Socialism explained (the Friday Fungus version)

From a late Soviet TV show called The Fifth Wheel:

"I have indisputable evidence," he said, "that the October Revolution was the brainchild of people who'd been taking hallucinating mushrooms for years, and in the long run, mushrooms replaced their personalities, and they turned into mushrooms. So, I just want to say that Lenin was a mushroom. Furthermore, he was not just a mushroom, but also a radio wave."

So said Sergei Kurekhin in conversation with Sergei Sholokhov the show's presenter (it was, I hasten to add a satire not a serious argument). And, in this Reason article by Jesse Walker, we find that they weaved an elaborate conspiracy theory - akin to John Allegro's equally bizarre argument that Jesus was a mushroom - involving Mayan temple frescoes, Carlos Castenada and much else besides.

The article comments on how Kurekhin was involved with the National Bolshevik Party which may - or may not - be an elaborate spoof. The Party did pioneer some of the punkier bits of Russian opposition politics and Kurekhin was an early adopter of fake news as a propaganda (or satire - hard to tell sometimes) tool. As Walker concludes:

Either way, Kurekhin doesn't just have a famous piece of fake news under his belt—he was an early adopter of ironic fascism too. The man may be 23 years dead, but this is his world; the rest of us are just mushrooms growing in it.

Very odd.

....

People who think Twitter - with or without Russians - decided the referendum need to get out more

There is an almighty panic afoot. It seems that a vast army of trolls in fur hats with snow on their boots are ruining our democracy by doing stuff on Twitter. Yes folks, it's the Russians - even the Prime Minister was moved to say how naughty they are albeit in a wonderfully sinister way ("we know what you're doing").

Some perspective is needed here because, while it may well be the case that Russian spies sat at computers in St Petersburg are bombarding Twitter with stuff, the impact on elections ranges from pretty much zero to really not very much at all.

According to Oleksandr Talavera at Swansea University there are 150,000 accounts with "links to Russia" that Tweeted about Brexit during the campaign. Talavera is at the upper end of the spectrum of guesses about these Russian bots most other researchers give much lower figures for accounts that can be clearly linked to the folk in St Petersburg - 419 from researchers in Edinburgh, 13,493 from London University and just 54 from Oxford University.

Taking the 419, this is what they were doing:

Professor Laura Cram, director of neuropolitics research at the University of Edinburgh, told the newspaper that at least 419 of those accounts tweeted about Brexit a total of 3,468 times – mostly after the referendum had taken place.

Commenting on the Brexit tweets, she told The Guardian the content overall was “quite chaotic and it seems to be aimed at wider disruption. There’s not an absolutely clear thrust. We pick up a lot on refugees and immigration”.

I'm pretty sure that the same will go for the bigger numbers. For a little context, however, we should note that there were literally millions of Tweets about the referendum - the LSE, for example, looked at 7.5 million in their analysis. Those Russian tweeters represent a drop in this ocean of Tweets. Let's remember also that there are about 10 million UK Twitter accounts (this matters because they're the ones with a vote) and let's also note that 17.4 million people voted to leave - rather more than have those Twitter accounts.

Even accepting that Russia did try to interfere in - disrupt, influence - the referendum (something that probably shouldn't surprise us), the evidence presented by researchers tells us that it really didn't make much difference at all, indeed it was swamped by a vast tide of Tweets from real people about Brexit. Indeed that LSE study showed just how Brexiteers were much more engaged and active:

There is clearly a pattern in the way the referendum campaign unfolded on Twitter, with those wanting to leave communicating in greater numbers and with greater intensity. Districts with a greater share of Twitter users supporting Leave also tended to vote for leaving the EU, so that Twitter activity correlates with voting in the referendum.

We also know from that LSE blog that the same goes for Facebook, Instagram and Google search - as a senior politician (and remain voter) said to me: "Brexit voters were going to crawl over broken glass so they could vote to leave". I've been involved in politics for 40 years and have never seen ordinary voters - the sort who often don't bother - so motivated to turn up and vote. Public meetings were a thing of history in British elections, yet we held a debate in Cullingworth and filled the hall with over 250 people, most of them planning to vote leave.

This latest conspiracy theory - hot on the heels of the "it was big data" nonsense - reminds us that many of those who voted to remain are still in denial as to what the campaign outcome was down to. These inconsolable remain voters simply can't countenance that their 'business as usual' message got both barrels from an electorate that frankly didn't think that 'business as usual' was doing them any good. The result has been firstly to shout about how it was all the stupid people who did it and it's not fair, then to blame the Daily Mail followed by lots of overhyped scare stories about 'hate crime'. We then got the conspiracies - it was shadowy American billionaires, it was manipulating 'big data' and now it's the Russians.

The truth is that two-and-a-half million mostly older and working class voters who don't usually vote or vote infrequently decided on this occasion to go down to the church hall or school and stick a big firm X in the box marked "Leave the European Union". There were a pile of reasons why they did this but the main one was that the EU is a distant, unaccountable, corrupt and undemocratic institution a very long way away filled with people who have absolutely no connection with or idea about what matters in Denholme or Wyke or Scarborough. It really had absolutely nothing at all to do with Twitter, the Russians, Cambridge Analytica or whatever stupid conspiracy sobbing remainers dream up and if you think otherwise you really should get out more.

