Why You Shouldn’t Fret Much Over Russian Election Interference
If you missed the news, Russians are interfering in American politics again. If you missed history, Russians are always interfering in other countries’ politics—and so is everybody else, including the U.S. Screwing around with foreign elections is a popular sport for the world’s regimes, though it’s not clear that websites, bogus social media accounts, and funds funneled to a political-commentary network will return more bang for Putin’s rubles than did past social media shenanigans.
Russia, Again
“The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as ‘Doppelganger,’ in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws,” according to a September 4 government press release. “In conjunction with the domain seizures, the U.S. Treasury Department announced the designation of 10 individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated response to Russia’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”
The indictment specified “the defendants, have deployed nearly $10 million, laundered through a network of foreign shell entities, to covertly fund and direct U.S. Company-I [which] publishes English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube.”
“Many of the videos published by U.S. Company-I contain commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy,” adds the indictment. “While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine.”
Based on details in the indictment, Company-1 has been identified as Tenet Media (since shuttered), which managed a stable of right-wing pundits including Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Taylor Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson. The company promoted, the indictment says, “nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone.”
Very nefarious, right? Well, maybe not. While Tenet founder Lauren Chen has gone quiet and lost her gig with Blaze TV and channels on YouTube, Tenet’s contributors seem baffled by the whole thing.
“The Culture War Podcast was licensed by Tenet Media, it existed well before any license agreement with Tenet and it will continue to exist after any such agreement expires,” insists Tim Pool. “Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show.”
Benny Johnson also says, “I am t
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