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Bette in the News
I had an opportunity to share my findings from my latest Hot Type column in Byline Times on The Thom Hartmann Program on Wednesday. Here is our report:
And here is the original column on Donald Trump’s Election Denier Industrial Complex:
As I told Thom, America’s future is up to the American people.
Italy Investigates: “Children as young as 11 or 12 who were involved in the protests seemed to have been subjected to a form of ‘counter-education’”
Siena-based geopolitical analyst Monique Camarra told Bette Dangerous that Italians have grown weary of destabilization efforts and protests in Italy backfired. She said the Meloni government is the longest standing government of the past 60 years and “people are disgusted by what happened on the weekend. They don’t want to go to elections or bring in a revolution.”
As I reported yesterday, EU regulators and digital defense agencies launched investigations into pro-Kremlin operations aimed at accelerating violence in France. EU officials are probing online actors who spread misleading content and fake videos to millions during the nation’s protests.
The ability to track online actors now occurs in real time, and reports about foreign interference are being updated hourly, but I think Italy’s Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has identified the real issue: young people being subjected to counter-education on social media.
The Italian government launched a probe to determine whether Russian agents helped fuel riots.
As Bloomberg reports:
Italian officials are looking into whether outside actors such as Russia had a hand in violent protests that swept Milan and other European cities over the weekend, according to people familiar with the matter. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni government has asked to be briefed on what role, if any, foreign provocateurs may have played.
Protests in Paris, Milan and other European cities over the cost of living turned violent over the weekend leading to looting and arson. The level of violence and apparent coordination of some of the attacks prompted officials to ask whether it might be more than just a spontaneous expression of anger.
In Tuesday in Rome at a Defence Procurement Forum, the Italian Defence Minister Crosetto pointed out that “the events in Milan and elsewhere in Italy are fundamentally different from those seen in other periods… They are the product of what I call ‘hybrid warfare,’ which someone is bringing into our countries with unconventional tools that are called TikTok, social media and YouTube, without the West realizing or reacting.”
He said: "The West has yet to realize this or take any meaningful action in response… If three out of every 10 young people took part in these demonstrations—and I am not just referring to 'maranza' (youth gangs) or second-generation Italians—and if six out of 10 agree with these sentiments, it is because they have been subjected to a 'counter-education' from somewhere—not from their families or schools.
He pointed out that “children as young as 11 or 12 who were involved in the protests seemed to have been subjected to a form of controeducazione” (counter-education).
"This has instilled in them values, ambitions, a worldview, and points of reference that stand in direct conflict with the society we live in and with our democratic rules,” he said.
As I am typing his words, I am saying, “Here! Here!” in my mind.
The time to investigate social media platforms being used to brainwash young people to sabotage their own democratic societies is long past. And under the EU Digital Services Act, European agencies have the right to hold social media platforms accountable for distributing coordinated, manipulated content by foreign state actors.
Of the 270 people detained in Milan over the weekend, 80% were minors.
Sacred Spaces and our Annual Halloween Hair-Raiser with Dr. Marci Shore - A Calendar Update (registration links will be sent separately)
Sacred Spaces on Sunday - As a palate cleanser from all the sturm und drang, I am opening my travel diary on Sunday 25 October, at 11 am Pacific, to share images of my favorite sacred spaces I have visited in Europe over the past 18 months. I feel like we can use an hour of pure beauty.
Halloween Hair-Raiser on Tuesday - Tuesday, 27 October, intellectual historian Dr. Marci Shore and I will be bringing back our annual Halloween Hair-raiser (last year, she wore a witch’s hat, I had a devil-horned wig, and Monique came as Mo’ lol). Shore will be offering us a master-class lecture on Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. This is part of Bette’s Book Club series, which since our September launch, has featured French historian David Colon on his new book Infodémie; NYT best-selling author Craig Unger on House of Trump/House of Putin, and British author Keir Giles on his new book American Overthrow. Both Unger and Giles will be back with us in coming weeks for Part 2 of our Book Series with them, and look for an announcement for the return of Shore on her book, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution.
As Shore once told me:
“I cling to the story of the Maidan, which was so important to me at the time, and if anything is only more important now, because it was what in German they call that augenblick — that blink of an eye, that flicker of a second in which you see that human beings are capable of something better.”
Me too.
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More info about Bette Dangerous: This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and broadcast news veteran, as well as former music and nightlife columnist for the Los Angeles Times. A No. 1 Amazon best-selling author and award-winning film director, Cuda writes the Hot Type column in Byline Times, an independent UK-newspaper. She executive produced the film Kherson: Human Safari. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism, arts, and culture reporting.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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V grateful for you xx huge thanxxxxxx