Once Upon a Time in the West - Brexit and Trump Were Russian Attacks
Once Upon a Time in the West - Brexit and Trump Were Russian Attacks
Acknowledging history NOW
It has something to do with our belief that we are in control of our destiny - that the West is somehow immune to foreign influence at our highest levels, but that is simply not so.
As I evidenced in my Byline Supplement report, The Rolling Insurrection: How Putin is Waging a Covert War Against the West, Russia is always at war. The West took its guard down after the Cold War. Western leaders thought they could play nice with this KGB spy who had petro and ammo. George W. Bush thought he could see his soul.
As Putin’s arch nemesis Hillary Clinton noted in 2008 - Putin was a KGB agent, so “by definition he doesn’t have a soul.”
She knew.
Contained in that spy is a heart of darkness - one that does not have the same objectives as the West. One that sees our freedoms as weaknesses to be exploited. One that found vulnerabilities in citizens, who are easily inflamed to vote against their own best interests.
We had no protection from this spy stuff - that these lies were often coming to us on Facebook and the 10 o’clock news, by men and women who wrapped themselves in the flag and sold Kremlin-propaganda as patriotism, are still selling Kremlin-propaganda as patriotism - by men and women who knew they were lying.
And we need better words. ‘Propaganda’ still conjures up World War I planes dropping leaflets over enemy territories. We are dealing with powerful, well-funded transnational mob efforts to overthrow truth to benefit a gluttonous desire for power, revenge, and as cover for massive corruption.
Recall, Putin has committed so many war crimes and human rights violations against his own people - let alone the West - he knows if his tight protective bubble is penetrated he will get the Gaddafi treatment from the Russian people. His latest North Korea-esque theatre craft made that clear. He actually looked like a desperate man.
A prisoner of his own making.
And here in the West, we try to wake up our citizens, we try to make them see that the cognitive warfare is targeting their brains, and that a network of American and British traitors are working with the Kremlin to delete democracy and replace it with autocracy.
I have proven this over and over again in seven years of investigating these criminals, and every day, I am dismayed by corporate media’s unwillingness to admit they missed the entire fucking story. Or maybe, they are complicit.
Jimmy Carter gets it.
Four years ago, an American President said these words…
“I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”-Jimmy Carter, June 27, 2019
Please refer to my Trump Is a Russian Asset thread from 2019, where I connect dots from Paul Manafort, and how Yanukovych’s puppet presidency foreshadowed the American attacks, the methodology, maneuvering, the active measures, the televised slogans - that ‘lock her up’ and ‘build the wall’ were recycled catchphrases - all of it.
It is also important to revisit my Warfighting thread, where Keir Giles does a brilliant explainer for NATO on how Russia hacks the brains of citizens.
Tweet No. 8: Like a tarantula hawk wasp paralyzing its prey, Russia uses information warfare to “incapacitate a state as much as possible before that state even knows a conflict has started.” New tech based on 100-year-old thinking. And like the spider, citizens lose consciousness.
Tweet No. 9: WAKE UP AMERICA: “...a massive dedicated impact on the consciousness of citizens...within a matter of days... deprived of actual sovereignty without the state’s territory being seized.” IW’s aim: regime change... “through destroying the organs of govt.” Well done TrumPutin.
So that is what happened in America in 2016, and the attacks are ongoing.
You will know the traitors because they will proclaim to be patriots who love Jesus, who wrap themselves in the flag, while spewing Russian talking points and being celebrated on RT etal. Some of the traitors will claim to be on the left, as they celebrate Assange, spew Russian talking points and are celebrated on RT etal.
A report in the Washington Post, shows how Elon Musk is propping up Russian troll accounts, who are now blue-check verified. 🥴
“Musk has boosted one of the pro-Russian accounts by replying to its tweets, including one spreading a lie that thousands of NATO troops had died in Ukraine,” wrote Joseph Menn.
In my own report, Unmusked: How Elon Musk is Using Twitter to Destroy the Concept of Objective Truth, my sources predicted Twitter’s swift descent into a Kremlin-propaganda hell thinly veiled as social media platform.
I wish it weren’t so.
‘The Great Information War’
In a report just reissued by Byline Supplement, US Army Report: Brexit the ‘First Step’ in Putin's ‘Information Blitzkrieg, it reveals how the U.S. Army knew that Brexit was a Russian attack on the UK.
Author Nafeez Ahmed wrote:
Published in July 2020, the extraordinary study commissioned by the Trump administration concluded that Russia was engaged in a long-term military strategy against the West focusing on the use of worldwide information warfare as a mechanism to weaken Western institutions and extend Russia’s sphere of influence.
“The UK’s approved 2016 Brexit referendum to separate from the EU is seen by many as the first step in unravelling that European order.”-US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute
That study backs what reporters like me, the Byline team, and Carole Cadwalladr have been proving for years - we are in a Great Information War, and Ahmed recalled a tweet by Cadwalladr from a year ago:
I think we may look back on this as the first Great Information War. Except we’re already eight years in. The first Great Information War began in 2014. The invasion of Ukraine is the latest front. And the idea that it doesn’t already involve us is fiction – a lie.
Cadwalldr has always used better words for this war, and her reporting has been vital to our understanding of it. In The Great Hack, she talks about returning to her hometown in the run up to Brexit and discovering a community with a soul infected by othering - citizens fearful of an immigrant invasion, a fear fanned on Facebook.
As she noted in the film, it “actually points to this much bigger, more worrying story, which is that our personal data is out there and being used against us in ways we don’t understand.
“It is this sort of visceral thing, living with this disinformation and this propaganda every single day and feeling the effects of it and knowing that it does work and does have an impact in real life whether people believe that or not.”
I think it’s time we all believe it. Brexit and Trump were Russian attacks on the West. The attacks are ongoing. Those who are working with the Russians to perpetuate cognitive war on the West need to be held to account.
Some are in the halls of Congress. Some are running for President. Some are on TV. Many are online. Russia - like fascism - will not stop until it is defeated. How many more insurrections do we need to start believing our own eyes and ears?
The first step for both of our countries is to admit we were attacked, prove we are still capable of ferocious accountability, and narrow our attack surface moving forward. Sending some inglorious treasony bastards to prison would be nice.
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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. 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, author Greg Olear called it “The Big Sleep 2.0” except with “not so much sleep happening.”
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Thanks for your important historical essay that at least helps me keep some perspective. In addition, it seems to me that this “information war” involving Putin’s war [Note I don’t mean the “information war” involving FOX and corporate media etc which is still in full force]…….is changing and I’m getting the feeling that the only “end game” is that Russia will have to eventually go!
A new factor is that Kamala Harris just recently accused Russia of “crimes against humanity” which is an accusation that is not used very often, which also seems to mean that this is a fight until the Russians are GONE with no diplomatic end game!
Also, at the Security Conference Sec of State Antony Blinken said the Chinese are ready to give equipment and arms to the Russians to use in Ukraine……….and also the Chinese balloon was not a weather balloon, it was an “espionage” balloon which worsened matters further!
And finally I’ve been reading about that Russian “Wagner” paramilitary mercenary group that is controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin is going down down downhill as it has no significant recruitment sources any longer! This seemed to be an important group for Russia. Wagner is not ideologically based but they do have connections to neo-Nazis and other extremists and they have been involved in Africa and Ukraine.
So there now seem to be more significant and increasing disruptions to Russia’s past information war activities anyway I’m thinking…….
Another incisive, beautifully written piece. Thanks, Heidi, for helping open our eyes and keeping us continuously informed.