If you were a high-functioning shill for Russia who wanted to be effective, you wouldn't indulge in any of retarded rhetoric that we commonly see from Putinistas and Kremlin-bots on the internet. You would instead make sensible and plausible arguments about "American overstretch" and the main threat to the West being in the Far East.
"Yes, that's right," you would effectively say, "the main threat is in the place where there is actually no war and no invasion, thousands of miles away from the place where there actually is a war and an invasion."
Your ideas would them be pushed by various media platforms that are "sympathetic" to the same narrative. These would have to be "serious" media outlets, not outfits like Zero Hedge and The GrayZone, that have been busted as shoddy Kremlin influence operations, or Russia Today (still operating outside the West), or GB News.
No, your shill message would, as far as possible, be leveraged into the general debate by still "respectable" media outlets that are, behind the scenes, extremely financially distressed and in need of money from somewhere.
This certainly seems to be the case with Elbridge Colby, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration, whom I came across on the Spectator's YouTube channel. He is tipped for a top job if Trump manages to win re-election.
Colby makes what seems like, and even may well be, a sensible case, namely that the US should pull back from the Ukraine and boost its defence commitment to the East Asian littoral in an attempt to contain and pre-empt a rising China. The guy sounds like he really cares about defending the "free world," etc.
"Yes, that's right," you would effectively say, "the main threat is in the place where there is actually no war and no invasion, thousands of miles away from the place where there actually is a war and an invasion."
Your ideas would them be pushed by various media platforms that are "sympathetic" to the same narrative. These would have to be "serious" media outlets, not outfits like Zero Hedge and The GrayZone, that have been busted as shoddy Kremlin influence operations, or Russia Today (still operating outside the West), or GB News.
No, your shill message would, as far as possible, be leveraged into the general debate by still "respectable" media outlets that are, behind the scenes, extremely financially distressed and in need of money from somewhere.
This certainly seems to be the case with Elbridge Colby, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration, whom I came across on the Spectator's YouTube channel. He is tipped for a top job if Trump manages to win re-election.
Colby makes what seems like, and even may well be, a sensible case, namely that the US should pull back from the Ukraine and boost its defence commitment to the East Asian littoral in an attempt to contain and pre-empt a rising China. The guy sounds like he really cares about defending the "free world," etc.
You could argue with his views and say that they are simply wrong. It seems pretty obvious to me that the best way to contain any potential Chinese aggression is to ensure that Russia's aggression fails; while the unnecessarily high stakes nature of a conflict over Taiwan could be lessened by relocating it's vital high tech industries to a more defensible location. But, that aside, Colby's somewhat limited and unblanced views are nevertheless "legitimate arguments" and will be seen as such.
It is just interesting that they are also "legitimate arguments" that directly favour rewarding Russian aggression.
Then there is the question of how they are being pushed, which, in this case, is via the Spectator, a "highly respected" and influential "Conservative" journal.
This is particularly interesting for me as I tend to keep an eye on the Spectator as a political bellwether, and flatter myself that I have developed what I call "an ear" for its content. This means that I soon pick up on whether the tone of its content is changing, and whether this change is "organic" or not.
In recent years and months, the Spectator has subtly but quite distinctly been moving in a "pseudo-realist" soft, pro-Putin direction, and this interview with Colby underscored that sense.
Of course, this could all be "just my imagination" or driven by my own "irrational Russophobic" tendencies, but I rather think it's more connected to the fact that the Spectator is part of the much-troubled Telegraph Media Group (TMG) and that the person best placed to bail them out is Paul Marshall, who is tied at the hip to the Putin-linked Chandler brothers. These three are the triad that is already running Kremlin-friendly GB News.
In fact, accounts show that TMG made a whopping loss of £245 million in the year to December 2023. This almost makes GB News's huge £30 million losses per year look profitable! In recent months, Marshall has been angling to buy TMG, presumably to push more "plausible Putinism" at the gullible British public. But it is clear that some parts of the TMG group are already on board.
Marshall was hoping to clinch the TMG deal before the election, which happened much sooner than expected. Now it remains to be seen if the incoming Labour government will block this dubious deal.
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).
Well if you think the Spectator is a Kremlin shill operation you ought to be thrilled at the recent election result given Fraser Nelson is best buddies with the slew of top Tories who have just been thrown out on their arses.
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