Read My Reports - Fight Fascism
Some of my most vital reporting of the last two years - part of my ‘Fight Fascism’ toolkit
One of the upsides to the authoritarian right and tankie left no longer hiding their fascist tendencies is it makes it very easy to spot the traitors to democratic values. I have written myriad articles on the techniques they use - othering, victimhood, mythic past, sexual anxiety, anti-intellectualism, propaganda - which we learned from Ruth Ben-Ghiat is never just words.
Bette Dangerous is growing so fast, I encourage new members to please scan the archives to get up to speed - an easy hack is to search for the weekly roundups. All my work is paywalled after two weeks, so please if you can afford to do so, support my work with a subscription - I am offering 25% off through Saturday. You will also receive invites to our amazing ‘Speakeasy’ zooms with vital and brilliant guests.
I promised new members that I would compile some of my key investigative reports from recent years that offer a full picture of what we are fighting. The volume of work I have been producing is staggering to even me, so I will be posting ‘Read My Reports - Fight Fascism’ as a multi-part series within the ‘Fight Fascism’ series. You will find the links to the entire series’ toolkit at the bottom of this report.
Do let’s remind our readers what fascism is - a society ruled by a dictator who controls the lives of people, who are not allowed to disagree with the strong-arm government. The dictator often comes to power to hide corruption, and the society is ruled by fear and violence. Rule of law has been subverted to benefit the dictator and allies - laws are often changed to benefit the leader.
As you can see by what is occurring in our statehouses and our Supreme Court, we are more than halfway there. So while we still have a chance and if we give “enough of a shit”, it is our duty to fight the fascist creep. Like my allies, I do not want my children and their children living in a fascist dystopia. I do not want what Russia has.
And while I am still free to type these words, onward…
Here are some of my most vital reports from the last couple of years:
Trump, Truss, and Twitter - The Year in Politics
I was interviewed by Adrian Goldberg for Byline Times Podcast about the events of 2022, along with Byline Times political editor Adam Bienkov. We cover all the salient points of the year in 30 minutes.
Unmusked: How Elon Musk is Using Twitter to Destroy the Concept of Objective Truth
When every corporate hack was talking about the money, I was talking about the assault on truth. I have been a reporter since college, and the work I am doing for Byline Supplement, Byline Times, RADICALIZED Truth Survives, and Bette Dangerous, is the most important work of my lifetime. Here is a podcast link where I report how Musk was plotting to turn Twitter into a Russian propaganda radicalization platform.
In Unmusked, I walk the reader through recent history of how communication platforms are weaponized to destroy truth and manipulate and radicalize people. This is nothing new. If Fiona Hill says Musk is transmitting messages for Putin, please believe her and please understand the national security implications.
Raw Power - Raw Notes from My First Recorded Interview with Jim Stewartson
Like 60,000 other people, I followed Jim’s work on Twitter, which was vital to understanding the hows and whys of radicalization, which we were seeing everywhere two years ago but were having trouble pinpointing the origins. Jim, with his background in ARG, saw the manipulations, identified Mike Flynn as a key orchestrator, and tenaciously exposed videos of Flynn reciting a cultic prayer in a Christian church and threatening to go to DC with his new assault rifle, while also suggesting and plotting coups. Jim has been relentlessly attacked for his work, and I recommend you both watch his film and read this letter.
A ‘Brainwashed Death Cult - The Gamification of Conspiracy
My first interview with Jim resulted in this stunning report I wrote for Byline Times. It is shocking that high-level traitors still walk free.
The Network: The American & Russian Moralists Behind the January Insurrection,
This is my first interview with Dave Troy for Byline Times - an interview that put a chill in my bones because Dave had just tied everything together between the Kremlin and American traitors. It is essential reading.
Shameful Opportunists - Why Big Business Backs Fascists
As Bette’s founding members know, Bette Dangerous is an anti-fascist fanzine, where I feature the brilliant work of Jason Stanley and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, among other vital scholars. Jason clued me in to why businesses goose-step to fascist leaders, something I never understood.
‘STRONGMEN’ - How a Crisis in Masculinity Paved the Way for Fascism
Someone recently asked me how I became friends with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. I don’t have a television so I don’t watch cable news, and I had to think about it. Then I recalled how a friend sent me an early screening copy of Unfit - and there I saw this brilliant, poised woman speak truth to power. It was Ruth.
I tracked her down to interview her for Byline Times more than two years ago. Here’s an excerpt:
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, details the precise moment in time when fascism was born.
