Why do we want to be friends with them? Why did the Clintons and Bidens sell out to them? Money over country?
JOHANNESBURG—Chinese and Russian agents are paying social media influencers in Africa to spread anti-U.S. messages worldwide, with the Trump administration being a top target, media experts say.
Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock
Their research reveals that many influencers who use the TikTok platform are earning hundreds to thousands of dollars per month by disseminating misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda that benefits Beijing and Moscow.
The studies align with information presented to Congress on July 22 by U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. military in Africa.
Analysts say China, Russia, and other malign actors are taking advantage of an information void created by the White House’s decision to cut financial aid to Africa, which has impacted the funding of media previously supported by the U.S. government.
In 2024, the Washington-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies documented nearly 200 pro-Kremlin and pro-China social media campaigns in each major region of Africa, with the Chinese regime’s influencers particularly active in Southern and West Africa.
One of Africa’s most popular social media figures has told The Epoch Times she’s receiving money to distribute information that makes Russia and China “happy.”
“This is mostly messages about Trump,” she said, asking that her name be withheld so that she didn’t “anger” her employers and lose income.
She said influencers working for Moscow and Beijing receive payments online via sites that facilitate paid promotions, with South Africa’s Lit marketplace one of the more popular systems.
“The money we’re making like this can be a few thousand dollars every month; it all depends on how popular our posts turn out,” she said.
A Chinese guy I worked with said to never trust the Chinese. The first rule of doing business is don’t use the 10 commandments (that’s right, lie, cheat, steal, murder others and try to get God out of the country)
Those bastards are sending fentanyl to the US, spying on us, disrupting out power grid, flying balloons over us and buying our politicians.
The media shifted this election. Going on podcasts that people listen to has a much larger audience and is far more influential. The winners recognized this pattern and the losers never saw it coming and relied on their propagandists in the media.
If the 2024 presidential contest proved anything, it’s that the mass media no longer drive the national conversation. They can no longer stoke fear and outrage in average voters. They can no longer prop up terrible candidates. And, like him or not, President-elect Donald Trump’s success with black, Hispanic and Jewish voters, if exit polls are even close to correct, proves that the entire “fascist” scare was a flop.
Indeed, the establishment press are less trusted than virtually any major institution in American life. It’s a well-earned ignominy. It’s also a tragedy for a free nation that we have a barely functioning press. Reporters probably tell themselves they’re disliked because they’re fearless truth-tellers. But, far more likely, it’s a referendum on their deceit.
If you have been awake these last several days, you will know all about how the aspiring First Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, publicly slapped a former girlfriend so hard she spun around. I believe, but am not sure of the chronology, that that was after Emhoff inseminated the nanny he and his former wife had engaged to, well, possibly to help him in his task of “redefining masculinity.”
Let us draw a veil. It is impossible to distribute air-sickness bags through the internet, and I do not want my readers left with so nauseating a spectacle as Kamala Harris’s repulsive husband.
I realize, though, that, should you be so unfortunate as to acquire your news from the Propaganda Press—from The New York Times or The Washington Post, say, or from CNN, MSNBC, or the other legacy media outlets, it is doubtful that you will have run across the true story about Emhoff.
The reason is that telling that story would violate The Narrative that the Propaganda Press exists to support—whatever that Narrative happens to be today.
As an aside, I have often wondered where the scribes and pundits that staff the ranks of the Propaganda Press go to get their daily marching orders about The Narrative. Does it somehow arrive with the morning oat milk and boiled, free-range egg? Or is it a subtler process, akin to the way bees perform dances to inform their fellows where the nectar is? I suspect the process may be closer to what happens when a body dies. Within minutes, or even seconds, various insects are attracted to the corpse. They lay their eggs, much like a New York Times reporter files his story and the putrefaction proceeds.
However it happens, the Propaganda Press is always au courant. Had Doug Emhoff been a Republican, you can be sure a detailed chronicle of his misdeeds would be swelling the news cycle like a distended corpse. Cast your mind back to what the media did to Mitt Romney—Mitt Romney!—when he had the temerity to run against The Chosen One in 2008. He picked on a kid in high school. He rode to a summer vacation spot with his dog on the roof of his car. Really, you can’t make it up.
Of course, that was small beer compared to the disgusting fury that was unleashed against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2019.
Those looking for the origin story of this partisan smear machine often adduce the campaign against Judge Robert Bork during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court under Ronald Reagan. That unseemly episode, which had media trolls sifting through Bork’s trash and movie rentals for incriminating tidbits, culminated in Ted “Chappaquiddick” “waitress-sandwich” Kennedy’s scurrilous denunciation of Bork on the Senate floor. That original instance of character assassination even contributed a new verb to the language: to bork.
