US Conservatives Creating “Synergy” With Russian Propaganda on Ukraine

UK media is report­ing that con­spir­a­to­r­i­al nar­ratuves on Ukraine being pushed by US con­ser­v­a­tives, led by Fox News star Tuck­er Carl­son, have “bol­stered and cre­at­ed syn­er­gies” with Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion. Accot­dig to a report by The Guardian:

Wed 6 Apr 2022 False and con­spir­a­to­r­i­al nar­ra­tives pushed by some Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and media fig­ures about Russia’s bru­tal inva­sion of Ukraine have bol­stered and cre­at­ed syn­er­gies with the Kremlin’s leg­endary dis­in­for­ma­tion machine, experts on infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion say. But even though Rus­sia has embraced and pro­mot­ed Amer­i­can dis­in­for­ma­tion, as well as the Kremlin’s own much larg­er stock of Ukraine war false­hoods, both brands have been wide­ly debunked by experts and most media out­lets, under­scor­ing Moscow’s set­backs in the infor­ma­tion war. Led by Tuck­er Carl­son at Fox News, a few Repub­li­can rightwingers in Con­gress, and some con­ser­v­a­tive activists, a spate of com­ments that have dis­par­aged Ukraine and its pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­skiy, and echoed oth­er Russ­ian war dis­in­for­ma­tion have been recy­cled by Moscow, say experts. America’s cul­ture wars dis­tract from what’s hap­pen­ing beneath them | Gary Ger­s­tle Read more A feed­back loop between the Krem­lin and parts of the Amer­i­can right has been pal­pa­ble since the war’s start in Feb­ru­ary, which Moscow false­ly labeled as a “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion” aimed at stop­ping “geno­cide” of Rus­sians in Ukraine and “denaz­i­fi­ca­tion” – two patent­ly bogus charges that drew wide­spread inter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism. Still, the influ­en­tial fig­ure of Carl­son has pushed sev­er­al false nar­ra­tives to mil­lions of Fox News view­ers that have been eager­ly embraced and recy­cled by Moscow and parts of the Amer­i­can right. Last month, for exam­ple, Carl­son tout­ed rightwing con­spir­a­cies that attempt­ed to link Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to a dis­cred­it­ed alle­ga­tion that the US financed bioweapons labs in Ukraine. On a sep­a­rate front, two Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al con­ser­v­a­tives, Madi­son Cawthorn and Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, delight­ed Moscow last month by con­demn­ing Zelen­skiy with­out evi­dence in con­spir­a­cy-rid­den terms that sparked some bipar­ti­san crit­i­cism. Cawthorn called Zelen­skiy a “thug” and his gov­ern­ment “incred­i­bly cor­rupt”, while Greene sim­i­lar­ly charged that Zelen­skiy was “cor­rupt”.

Read the rest here

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has been report­ing exten­sive­ly on Tuck­er Carl­son’s role in Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da efforts.