Foreign policy expert Kevin Baron, the founding executive editor of the military news website Defense One, warned of the threat right-wing media poses to American in a new analysis.
“It’s hard to watch Russia’s version of journalism and not think of the American far-right’s version of it. Indeed, the connections are both direct and philosophical—and of import to national security leaders,” he wrote. “In the past few months, we’ve seen just how closely related the two are, Putin’s propaganda and our own. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, America’s far-right denied the looming threat as a wag-the-dog conspiracy concocted by deep-state Democrats and centrist Republicans, or tried to blame President Joe Biden. Russian propaganda outlets gleefully put those clips into heavy rotation.”
Baron warned this should be a wake-up the national security community.
“Two weeks into the invasion, far-right leaders continue to sow doubt on war reporting, claiming or implying there is an elite conspiracy to keep Americans uninformed, and often parroting Russian propagandists’ distortions and lies,” he wrote. “So, while commentators and security legends by now have called the Ukraine war a wake-up call to Americans for many reasons, allow me to add one more: If you look upon Russia’s state-controlled, loyalist media with horror, then it’s time to wake up with equal concern toward America’s own rising partisan propaganda machines. There have already been calls for security professionals to add America’s far-right extremism to their portfolios. It’s time to do the same for domestic far-right propaganda.”
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Russia’s war propaganda has been likened to Donald Trump’s crusade against “fake news.”
“It’s almost as if some never learned their lesson from 2015, when the natsec establishment hoped they could make Trump go away by ignoring him. Or when everyone ignored the right’s openly-stated, disinformation-fueled plans for the Jan. 6 insurrection, perhaps the most troubling national security incident on American soil since the 9/11 attacks. That day was made possible by 40 years’ worth of right-wing, anti-government propaganda. Propagandists continue to lie about it more than one year after,” Baron warned. “While politicians come and go, the lasting damage is in the lingering popularity of Soviet-style agitprop propaganda from loyalist far-right media operations deliberately masquerading as journalism. These outlets—designed to look, sound, and feel like journalism—are de facto paid actors, directors, and scriptwriters of a carefully crafted fiction that would make the Kremlin proud. They call themselves reporters and operate in pretend newsrooms like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, Carlson’s Daily Caller, Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and upstarts like One America News Network and Newsmax.”
Read the full analysis.