The Guardian featured an op-ed on Oct. 16 so ‘over-the-top’ that it called attention to a curious disinformation operation run out of London, and run into Kiev. First, Peter Pomerantsev’s article, “Russia’s genocidal propaganda must not be passed off as freedom of speech,” on one level is yet another case of the Brave New World argument that “disinformation terrorism” must be treated as a war crime. And, indeed, the “genocidal propaganda” verbiage sort of gives away the game.
At a time when the West is deluged with anti-Russian propaganda, Pomerantsev takes the next step in the Bertrand Russell world of convincing the population that “black is white,” projecting his world as that of Moscow’s: “Russian military theory sees information operations as integral to military operations to an unprecedented extent…. And rather than just nasty words broadcast on radio or TV, information operations are now continued in tightly controlled digital campaigns with everything from online ‘troll farms’ through to search engine optimisation, which rise and crest in tandem with military operations. If, for example, one can show that information campaigns purposefully spread lies that Ukrainian military are hiding in civilian areas such as hospitals in the advent of an attack, and encourage attacks on the areas, then these lies become more than just abhorrent, they become integral parts of aiding and abetting crimes.”
Peter Pomerantsev is a second-generation agent for British intelligence. His father, Igor Pomerantsev, from Kiev, was arrested by the KGB in the 1970’s for proliferating anti-Soviet literature, then emigrated to Munich in 1978, and then to London, where he worked for the BBC World Service. His mother produced anti-Soviet documentaries such as “Gulag.” Peter studied for a while at Edinburgh University, then went to Russia in 2001, working as a consultant for what he labels “European Union projects.” Back in London in 2010, he became a project chair for the “Information Warfare Initiative” of the Center for European Policy Analysis. His 2015 book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is on how the Russian state apparatus uses “black PR” to manipulate the truth, and he provided testimony on such matters to the US Senate during the “Russiagate” process. It turns out that at least some of the quotations in his book, he later had to admit, were closer to reconstructions from his memory, which he put into quotes.
