There is some irony to this. The United States has been covertly interfering in other nations’ politics—including elections—for at least three-quarters of a century. It still does today. Latin America, the focus of my own research, has been a frequent target.
Rather than using Facebook and Twitter to create make-believe organizations, the CIA organized front groups. Rather than creating bots to spread fake news, the CIA bribed foreign journalists, financed foreign newspapers and set up false flag radio stations. The disruptive goals of information warfare have not changed over the decades, only the technology has. [...]
The US feared that Western European Communist parties would ascend to power by winning elections. One of the very first covert actions by the CIA’s new operational wing, directed by Frank Wisner, was a concerted effort to prevent the Italian Communist Party from winning the 1948 election. Washington funneled several million dollars to the conservative, pro-American Christian Democrats. [...]
A decade later, the CIA enlisted La Prensa, Nicaragua’s main newspaper, to play a similar role in a covert war to overthrow the Sandinista leftist government. As in Chile, the CIA funneled funds to a wide variety of opposition political parties, private sector groups and voluntary organizations—not to mention creating a counterrevolutionary paramilitary army, the “contras,” in neighboring Honduras. The Reagan administration’s funding of the contras in defiance of a congressional ban led to the Iran-contra scandal.
No comments:
Post a Comment