A former senior intelligence officer from a democratic country has told Jerusalem Online that the latest sex scandal may be part of a broad psych-op disinformation campaign aimed at weakening democracy via scandal overload.
He was referring to the latest global sex scandal, in which approximately a dozen (so far) over a dozen broad range of Western leaders, public figures and celebrities have been named as having participated in high-octane sex parties, which included sex with teenagers. Prince Andrew, Former President Bill Clinton, leading jurist and attorney Prof. Alan Dershowitz, are among the people named as having participated in these parties.
According to the source, Putin, who was a senior KGB officer before entering politics is very familiar with such types of psychological warfare operations, and believes they can have significant value. “The KGB were past masters at using disinformation in effective psychological warfare campaigns, very skillful at concocting a mixture of the proven, the probable and the possible to create the plausible.”
Putin is probably the mastermind behind this. He understands that the greater the level of Western public distrust in their leaderships, the weaker leadership becomes, and the less capable it is of garnering public support to confront dictatorships seeking to ensure their survival by aggressive foreign policies. He believes he has the measure of Obama, Merkel, Hollande and Cameron. He does not see even one bold inspirational Western leader, someone even vaguely cast in the mold of a Churchill or Roosevelt, a statesman with the courage of conviction, willing to fight for what he or she believes in.
He believes that by eroding public support of, and belief and confidence in their democracies and their establishments, he can further undermine and weaken Western leadership, making it easier for him to manipulate them into acquiescing into whatever geo-political moves he and his dictator allies may be planning.
“I am not sure this is Putin alone,” he said. “We know he is a very sophisticated thinker, but so are Khamenei, Kim Jong Un and IS leader Al Baghdadi, much more so than most Westerners realize.” They, like their ideological forefathers Hitler, Stalin and Mao, understand that ultimately their battle with the West is a battle of willpower and ideas.
“They believe that the more disenchantment they can create with democracy and democratic values, the less willpower there will be to defend them. Nothing can erode public confidence and weaken its belief in their leaders and their system as much as scandal overload and this is what they are doing … This current scandal has all the signs of such an operation… Perhaps 20% of the allegations can be proven, the rest are somewhere between possible and probable, but package it and sell it right, and it becomes highly plausible, generating just the kind corrosive scandal that can be so effective at weakening Western leadership, confidence and resolve.
“The USSR regularly used such tactics, often very successfully in manipulating Western public opinion. Today, in the social-media cyber-media age we live in, it’s even easier.”
Professor Haim Assa, whose recently published book “When Marx Meets Nietzsche in Cyberspace: Revolutionary Praxis and the Will to Power in Twenty-First-Century Revolution” deals with the creation and nurturing of public opinion in the cyber-media age agrees wholeheartedly with this. Assa is considered one of Israel’s renaissance men. He has advanced degrees in both mathematics and philosophy. However he not just an arm chair theorist. He has experienced real-politick at the highest levels, having been Itzhak Rabin’s NSA (National Security Adviser). He is considered one of the world’s leading experts in cyber warfare and cyber-media campaigns.
“Undoubtedly it is much easier even for rank amateurs to manipulate the media and influence public opinion in today’s cyber-media era. For practiced skilled professionals such as any halfway competent intelligence agency would have, or can buy, it’s practically a piece of cake…I believe that this scenario is not as far-fetched as might be thought, and merits serious investigation by relevant competent agencies.”
By Yoni Ariel/www.jerusalemonline.com
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