All that is one side of what the Regime Party is about. Another side has been on view these last several days as the destruction and human misery left in the wake of Hurricane Helene has haltingly become public. As I write, the official death toll of that disaster is somewhere around 300. Reports from people on the ground say it is much higher, probably around 2000.
Quite apart from the human toll exacted by the storm, there are two things to note about the response of our government and the Propaganda Press struggling to control what reports leak out about that response.
First, notwithstanding the efforts of the Propaganda Press to keep a lid on the facts, it is now widely known that FEMA, the chief federal agency in charge of responding to such disasters, has failed miserably. What initially sparked public outrage was Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s statement that, sorry, but the agency was out of money. He’d love to help but the “funds” were not there.
That was quickly followed by the news that, over the last 18 months or so, the Biden-Harris administration had spent some $1.4 billion to house, tend, and cater to illegal migrants (and how many billions have been siphoned off to Ukraine?). Hundreds of thousands of those migrants were salted around the country, especially to vulnerable counties in red states, where they were provided with cash stipends and housing at taxpayer expense. I note that Mayorkas, as head of the HSS, is also in charge (under “Border Czar” Kamala Harris) of that porous figment, the Southern border.
News that FEMA had plenty of money for migrants but none for the citizens of North Carolina and Tennessee was met with rage, especially as horrific stories of the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene piled up.
However, that fury was tame compared to the response to the news that not only was FEMA inert but also that it was actively hampering private efforts to aid those in distress. Probably the most high-profile such story came from Elon Musk, who described in several posts on X how his efforts to bring Starlink terminals to those without internet were being actively hampered by FEMA.
I worked with the media for decades. I know how bad they are. Bias is their name.
One of the greatest evils of our time is the political press. They suppress information or fail to investigate what they should. Conversely, they promote an agenda that since WWII has been closeted anti-American. Look at the difference in coverage between Hillary/Obama/Biden/Hunter vs Trump.
This has allowed liberalism to prosper and anything associated with morally good or anything associated with God to be censored. The left has had their air cover from the press to get away with whatever they wanted to do, starting with lying.
After having been exposed for covering up Biden’s dementia, they are hedging their bets. They don’t know if they should push for a real candidate or stay the liberal course.
This has caused liberals to use the press as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, it’s expected. The media has carried their water for so many decades it is expected, until now.
MILWAUKEE — President Biden repeatedly scolded NBC anchor Lester Holt in an interview Monday — exclaiming at one point, “What’s with you guys? Come on, man!” — as he defended his criticism of Donald Trump despite calling on Americans to “lower the temperature” after the assassination attempt on the former president Saturday.
The 81-year-old president lashed out when Holt pressed him on his disastrous June 27 debate performance and bristled when the journalist asked him about former Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance.
“Are you seeing what [viewers] saw, which was moments of frankly, that appeared to be — you appeared to be confused?” Holt asked the president.
Later, Biden raised the fact that Vance, an Ohio Republican senator, had criticized Trump in 2016.
“Well, he said something about you,” Holt replied.
“He said some things about me, but see what he said about Trump. What’s up with you guys? Come on, man,” Biden chided.
At one point in the interview, Holt challenged the president when he launched into an extended criticism of Trump — despite using a rare Oval Office address Sunday night to call on Americans to “lower the temperature” following the Trump assassination attempt.
“This doesn’t sound like you’re turning down the heat though,” Holt said.
Just like the Ministry of Truth in 1984 or the Ministry of propaganda in Germany in the 1930’s, it’s a state sponsored department. They go after one politician for the things that others did.
It’s a time suck for some, it causes mental illness in teenage girls and is a propaganda tool now.
It’s being weaponized against the users and they don’t know it.
While I think that it has crossed the Maginot line of some not being able to shut it off, it is being used as a weapon against us now. It probably has for a long time. It was a political football that was kicked around when they started banning people for not thinking the same way the Silicon Valley tech moguls think.
Before the meat of this story, let’s not forget that Tik Tok is also a Chinese spy tool.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cyber-influence campaigns against Western democracies on social media have become more frequent, sophisticated, and effective in recent years, with more Chinese government agencies, such as Qi An Xin, becoming involved.
Named “Gaming Public Opinion,” the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) included data collection spanning Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Sina Weibo, and ByteDance products.
It reveals previously unreported CCP cyber-influence operations, such as one called the “Spamouflage network,” in which inauthentic accounts are used to spread claims that the United States is irresponsibly conducting cyber-espionage operations against China and other countries.
“The CCP has used these cyber-enabled influence operations to seek to interfere in U.S. politics, Australian politics, and national security decisions, undermine the Quad and Japanese defence policies, and impose costs on Australian and North American rare-earth mining companies,” the report said.
