I smell a big fat KGB rat in all this.

[Kid Berwyn]

96. Why conspiracy theorists and the Kremlin echo each other's disinformation

Last edited Thu May 11, 2023, 06:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Western conspiracy theorists and the Kremlin have each spread similar disinformation online.

William Audureau
Le Monde, News Analysis, March 3, 2023

“Look at what they're doing with their own people!" In his address to the nation on February 21, Vladimir Putin accused the West of having made pedophilia "the norm." A wild attack typical of the Kremlin leader, but one which resonated with the most far-out conspiracy circles, such as the QAnon community which spreads disinformation about pedophile elites in the White House.

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The convergence has reached the point where the two circles now feed each other, in an incessant back and forth. "What is difficult," observed Pierre-André Taguieff, political scientist and author of several books on conspiracy, "is to distinguish between propaganda manufactured by Kremlin strategists and the multitude of Russian and French conspiracy circles that gravitate to them and can be manipulated."

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During the Soviet era, the USSR financed the publication of several books attributing the assassination of J. F. Kennedy to an American conspiracy, and then, in the 1980s, spread the rumor that HIV was an artificial virus created by the United States. Behind this subversive approach is a strategy that international relations researchers now call "sharp power," a venomous counterpoint to the more benevolent and sunny "soft power."

"When you can't subjugate people using the appeal of your own model, you have to undermine the allegiance of the citizens [of foreign countries] to their own system," Rudy Reichstadt explained. And the conspiracy scene, this machine for hating existing elites and democratic institutions, is a perfect channel.

Seen in this way, the novelty lies less in the originality of the process than in the scale and systematization of the phenomenon, facilitated by the polarization of political life, the acceleration of transmission of information through social media, and the possibility of easily flooding these sites. In 2018, Twitter identified nine million tweets linked to Russian disinformation, while in the fall of 2022, Facebook announced the dismantling of two Russian and Chinese disinformation networks.

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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/03/02/conspiracy-theorists-the-kremlin-echo-each-other-s-disinformation_6017960_8.html

PS: Mixing truth with falsehood they divide and conquer.

PPS: It sure WAS an American based conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK. He HATED NAZIs, warmongers and traitors.

Most importantly: Thank you, m.