U.S. Fifth Column Echoes Russian Biolab Propaganda
“Propaganda is as powerful as heroin; it surreptitiously dissolves all capacity to think.” ― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
After weeks of flailing and trying to paint a picture of an elected Jewish president as a Nazi, Russian propagandists have accepted a recycled gift from the far reaches of US loonyland and are focusing their message on “biolabs” in Ukraine.
The disinfo campaign is trying to portray biological research facilities centered on public health concerns as part of a US plot aimed at preparing a chemical or biochemical attack on the underfed and undersupplied Russian armed forces.
The domestic peddlers of these biolab fictions allow them to include MAGA enemies, including the Bidens and Dr Anthony Fauci.
A major part of the Russian disinfo program for the current conflict is aimed at the Russian people. Non-state media, including social platforms, have been largely silenced. Much of the internal messaging has focused on claims of genocide being committed against Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine. The biolabs memes serve as an adjunct to these assertions.
There are no U.S.-run biolabs in Ukraine. The country is one of many former Soviet Union republics, and other countries, partnering with the Defense Department as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.
The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program began after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to reduce the threat of existing weapons of mass destruction. It is also known as the Nunn-Lugar Program (named after the senators who passed the Soviet Threat Reduction Act) and is housed within the Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation.
These laboratories have recently played an important role in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in Ukraine. By the Russian propagandist interpretation, the San Diego County Public Health Laboratory is also part of this conspiracy.
For an overview of biochemical warfare, used at one time by virtually all countries (including the US) with large militaries, see this article.
The Russian (and sometimes Chinese) claims about their nations being bordered by these sinister sounding facilities are so old and discredited that Kremlin propagandists did not include them in early social media and state media coverage.
A few days before the Russian invasion a post on the right-wing social media platform Gab mentioned the existence of biolabs, sans any accusations about weapons production.
From NBC News:
Welton Chang, the CEO of Pyrra, said posts about biolabs on the top 15 far-right social networks numbered in the single digits in the days before Russia’s invasion. But on Feb. 24, the day Russia began its invasion, the number of posts about biolabs on English-language far-right websites skyrocketed into the hundreds and only grew in the days after.
Boosted by far-right influencers on the day of the invasion, an anonymous QAnon Twitter account titled @WarClandestine pushed the “biolabs” theory to new heights, using the same “US biolabs” graphic initially included on the Gab post that went largely unshared the week before.
Twitter said the account and others that pushed the biolabs theory were banned for “multiple violations of our abusive behavior policy.”
The biolab conspiracy theory has taken over as the prevailing narrative on pro-Trump and QAnon websites like The Great Awakening and Patriots.Win.
Now the supposed biolabs are said to be producing zombies (really!). Those of us who have longer memories also remember the Soviet campaigns blaming HIV/Aids on the CIA.
The Kremlin has a long history of planting false reports that the U.S. was developing chemical or biological warfare to distract from its own use of such weapons, said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of a history of Soviet and U.S. disinformation tactics.
In the early 1980s, as Soviet forces deployed chemical agents in Afghanistan and Laos, the Kremlin tried to distract from such attacks by publishing false tales, like one that the CIA was developing weaponized mosquitoes in Pakistan to spread encephalitis in Afghanistan.
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Back in the old days of 2016, the Russians paid for social media amplification of various claims. Now they’ve wised up, since there are vast swatches of the domestic and international far right willing to do the job.
The biolabs conspiracy stories have provided Trump supporters and other far rightists with a path to be critical of the war without seeming to be too pro-Putin.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House Director of Strategic Communications in the Trump administration, observed:
"I think the former president, as well as other prominent Republicans, are taking their pointer from one place, and that's Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. He has become essentially an arm of the Kremlin and what he is talking about, what he is saying is indistinguishable from RT propaganda."
For his part, Carlson is playing the usual edging games, saying he has “questions” about the topic at hand. He’s been joined by former Democratic Congressperson and present day wacko Tulsi Gabbard, who’s been making the rounds of the talk show circuit, filling the networks’ need for “both sides.”
You really have to wonder if they would have featured the propagandists for the Axis powers in World War II if the present corporate overlords were running the show.
Anyhow, the Russians are appreciative. A leaked Kremlin memo given to Mother Jones reporter David Corn includes a request to use more reporting and clips featuring Tucker Carlson.
“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”
The document—titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)”—was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com