Feb 28: Latest Russian narratives in the West
Thread by Jim Stewartson published on Feb 27, 2023, latest Global Engagement Center Report, Russia Loves Tucker & Russian talking points in the West
Jim Stewartson: What is ‘wedging’?
As many of you know, I was banned three times from Twitter — the last time for a year despite never breaking the rules. Ever.
This was the result of a coordinated social media attack that included bad actors with access to Twitter tools, and influence on Twitter Safety.
I will leave the story of how I was banned and who’s responsible for another time…
Regardless, Elmo let me back on and also took the “moderation” tools away from bad actors that weaponized them. So they have resorted to a different strategy to reduce my influence. Wedging.
If you can’t shut someone up completely, you go chunk by chunk, or in special cases, person by person, to poison the reputation of the target and make it uncomfortable to be around them.
You can see this happening in most of my threads. Or in numerous insulated groups.
For example, I tweeted about someone I admire and tagged them out of respect and was retweeted by them which was nice.
But someone else with a blue check whose job is to push a false narrative, who I have had blocked for 2+ years, swooped in to lie and smear me.
This is someone who, as a profession, intentionally distracts from the truth about very important subjects that I write about, and has been accepted in some circles as an “expert.”
Part of his job is to make sure there are no other experts that will debunk him.
His goal was to “wedge” the person that I admire away from retweeting me by peppering him with lies and then bringing in an army of paid trolls to back him up.
This is textbook defamation — but it’s just Twitter, right?
The blue-checks don’t do most of the actual dirty work. They validate groups of coordinated trolls that spend their days trying to find ways to tear down the target for money.
There are at least a dozen anonymous trolls whose *full-time job* is to destroy me personally.
These trolls are experts in weaponizing social dynamics, some of whom have been trained through Erik Prince’s organizations. They will find a community of people — for example fans of a podcast — and try to poison that entire group with false allegations.
You can find allegations of me being an antisemite despite me being half-Jewish, that I’m misogynistic, homophobic, running a psyop, abusive, mentally ill, or literally anything else negative you can say about someone. To wedge them.
For the record, I am none of those things.
Regardless, these bad actors, through any means necessary, will try to isolate the target(s) and wedge them with pure lies.
If someone is going out of their way to convince you to dislike a person, question why before you believe it out of hand. Ask yourself: Are they wedging?
I wanted to bring this concept to people’s attention, not just as a defense for myself, but because it happens constantly on Twitter and I wanted to provide a bit of a framework for the strategy and mechanics, so people can defend themselves.
Global Engagement Center, Disinformation Roulette: The Kremlin’s Year of Lies to Justify an Unjustifiable War- US Dept of State
I have included the first of five false narratives because this is the most prevalent falsehood currently circulating in the EU and North America at the moment in addition to Ukraine being a puppet of The United States.
It is obvious that any missiles and artillery of Russia will not succeed in breaking our unity and knocking us off our path. And it should be equally obvious that Ukrainian unity cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, fake information or conspiracy theories.
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY
JULY 16, 2022
On February 24, 2022, millions in Ukraine awoke to a chorus of air raid sirens that had not been heard for 80 years . Russia had launched a full-scale invasion. Leading up to that fateful morning, and in the year since, Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem deployed an array of false narratives to deceive the world about the Kremlin’s neo-imperial intentions, portray its war of choice against Ukraine to the people of Russia as a necessary response to purported threats from the United States and NATO, and attempt to justify an unjustifiable war. The Kremlin routinely changed its false claims to distract from its battlefield failures and political isolation. This report will highlight five of the most salient false narratives deployed by Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem: 1) Russia was encircled by NATO before the February 2022 invasion; 2) Ukraine is committing genocide in the Donbas; 3) the Ukrainian government needs “denazification and demilitarization ;” 4) restoration of traditional values requires “desatanization” of Ukraine; and 5) Russia must fight in Ukraine to defend its sovereignty against the West.