“World War One was this cataclysmic change,” she told Byline Times. “Multiple empires fell, including the Russian Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire. It created death on a scale no one had seen before. It created wounds no one had seen before because of new weapons.”
In addition, the Great War led to a profound crisis in maleness.
“It created this entire class of men who were damaged, many were killed, and it created this huge crisis of masculinity,” she said. “So fascist rulers came up during this crisis period of unrest and instability in their individual countries and Italy was first. They had this ‘right versus left’ civil strife, and Mussolini appears. And he’s milking this strife, but he’s also saying ‘I can fix it. I can bring order’. And that’s why he got invited into power.”
We have a new crisis in masculinity, one manufactured on Telegram and on Infowars, as a way to exploit young men to turn to the right. In Strongmen, Ruth offers preventative medicine by revealing the playbook. Everything we see now has been done before - from violent militias to truckers waving flags - it all started in Italian villages with malevolent goons trying to hide their corruption.
I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes my archives blow me away.
The Tax Man Cometh - Robert Mercer, William Barr & Trump’s Chinese Bank Account
For nostalgic reasons, I am including the first interview I did with Martin Sheil. Marty has become one of my greatest allies and supporters, and he is one of the reasons I never feel alone in this fight no matter how brutally I am threatened.
Episode 43: War Is Hell - An Interview with Volodymr Demchenko
Every episode of my podcast with Jim, HiFi, and Sean is dynamite. What the guys did not know when I created the show with them is that among the many hats I wore as an investigative producer in broadcast news was talent booker. They had no idea I could get the high-level guests we have had on the show - from heads of state to the most important scholars of our time.
Each episode offers tremendous information about our war, but to hear from a Ukrainian soldier in the trenches of battle - one who could quote Dante - was simply incredible. Volodymr Demchenko reads books, and that is why he so nimbly battles disinformation. Please take the time to listen to our fascinating interview with him.
Trump Unmasked - A Guide to Becoming a Demagogue
I am sad for my journalist colleagues who are constrained by the failed notion of impartiality. The world is on f**king fire, and rather than report that truth, they have their heads up their arses as they bend over backward to offer equal time to malicious liars.
Not me! This piece is pure Jason Stanley. I took Trump’s announcement speech and matched the words to Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works so people can see how Trump is manipulating his audience with fascist tropes - unreality, the mythic past, anti-intellectualism, ‘law and order’, propaganda, sexual anxiety, and victimhood.
I am very proud of this passage:
With the disgraced, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump now back in the ring, pro-democracy reporters are now facing whiplash, as corporate media outlets continue to platform him, while failing to confront the fact that their outdated ideas of journalistic impartiality are failing the very people they’re meant to serve.
The Rolling Insurrection: How Putin Is Waging a Covert War Against the West.
“Russia has really f**ked us.”-words of a Bette member. Alas, the Russia, Russia, Russia propaganda dismissed truth effectively.
Here is an excerpt from my Rolling Insurrection report that shows how real the covert and overt war Russia is waging against the West is - the quotes are from Bette member Michal MacKay:
“What we are seeing is a rise of unreason in public life. This helps fascism, which is an ideology founded on irrationality..The amplification of irrationality by Russian information warfare ties together Titushky rent-a-mobs in Ukraine, the Trump/MAGA insurrectionists in the United States, the ‘Freedom Convoy’ rabble in Canada, the Bolsonaro insurrectionists in Brazil, and the world-wide anti-vax/anti-mask COVID conspiracists. What they have in common is a violent antipathy to constitutional democracy and a lack of belief that a shared truth of human experience can even exist.”
“The global rolling insurrection is being carried out by zombies, the walking dead: people who have been separated from a supportive communal life,” he said. “They are easily directed by Russian information warriors and other malign actors to lash out against a civil society which they don't understand but which they hate. People who no longer aspire to living as human beings in communities with shared values are the most dangerous people of all. To paraphrase the Sex Pistols song, they don't know what they want but they know how to get it.
Reversing History - The US Authoritarian Right’s War on LGBTQ+ People
Needless to say, when I learned the attacks on the gay community in America were nationwide, I sounded the alarm. Just like I sounded the alarm in my myriad reports on the threats to Roe, which no one listened to. Will we listen now?
How Russia Joined With Anti-Vaxxers to Wage Biological Warfare by Proxy Against the West
Please share it with everyone you love - whether in the cult or not. I painstakingly pieced together the events of the last few years that reveal the plot to kill people by Putin, Trump, and the CNP. That is not hyperbole. Ruth Ben-Ghiat taught me not to ‘memory hole’ any of this, so I went back in time and pulled up all the evidence to reveal that the loss of lives during the pandemic due to the onslaught of disinformation and malinformation was just collateral damage to the fossilized set’s desire to not depress the price/sale of oil.
