WHO'S WHO IN THE DISSIDENT RIGHT: PATRICK HENNINGSEN

Viewed from 2023, Patrick Henningsen is a typical piece of psy-op detritus, floating on the rancid sewer of Russian disinfo and shillery that flowed from Alex Jones's "fruit loop" conspiritard site Info Wars -- via the now-banned and deplatformed Russia Today -- to the present day internet, where he continues to bob around like an unflushed turd. His rather greasy-looking appearance subtly invokes this entirely accurate metaphor.

Henningsen got his start as an editor and presenter at Infowars.com back in the Zeroes, before being set up in his own slightly less "fruit loopy" operation as "editor" of the website 21st Century Wire, which continues to do the Kremlin's cack-handed work of sowing low-grade disinfo and attempting to stir the shitpot of polarisation. He has been a frequent guest on Russia Today, where he was laughably billed as an "independent journalist."

An actual smoking gun of Kremlin management is yet to be revealed to the public, but it is pretty clear from how Henningsen's content has meticulously shadowed key Kremlin-backed narratives and talking points -- everything from 9-11 scepticism, vax paranoia, and anti-Ukrainianism to bending over and taking it up the arse from Syria's President Assad.

In 2017, the Guardian reported research by social media monitors Graphika which showed 21st Century Wire closely tied into Kremlin attempts to shape the narrative on the White Helmets NGO, working to help civilians in Syria. Much of this activity was through Brit, Vanessa Beeley, Henningsen's "co-editor" at 21st Century Wire:

"The analytics firm Graphika has spent years analysing a range of Russian disinformation campaigns including those around the Macron leaks and the Russian doping scandal. In research commissioned by the human rights group the Syria Campaign, it found that the patterns in the online network of the 14,000 Twitter users talking about the White Helmets looked “very similar” and included many known pro-Kremlin troll accounts, some of which were closed down as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the US election. Other accounts appeared to generate more than 150 tweets per day (more than 70 is seen by scholars studying bots as suspicious).

Graphika also found evidence of coordination of timing and messaging around significant events in the news cycle relating to the White Helmets.

Separately, both Graphika and Menczer’s Hoaxy tool identify Beeley, the British blogger, as among the most influential disseminators of content about the White Helmets.

Their findings also correlate with work done by Kate Starbird from the University of Washington in Seattle, who asserts that Beeley and the alternative news site 21st Century Wire have dominated the Twitter conversation about White Helmets over the last few months, along with Sputnik and RT.com.

In recent days, so-called "anti-censorship" crusader Mike Benz (aka Frame Games, aka philosemitic psy-op on the Alt-Right) has been on 21st Century Wire's podcast, preaching his doctrine of "informational unilateral disarmament," where the West opens itself up to enemy-state-run crank disinfo and polarisation ops at every level, while its geopolitical competitors do not. 

Frame Games shitting away his credibility by appearing on obvious Kremlin shill site