From Russia with hate

A silver lining in the new Justice Department indictment

Last year, a guy I don’t know made a YouTube video criticizing my criticism of billionaires like Elon Musk. This was how Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report began:

Over at the televised mental institution known as MSNBC, there's this guy. We've played some videos of him before. It's hard to believe he's a real person. He appears to be a villain from Gotham City. Batman is looking for this guy. He's hanging out with Two-Face and the Riddler and the Penguin. And [looking over to his production staff] give me one more — Bane. [Again he looks at his staff.] Give me one more — Joker. Give me one more — Poison Ivy. Thank you. His name is Anand Giridharadas, something like that. And he is very upset that billionaires exist. And I wonder, if he had the power as a Gotham villain, what he would do to billionaires.

I bring this up because Dave Rubin now needs our thoughts and prayers. I know Ink readers will join me in pulling for him as he grapples with the fallout of revelations that he got mixed up (unwittingly, he claims) with a Russian propaganda operation, according to a new federal indictment.

Because I am not, in fact, an evil supervillain, I honestly wish Dave Rubin nothing but the best. Or, to put it in terms he might understand, я желаю ему только лучшего.

The new allegations laid out by the Justice Department are staggering. The AP reports:

They have millions of followers online. They have been major players in right-wing political discourse since Donald Trump was president. And they worked unknowingly for a company that was a front for a Russian influence operation, U.S. prosecutors say.

An indictment filed Wednesday alleges a media company linked to six conservative influencers — including well-known personalities Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — was secretly funded by Russian state media employees to churn out English-language videos that were “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russian interests, like its war in Ukraine.

In my book The Persuaders, the opening chapter was about an earlier attempt by the Russians to manipulate American public opinion and influence our political culture. I spent a lot of time with the actual content these foreign content creators created. And it gave me an understanding of the project that informs how I see this new indictment.

Here’s the thing: The actual influencing achieved by the Russians is the sideshow. What is important about this story is the following things it tells us — about us.

1. You are being manipulated to hate your neighbors. You are being manipulated to be more inflammatory. You are being manipulated to write off other people. You are being manipulated to think divisions are unbridgeable. You are being manipulated to hate people. To be clear, Americans have shown themselves to be very good at behaving in these ways on their own. But foreign propaganda operations are very interested in moving you ever more in this direction.

2. The Russians have so many things they could do to another nation-state. Vladimir Putin must receive binders full of choices that would make Mitt Romney jealous. That they are continually doing this — promoting inflammatory social media content as their weapon of war — is the real revelation. Their results are besides the point. The point is that this is what a hostile foreign nation has concluded most makes the Untied States vulnerable: when we talk and think in this cynical, hateful, dismissive, contemptuous, all-or-nothing, victim-complexed manner.

3. Be wary of the purported truth teller who is telling you truths no one else will. This has become a big move of the age. It works very well online. It travels. You whip up this sense that others are lying to you, and then you cast yourself as the lighthouse of reality in a sea of cons. Vaccines, Ukraine, Tim Walz’s past, etc. If these indictments teach us anything, it’s that we should, at long last, have some skepticism of this kind of pose. The flow of information in the United States, contrary to what these self-styled free speech martyrs would say, is robust. There is all manner of highly reputable news organizations putting out real, vetted information. Don’t fall for charlatans offering you facts in the lining of their trench coats like some $40 “real” Rolexes.

4. We are less divided than we seem. As I keep stressing, I don’t want to overstate the effect of these Russian operations. It’s a drop in the ocean. But it is the case that many of the most prominent voices out there inflaming our conversations are doing so, even if unknowingly, at a foreign power’s nudging. This suggests that we may have an impression of our discourse, of our state of relationship with each other, that is not entirely accurate. There is no foreign propaganda operation that I know of, at least, that has highlighted the work of the churches engaging in dialogue processes in recent years to bridge racial divisions, or highlighted workplaces that have changed to make women feel more heard, or highlighted white Americans who have delved into racial topics and evolved as a result, or highlighted families that have navigated division but grown even closer. These things are happening every day. Russia just doesn’t feel the need to hype them.

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Photo: United Artist/Getty Images