How Russia’s Useful Idiots Work
Foreign influence brings out our worst tendencies—and makes them seem normal.
A RUSSIAN INFLUENCE OPERATION paid millions of dollars to right-wing American “influencers” who promote Russia-friendly narratives, according to a detailed indictment alleging money laundering and other crimes. Through a company called “Tenet Media,” two Russian state media employees used nearly $10 million to fund right-wing influencers who often ape Russian propaganda, including Dave Rubin (2.45 million YouTube subscribers), Benny Johnson (2.39 million), Tim Pool (1.37 million), and Lauren Southern (712,000). Russia’s operation also allegedly built fake websites that mimicked media outlets such as the Washington Post and Fox News, and used a network of fake accounts and bots on social media to spread conspiracy theories and other Russia-friendly content.
For example, after ISIS terrorists killed 145 at a Moscow concert hall this March, Tenet Media allegedly received instructions to ask the Americans on its payroll to blame the attack on Ukraine and the United States. At least one of the influencers, believed to be Benny Johnson, cast doubt on ISIS’s claim of responsibility, and raised the (absurd) possibility that the United States was responsible.
Johnson and the other Tenet Media–paid influencers are pleading ignorance. They’re not accused of a crime, and there’s no evidence they knew the ultimate source of the payments.
But they didn’t bother looking, either. Pool reportedly got $100,000 per video for videos he was already making, and he didn’t even have to give up the rights to the videos. That surely struck him as an unusually good deal.
Apparently the crowd that defends conspiracy theories as “just asking questions” didn’t think a relevant question was “who are these people giving me a lot of money, and what do they want?”
Pool, Johnson, etc. are why we have the term “useful idiots.” And as Russia presumably knew when it picked them, they’ll remain useful, even after being exposed.
THIS IS A QUINTESSENTIAL INSTANCE of Russia’s Internet Age influence operations, which most infamously targeted the United States in the 2016 presidential election, and didn’t stop there. Their primary goal is weakening the United States—along with the European Union, NATO, and democracy—by stoking division and undermining public confidence in institutions and establishment sources of information, namely government and mainstream media.
It’s much easier to stoke preexisting divisions than to create new ones; to promote and amplify existing voices and positions rather than invent some from scratch. Russian influence operations played all sides of America’s race and policing debate, including by setting up fake Facebook groups with names such as “Black Matters,” “Don’t Shoot,” and “Back the Badge” that garnered hundreds of thousands of members before Meta shut them down.
It’s not a coincidence that the American (and Canadian) influencers Russia promoted are right-wing culture warriors—the sort who cast themselves and their followers as victims of the nearly-all-powerful forces of “wokeness,” complain about being “silenced” in videos viewed by millions, and present a mix of personal opinion and falsehoods as the secret truth some ambiguous They “don’t want you know.”
A lot of culture war divisiveness is organically American. But for America’s foreign adversaries, especially those like Vladimir Putin who promote right-wing cultural views, the more the merrier.
Even better are Western voices directly promoting Russian interests, especially on Russia’s current top concern: Ukraine. Russian influence operations don’t really aim to convince skeptical people that something false is real. That rarely works. Rather, they aim to give people already inclined to support Russia’s position something to say, and to muddy the waters enough that average people get frustrated and check out.
MOST PEOPLE HAVE STRONG personal opinions on a few issues, and otherwise get their stances from elite cues. Rather than ask, What do I think? about every issue and seek out politicians who agree, most affiliate with a group—based on their top personal issue, or sometimes just acculturation—and then ask, What does my side think about this?
We can see signs of Republicans following elite cues on Ukraine. In March 2022, a month into the war, most Republicans wanted to help Ukraine stand up to Russian aggression. In a Pew survey, 49 percent of Republicans said the United States was not helping Ukraine enough, with another 23 percent saying the amount of aid was “about right,” and just 9 percent saying it was too much. That was a little more supportive than Americans as a whole.
