We Won’t Get Fooled Again — My Latest Report in Byline Supplement
We Won’t Get Fooled Again — My Latest Report in Byline Supplement
A Long Screwdriver: How Russia Exploits US Grievances — my latest report in Byline Supplement documents how Putin's regime works to divide Americans
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When Russia’s War on Everybody author Keir Giles used the ‘long screwdriver’ metaphor to explain how Russia attacks the US and other democratic nations by turning up the volume on internal strife, I knew I had to share it with my various outlets immediately. I pulled an all-nigher in the UK to write this report for Bette:
And I expanded on that interview with Keir to report the following in Byline Supplement:
Here is an excerpt from that report:
A Long Screwdriver: How Russia Exploits US Grievances
“Unconstrained by facts or journalistic standards—striving to kill two birds with one stone—Russian propagandists are now blaming both the Democrats and Ukrainians for an attempt on Trump’s life, and hoping it will ignite a civil war in the United States.”
—Julia Davis, on X/Twitter, 14 July 2024
“Russia Gloats Over Shooting: ‘Trump Has Biden’s Balls in his Hand’”, reads Julia Davis’ headline in the Daily Beast. Davis, who documents Russian propaganda for an American audience, detailed the response on a popular Russia state TV program, where a former New York Times reporter “baselessly claimed” the Democratic party was behind Trump’s attempted assassination, while also claiming “Ukrainian special services may be behind this—on orders from the White House.”
It is, of course, nonsense, but that is the point.
The point is to pollute and confuse reality, so chaos ensues, making a shared narrative of truth elusive. This narrative pollution has roots in the Soviet era — the KGB planted lies about the Kennedy assassination through propagandists posing as journalists and the lies became part of American lore.
As Adam Sybera — a reporter documenting war crimes in Ukraine — told Byline Supplement, “Once a lie enters the discussion discourse, it is there and lives its own life, inevitably someone will pay attention to it.”
So regurgitating lies has no downside for the propagandists, but it can be extremely damning to democracies, which rely on that shared narrative of truth to function.
Whether it’s clarity on the science of vaccines, a brouhaha over Joe Biden’s age, Hillary Clinton and her emails, or the latest — an attempted assassination of Donald Trump and Biden’s dropping out — the orcs are dispatched to exploit America.
At the Northamptonshire pub the Fox & Hounds last week, I met up with Russia analyst and author Keir Giles and asked him about this exploitation — how But His Debate is the latest But Her Emails active measure, and which came first — the organic crises or the active measure?
“The two shouldn't necessarily be disentangled fully, because active measures lean on organic crises and augment as opposed to inventing in the first place,” said Giles, the author of Russia’s War On Everybody and the NATO Handbook on Russian Information War. “Just the same as when people see a Putin trace behind, for example, the Reform Party in the UK and the right of center parties in France — that's not necessarily rhetoric that is inspiring this, these are genuine grievances that people are responding to by voting in this way. And the question is more to what extent can we see the Kremlin reaching in with a long screwdriver to turn up the volume.”
In the United States, the Kremlin has been cranking the volume up to 11, made worse by the refusal for most citizens to even acknowledge Russia’s hand. But as Trump names Ohio Senator JD Vance as his VP pick, it’s another win for the Kremlin. Vance, who was funded into office by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, has stated that he “really doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine.” Thiel and Vance operate the platform Rumble, a pro-Russian propaganda platform and radicalization accelerator.
“In the US, (the Kremlin has) a clear favorite (in) Trump,” said Giles. “If you have one candidate that many people have already forgotten was actively working for Russia in his first term, then obviously, there's going to be a clear incentive for greater attempts at influencing the result in the US.”
He said one of the most difficult aspects of Russian active measures is that they ultimately are a counterintelligence problem, and that those relying on open source intelligence gathering can only guess the useful idiots from the agents of influence…
In the US, there are virtually no legal consequences for muling hacked goods, leaving us wide open for the poisoning of narratives as we careen toward November and the most consequential election in US history since the Civil War. In evidence that irony is not dead, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s classified documents case by citing Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas’ concerns with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment. Thomas, who has been exposed for taking shady gifts from a billionaire who collects Nazi memorabilia, was just outed this week for another freebie yacht trip… to Russia.
I asked Giles how he sees November play out in the United States — if we are facing a Putin-led world and the end of democratic governance, or if Putin’s demise is inevitable?
“Well, there's no doubt that Putin’s demise is inevitable because no amount of Botox is actually going to save him from being carried out of the Kremlin feet first, eventually, but that may not necessarily help,” he said. “Because yes, in this global confrontation between the retreating forces of democracy and those authoritarian powers that think it's a return to the normal and natural order for them to be in the ascendant, is certainly not going away.”
He said that America needs to get over its collective amnesia regarding how Trump worked for Russia in his first term, then led an insurrection in an attempt to maintain his power, and once we face that reality, we can become more exploitation proof.
“The collective amnesia that has gripped the United States is partly wishing the problem away,” he said. “But the reality means either taking a stand against it or knuckling under and going with the new regime.”
To read the full report, please consider a subscription to Byline Supplement — you will be helping to support a small global team of investigative reporters. If you are unable to take out a subscription at this time, I am authorized to send my Byline reports to Bette readers upon request at bettedangerous/gmail.
I am working hard to ensure we do not get fooled again by reposting my 2016 Election Series, parts 1 and 2, which shows how Russia weaponized misogyny and racism to help defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and throw the election for Trump.
Here are those two reports:
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