I first wrote about this movie on September 6th of this year. I mentioned it in this diary mostly as a head’s up that it had just been released. I hadn’t watched it yet, but I’ve finally watched it twice now. The first time just to watch it, then realizing I wanted to write about it, I knew it needed a 2nd viewing. There was lots of information in it, and I now have 7.5 pages of notes on it. Fortunately for you I won’t just transcribe my notes.
For some background, and to explain the title of the movie, Jeremy Bash, a former Chief of Staff at both the Defense Department and the CIA describes active measures as the manner in which Russia conducts non-military warfare. He sees these measures breaking down into three categories:
- Propaganda
- Cyber attacks
- Agents of influence
The point of the movie as I see it is to inform us of what Russia is capable of, and has been doing with their active measures, and why they were motivated to prevent Sec. Clinton from winning the election. I would also add that the director and those interviewed for the movie really, really want us to understand how grave the threat is to our democracy.
Here’s what we know Putin/Russia are capable of doing, since we’ve seen it with our own eyes as it’s been reported. These include physical violence in addition to the use of active measures described by Bash.
- Killing individuals they see as threats to their kleptocracy. Individuals like Sergei Magnintsky, although not just limited to him.
- Killing innocent people for their own personal or political gain, like the apartment building explosions just prior to Putin’s first victory as President of Russia; or shooting down the Malaysian airliner.
- Locking up political opponents, like Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine, via their puppet, Viktor Yushenko.
- Massive cyber attacks like those against Estonia in May 9, 2007, the day Russians celebrate the end of WWII. The attack was committed solely because the Estonian government moved a Soviet statue out of the center of town. They wanted to send a message, and likely test their cyber warfare capabilities. They deployed a multi-week DDS attack that affected access to everything on the internet. They were hugely successful. So successful, they deployed it again a year later on the same day, May 9th, against Georgia for considering an alliance with the EU. Heck, there could be a separate diary about Russia’s use of cyber attacks, because they’re that plentiful.
- Russia has influenced elections in Ukraine, and Georgia. They’ve used some of the same things we’ve seen here, like the “othering” of Obama and his birthplace. The use of soft language like, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a good relationship with Russia?” And of course the use of loaded propaganda. In Ukraine the propaganda took the form of staged prison beating tapes, here it was hacked DNC emails. These three techniques were all used in Ukraine, Georgia, and the US.
Here’s why they were motivated to deny Sec. Clinton the WH. The main reason was because she was tough on Putin. She called him out, on behalf of the US, for the farce of stepping aside for Dmitry Medvedev, only to return to the presidency after Medvedev’s 4 year term. The 2011 election in which Putin returned to the Presidency spawned months long protests in Russia rooted in the election irregularities and that he was elected to a constitutionally shaky 3rd term. No surprise Clinton was bullish about the election irregularities and the result. He believes she encouraged those protests.
Additionally, Putin/Russia were very much wanting to get out from under the sanctions put in place after the Malaysian airliner was shot down. Those sanctions came at the same time the price of oil was dropping, so it hit the Russian economy quite hard. These sanctions came into effect after Sec. Clinton left the State Department, but Putin knew that she would continue to keep them in place. He’s smart enough to know to have expected more sanctions still, for the election attacks in 2016. He knew Pres. Obama would retaliate and Clinton would support those, and perhaps strengthen them.
Russia doesn’t have a strong economy, and lifting the sanctions was critical to the improved economic health of the country, and the oligarchs who enrich themselves and Putin.
Finally, weakening the US without having to attack it militarily, but through the use of active measures would be a major stepping stone to elevating Russia once again on the world stage. Putin sees the breakup of the USSR as making Russia smaller, both literally and figuratively. Helping DT win the election would mean they would have their puppet in the WH helping them to take down the US internally. DT would also help them weaken other western alliances. As a matter of fact candidate DT’s foreign policy speech at the Mayflower hotel was mostly written by the Center for National Interest, a Russian friendly think tank.
That speech alone showed what Russia wanted DT to do in their efforts to undermine the European Union and weaken western alliances. That speech and the republican party platform plank removing the arms support for Ukraine show just how successful Putin was even before the election!
We are right to be concerned about the threat that Putin/Russia pose to our democracy and social structure. Most of us here in this group, although unfortunately, not this site, have been concerned about the threat from Putin for over two years. We saw the bots in action on Twitter, we saw the crazy propaganda on FB, we heard lies spouted about Sec. Clinton on this site, then and even now. We saw how the MSM was completely lacking in their ability to deal with the propaganda and the trojan horse republican candidate; sadly, they still are lacking. I caution you now, that it’s already being stoked in advance of the 2020 election. There are seemingly left leaning organizations with dubious funding/support who are quite happy to continue to sow the seeds of division, not to mention those fomenting divisions on the right.
To emphasize the risk, I’ve pulled just a few quotes from the movie to give you a sense of how seriously people have viewed what’s happened the last several years.
In his reference to the active measures from Russia, Craig Unger, (author of House of Bush, House of Saud, and House of Trump, House of Putin), had this to say,
Probably the biggest intelligence breach in the world.
From Evan McMullin, ( former CIA operative, and 2016 Presidential candidate),
The President is, I believe a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
And with his voice shaking a bit as he neared the end of this sentence,
What is at stake is truth, what’s at stake is a government accountable to us, and the cause of liberty at the most profound level possible.
The movie Active Measures uses solid reporting, and an abundance of interviews from a variety of people to tell the story of why our election was attacked, and what we can expect in the future, because it will look a lot like the past if we don’t actively prevent it.
We must also be willing to see the active measures being deployed around the world in other countries as well. Organic protests are manipulated by Russia to advance their own goal of domination on the world stage. We saw that in Spain last year; France before their election in 2017, and now with the “yellow jacket/vest” protests; and during the Brexit campaign. The internet is everywhere and they are using it everywhere to help themselves.
Recognizing their propaganda will help us to combat it now and in the future.
You can find the movie, Active Measures on iTunes, Amazon Prime, & YouTube for a couple of dollars.
Personal note — I’m flying to Memphis this morning on a 6am flight, so I likely won’t be able to reply to comments this morning unless the flight has wi-fi.