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MUST-READ: Putin's Campaign to Seduce, Subvert and Screw Over Western Democracies—Including Ours
From the Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/30/vladimir-putin-s-campaign-to-seduce-subvert-and-screw-over-western-democracies-including-ours.html
As The Economist pointed out last week, inside Russia,“The two main pillars of the Soviet state, propaganda and the threat of repression, have been restored.” The infamous KGB, which was humiliated and broken up 25 years ago “has been rebuilt as the main vehicle for political and economic power.” Meanwhile, “reactionary restoration at home has led to aggression abroad,” with hybrid warfare against Georgia and Ukraine, and intimidation of the little Baltic states. All this even as Moscow has “attempted to undermine Euro-Atlantic institutions, backed right-wing parties in Europe" and, as the The Economist, too, avers, “tried to meddle in America’s presidential elections.”
If Putin’s aggressive stratagems are a fairly recent revelation to Americans (or, at least, those Americans willing to pay attention), the basic tactics are old news in France and much of the rest of Europe, where Moscow has been active for a long time helping to underwrite with money and propaganda the wave of populism sweeping the Continent.
-snip-
“The key is to say we are declining countries because we don’t have moral values anymore,” Hénin explained. The message the Russians bring—a message they insinuate anywhere they can—is that “we are too open to ‘foreign’ influences”: too much immigration, too much Islam, too many LGBT rights, too much America. And not enough Russia, it would seem.
The story in France has its own particularities, but anyone who has watched the Trump campaign — which was once managed by Russian-crony-funded consultant Paul Manafort and continues to exploit Russian-hacked intelligence about the Democratic Party, including very probably the drips out of Wikileaks — must see some striking similarities.
-snip-
If one is to understand the Russian game in the West, it’s important to understand the way Putin tells his people they’ve been gamed by the West, feeding their fury and resentments. Presenting himself as the boss of the angry people in his own country, he has heightened hysteria and pared away freedoms to the point where Russia “has long since ceased to live by the rule of law,” as French academic Cécile Vaissié noted in her recent book, Les Réseaux du Kremlin en France.
-snip-
If Putin’s aggressive stratagems are a fairly recent revelation to Americans (or, at least, those Americans willing to pay attention), the basic tactics are old news in France and much of the rest of Europe, where Moscow has been active for a long time helping to underwrite with money and propaganda the wave of populism sweeping the Continent.
-snip-
“The key is to say we are declining countries because we don’t have moral values anymore,” Hénin explained. The message the Russians bring—a message they insinuate anywhere they can—is that “we are too open to ‘foreign’ influences”: too much immigration, too much Islam, too many LGBT rights, too much America. And not enough Russia, it would seem.
The story in France has its own particularities, but anyone who has watched the Trump campaign — which was once managed by Russian-crony-funded consultant Paul Manafort and continues to exploit Russian-hacked intelligence about the Democratic Party, including very probably the drips out of Wikileaks — must see some striking similarities.
-snip-
If one is to understand the Russian game in the West, it’s important to understand the way Putin tells his people they’ve been gamed by the West, feeding their fury and resentments. Presenting himself as the boss of the angry people in his own country, he has heightened hysteria and pared away freedoms to the point where Russia “has long since ceased to live by the rule of law,” as French academic Cécile Vaissié noted in her recent book, Les Réseaux du Kremlin en France.
-snip-