By September 2022, the numbers had flipped, with Republicans’ most popular answer being that we were helping Ukraine “too much” (32 percent), followed by “about right” (30 percent) and “not enough” (16 percent). They were less supportive of Ukraine than Americans on average and have been ever since. At the end of 2023, 48 percent of Republicans wanted to reduce aid to Ukraine, outnumbering “about right” (20 percent) and “not enough” (13 percent) combined.
It’s hard to explain this flip-flop without elite cues. A negative opinion of Ukraine aid at the end of 2023 could be a reaction to the costly and largely unsuccessful counteroffensive earlier that year, but in September 2022, Ukraine was retaking territory. American policy was consistent throughout: No U.S. troops, only assistance, primarily via older equipment, along with ammunition production upgrades the Pentagon had been wanting to do, all worth less than a tenth of the annual U.S. military budget.
What changed? Republican leaders.
Republican voters’ quick support for Ukraine, a U.S.-partnered European democracy, against Russian invasion reflected the old Reaganite worldview. But Donald Trump reacted to the invasion by praising Putin, calling the move “genius” and “savvy.” Influential right-wing figures such as Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Sen. Mike Lee—along with online influencers like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson—pushed Russia-friendly narratives. And millions of their followers came around.
The Republican shift is far from costless. From fall 2023 into spring 2024, Republicans delayed Ukraine aid in Congress. Bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate supported it, but a large faction of Republicans did not, and Speaker Mike Johnson refused to allow a vote. By the time Congress passed the support bill, the manufactured delay-caused shortages of ammunition and other essentials had enabled Russian advances and allowed more Ukrainians to die.
We don’t know if the delay in aid would have been shorter if not for Russian influence operations. What we know is that the Kremlin and MAGA Republicans push in the same direction, the effect is greater than zero, and Russia wouldn’t keep devoting money and operatives to the effort if they thought it wasn’t serving their interests.
RUSSIAN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS didn’t swing a sizable percentage of American opinion on their own—not even close. A variety of Americans oppose U.S. aid to Ukraine for a variety of reasons, some would have argued against it no matter what, and not all of them are voting for Trump or consuming right-wing media.
But the Russian influence agents know that.
They weren’t convincing people who support Ukraine, and the Western democratic alliance more broadly, to switch sides. But they probably strengthened the convictions of some anti-Ukraine Americans, contributed to making their position mainstream in the Republican party, and spread it more widely.
If you oppose Russia’s aggression, this wouldn’t make you think otherwise, but by perpetuating and amplifying Russia-sympathetic arguments, it may have helped convince you that the anti-Ukraine stance is more widespread than it actually is, and therefore warrants more consideration in public debate.
It’s not election-swinging on its own, but it’s worth opposing in the name of sovereignty and democracy. Americans should decide American elections absent foreign manipulation, and with the most accurate information possible.
For that reason, it’s good that the Justice Department chose to expose this operation now, before the election. Perhaps we’ve learned something since the Obama administration, which didn’t tell the public about Russia’s operation targeting the 2016 election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doubted the CIA’s conclusions that Russia was hacking U.S. targets and trying to elect Trump. McConnell told the White House he would consider public pushback on Russia an act of partisan politics, and Obama, who as president had the authority to disclose the information no matter what the Senate Majority Leader thought, decided not to.
The government is more on the lookout for foreign influence operations, especially from Russia, and took action to counter it. Instead of a presidential announcement, disclosure came via a detailed indictment filed in court.
By going public now, the Justice Department informed voters about Russia’s ongoing efforts and undermined this operation. The Russia-paid influencers have less credibility on Ukraine. YouTube closed Tenet Media’s channel. Websites and independent media figures may be warier of getting involved with this sort of thing in the first place.
However, while the U.S. government can expose specific influence operations, there remains a large swath of the American right that sees Putin’s Russia as an ally against the “real” enemy—the broadly defined Left—and is eager to believe Russian propaganda as long as it’s negative about Americans they don’t like. That’s a harder problem.
 | A guest post by
|