In May, 2017, The Guardian published an investigation by journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who was no small force in bringing down Cambridge Analytica. That investigation looked closely at the connection between those pushing for Brexit and billionaires in the UK, US, and Russia.
The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked
In January 2013, a young American postgraduate was passing through London when she was called up by the boss of a firm where she’d previously interned. The company, SCL Elections, went on to be bought by Robert Mercer, a secretive hedge fund billionaire, renamed Cambridge Analytica, and achieved a certain notoriety as the data analytics firm that played a role in both Trump and Brexit campaigns. But all of this was still to come. London in 2013 was still basking in the afterglow of the Olympics. Britain had not yet Brexited. The world had not yet turned.
“That was before we became this dark, dystopian data company that gave the world Trump,” a former Cambridge Analytica employee who I’ll call Paul tells me. “It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm.”
Was that really what you called it, I ask him. Psychological warfare? “Totally. That’s what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change. It’s what they mean by winning ‘hearts and minds’. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don’t have many rules.”
Why would anyone want to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask him. And he looks at me like I am mad. “It was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It’s not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit.”
Of course, we know, now, that Paul is Christopher Wylie, who spoke out this year about his time at Cambridge Analytica.
Cadwalladr's latest podcast is titled Arron Banks: the man who bankrolled Brexit, and shows that she has continued to dig. Banks is an insurance mogul who has moved on to data profiling and general ratfucking for profit. He is said to have bankrolled the “Leave campaign” to the tune of £8 million but there is reason to believe that some of that money may have come from somewhere else. And Robert Mueller makes a cameo appearance.
It’s been more than a year since the Guardian and Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr started investigating Arron Banks and his unofficial Brexit campaign Leave.Eu. She tells Anushka Asthana how each new story brought with it a hail of criticism and ridicule.
But now the National Crime Agency has said it is investigating Banks amid concerns that he was “not the true source” of £8m in funding to the Leave.EU campaign.
This week, Banks’s insurance company, as well as his Leave.EU campaign group, faced fines £135,000 for breaches of data laws.
Meanwhile, the New York Times has reported that the US special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, is looking at records of Banks’s communications with Russian diplomats.
Cadwalladr is continuing to investigate Banks and the “smoking guns” he ridiculed in an initial interview in a pub in north London back in the spring of 2017.
I've taken the liberty of including most of the post as it is just the introduction to the podcast. It's just 21 minutes; check it out.
Note that Mueller is probably not looking to indict Banks — at least, not for his role in Brexit — but, more likely, to uncover any links between his Russians and Trump's, so as to bolster the case for Russian involvement and conspiracy among those running the Trump campaign.
Cadwalladr describes the attacks on her, beginning with a strange email from the Russian embassy in the UK and progressing to some quite vile stuff.
She also reveals — surprise, surprise — that these fuckers really believe that they’re untouchable. Let’s see that they’re shown to be wrong.
Friday, Nov 9, 2018 · 4:02:04 AM +00:00
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subtropolis
In case the connection between brexit and the tattooed gentleman, pictured, is not clear: I urge all to read this important investigation from 2015. It presaged all that has come to pass, and hints at how dark this could become.
The Agency — Adrian Chen, The New York Times Magazine