In the past week, I had the opportunity to take part in a Canadian academic workshop on “disinformation”, that turned into an example of how the security state, non-governmental organizations (the “NGO-complex”) and academia can work hand in hand to both push the establishment narrative and attempt to label opposition narratives as “disinformation”. This very much parallels the way that the Xinjiang “genocide” narrative has been pushed as I covered earlier.
The first stage is the manufacturing of “facts” by individuals and supposedly “independent” NGOs. In the case of Xinjiang the main fact fabricator has been Adrian Zenz, with respect to foreign “disinformation” in Canada it has been Marcus Kolga. Like Mr Zenz, he has burst onto the scene as an expert regularly featured in the mainstream media (MSM) in many countries, with seemingly little background or skills to equip him to be such an expert. In 2020, as part of the right-wing Montreal-based think-tank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute he founded an organization called Disinfowatch with research partners that include the US State Department, the US Embassy in Canada, NATO, the Lithuanian Vilnius Institute, the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (itself funded by the US State Department, NED, NATO, defence contractors and other large US corporations), the EU, and the Czech-based European Values (itself funded by Western governments). Disinfowatch’s main aim seems to be to contest anything stated by the Russian government, or independent journalists and commentators, that challenges Western establishment discourses and to point individuals towards “reputable” sources – which means Western governments and the MSM. He is also a senior fellow at the right-wing Macdonald-Laurier Institute which is itself heavily funded by fossil fuel and mining interests to push a free-market ideology. Mr. Kolga, who is of Estonian ethnicity, is not a disinterested party but rather very much a Western establishment actor.
In March 2023 he was one of the four authors of a joint report entitled Enemy of my Enemy Russian Weaponization of Canada’s Far Right and Far Left to Undermine Support to Ukraine. It was published by the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Conflict (CAIDAC) at the University of Regina, the University of Maryland College of Information Studies and Digital Public Square, with the report being “generously supported” by the Canadian Department of National Defence. Digital Public Square, which works hard on its website to pass itself off as some hip grassroots-style organization, was co-founded by Farhaan Ladhani (10 years in Canadian government agencies, such as the International Development Agency, Global Affairs Canada, the US Embassy, and as a senior advisor to the Prime Minister) and Sean Willett (the Munk School of Global Affairs in Public Policy at the University of Toronto).
The highly subjective and biased nature of the report is established in its first sentence “Russia invaded Ukraine with overwhelming force one year ago, ending seventy years of peace in Europe”. This is patently false as it ignores all the European conflicts since 1953, such as the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian Uprising (1956), the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring (1968), the European terrorism of the 1960s and 1970s, the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Northern Ireland Troubles from the 1960s to the 1990s, and the Ukrainian Civil War following the 2014 coup. The propagandist nature of the report is obvious in this first sentence, and others that make highly questionable statements about Russia’s actions during the Russia-Ukraine war. As with the Xinjiang establishment discourse and propaganda efforts, publishing is not done in independent peer-reviewed journals as such a report would not survive an academic peer review process. As Dmitri Lascaris notes, this report does not do the most basic step of validating whether or not what is being put forward as “disinformation” is true or false, it is simply assumed to be false because it goes against the establishment narrative. In many cases such “disinformation” is strongly supported by the evidence available.
https://dimitrilascaris.org/2023/04/01/more-pro-nato-propaganda-masquerading-as-academic-analysis/
The report purports to identifies 90 supposedly, “active Russian=aligned accounts that co-opt and engage massive online communities” but at no time provides the identities of the accounts, and requests by an academic colleague for the identities of these accounts were rebuffed. These accounts are also identified as mostly “far-right” and “far-left” in nature with no methodology provided to define these terms and with no identification of these accounts for readers to validate these claims. This approach matches to a tee that of the now thoroughly debunked Hamilton 68 dashboard of 500 supposed “Russian bots” produced by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) that was set up by mainly former senior US intelligence and State Department officials. Covered wildly by the MSM, the ASD refused to provide the identities of these “bots” which were found to be predominantly well-known journalists and average citizens by Twitter (findings that were not made public until the recent “Twitter Files” expose).
