An unintentionally hilarious “EXCLUSIVE” in The Washington Post this week claimed that Russian “propaganda” is both creating and exacerbating opposition among Republicans to dumping more money into the war in Ukraine.
And next week: The dark foreign influence campaign that has men hating Amy Schumer…
Apparently, the only reason a plurality of Americans — 31 percent, according to Pew Research — feels we’ve financially shackled ourselves a little too tightly to Ukraine, sinking hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into a conflict we have no way to account for, is that Russia said so.
“Russia has been ramping up its propaganda operations,” the Post reported Monday, “as part of a second front that current and former senior Western officials said has become almost as important for Moscow as the military campaign in Ukraine — especially as congressional approval for further aid has become critical for Kyiv’s ability to continue defending itself.”
An example of such allegedly poisonous “propaganda” was included at the very top: a fake American citizen created by a Russian communications firm who would somewhere be cited (presumably on social media) professing he “doesn’t support the military aid that the U.S. is giving Ukraine and considers that the money should be spent defending America’s borders and not Ukraine’s. He sees that Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”
Raise your hand if you needed someone, real or fake, to tell you the southern border has collapsed as a direct consequence of the president’s policies, and everything else has gone to hell for the same reasons.
As dumb and gullible as the media believe middle-class Americans are, nobody goes to the grocery store or the gas station right now and finishes up saying, “All my money is gone, but I really can’t wait to send another $20 billion to Ukraine.” Likewise, nobody sees the shocking images of the hordes of foreign men bum-rushing their way through border agents and thinks, “Hey, that’s neat!”
The Post nonetheless referred darkly to Russia’s “increasingly sophisticated strategy … to interfere in the U.S. political system” by way of disseminating messages. The intent, the Post said, is to “cultivate an environment in which ‘Americans are not ready to sacrifice their well-being for the sake of the conflict in Ukraine’…” (I mean, yeah. I’m not. But the Post and the rest of establishment Washington are ready to do it for you!) The elaborate Russian scheme is said to include “Kremlin-linked political strategists and trolls [who] have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions.”
If Russians are spending a single dollar with the hopes of instigating “racial tensions” in America, someone really needs to tell them to save their money. We’ve already got MSNBC and The Washington Post to do that for us. As for the rest, maybe Democrats can just tell Biden to be a better president. Turning off the internet won’t fix the border or put more money in my account. And I can promise it’s not some marvel of Russian geopolitical ingenuity that Americans aren’t as sexually aroused as Max Boot at the thought of Ukraine receiving more funds. The war is two years old with no end in sight, and its continuation serves no benefit to us normal Americans here.
We’re not exactly living in luxury at the moment. Why would anyone feel the urgency to prioritize the problems of Eastern Europe when Washington won’t fix the fundamental ones we have on our own?
The “Russian propaganda” nonsense is just as big a threat in 2024 as it was in 2016, which, the Post claims, is when the Russian government “deployed a network of trolls — creators of fake social media accounts — to spread disinformation boosting the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and seeking to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, including stories using material hacked from the Clinton campaign.” (Notice how the Post conflates real material with “disinformation” because it hurt the media’s preferred candidate.)
[Here’s Why I Didn’t Fall For The Russia-Trump Conspiracy]
It was a ridiculous claim in 2016, and it’s a ridiculous claim now. Recall the diabolically genius ways Democrats and the media say Russians spread “disinformation” back then. One meme during the election promoted by the account “Army of Jesus” depicted Jesus Christ arm-wrestling Satan and was captioned, “Satan: If I win, Clinton wins! Jesus: Not if I can help it!”
Another ad said, “Stop Trump! Stop racism!”
A third personal favorite featured an illustration of then-Democrat candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing only a Speedo and flexing for gay rights.
It’s worth noting that Democrats lied through their teeth about accounts having originated from hostile actors in Russia, as the “Twitter Files” showed. Moroeover, not a single vote was demonstrably swayed by any of it, and it’s absurd to think Americans aren’t passionately devoted to Ukraine purely because they’ve been manipulated by deceitful propaganda.
If only changing public opinion on the matter was so simple, the Post might have been more successful in its own pro-Ukraine propaganda campaign, which it wages at the extreme peril of setting the U.S. and our European allies in an existential conflict with a nuclear power.
Since the conflict began, the Post has published countless articles and columns either romanticizing the conflict as a fight for “democracy” (Ukraine has suspended elections, and President Volodymyr Zelensky closed down information outlets critical of his leadership even before the war) or suggesting that Russia was on the cusp of defeat.
“Ukraine is winning the information war,” The Washington Post, March 1, 2022.
“Is Russia losing the war?” The Washington Post, March 14, 2022.
“Putin, unaccustomed to losing, is increasingly isolated as war falters,” The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2022.
“Pressing for elections now would weaken Ukrainian democracy,” The Washington Post, Oct. 1, 2023.
“Ukraine remains stronger than you might think,” The Washington Post, Feb. 21, 2024.
Maybe the Post should try a meme with Zelensky in a Speedo.