Russia Report: ‘Russian interference is the new normal’
‘Russian interference is the new normal.’
Yes, the Russia Report said this and the country just looks away.
What does interference really look like? It’s the troll farm accounts on social media who push the insidious propaganda that influences opinions because if you see something often enough, it becomes true and if enough of the accounts you follow say it then for certain character types you are swayed ‘because if everyone is saying it, it must be true’.
It’s the money that are paid to UK organisations that support Russian objectives. The even more staggering amounts of money that have been paid as ‘donations’ to Government MPs and leading Conservative party figures. In 2019, a report by Open Democracy said it was around £3,500,000 in the 10 years to 2019. Yes, £3.5 million ‘donated’ to Conservative party figures, that included serving Prime Ministers, by associates of the Russian PM Vladimir Putin and organisations who are funded by the Russian state.
You may ask yourself, ‘Where is the outcry?’. That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Although this was reported just before the 2019 General Election, it barely generated a murmur. However, the disclosure that Jeremy Corbyn received £5,000 for his appearance on the Iranian Press TV a few months previously was all over the media. If we accept that Russian money has compromised the government and the media is predominately staffed by people who are also part of the establishment, it doesn’t take much effort to see that the influence the ‘donations’ purchased, indirectly affect the media’s reporting of it.
Now you may ask yourself ‘Why does this matter?’. During the Brexit referendum, a lot of the pro-Brexit accounts on social media were alleged to be Russian funded. There’s allegations that the key supporters of the leave vote were Russian funded and it appears that post-referendum, that Russian money paid to Conservative party members bought a selective blindness from the government as the government chose not to investigate the allegations and as MP Stewart Hosie put it, “[…] actively avoided looking for evidence that Russia interfered”. It also appears to have bought silence, as when Russian military aircraft invade UK airspace, not a word is said.
Those of you with a more trustful nature may wonder what Russia gains from it. To give it some context, let’s remember that outright acts of military aggression can be expensive and self defeating. The US developed a cyberwarfare unit decades ago to replace traditional military conflicts with something more modern and we can assume most other countries followed their lead. Cyberwarfare is hacking into computer systems, trying to cripple computer systems with denial of service attacks and more recently, with social media troll farms to undermine social cohesion in a country by pushing opinions are are damaging to the country. The UK government actually has a for-hire social media troll farm run by one of the security agencies, although just who is allowed to hire it is unknown.
So what does that actually mean? The UK has been weakened down the last 5 years. It was withdrawn from one of the largest trading blocks in the world and is likely to end up starting 2021 with very few trade deals with the countries it actually has a large amount of trade with. Where it does have trade deals with countries that are more powerful than us, the deals are likely to be worse than the deal we had being part of the EU because the UK doesn’t have the economic clout of the EU. In Sept 2019 the US asset manager State Street likened the UK to an emerging market and said, ‘The polarisation around Brexit has now infected the broader political system, undermining of the the UK’s major sources of competitiveness – a stable political system and a predictable policy environment.’
Business is going to have to shoulder more costs in dealing with imports and exports to the EU, the £ has dropped around 20% since the vote, so imports cost more in general and when the withdrawal agreement ends will probably rise further as the costs of import duties and paperwork are added in.
Then there’s the UK’s loss of influence in the world of diplomacy in general and in the EU specifically . At home, we have a political party that, despite the allegations of corruption that keep surfacing, keeps being elected to government as the country lurches to the far right. Where we’re looking inwards and becoming more insular with a hatred of foreigners is being normalised and we slide towards a totalitarian state as parliamentary oversight of government decisions is eroded.
The final question I can see on your lips is ‘Why would they do this?’. With our ‘special relationship’ to the US and one of the more dominant voices in the EU, if the Russians wanted to undermine it’s primary opposition, the UK is the perfect choice. Weaker than it’s two main opponents but with enough influence to make it a strategic target, you can see just how tempting it would be and who needs a military engagement when you can splash a bit of cash and pay teams of people to sit around disseminating misinformation that achieve your objectives without a shot being fired?
Welcome to 21st century warfare.
