Why do the Russians need to bother spreading disinformation when our own domestic sources do a much better job at it?
We just went through a four-year national obsession with Kremlin disinformation. It supposedly swayed the 2016 presidential election. It was âsowing divisionsâ in American society. It accounted for the discovery of Hunter Bidenâs laptop during the 2020 election.
Social media companies were excoriated for allegedly letting Russian disinfo poison their networks, and the American mind.
There was nothing that some Russian operators â spending a pittance â couldnât do. The former Time magazine managing editor and Obama state department official Richard Stengel wrote a book called âInformation Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.â According to Stengel, the Russians had mounted âan unprecedented attack against the very foundation of our democracy.â
By S.T. Patrick
At a 2018 panel organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Stengel said, “There’s another word for ‘master narratives.’ It’s called ‘history.’ Basically, every country creates their own narrative story. My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the ‘chief propagandist.’ I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population. I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.” Today, Stengel is the most prominent media appointee to Joe Biden’s transition team.
As Barack Obama’s undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs, Stengel created what he described as the “only entity in government, non-classified entity, that combated Russian disinformation.” The entity was the Global Engagement Center, Ben Norton of “TheGrayzone. com” described as “a massive vehicle for advancing U.S. government propaganda around the world.”
without his testimony, it will be difficult to determine what was said in that conversation unless, of course, president trump decides to discuss it himself as he has done in other occasions, on other elements of this impeachment inquiry. my money is on kelly o. to get him to talk about it on the lawn one day this week. my money is always on kelly o., too. i ll take up the challenge. we ll stand by and come back to you when you get something from the north lawn. thank you, kelly o. let me bring in kim wailly, former u.s. attorney and also the author of how to read the constitution and why. rick stengel, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, msnbc political analyst. he s got a new book out called information wars, how we lost the global battle against disinformation. we ll dig into that. kim, you literally wrote a book on the constitution. let s start with this question. what can the house do if the white house just says no to all
analyst. his new book is information wars, how we lost the global battle against disinformation. and heidi przybyla, her new article is titled donald trump s longtime business connections in turkey back in the spotlight. richard, let me begin with you. what do you make of the reason that president trump decided to pull out under this campaign promise that he s pulling out of the middle east, when in reality, our contribution or our footprint in syria was the smallest out of all the footprints we have in the region, and hardly a significant one from a footprint point, bought significant one from a tactical security point. ayman, i wish we didn t have to have any american service men or women in harm s way around the world, but we do. and the reason we had not a small force in syria, thousands or so, was to combat isis. that started back in 2014, 2015. our greatest ally there, who lost thousands and thousands of lives, were the kurds. and they fought beside us,