The extensive MSM use of the completely specious Hamilton 68 dashboard is shown by the 279 times that the single MSM outlet MSNBC reported its findings as facts:
A process repeated by Canadian media with respect to the Enemy of my Enemy report; a piece of work that would be failed by any self-respecting professor teaching an undergraduate class, let alone an academic peer review. A second report covered at the conference was Disinformation And Russian-Ukrainian War on Canadian Social Media, published by the University of Calgary School of Public Policy as a briefing paper (once again dodging any independent academic peer review). The report starts by stating that Russia is carrying out a large disinformation campaign against Canada that pushes such narratives as “Russia’s invasion was a result of NATO’s expansionism or aggressive intentions toward Russia”, “Western nations are propping up fascists in Ukraine” and amplifying “mistrust of democratic institutions, be it the media, international institutions, or the Liberal government”. That such concerns may actually be valid ones held by Canadian citizens within a supposedly democratic nation that supports free speech is never addressed. Unlike with the other report, the list of “pro-Russian” accounts is given, and immediately the whole report is shown to be a sham as these “pro-Russian” accounts include:
· Tulsi Gabbard as #1 of Russian disinformation “US-influenced accounts”
· Maajid Nawaz #3 (who is actually a British journalist and activist)
· Glenn Greenwald #4 (award winning journalist)
· Maxime Bernier #9 (Canadian politician)
· The Real Andy Lee Show #11 (independent Canadian journalists)
· Richard Medhurst as #1 on the Russian disinformation “Russian influenced accounts (a Syrian-British independent journalist)
· Aaron Mate as #2 (the Canadian award-winning independent journalist and reporter at the Grayzone)
· Benjamin Norton #7 (Latin-American based independent journalist)
· John Pilger #10 (world famous Australian independent author, journalist and documentary filmmaker)
· Max Blumenthal #11 (US independent reporter, author and editor of the Grayzone)
This is such an obvious and transparent attempt to label independent journalists, commentators and politicians as agents of a foreign government that it is stunning that it could be published by an institution of higher learning. Utter and blatant propaganda.
The workshop did not rise above the academic and ethical standards set by the above two reports as we were regaled with scary images of a Russian (and Chinese) “enemies within” that were no longer hiding under the bed but were lurking invisibly across the internet and gnawing into the minds of helpless citizens that needed to be “saved” by the powers of the establishment. Above all, we were told that the citizenry must become media savvy enough to understand what were “reputable” sources (the state and the MSM) and welcome the advice of the NGO “fact-checkers” and understand why some dissent should be criminalized; I felt like I may be a Winston Smith undergoing a regular refresher course.
After a full day of being disinformed about “disinformation”, I decided to skip the second day, which my colleague told me was just more of the same. A deeply worrying concoction that seamlessly mixes together fact fabricators, the security state, well-funded establishment think tanks and NGOs, and academics; all nicely laundered by our academic institutions and MSM. At the same time that I was in the workshop, it was being revealed that a Canadian military contractor had been using a troll farm to manufacture consent for intervention in Haiti.
If you wish to go further down the disinformation rabbit hole I have attached an excellent series by the Racket News:
Also, an excellent Columbia Journalism Review coverage of the utterly debunked “Russia, Russia, Russia” disinformation campaign run by the Democratic Party, the US Security State and the MSM to undermine a democratically elected President of the United States that they happened to disagree with.
This on the fact checker invasion and this on the censoring of the internet.
The repeated lies that the establishment and MSM have served up in North America, and in other parts of the West, over decades has destroyed the citizen’s trust in their veracity. As truth seeps out (e.g. the Twitter Files) and establishment narratives are repeatedly shown to have been lies (the “failing” Russian army, the “fakeness” of the Hunter Biden laptop) the attempts to shut down the dissident truth tellers will only become more desperate. With the candidacy of both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the position of US President now appearing quite possible, together with a Ukraine war which will increasingly be seen as not going the US elite’s way, we can expect a major ramp up in establishment disinformation campaigns and the removal/undermining of dissident voices. The removal of Ticker Carlson from Fox News may be the starting gun for an establishment war on its elite opponents (Trump and RFK Jr. are both members of the elite) and those that threaten to debunk its propaganda.
Do the Twitter files just show right-wing suppression?
The phrase that has been useful to me was gleaned from Moon of Alabama earlier: limited hangout.
Ellul's book on propaganda quotes a Mr Goebbels, who says the best propaganda is the truth. People can see you are telling the truth, and act (or not act) accordingly. If these war-mongers are setting up reports that are lies, then reality will bite down hard. Bit like now, come to think of it. Turns out GDP is not a good metric of military capability. Wonder what else is coming down the line...
Let's not get too carried away with the robustness of the academic peer review process - it is as co-optable as any other (witness Ivan Katchanovski's experience when publishing his recent Maidan study). The most likely reason for not putting this propaganda through such a process is, I would imagine, some combination of expediency and the fact that academic journals are awash with unimportant stuff destined to be unread.