What’s the Frequency, Oleg?
My report on today’s RT indictment, the action the US is taking against Russian influence operators, and the larger fight ahead
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“I think a whole lot more ‘American’ social media influencers who take foreign money to mindfuck their fellow citizens should be exposed. Nothing lower than people who sell their country out for cash. Traitors.”—Wes Clark Jr
“For over a decade, Tim Pool has been infiltrating progressive movements, inciting hatred, violence, and chaos, acting as a stenographer for foreign powers intent on destroying America. While it’s nice to see his pockets empty with this new indictment, how long until we see accountability for these bad actors who conspired with foreign governments to destroy our country? This is not a one-time thing. This is not ‘Company-1’ was deceived. This is Donald Trump not asking where the briefcases full of money came from when men with strong Russian accents purchased his condos in cash.”—High Fidelity for Bette Dangerous
“Of course, if every day you are feeding on hate, it eats away at your soul. You start really believing in it. You have to be strong to stay clean when you spend your whole day submerged in dirt.”—former St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency employee, about losing his sanity
“The direct management had never touched politics. There was a funny guy, Oleg. Imagine—a man with a huge beer gut, in an untucked denim shirt, walks around, dangles car keys on his finger like a taxi driver and tells you: ‘If a man can write, he’ll write about anything’….—IRA defector
“For years now, we at RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast have been sounding the alarm about Peter Thiel’s machinations. Now, with this criminal indictment of RT employees, Americans STILL can access Russian propaganda at the Thiel and JD Vance funded Rumble video platform. You read that correctly — a Vice Presidential candidate in the United States of America funded a platform that allows direct delivery of смерть Америке hatred to American minds. Thiel, Vance, Trump- they’re all Putin’s boys.”—High Fidelity for Bette Dangerous
“Meh. It’s a start.”—Jim Stewartson for Bette Dangerous
What’s the Frequency, Oleg?
“If a man can write, he’ll write about anything…”—Oleg, Internet Research Agency, middle-level manager
I guess because I always see things cinematically — I was an award-winning director/writer/producer in the Before Times — one image has always stuck with me.
A St. Petersburg ‘desk yob’ recalled how a middle manager of the Internet Research Agency used to run around the office with his belly hanging out — keys dangling — shirt too short for his portly frame. An obscene image of an obscene man — a mid-level reality warper in a Kafkaesque tale where people behind computers function as heat-seeking missiles in a military plot to commit menticide on the population of target nations.
I often think of Oleg. I found him in a Euromaidan press report, that drew directly from Russian reporting in 2014. It’s how we learned that IRA contractors worked 12-hour shifts, two days on, two days off, filling quotas.
Another moment seared into my brain permanently was when one ‘influencer’ described how he no longer cared about anything. That occurred for him during one of the many speakers brought in to inform the troll operatives on ‘Putin’s glorious policies.’
“I stopped having hostile reactions — or any reactions.”—former IRA contractor
As someone who has been stalked by nihilists willing to take filthy lucre for eight years, I still get winded when I read that line. A troll had demhumanized himself in order to deal with misshaping people’s realities for cash.
“Most people come not because they love Putin,” the former IRA troll explained. “But they have nowhere else to go. For intance, one room is occupied by a couple of retirees. They have nowhere else to work.”
That line literally devastates me.
‘Nowhere else to work.’
In America, we still have options.
We have the option to not take filthy lucre stolen from the people of mafia states run by fascists.
RT Indictment
In today’s RT indictment, we learned that a Tennessee-based ‘conservative media’ group took millions in Kremlin cash. Russia gets more bang for its ruble when it uses stateside ‘useful idiots’ to spin its dark Russian tales, remade as ‘conservative media.’
Although two Russians are named in the indictment, most of the Americans are not, but just as with the Ionov indictment in 2022, it wasn’t hard to piece together who they were. And it’s also worth nothing, that it was a year after Kremlin proxy Alexander Ionov was indicted that the Americans paid by the Russians to influence US elections were charged.
Today’s unsealed federal indictment left enough clues to indicate the media company is Tenet Media and that among the influencers being paid in this Russian “cover” operation are Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern. Johnson tweeted a threat that “his lawyers will handle anyone who states and suggests” he was anything but a “victim” of the scheme.
Tim Pool, a Russian propaganda superspreader who operates an extremist hate account on Twitter, also claimed to not know he was being paid by Russia. Pool is a consistent peddler of Russian propaganda, and regularly platforms pro-Russian ‘influencers’ and racist, antisemetic, misogynistic commentary. Pool himself called a 10-year-old rape victim a ‘hoax.’
Rubin also claims to be a victim.
