I heard a very disturbing story on NPR today. It concerned a group of teen age computer enthusiasts in in Skopje, Macedonia, who have been implicated in manufacturing fake news stories with a deep propaganda content. A local investigative reporter has been looking into this, and has turned up some frightening possibilities.

Let me stop here and make it clear that I haven’t followed up on this, I haven’t even tried to look up a transcript of the story. I have made no effort to check the sources or follow everything up to its sources. Frankly, stuff like this has been turning up so often lately I really don’t have the time, or the stomach, to research it all, and I don’t expect anyone to take my word for it. I trust NPR, but I am aware a lot of people don’t. I’ll just post it here as something to be on the lookout for.

The reporter revealed that many of the kids implicated in this rumor mill have adequate technical skills, but lack the English language skills or other resources to pull this off on their own. They have been mobilized by “clients”, who apparently have the financial and editorial capacity to underwrite this project, and the central strategy to coordinate it into a coherent propaganda action.

The source of the material points directly to Russia, although the reporter made it a point to stress she had no smoking gun evidence. It just seemed that the material being disseminated (mostly to W. European and American outlets) and the message being spread served Russian interests. Much of it was pro-Putin, or supported Russian policies in E Europe. A great deal of it was material aimed to support the activities of pro-fascist and populist/nationalist political parties in the NATO countries and the EU. Much of it was aimed at the US, with a decidedly pro-Trump slant.

Like all good propaganda, it wasn’t necessarily blatant lies and fabrications, much of it had a kernel of truth, or were reflections of genuine stories and events that had actually occurred. For example, the old meme of “gangs of Muslim youths attacking white girls” appears frequently, sometimes in places where no alleged reports of this type of activity are known. This doesn’t mean these events didn’t happen, just that they didn’t happen as frequently or as widespread as the casual listener might think. The goal is to create confusion and conflict in Europe, to make it difficult for Syrian refugees to carry stories of Assad’s atrocities, to indirectly support him and to generate anti-Muslim and anti-African sentiment in Europe, all which serves long-term Russian geopolitical goals in the the region. When the stories are picked up by legit news bureaus, or wind up on Youtube or the Internet, they achieve a life and momentum of their own. Far from providing a world wide technological network of information that would liberate us all, what we have is the automation of lies and their spread at the speed of light–to enslave us.

There is nothing new about this. Propaganda like this has been around for centuries, and became truly widespread with the development of electronic communications in the late 19th century. But nothing like this has been seen on this scale, and under such direct government support, since the days of Stalin and Hitler.

Of course, I have no foolproof way of knowing this story wasn’t some form of anti-Russian propaganda originating with the CIA and unwittingly spread by the fellow travelers at Liberal Western press sources. I know for a fact we’ve done that sort of stuff ourselves. Or maybe it is the manifestation of competing propagandists in some sort of global media war. But that is part of the Plan, isn’t it; not just to spread a POV, but to make people everywhere unsure and suspicious of everything they hear, anywhere. So that no one knows what to believe any more. He who can destroy a thing controls it. Except in this case, its the truth.

I’d really like one of you to dig in to this, to find that Macedonian reporter and dig up a transcript of that NPR report, and to do some further research on this, follow it up and see where it leads. I’ll be honest with you, I’m too depressed and upset to do it myself. The whole concept fills me with dread and uncertainty, which is, of course, exactly what they want.

Welcome to the Global Village. How ya doin’ Marshal McLuhan?