Trump is Putin’s useful idiot: How Russia sabotages the West
The Lowdown interview withg Peter Pomerantsev
As Moscow bribes MAGA influencers to help Trump return to power, I talked to Peter Pomerantsev, one of the great authorities on Russian propaganda, about how democracies can protect themselves against Putin.
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Our interview ran into the ugly question of whether, in the age of Trump, the European far right and the pro-Moscow far left, significant forces within modern societies even want to defend democracy from its enemies.
Putin now has within sight the enormous prize of Trump securing the White House. The Russians have been grooming him for decades.
But as Peter explained that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are paying him off
“When Russians talk about useful idiots [they] aren't necessarily paid,” he told me.
“They don't even need to think they're agents of influence. Ideally, you have worked them so well, brought them around to being your helper so well, that they are helping you because they think it's in their own interests. People ask is [Trump] recruited? Let's say there was a Russian operation to get Trump on side that started with his first wife, and his visits to Moscow in the 1980s…I don't think it would have been about saying ‘you're working for us and here's some pay off’. You work somebody so organically that they don't even notice.
“Look at Russia's relationship with the National Rifle Association and with religious groups in America.
“They've been bringing them around, bringing them into their agenda for a long, long, long time. By funding them, sometimes. But at other times by just sharing their worldview. Russia sees its foreign policy influence as a whole tool of state craft... The art of it is working people so that they start operating for you. And of course they think about America a lot. Of course, they've always been obsessed with America.”
Peter Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. His latest book is How to Win an Information War The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler.
The first aim of Russian propaganda is to brainwash Russians into accepting the regime. Below is a piece of mine based on the research of the Russian émigré photojournalist Dmitri Beliakov. It looks at how the regime exploits stereotypes of masculinity to fool men into joining the army and heading off to a rendezvous with the meat grinder.
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Escape your worthless life! Join Putin's army for sex, money and status!
What Russia’s recruitment ads tell us about a failing state
A beautiful woman gazes at her distinctly average ex. The sight of his uniform persaudes her to ditch her husband and go back to him.
Russia is a poor country that thinks it’s a superpower. Nowhere is the gulf between the imperial aspirations of the rulers and the weariness of the ruled exposed more ironically than in the regime’s attempts to persuade men to join its invading forces in Ukraine.
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