1933 - How Nazi Violence Destroyed Berlin’s Gay Freedom
Every story leads to a story and when RadPod interviewed human rights activist Peter Tatchell I learned of a man named Magnus Hirschfeld, who had done groundbreaking work on gender fluidity a century ago and whose books were the first to burn in 1933 Berlin.
What a man, and what a chapter in history that was tragically lost to fascism. Please read and share so we all can see how vulnerable groups are targeted in the early stages of fascism and why we must get in the way early to prevent the inevitable violence that follows.
Agent Provocateurs and the Hierarchy of Disinformation
I stumbled upon a brilliant documentary by Undercover Asia 9 - an investigative series by CNA Insider - while researching my Unmusked investigation. The documentary is titled - Internet Trolls: The Unseen Force Behind Philippines’ Politics. In methodical detail, the producers explain the hierarchy of disinformation and how a lack of laws in the Philippines ‘render authorities helpless’.
Why this is so important is it explains in incredible detail the troll operations that are run globally - the chief architects at the top, hiding their evil work under the guise of marketing companies; then the next layer - the influencers who are paid to make the evil work look legit; and then the lowest rung - the actual trauma merchants - the hate terrorists - the ‘trolls’, who deliver the psychological blows to the people doing the work of democracy to make them look false or to make them so toxic even their friends don’t want to be near them.
It is worth noting, yesterday the Daily Beast exposed some of the online hate terrorists who have been running character assassinations of me, my RadPod team, and others, tying them to the registered foreign agent who works for Ron DeSantis.
Agitation AND Propaganda - Russian Indicted for Using US Political Groups as Foreign Agents
Please read every word of this report that I co-investigated with Matt Bernardini for Byline Times. In exhaustive detail it shows how an FSB cutout paid American groups on the left and the right for a decade to cause chaos and to make America look ungovernable. Active measures has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with destabilization. Our report was taken directly from a Department of Justice indictment that showed how the ops are run, and the accused busted by the DOJ is one of many of these operatives.
We are not imagining the depth of Russian infiltration into our communities. We must confront it to defeat it. Those of us who are aware cannot be afraid to tell others just how real it is. Worth noting the ‘bad boys of Brexit’ make an appearance in the report, as they kremlined for CalExit - which turns out, was a Russian op.
Spy v. Spy Series - The Arrest of Charles McGonigal
We will be encouraged to forget about the arrest of the high-level FBI officer who was working for the Russians. Not me.
Meat is Murdoch - All My Fox Reports
Included in this roundup of my reporting on the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, are my personal reflections, Confessions of a Fox Blonde and How I Lost My Father to Fox News. Yeah, this is all very personal for me. Fox News is not done destroying our families. The question is, what are we willing to do about that?
Three additional reports to bookmark when you have a moment:
Trump’s Legal Entanglements - reassuring reporting that Trump has finally committed one crime too many. Like Berlusconi, who was proscuted 45 times, according to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Donald Fucking Trump will never be our real fake president ever again.
Theatre Craft - When Lying Is the Message - this continues to be the most read report in my Bette archives. It shows how chaos agents such as George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene are there to distract us from the true destruction of our democratic systems. We need to decide if we give enough of a shit to fight the battles that matter.
All Of Us Together - a report from our ‘Speakeasy’ zoom with David Pepper, who offers a tactical how-to tutorial on how to fight back against the authoritarian right.
All of this reporting should keep you busy for awhile. Thank you to everyone who supports my work and who made Bette Dangerous a bestseller.
Since many of these reports are already paywalled, please do subscribe to support independent investigative journalism and a woman-run business.
To those who are nickels down, we have a generous gifting program so send an email to bettedangerous@gmail.com, and I will add you to our next lottery. Those who work for activist organizations, also please reach out, as I offer a very special discount exclusive to activist groups. And if you are a teacher, and need access to a paywalled article, just write me.
Here are the links to the entire Fight Fascism series:
The Toolkit
I am glad you are here.
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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 all those who support my work with your generous coffee donations and who buy my ebooks. A private link to group activist discounts available upon request.
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.
Save the date! The next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Sunday, April 23, 4 pm PT, featuring ‘Pastels and Pedophiles - Inside the Mind of QAnon’ author Dr. Mia Bloom.
“Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, who can hear the invitation of Truth…”-words from a Bette Dangerous community member
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