No surprise there.
False and conspiratorial narratives pushed by some American conservative politicians and media figures about Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine have bolstered and created synergies with the Kremlin’s legendary disinformation machine, experts on information manipulation say.
Led by Tucker Carlson at Fox News, a few Republican rightwingers in Congress, and some key conservative activists, a spate of comments that have disparaged Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and echoed other Russian war disinformation have been recycled by Moscow, say experts.
A feedback loop between the Kremlin and parts of the American right has been palpable since the war’s start in February, which Moscow falsely labeled as a “special military operation” aimed at stopping “genocide” of Russians in Ukraine and “denazification” – two patently bogus charges that drew widespread international criticism.
Still, the influential figure of Carlson has pushed several false narratives to millions of Fox News viewers that have been eagerly embraced and recycled by Moscow and parts of the American right. Last month, for example, Carlson touted rightwing conspiracies that attempted to link Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to a discredited allegation that the US financed bioweapons labs in Ukraine.
On a separate front, two Republican congressional conservatives, Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, delighted Moscow last month by condemning Zelenskiy without evidence in conspiracy-ridden terms that sparked some bipartisan criticism. Cawthorn called Zelenskiy a “thug” and his government “incredibly corrupt”, while Greene similarly charged that Zelenskiy was “corrupt”.