A Spamouflage account called Erin Chew claimed to live in Sydney. (screenshot/ASPI report)
The most notable Chinese party-state agencies involved include the People’s Liberation Army’s Strategic Support Force, which conducts cyber operations as part of the army’s political warfare; the Ministry of State Security, which conducts covert operations for state security; the Central Propaganda Department, which oversees China’s domestic and foreign propaganda efforts; the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which enforces China’s internet laws; and the Cyberspace Administration of China, which regulates China’s internet ecosystem.
Chinese state media outlets and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials are also running clandestine operations that seek to amplify their own overt propaganda and influence activities.
The account of user 7763546981 has a headshot of a public security bureau. (screenshot/ASPI report)
Private Chinese Companies Assisting Government Agencies
In addition, the authors found that private Chinese companies collaborate with CCP agencies in their operations.
In a recent coordinated CCP propaganda campaign named “Operation Honey Badger” (蜜獾行动) by Chinese government-linked entities, for instance, Chinese cybersecurity company Qi An Xin (奇安信) supporting the influence operation.
“We uncover new evidence to suggest that the MPS, with the support of cybersecurity company Qi An Xin, may be involved in this campaign,” they wrote.
“The company has the capacity to seed disinformation about advanced persistent threats to its clients in Southeast Asia and other countries… It’s deeply connected with Chinese intelligence, military, and security services and plays an important role in China’s cybersecurity and state security strategies.”
As of April 2023, the “Operation Honey Badger” campaign continues to attribute cyber-espionage operations to the U.S. government.
Evidence that Chinese officials and state media retweeted tweets from Spamouflage accounts. (screenshot/ASPI report)
Clive Hamilton, the Australian academic who authored “Silent Invasion,” said he agrees with the arguments made in the ASPI report.
Hamilton said he believes the CCP’s goal of manipulating public opinion remains the same, but the way it actually does it is changing.
As countries such as Australia have strengthened legislation and law enforcement to counter foreign interference, it has become more difficult for Beijing to carry out on-the-ground missions in those countries. That’s why underground work through networks is all the more important, he told Radio Free Asia.
Clive Hamilton, author of “Silent Invasion,” speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in “A Conversation on Chinese Influence in Australia and Beyond” in Washington on Oct. 18, 2018. (Wu Wei/Epoch Times)
Solution: Strengthen legislation, intelligence sharing, and cooperate with social media
The authors suggest governments review foreign interference legislation and consider mandating that social media platforms disclose state-backed influence operations and other transparency reporting to increase the public’s threat awareness.
In addition, they appeal to partners and allies to share more intelligence with one another on such influence operations.
“Strong open-source intelligence skills and collection capabilities are a crucial part of investigating and attributing these operations, the low classification of which should making intelligence sharing easier,” they argued.
On the other hand, social media platforms are urged to remove access to those analytics for suspicious accounts breaching platform policies, making it difficult for identified malicious actors to measure the effectiveness of influence operations.
It’s like the movie War Games. The media is the enemy this time. The emerging pattern is that they’ve started (and lost) almost all of the wars recently. This war is against the middle class, the everyday Joe six-pack and flyover country.
The high IQ part of this is to ignore them and pay attention to the facts.
This is their manual for vaccine propaganda. It’s all right there in it. All the tactics spelled out with instructions. When people say it seems like they are “reading from a script”, well they actually are. This is the script.
I finally found a lot of people like me. I’ll link to the article below, but the comments by the people are most revealing.
I thought I lived on an island regarding Covid and the jab. I now see a lot of people who have been through these scares before, don’t trust the government, saw through the propaganda, actually looked at the science, refused to be sheep and various other reasons.
I saw the pattern developing early that caused me not to trust anyone on this. There was too much pressure and not enough evidence of anything but the 1930’s in Germany all over. I wasn’t going to line up and comply like a sheep being led to slaughter
I find this refreshing to see that the beating I took over not being jabbed was worth it. It will go down as one of the biggest scamdemics pushed on us. Note how much the word trust is used.
Excerpt:
In the bigger picture if you want to fill up your faith cup and recognize the scale of commonsense assembly in our nation, take the time to read through the 2,000+ responses.
The feedback you are providing is exceptional and trust me when I say that far more people are reading these responses than you could fathom. Additionally, the responses have reasserted my belief in the scale of our national assembly. There are far more of us, ordinary, hardworking, commonsense, pragmatic and smart people, than the self-described intellectual elites would ever admit.
In addition to the responses below, there have been hundreds of emails answering the question, which suddenly made me realize that no one has really ever asked this question before in a format that provides ordinary people with the ability to respond.
There is also a yearning to talk about this issue, publicly and with deliberation; massively so. And I am hopeful (insert grin here) this small corner of the internet is about to push this conversation into a much larger national forum. Our nation needs a big conversation about this.
