Military pays propagandists to call dissenters ‘Russian propagandists’

 

Opposing military spending, NORAD and NATO is not an endorsement of Russian violence in Ukraine. But, in the current climate, many are seeking to frame it as such.

On the 74th anniversary of NATO’s formation Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix (MQP) organized a protest in front of CBC/Radio Canada’s offices in Montréal. One self-described progressive labeled the April 4 rally against the alliance “a pro-Russian demonstration of 30 people.” But three years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine MQP organized its first march to mark the 70th anniversary of NATO.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established largely to blunt the European left and help the North America elite rule the world. Through NATO’s mutual assistance program in the 1950s Canada provided large amounts of weaponry to European colonial powers suppressing independence movements in Africa and Asia. Over the past quarter century Canada has contributed to many NATO missions including wars in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya. Canada’s push to expand NATO – including assisting with the overthrow of an elected Ukrainian president opposed to joining the alliance – contributed to precipitating the ongoing horrors in Ukraine.

A recent report published jointly by the University of Regina Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict, University of Maryland College of Information Studies and Toronto-based Digital Public Square provides academic weight to the notion that criticizing NATO is to support Russia’s war. Covered in the Globe and Mail, New York Times, Regina Leader Post and elsewhere, “Enemy of my Enemy: Russian Weaponization of Canada’s Far Left and Far Right to Undermine Support to Ukraine” suggests that “far left” NATO critics on social media are Kremlin stooges. In an article about the report headlined “The Russian propagandists amongst us”, National Post columnist Terry Glavin labels me “among the most prominent pro-Putin apologists in the western world”.  (more...)

Military pays propagandists to call dissenters ‘Russian propagandists’