It’s worth noting that the now-indicted US citizens I reported on in 2023, who were charged with being paid by Russians to ‘corrupt US elections’, also claimed innocence when their Russian handler was indicted.
According to Vienna-based disinformation analyst Dietmar Pichler, the facts revealed in the RT indictment are standard operating procedure for the Kremlin.
"The approach allegedly used by the suspects is not unusual,” Pichler revealed to Bette Dangerous. “Even when platforms like RT or Sputnik are not blocked, distributing content covertly remains attractive, as it prevents it from being directly perceived as Russian-controlled. Increasingly, topics are being used to divide and destabilize the West, without clear ties to Russia, such as migration or economic issues. We have observed this since 2014, particularly in 2015, during the major migration crisis in Europe. Anti-Ukraine narratives, fake news, and propaganda are often mixed into this 'anti-establishment' mix of content.”
He said the next phase of the investigation will be to scrutinize Tenet’s output.
“It is crucial to analyze the content, narratives, proxies, amplifiers (and influencers) that the alleged suspects may have used, and to what extent the involved actors were aware of what was happening."
According to the court documents, Russia Today (RT) paid about $10 million dollars to Tenet in the scheme to pollute American brains with “Russian government messages.”
The indictment was filed in the Southern District of New York, and names two RT employees, Kostiantyn “Kostya” Kalashnikov and Elena “Lena” Afanasyeva, who are accused of running “cover projects” to mind hack Americans.
The criminal charges indicate the founders of Tenet Media, Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donavan, were aware of the source of their funding.
Chen is linked to such extremist shittery as Turning Point USA and Blaze TV.
‘Overt Shilling’
There’s an interesting section in the indictment where a Tenet producer pushes back against posting video of Tucker Carlson fanboying shopping carts in Moscow, calling it ‘overt shilling’ — that bit of intel may make it more difficult to prove that those working for Tenet were “unwitting” as to the source of funding. That producer lost the argument, by the way, acquiescing to posting ‘overt shilling’. Although Carlson isn’t named, it’s clear the indictment is referencing his trip to a Moscow grocery store.
Least surprising of all is that Elon Musk fanboys Tenet content to his near 200 million followers on Twitter, causing my podcast partner Jim Stewartson to post a screenshot of Musk’s (!) Tenet promos, with this comment:
“Atomwaffen Elmo is just a Very Large Russian Bot.”—Jim Stewartson
I had just reported this week about how being a paid propagandist should have some FARA teeth…
… when I read in the indictment that Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva are charged with “conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)” and “conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
But most importantly, the Justice Department noted that what this “covert” project boils down to is an attempt to subvert the US election.
Just like in 2016.
Also breaking today was the news that the Justice Department seized “32 internet domains in a Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaign.” In addition, the US Treasury Department “designated ten individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated U.S. government response to Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election” — among them, RT’s Margarita Simonyan, who sat with Mike Flynn and Putin at an RT gala in 2015. According to US Treasury Janet Yellen’s release about these sanctions, Simonyan allowed the “operations of a front company to occur under the cover of RT” to do the Tenet deal.
I can’t help but think of the international tribunals that also included the propagandists of fascist regimes.
Ultimately, today is a historic day. It’s one I have been waiting for and pushing for.
It’s not everything I would have wanted. I do not believe people take gigantic sums of money “unwittingly,” but I know that more shall be revealed.
As Jim said, it’s a start.
Already, as I scan Tenet’s latest content, it’s loaded with misogynistic content directed at Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running to become the first women president in US history, just as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The content looks identical to what the Internet Research Agency put out on Clinton from St. Petersburg eight years ago. Same ugligness, same memetic warfare.
What’s the frequency, Oleg?
“If a man can write, he’ll write about anything…”—Oleg, Internet Research Agency, middle-level manager
I am grateful today that my country is finally attempting to jam the signal, but we have a long way to go.
As Jim Stewartson tweeted: “Elon Musk is a national emergency.”
Russian propagandists in US military uniforms are a national emergency.
A former so-called president who launders money for the Russian mob is a national emergency.
A technofascist who installs Senators and VP candidates and platforms RT is a national emergency.
The delaying of justice for the perpetrators of the 2016 Election Attack — the greatest crime in US history — is a national emergency.
We are dealing with transnational digital weaponry, and we must do more and fast.
“Now that the Biden admin has acknowledged that hybrid warfare is occurring, it is up to the United States to begin working with its allies to dismantle the transnational weaponry built by fascists, organized crime, and the tech broligarchs,” High Fidelity told Bette Dangerous. “The objective is massive, those opposing freedom and democracy are well heeled, and as history has proven, filthy lucre purchases plenty of soldiers. But to steal a quote from Vice President Harris: ‘When we fight, we win.’”
BAM!
POW!
THWAPP!
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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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