The SHOCKING! revelation that Putin’s gangsta state has been sneakily funding far-right propagandists in the United States has certainly caused A Splash. Not unreasonably, those at the centre of the scandal — Tenet Media’s owners Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, along with professional binfluencers Matt Christiansen, Tayler Hansen, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern and
Pim Tool — have thus far defended themselves by simply claiming Useful Idiot and/or Victim status. Thus while more than handy at detecting the evil influence of (((Soros))) & Co. at every political moment, the group was, unfortunately,
deeply incurious as to who was paying them millions of dollars to shitpoast far-right talking-points.
Sad!
See :
Russia Secretly Worms Its Way Into America’s Conservative [sic] Media, Steven Lee Myers, Ken Bensinger and Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, September 7, 2024 ///
What Right-Wing Influencers Actually Said in Those Tenet Media Videos, Tim Marchman and Dhruv Mehrotra, Wired, September 6, 2024 ///
Russia Today, YouTube, and the US Department of Justice: How an online web of Russian disinformation crumbled, Esther Linder, ABC, September 5, 2024 ///
Russia made useful idiots out of MAGA’s top influencers. It was nearly effortless., Jared Holt, Posting Through It, September 5, 2024 ///
Media start-up from Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and Dave Rubin was secret Russian influence campaign, indictment alleges, David Covucci, Daily Dot, September 4, 2024 ///
Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube, Becca Lewis, Data & Society, September 18, 2018.
As for Lauren Southern — the only one of the Tenet propagandists to have apparently visited and indeed, in Southern’s case, even settled for a brief period in Australia — she first brought her grift to the country in
July 2018. And while she may not have displayed any knowledge of Sydney, let alone Australia — while accompanied to
Lakemba by Lads’ member Stuart von Moger, the tourist was soon put in her place by a local reporter — wearing an ‘It’s OK To Be White’ tee
did have a profound effect upon the Australian Senate, which in October 2018
narrowly voted down (28 ‘Yes’ vs. 31 ‘No’) a PHONy motion to that effect. Her promotion of ‘The Great Replacement’ thesis also paid
grisly dividends only a few months later, when another Great Aussie Patriot massacred 51 Muslims in Christchurch. (Note that the current lvl boss of the neo-Nazi EAM/NSN, Tom Sewell, while Führer of predecessor grouplet ‘The Lads Society’, tried and failed to recruit the killer to it.)
Southern’s sojourn in Australia was mercifully brief and, despite being
happily adopted (post-massacre) as a semi-regular commentator by Sky News Australia, it seems as though local pickings were relatively slim and, following separation from her partner, she eventually RETVRNED to Canada, where her talents were picked up by Tenet Media. Of course, now that Tenet is in deep trouble, Southern, like the other schmucks, will have to seek alternative sponsors for her propaganda. Fortunately, the far-right media eco-system in which she’s thrived to-date shows no sign of disappearing any time soon, and the army of gormless bigots it depends upon are thriving on anti-social media platforms like Apartheid Clyde’s, so things aren’t all bad.
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention Southern’s
contributions to the campaign to
discredit the horrific accounts of the abuse of Indigenous children at
Indian Residential Schools in Canada, or to note that Canadian serial killer Jeremy Skibicki, who
last month was ‘given four life sentences for the 2022 murders of four Indigenous women in Winnipeg’, was apparently also
a bit of a fan.
in this case? ) as over here.