....

Snow on their boots...thoughts on the Great Russian Hacker Conspiracy

"There is being circulated everywhere a story that an immense force of Russian soldiers – a little short of a million, it is said – have passed, or are still passing, through England on their way to France."

The rumour began on 27th August 1914, because of a 17-hour delay on the London to Liverpool train service. The reason for the hold-up was said to have been caused by the transportation by rail of Russian troops, who had landed in Scotland and, under conditions of the utmost secrecy were being moved by train to the Channel ports. From there they were destined to cross to France and fight alongside the Allies.

As the tale spread, more and more people ‘knew’ someone who had seen Russian troops in transit. For instance, someone knew a railway porter in Edinburgh who had swept snow from the railway carriages there, at several stations there were reports of strange-looking men seen with snow on their boots. In Perthshire, Lady Baden-Powell heard that the Russians were coming and promptly rushed to the station to catch a glimpse of them.

It seems not much has changed. Except the Russians in question today don't have snow on their boots preferring the relative warmth of a swivel chair in front of a computer screen. And this time they're sinister baddies not saving troops.

Hours after Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's national security adviser, resigned after misleading the White House over conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US, reports emerged that key campaign aides had also been communicating with Russian officials.

That scandal began after US officials leaked the fact that Mr Flynn had discussed sanctions with the ambassador. Leaks also prompted the controversy over the "dirty dossier" prepared by a former MI6 operative, and have plagued the first weeks of the Trump administration.

From anonymous briefings, leaks and oblique references comes a line that results in the widespread belief that somehow Russian espionage was responsible for Trump's election (and for more febrile minds Brexit too). The most creative and complex of those conspiracy theories can be read here - it's very good, John Le Carré would love it.

Now I'm absolutely sure that Russian intelligence agents did endeavour to interfere in the US Presidential election. I'm also pretty sure that those agents and their predecessors tried to influence the outcomes of every US election. This is pretty much part of the job description for a spy - get favourable outcomes for your country. And it's why countries have laws preventing foreign funding of election campaigns.

I'm also pretty much sure that the impact of Russian intelligence on the election is somewhere between 'none at all' and 'a little but but insignificant'. It suits a particular agenda to adopt the view that the Democrat's comprehensive defeat last November was down to sinister external forces rather than them simply not being popular enough even to beat a candidate as weak and unpopular as Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, as Tim Newman observes, liberal media such as the BBC persists with the suggestion that "one controversy has clung to the Trump train like glue: Russia". Tim also points out that there's not much truth to this:

Russia only became the albatross of choice with which to hang around Trump’s neck when all others were laughed off: misogyny, racism, fake news, etc.

Speaking from a cynical perspective, such argument - effectively exonerating left of centre political campaigning from failure and blaming a foreign government - continues to give the right, whether conservative or reactionary, a free run at politics. The public love a good spy story but, in the main, consider those stories to be just that - tall tales. Tim Newman's conclusion here is apt:

...if Trump had a tower with his name on in Moscow or a casino in Vladivostok then one could raise legitimate questions over his connections to Putin. But he doesn’t, and nothing I have seen suggests Trump ever had any business or other interests in Russia aside from him having a quick look-see back in the 1990s or early ’00s and deciding, quite sensibly, that it wasn’t worth the hassle. Has Trump actually ever been to Russia in person? Has he met Putin? I’ve not seen any evidence he’s done either, and if it existed surely we’d have seen it by now. This whole obsession with Russia is nothing more than the latest in a line of pathetic attempts to cast doubts on the legitimacy of Trump’s Presidency and shore up the narrative that he is not acting in the interests of America.

Strange conspiracy theories about Jews, communists, banks and big business used to be the stock-in-trade of the loonier parts of the far right. The continuing failure of decent patriots, working people and nationalism wasn't down to its lack of appeal but rather to the efforts of sinister folk meeting in Swiss mountain resorts or nice Caribbean hotels. It seems that, faced with a similar scale of defeat - especially in the USA - the centre-left has fallen hook, line and sinker for a new generation of conspiracies: tall tales with Russian snow on their boots.

....

Secret Soviet maps...wow!

Fascinating article on the Russian's secret cold war maps:

The maps were part of one of the most ambitious cartographic enterprises ever undertaken. During the Cold War, the Soviet military mapped the entire world, parts of it down to the level of individual buildings. The Soviet maps of US and European cities have details that aren’t on domestic maps made around the same time, things like the precise width of roads, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and the types of factories. They’re the kinds of things that would come in handy if you’re planning a tank invasion. Or an occupation. Things that would be virtually impossible to find out without eyes on the ground.

Awesome!

....

Why we needed Maggie.....starting with the Russian spy who owned the Labour Party

Quote of the week...

From Alexander Illarionov, chief economic advisor to President Putin (cited in this Spectator article):

"...man-hating totalitarian ideology with which we had the bad fortune to deal during the 2oth century such as National Socialism, Marxism, Eugenics, Lysenkovism and so on. All methods of distorting information existing in the world have been committed to prove the alleged validity of these theories. Misinformation, falsification, fabrication, mythology, propaganda. Because what is offered cannot be qualified in any other way than myth, nonsense and absurdity."

...and I worry he might be right - which is why the Greens and their useful idiots must be stopped.