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.
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,
NEW: I'm seeking permission to appeal in the Supreme Court. There's no meaningful free expression in this country if after proving your speech is lawful, you're hit with £££ costs: a devastating ruling that will chill public interest journalism
by @_EmmaGH theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/m…
This was filed today in the Court of Appeal. If the Supreme Court rejects it, we believe there’s a strong case to take it to the European Court of Human Rights.
Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights puts an obligation on states to ensure freedom of expression. According to the ruling in this case, it's very far from free: even if you can prove your speech is lawful, it'll still cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds...
It's been a long time but v happy to be back in @ObserverUK today with 2 pieces, both close to my heart. And to launch a new project with @allthecitizens.
1/ An astonishing new claim that MI5 refused to investigate Russian spy's infiltration of Tory party theguardian.com/politics/2023/…
2/ Delighted to profile the fierce & brilliant @pevchikh for @ObsNewReview. If you've seen the Navalny doc, she's the woman sitting by Navalny's side as he calls one of his FSB poisoners & gets him to confess to Novichoking his underpants. theguardian.com/world/2023/jan…
3/ Finally, the story of how the Kremlin captured Britain. And how the UK government covered it up. If you've wondered why no British broadcaster has told the real story behind the Russia Report, please watch this & consider contributing.
My jaw hit the floor when I discovered Boris Johnson left an emergency NATO meeting after the Kremlin’s chemical warfare attack on Britain & flew to an off-the-books meeting with an ex-KGB spy.
In July 2019, Johnson had just been made PM. And @nickhopkinsnews published 2 extraordinary stories about Foreign Secretary Johnson flying from a NATO meeting to a party in Italy at the height of the Skripal crisis.
The party was at Evgeny Lebedev’s villa. The owner of Independent & Evening Standard.
Hopkins’s first story suggested he’d given his security detail the slip to fly to Italy. Then a Guardian reader supplied photos of him leaving: hungover & dishevelled 3/
Thank you to the judge, my stellar legal team & the 29,000 people who contributed to my legal defence fund. I literally couldn’t have done it without you 🙏🙏🙏
I haven't read the judgment yet but what I can say that the last 3 years have been extraordinarily difficult. Fighting this has been a crushing, debilitating, all-consuming experience that I sincerely hope no other journalist ever has to go through. 2/ judiciary.uk/judgments/bank…
The fact that his case was brought clearly shows how our libel laws favour the rich & powerful. I was only able to defend myself because of the incredibly generous support of the public. But this judgment is a huge victory for public interest journalism.
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