Britain has a Russia problem. And his name is Nigel Farage.
Today, Ofcom finally banned RT. 8 long years after Russia illegally invaded Crimea.
But this is their man. RT - whose editor described it as a "weapon" of the Russian state - is what made Farage into who is today.
1/
RT is not just a TV channel. It's at centre of a whole ecosystem of Kremlin propaganda. Clips uploaded to YouTube were laced between mesmerising videos of tsunamis & tornadoes.
It was clickbait wizardry.
As ex-YouTuber @gchaslot told me no-one milked YouTube's algo like RT.
2/
And who was RT's favourite man in the West?
This man. It's not just that Farage was paid by RT - the Russian state - for appearances over years. Though he was.
It's that RT - the biggest news channel on YouTube - made him a star.
3/
RT cultivated UKIP from at least 2011. First Gerard Batten. And then Farage. He was paid £2k an appearance, I was told.
And as @benimmo explained in our 2018 @ObserverUK investigation. The Kremlin was always explicit. RT was as essential as the Ministry of Defence
4/
In 2018, I had weird eye-popping experience of how this all worked.
I went to 'An Entertaining evening with Nigel Farage' in Melbourne. And discovered an audience of almost entirely young men.
Jordan Peterson fans!🤯
Who'd found Farage via YouTube's 'Up Next' algo
4/
RT was central to Farage's entire media game. His set appearances in EU parliament were clipped, uploaded & amplified by the most powerful algo on YouTube.
It all got fed into the Kremlin's propaganda machine.
5/
The pro-Putin far-right parties of the EU parliament are central to so much of the Kremlin's influence across Europe.
And here's the EU staffer who used to upload Farage's videos to YouTube. "A frequent visitor to the Russian embassy."
6/
What's more, emails revealed that same EU staffer who @guardian had shown linked to Russian embassy was using Farage clips to fuel an entire fake news ecosystem.
Mr Farage's spokesman responded to this claim: "Mr Farage has no desire to talk to you under any circumstances" 😂
"All this is out in the open." That's what we said in our 2018 @observerUK investigation.
The Russian govt made its intentions clear. And the UK govt sat back & watched it.
Why? Because Britain has a Russia problem. And its name is Nigel Farage.
theguardian.com/politics/2018/…
Postscript: Where is BBC in this? A good question. And a whole other thread.
But here’s one of those famously ‘forensic’ interviews. From 2019, 2 years after reported FBI investigating Trump-Russia ties. His pro-Kremlin voting record never ever discussed
And here's Margarita Simonyan. RT's editor in chief at today's Putin rally in Moscow.
She's the one who called RT "a weapon" in Russia's information war.
A war she brought to the West. With the UK govt's consent & approval,
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