:
“With no idea of the future left, facts become unnecessary. They are, after all, unpleasant things, reminders of one’s mortality and limitations… The process occurred in Russia harder and faster because cynicism and disillusionment set in earlier… everything turned into a dark carnival more rapidly. The Russian president turned politics into a reality show, remaking authoritarianism with the logic of twenty-first century entertainment.”
To that point, Trump just introduced aliens and UFOs as the next clickbait theme.
Simulations and the exploitation of dark carnivals of sleaze are designed to break us, to exhaust us and to break reality — to make us think the world is entirely scary and evil.
As long as war porn, news porn, and trauma porn are served up in prime time, in what I call ‘Reality TV Fascism’, a coherent and cohesive Resistance becomes more elusive, as scandals often serve the interest of fascism.
We can see by Trump’s sanctions targeting International Criminal Court judges that he is aware that there remains a mechanism for criminal leaders to be brought to justice — accountability can happen.
But first, democracies have to survive the internet.
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The above is an excerpt from Hot Type. As always, I ask those who can afford to support a small global team of investigative reporters to please take out a subscription to Byline Supplement.
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I am grateful you are here.
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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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I appreciate the reminders. Stay focused. Don't let scandals distract from the main purpose - to save our Democracy.