False Narrative 1: NATO “encirclement” and Russia “is not the aggressor”
One of the earliest Kremlin-fabricated justifications for war is the false claim that NATO and “the West” are aggressors threatening Russia’s security. For months leading up to February 24, 2022, Russia demanded security guarantees including restrictions on countries’ joining NATO, a position which rejected Ukraine’s and other countries’ sovereign right to choose their own foreign policy. As Moscow amassed up to 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spread disinformation to cloud the Kremlin’s intentions, claiming Russia’s troops were not on the border with Ukraine while accusing the United States and allies of whipping up hysteria . President Putin falsely blamed NATO for the escalating tensions, claimed he was not planning an invasion , and accused the United States of using Ukraine as a “tool to contain Russia .” Aiming to deflect the blame, disinformation outlets linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU), and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) amplified the false claims, calling the warnings by the United States and NATO about the potential for a military offensive by Russia against Ukraine “western hysteria ” to “drag Ukraine into war .”
Over the year of war, the Kremlin shifted this disinformation narrative of Western efforts pushing for the war to one arguing that by helping Ukraine to defend itself, the United States and NATO are prolonging or escalating the war. Following a November 2022 NATO Ministerial Meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed the “global majority” understands the threats posed by NATO, blaming the Alliance for allegedly pushing Ukraine to continue the war. Disinformation outlets, such as the FSB-tasked News Front and state-run Sputnik , both cited alleged “experts” who argued that by pledging further aid to Ukraine, NATO was “pouring oil on fire.” The SVR-directed Strategic Culture Foundation and Oriental Review warned that Ukraine will try to “drag NATO into a war within Ukraine’s borders” and claimed to have proved that NATO provoked the conflict in Ukraine.
The Kremlin resurrects this disinformation narrative whenever Ukraine’s partners announce more military assistance to Ukraine. The latest twist accuses NATO of Russophobia after the United States and Germany agreed to provide modern M1 Abrams and Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov parroted this narrative in January 2023 claiming, “NATO with maniacal persistence … consistently crawled up to the Russian borders, at the same time zombifying our neighboring countries with Russophobic horror stories.”
Russia spreads disinformation portraying NATO as the aggressor to obfuscate the facts. Russia alone started this war, not Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor, not NATO. As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated to the United Nations Security Council on September 22, 2022, “If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends .”
Россия любит Тucker
I don’t watch Tucker Carlson but his February 24, 2023 agitainment show came across my feed, and it should be studied by experts of information warfare. He managed to hit every single Russian talking points in thirty minutes or so. Putin would be proud, and amazed because even Putin can’t do it in less than one hour and forty-five minutes.
Claire Berlinski tweeted, “Tucker Carlson's Ukraine war anniversary episode is obscene-an unrelenting firehose of anti-Americanism, Russian propaganda, and grotesque lies about Ukraine. It leaves me slack-jawed that this was aired in America.”
As the West increases its support to Ukraine by providing heavy weaponry and ammunition, we can expect the frequency and intensity of Russian talking points to increase as well on social media platforms and on agitainment talk shows on YouTube and other outlets. We’ll also see Stop the War rallies, like those in Washington DC, Germany, the UK and Italy, parading down streets and in piazzas.
At this Stop the War rally, the organisation PerugiAssisi (unknown) featured font on the banner that comes directly from Mussolini’s Fascist era, and is used today by the far-right political party, CasaPound.
Russia often acts through its proxies on the far-right and far-left because these associations are perfectly aligned with their worldview and values. These are generally small fringe groups are beneficial to Russia because that have visibility on social media owing to their theatrics. They are the bottom feeders of the information warfare ecosystem.
Professor Mearsheimer teaches at the University of Chicago, and has appeared on an array of media platforms and think tank conferences. Being a professor at an American university means that the Russian talking points he disseminates are given weight, reach and credibility. In Italy, the same tactic is used: an array of university professors justify and amplify Russia’s positions from their pulpits and on media platforms.
