Twitter Has Completed Its Transformation Into a Russian Information Warfare Outlet
As I predicted in 2022
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These are figureheads for the autocrat takeover of the world, and they use social media to create clickbait in the mind war to control the populace. These are not politicians or businessmen — they are influencers for fascism.
My Twitter For You feed is filled with Russian propagandists — not just US ones, posting selfies from the Pentagon or White House, but actual certifiable Russians. There’s Alexander Dugin, sh*tting from his mouth about Ukrainians, and Vladimir Soloviev dehumanizing Macron — a genuine threat to Russian fascists. And there’s Kirill Dmitriev pushing anti-UK garbage or fake peace plans.
So I quote-tweet each, calling out or countering their lies — surely stealing my time away from writing, but it feels urgent — a David and Goliath fight.
I do not follow any of them. I have many propagandists blocked, but that does not stop them from filling up my feed.
Elon Musk is clearly fulfilling his contract. He was put in charge of the Twitter operation much the same way Prigozhin was put in charge of the St. Petersburg operation. These are figureheads for the autocrat takeover of the world, and they use social media to create clickbait in the mind war to control the populace. These are not politicians or businessmen — these are influencers for fascism.
On December 11, 2022, I wrote my first Unmusked investigation for Byline.
While financial journals were filled with reports by hand-wringing reporters over Musk paying too much for Twitter, I knew his real intent — to throw the election toward Trump in 2024 — and to turn the former imperfect public square into a Russian information warfare outlet, a boon to global autocrats.
This morning, as I scrolled my timeline, I could see he had accomplished the mission. I felt like I was running the gauntlet — a sea of Russian propaganda pollution, with the occasional sane voice of truth breaking through.
When I first reported three years ago what Musk’s plan was, I was told I was overreacting. But I knew it was war, I had known since 2016. Those who ignored the mounting evidence of what social media was doing to polarize our world ignored it at their own peril.
Now, everything seems so obvious.
Here is an excerpt from that original report. I have written volumes since then, but I often return to this one. My sources were spot on.
Unmusked: How Elon Musk is Using Twitter to Destroy the Concept of Objective Truth
Heidi Siegmund Cuda reveals how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter fits a disturbing global trend
December 11, 2022 in Byline Supplement
When Twitter owner Elon Musk Tweeted his support for returning Crimea to Russia, Russian analyst Fiona Hill accused Musk of actively transmitting a message on behalf of Putin.
Canadian academic Michael MacKay agreed, describing it as ‘active measures’ - a term used to describe how the Soviet Union used covert disinformation operations.
“Elon Musk is turning Twitter into VKontakte, the Russian information warfare outlet disguised as a social media platform”, MacKay told Byline Supplement.
These claims have to be taken seriously. Hill is a foreign affairs specialist who was a witness during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, and MacKay is a noted Ukraine expert with a PhD in political philosophy from the London School of Economics.
“Under the guise of ‘free speech’ Musk’s purpose is to destroy civil speech – genuine communication that connects people”, MacKay explained. “Musk and Kremlin propaganda do not present a point of view. They seek to destroy the idea that truth and a shared experience of reality exist.”
To understand why the purchase of Twitter by a Kremlin-friendly billionaire matters, one need only to look how other autocrats and oligarchs around the world have abused their powers.
Donated Freedoms
In 2018, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban encouraged owners of hundreds of Hungarian media properties to ‘donate’ them to a Government allied foundation. The Central European Press and Media Foundation (CEMPF) began absorbing cable news channels, internet platforms, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines. The result was a centralized right-wing Government-controlled media syndicate.
Freedom of the press has been on a steady decline in Hungary ever since.
Orban’s attacks on the rule of law ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he declared a state of emergency and began seizing unlimited power to rule by decree. Among the targeted groups were the LGBTQ+ community, women, journalists, academia, and asylum seekers.
Russia itself has a similar history. Two decades ago in Russia, as Vladimir Putin came to power, the media tycoon Vladimir Gusinksy said he was pressured to relinquish his empire to the Government.
He had formed a media consortium during perestroika and his organization’s coverage of the first Chechen war was critical of Russia. In addition, he refused to back down from an investigation into a series of apartment bombings that independent journalists claimed were the work of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB. The Kremlin blamed the bombings on Chechen rebels.
In the mid-‘90s, Gazprom, the state owned gas company, became a 30% shareholder of his media holdings, and this investment was later weaponized against Gusinsky, according to a human rights court. Gusinksy alleged Russian operatives declared ‘open warfare’ against him, as he was hit with repeated charges that prompted him to flee to Spain. The European Court of Human Rights determined the charges violated Gusinky’s rights.
In modern times, autocratic leaders are increasingly seeing the value of controlling social media. Former Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte had a rabid fan base online, with an army of bloggers who defended him, and who also went after journalists critical of his savage anti-drug policies, which often resulted in bloody public executions.
“If it’s drugs, you shoot and kill”, he famously said.
Before leaving office, Duterte used his presidential power to block the franchise extension of the country’s largest media conglomerate, ABS-CBN, silencing a network that had been critical of him and which he said refused to air his 2016 political ads.
Earlier this year, an ally of Duterte’s took control of the network, causing media watchdogs to decry the move as ‘shameless’ and ‘concerning’.
Shutting Down Critics
Elon Musk’s former partner in PayPal, Peter Thiel, famously called Hulk Hogan a ‘single-digit millionaire’, as he defended funding the wrestler’s invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the once-influential media site, Gawker. Thiel had been outed by the publication for being gay and according to multiple media reports, he spent $10 million dollars bankrolling Gawker’s death by a thousand legal cuts.
In his final column on August 22, 2016, Gawker managing editor Nick Denton wrote: “This is an act of destruction.”
He called it a “fitting conclusion to this experiment in what happens when you let journalists say what they really think”, and he called freedom “illusory”.
Twitter is now at risk of a similar ‘death by a thousand cuts’ except the threat comes from inside the organization, rather than outside.
Although always a wildly imperfect platform, Twitter broke news faster than any other site and the direct global communication it offered for journalists and activists was unparalleled. Now, that’s in danger of being replaced by a free-for-all for those with a darker agenda.
“What all of this means is not that ‘it’s a bummer that Twitter is dying,’ it’s that Musk is providing the largest on-ramp for brainwashing, for coercive propaganda in history”, Jim Stewartson, the cohost of RADICALIZED: Truth Survives, an investigative podcast about disinformation, told the Byline Supplement.
“That’s why this is so dangerous”, he said.
Michael Mackay said Musk’s nihilism runs contrary to the needs of a healthy functioning democracy, which requires a shared narrative of truth.
“Nihilists want the opposite of civil society”, said MacKay. “They want us to be angry, atomized, zombified and lonely individuals, crying out in a cacophony of noise.”
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My co-host High Fidelity for RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast was the first to call Musk’s purchase of Twitter a “44-billion-dollar psyop cannon.” That proved accurate.
One thing I note as I reflect back on this report, Duterte is now awaiting trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity related to dozens of murders for his so-called war on drugs. The former Phillipine president is in detention at the International Criminal Court, which just rejected a request to release him on health grounds.
Trump, Hegseth, and Leavitt already qualify for crimes against humanity — 80 people have been murdered in their so-called war on drugs.
And Musk, his role as emperor of the Kingdom of X, which reputation washes murderers by boosting propagandists, also qualifies for crimes against humanity, as the mind war rages on.
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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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