In today's #vatnik soup I'll talk about the "fifth column": a group of people who undermine and sabotage a nation or a group from within, usually in favor of a another nation or a group. Their activities often include sabotage, disinfo & propaganda, espionage, and terrorism.
1/19
Maybe the most famous case of fifth column is Russia's illegals program. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) trained several Russian agents to live indefinitely in the US. Their mission was to get involved in high position in the society, build contacts with ...
2/19
... executives, academics and policymakers, and gather and send intel for the SVR. These "illegals" were often given the identities of dead people and they were supposed to live a normal American life to not raise any suspicion among the common folk.
3/19
One of the best-known illegals is Anna Chapman, who became the "modern Mata Hari" that tried to seduce her way to state secrets. FBI caught up on the illegals at an early stage, and they were tracked and followed from the beginning of the program in Operation Ghost Stories.
4/19
In Jun, 2010, 11 people were arrested and the sleeper agents were charged of spying on behalf of Russia. They were later exchanged for four Russian nationals convicted on espionage on behalf of the US and UK.
5/19
The program was considered to be a failure because of its high costs and bad outcome in terms of intel gathered, but the illegals and those who spy for Russia are considered heroes, and many of them have been offered prominent positions after their return to the motherland.
6/19
Anna Chapman, the "Modern Mata Hari", has become a famous celebrity in Russia, modeling for various magazines, having her own TV show and advertising state-sponsored activities such as encouraging people to take the Sputnik-V COVID-19 jab.
7/19
Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova are both working as authors and Andrey is also an adviser to president of Rosneft. Bezrukov & Vavilova also served as the inspiration for the main characters of the (fantastic) TV show The Americans.
8/19
Some time after this Russians started focusing more on online propaganda and cyber warfare. Russia already had a very strong hacker scene dating back to the 90s, but their new plan was something completely fresh in the propaganda sphere: ...
9/19
... they would utilize fictious "digital illegals" in hybrid warfare against the West. It provided both remoteness and implausible deniability for these digital actors, and technologies such as VPN allowed them to be geographically from any place on earth.
10/19
The most famous spawning point for digital illegals was Yegveny Prigozhin's Internet Research Agency (IRA), but the main script was written by a man named Vladislav Surkov. His idea was to polarize and confuse the West by funding various, opposing parties or organizations.
11/19
For example, IRA would fund both pro-BLM and anti-BLM movements and rally them against each other. Russian disinformation and propaganda machinery exploited the West's idea of free speech and free press, ...
12/19
... and they launched several websites and communities such as "Secured Borders" and "Blacktivists" with a sole purpose of spreading hate and confusion among the Western nations.
In 2016, a man named Matt Skiber became active in the US political sphere.
13/19
He was very active in politics and organized events such as "March for Trump" rally in NY. He arranged megaphones, designed posters, wrote press releases and communicated with other Trump supporters.
14/19
In reality, Matt Skiber wasn't a real person, but a digital illegal and a IRA employee depicting as a Trump supporter. On that particular day his job was to promote Trump and mock Hillary Clinton, but the next day it could be something completely else.
15/19
These digital illegals were extremely effective and very cheap assets, which is why Russia has been investing in them for over a decade. In this type of digital warfare, Russia was one step ahead and the West is now paying a hard price for their overlook of the phenomenon.
Many of the key figures work in both real and the digital world and they do it very effectively, and most of them are Russian immigrants with connections to Russian intelligence agencies and/or neo-nazis.
This is what a successful fifth column activity looks like.
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce an Irish politician and a MEP from (South) Ireland: Mick Wallace. He aligns himself strongly with another Irish MEP, Clare Daly, and his love for both Russia and China has been evident in his recent comments and appearances.
1/13
His political career started at the Irish 2011 general election, and he was elected as an MEP in the 2019 European Parliament election. Wallace falls to the general category of "anti-imperialists", basically meaning anti-US and NATO.
2/13
Wallace's views also line up perfectly with folk from the fake news blog The Grayzone: he's supported Venezuela, China, Russia, Belarus and Syria during his period as an MEP.
So if there's an authoritarian regime somewhere, it probably has Mick's support!
In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a neo-nazi,conspiracy theorist & a troll, Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang). He's by no means a prominent figure of influence,but I wanted to introduce him as a cautionary tale of how people with fragile egos become brainwashed online.
1/9
It seems that throughout his life Andrew has been soul searching, but in all the wrong places. As a teenager, he was a declared atheist and a vegan, wearing clothes with "Fuck Racism" written on them. Even as a youngster, his friends described him as erratic and sadistic.
2/9
Ironically, he even flirted with homosexuality during his teenage years, something that he would strongly condemn later on, supporting the ISIS-style of throwing gays off buildings.
At some point he became interested in conspiracy theories, and became a fan of InfoWars ...
In today's #vatnik soup and another edition of "You pronounced this nonsense, not me". Today we're going to talk about the "genocide in Donbas" disinformation and propaganda trope, that's been debunked many times but just refuses to die in the social media sphere.
1/12
First, let's talk a bit about what Donbas is: it's an area in the Eastern Ukraine and today refers to two Ukrainian oblasts: Donetsk and Luhansk. The area was mostly depopulated during WW2, after which Stalin brought in a ton of Russian immigrant workers, ...
2/12
... restricted the use of Ukrainian language and forced most schools to use Russian. With this move, the demographic shifted towards Russian: in 1989 census, 55% were Ukrainian and 45% Russian.
After Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, Russians started campaigning ...
3/12
In today's #vatnik soup I'll discuss Russia's disinformation and propaganda campaigning in more detail, and go through four of the main "big" themes around which most of their propaganda is based on.
1/13
The first theme is historical revisionism. Russia LOVES to distort historical narratives so that they favor themselves. They have conveniently "forgotten" the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the USSR and Nazi Germany,and Putin even published a refurbished version... 2/13
...which blamed other countries for WW2. Even though the US reinforcements played a huge part in the downfall of Hitler, Russians love to portray themselves as the heroes who beat the evil Nazis. They even have another name for WW2 (during 1941-1945): The Great Patriotic War.3/13
In today's #vatnik soup I'm going to talk about conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them. These theories are an explanation for an event that's orchestrated by powerful and often hidden groups.
1/15
Conspiracy theories are often political and they're even more often explained with insufficient evidence.
Douglas & Sutton (2011) concluded that belief in conspiracies correlates with lower analytical thinking, low intelligence, paranoia and Machiavellianism.
2/15
2022 meta-analysis by Stasielowicz
supports this, adding that conspiracy theorists often believe in pseudoscience, are narcissistic or religious/spiritual and have relatively low cognitive ability. Douglas et al. (2017) stated that conspiracy theories correlate strongly ... 3/15
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce an American, pro-Russian politician and a conspiracy theorist, Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG). She's also a US representative for Georgia and member of the Republican Party, and is best known for her love of guns and QAnon.
1/15
She started her political career after the 2016 Republican Party primaries, and in 2017 she was writing dozens of articles for fake news blogs such as the American Truth Seekers and Law Enforcement Today. In 2018 she was also "moderating" a FB page for the Family America...
2/15
... Project, an organization known for posting death threats against Democrats, racist post against the Obama's and generally supporting the wackiest conspiracy theories out there.
Greene knows her audience and campaigns accordingly: ...