If I had to pick a single phrase to encapsulate the myriad of phenomenal responses to the question I would use the phrase, “intellectual discernment”; which again provides buckets of faith that a large number of people are wide awake, albeit part of what I call a potato revolution growing safely underground.
Also, unbeknownst to front page readers I am stunned at the people in/around operation warp-speed, these are people in government directly attached to the issue, who have contacted CTH on the backside, stepped forward and said they also didn’t take the shot because, well, despite their belief in the purpose and principle at the time, things were just not adding up and ultimately seemed sketchy. They couldn’t talk (so they felt), couldn’t even hint at their concern; but when it came to making the personal decision, they waited.
I also owe it to you to answer the question of my own status, which is a big heck no – I did not take the jab.
Why? Because in the preceding years of all my research into the rapidly exposed corruption of our government, there was just no way in hell I was going to trust that same system. A system that literally was working outside the constitution and legal framework of our nation to destroy a sitting U.S. President is going to suddenly care about my health. Nope, it did not align. I also looked at the datapoint of the U.S.S. Comfort delivered to New York City under the grandest of media proclamations about impending medical doom, only to see the ship sit empty and completely unused despite the scale of the narrative that surround its purpose.
Lastly, and more obliquely, the datapoint of one of my heroes Franklin Graham assembling a NY field hospital to serve over 20,000 patients; another massive endeavor that sat empty and without use. However, prior to the hindsight, it was the in-real-time fight from officials in/around the area who tried to block Samaritans Purse from setting up the facility. If the SARS-CoV-2 issue was as great a threat as declared, then why would anyone fight to keep out a field hospital that could provide such relief. It just didn’t make sense.
Those issues, and others, formed the baseline of my inability to reconcile the key issue of ‘trust’ needed to believe in the vaccine. Additionally, I am healthy and not within any of the risk factors. However, I also feel strongly that each health decision is unique to the individual person, and everyone was making the best decisions for them based on the available information at the time; so, I carry no judgement for those who made a different choice.
A relative of mine continues to get his news from the alphabet channels. I just ask if he wants to find out what went on like he said, why is he watching the news?
I have another friend that listens to NPR, another source of propaganda. I can’t tell him anything either.
Why, because they circle the wagons to protect their lies, power, control and money. It’s been that way since the beginning of man. There are power seekers always. Those that want to do good, will do it for others. Not only are they afraid of losing power, they are afraid of being exposed as liars.
First it was everyone should be vaxxed, then you had to get it, then you would get fired if you don’t and all the talking heads signed up for the message. We of course are finding out that the jab didn’t stop you from getting Covid or transmitting it. In fact it’s killing more than it’s saving in the 18-64 range.
Now they are attacking Joe Rogan, who is a liberal, for not carrying the water on the state controlled propaganda. Today, Peppermint Patti Psaki went after him. How this girl can look herself in the mirror knowing how much she is lying and contorting the truth is astounding. She’ll never be trusted again, although she’ll probably get a book contract.
I know when I was trying to get educated on the Covid Vaccine, the one thing that kept bothering me was why were they pushing it so hard. Any evidence of it’s efficacy or side affects were brushed aside. They didn’t even seem to pursue the truth for trying to force it on everyone. When they were all lining up on this is the only way to get cured, I instinctively knew they had an agenda. That inspired me to start looking at all sides of how to deal with it. The truth is coming out and a lot of people got hurt or died needlessly. They could have cured and ended Covid as has been done in parts of India, Africa and now Japan.
Obviously Rogan has challenged that agenda by having guests Dr. Robert Malone who invented mRNA, Jordan Peterson who has rational thoughts and other educated people who have actual science facts.
Once again, this coordinated attack by leftists on (anyone who doesn’t fall in line, in this case) a liberal, is as big of a red flag as you could want to know they are lying again.
The money the government has wasted on Covid is now more that WWI and WWII combined. A lot of government officials are surprisingly far more wealthy than before Covid, so do the math there.
My advice is if there isn’t a challenge out there as to whether there is more than one side of the story, it stinks. It stinks to low or high hell it’s so bad. Just like the lie that everyone has to get jabbed, it is a lie by people who are using the same propaganda tactics that was done in Germany in the 30’s.
If you don’t know by now, I don’t have much if any respect for opinions from Hollywood. If they can choose what is bad or morally wrong, they make that decision more often than not. I worked with the mainstream media so I know they are biased and lie consistently and constantly. Psaki likes for Biden every day.
We also now know Fauci lied, as did Bill Gates on the origins of Covid and the vaccine.
They can’t take it that Rogan got cured by what they were trying to ban, because it was cheap and worked. If they had used it what Rogan did, we’d be a fully and open economy with well people and less deaths.
It’s not about Rogan, it’s about his guests who are telling the truth, exposing these people in Government, hollyweird, and the MSM. No wonder they are circling the wagons.
Delusions of Adequacy 