The Deep State and Ruling Class are really gearing up for Election 2024. We’ve seen the J6 Hoax and attendant prosecutive abuses, the Lawfare Jihad against Trump, and the gearing up for the Covid Regime 2.0. Now the new Russia Hoax strategy is being leaked by the CIA through CNN.
I believe I see two things going on here. We’ve seen repeated warnings from mainstream media outlets in both the US and Europe, attempts to prepare the public in the collective West for the inevitable defeat of our Ukrainian proxy army. Some of our rulers are still in denial, but the Intel insiders can see it coming. Judging from reaction to the Afghanistan debacle, another military disaster for which the public is unprepared—and this time in an election year—could lead to electoral catastrophe for the Left. On the other hand, even if the Neocons manage, against all probabilities, to stave off Ukrainian collapse until after Election 2024, there will still be a need to defend the regime from forecasts of defeat.
Therefore …
The CIA—and no doubt other stooges of the ruling class—are preparing a reprise of the Russia Hoax. To put it baldly, all dissenters from Ruling Class orthodoxy will be tarred as Russian agents:
Newly declassified US intel claims Russia is laundering propaganda through unwitting Westerners
Who thinks that those “unwitting Westerners” will be at the NYT, the WaPo, the major networks, the Congressional Dems? Of course not. And the game is pretty much given away at the start of the article when the example of supposed propaganda laundering is drawn from OANN:
Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence.
US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing Russian civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support Kremlin objectives, obscuring the FSB’s role through layers of ostensibly independent actors.
“These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small scale, the overall goal being US [and] Western persons presenting these ideas, seemingly organic,” a US official authorized to discuss the material told CNN. “The co-optee influence operations are built primarily on personal relationships … they build trust with them and then they can leverage that to covertly push the FSB’s agenda.”
The campaigns have sometimes been effective at planting Russian narratives in the Western press, according to the intelligence. Maxim Grigoriev, who heads a Russian NGO, made multiple speeches to the UN presenting a false study that claimed the humanitarian group the White Helmets – which operates in Syria – was running a black market for human organs and had faked chemical attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with whom Russia is allied. Those claims eventually found their way into a television report on the far-right OANN in the United States, according to open-source materials provided by the official.
CNN has reached out to Grigoriev and OANN.
But the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for Russian propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing.
A close reading suggests that, according to CNN’s CIA masters, the simple way to identify whether someone is spouting Russian propaganda is to determine whether whoever that person is dissents from the official line of the Zhou regime. This litmus test offers an easy way to smear political opponents of the dominant Left, with a veneer of supposed Intel support—for those inclined to uncritically accept official narratives. The mouthpieces of Russian propaganda are, conveniently “unwitting,” unaware that they’re being used. Therefore, there’s no need to provide evidence that the Americans knew what they were doing. All that’s needed is to allege contact with a Russian and a further allegation that the Russian is somehow connected to Russian intelligence. That’s it. The clever Russkis manipulated them in ways that can’t really be documented. But that’s enough to intimidate most American dissenters who may have Russian contacts, or to cause the opinions of such dissenters to fall under the cloud of suspicion. It’s enough to fool most of the people most of the time. Because Orange Man literal Hitler, Vlad Man worse.
Here’s a handy translation to explain what’s really going on in plain sight:
Aaron Maté
@aaronjmate
Translation: US intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-CIA propaganda through private relationships between US operatives and witting US and western media stenographers, including CNN.
11:08 AM · Aug 25, 2023
But recall the claims of Russian bots “meddling” in the 2016 election. Most such meddling turned out to originate from either the Hillary campaign or from FBI and CIA informants. When DoJ attempted to prosecute a Russian organization, they were stunned when the Russians hired American lawyers and demanded to see the evidence. The case ended up being dismissed.
Caitlin Johnstone asks some pointed questions about this CNN presentation of a CIA narrative, masquerading as news reporting—I’ll cite the first and fifth questions:
Firstly, what precisely are we meant to do with this very vague information about this very broad supposed trend? It kind of seems like we’re meant to just generally feel more paranoid and suspicious about anyone who isn’t toeing the official western line on issues pertaining to Russia. Whose interests would that serve? Would it perhaps serve the information interests of the US empire, which the US intelligence cartel exists to promote?
…
Fifth, and related to the fourth, is it not funny how the western media pour so much more energy into reporting on Russian propaganda and influence operations than on western propaganda and influence operations, even though western propaganda and influence operations dwarf Russian ones by many orders of magnitude in terms of manipulating the way westerners think about the world?
Have we so soon forgotten how we have been inundated with official disinformation over the course of the years, and never more blatantly that since 2016? The Russia Hoax, the Covid Hoax, the 2022 Election Hoax, the J6 Hoax, the Mar a Lago Hoax—the list goes on. It was all propagated far and wide by the major networks and major newspapers. Dissenters were smeared or outrigh censored on social media—at the instigation of the FBI and other national security agencies and the Zhou regime itself from the White House. We’re supposed to ignore all that and get paranoid about a non-existent threat. Johnstone puts that part well:
One of the craziest things happening in our world today is how westerners are being trained to overlook the massive amounts of western propaganda they’re inundated with day in and day out and focus instead on “Russian propaganda”, which has no meaningful existence in the west. In 2017 before RT was shut down in the UK, it accounted for 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. A New York University study published earlier this year found that the supposed Russian Twitter influence campaign ahead of the 2016 election which dominated headlines for years had had “no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior”. An earlier study found that suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s news feed during that time amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.” A study by Adelaide University found that despite headline after headline warning us about a massive wave of Russian bots manipulating online discourse after the invasion of Ukraine began last year, the overwhelming majority of fake accounts they examined (more than 90 percent) were pro-Ukraine accounts.
Contrast this microscopic smattering of influence with the fact that westerners are continually getting their news reporting from western propaganda outlets which openly publish CIA press releases disguised as news on a regular basis. These people are absolutely telling us the truth when they say we’re under constant bombardment by propaganda and influence operations — they’re just lying about who’s really doing it to us.
Miranda Devine
@mirandadevine
Fascinating that, just as Biden’s false Shokin narrative is being re-examined, CNN has been fed a new “Russian disinformation” scare. The counter-counter narrative is being mobilized.
What’s driving this:
1. Trump getting coverage - Tucker Carlson interview that bypassed controlled media channels
2. Rise of substack non controlled media - Simplicius for example
3. Increase in non msm credible coverage, mostly substack, on Covid questioning the approved narrative.
4. Progress of Lawsuits on internet giant censorship involving government