The Federal Election Campaign Act outlaws campaign contributions from foreigners. But since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates to unlimited anonymous “dark money,” how can that rule be enforced? No one knows how many rubles the Russian state donated to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. But we can see how handsomely Elon Musk’s investment has paid off for him. And we’re beginning to see what Vladimir Putin – the world’s real richest man – expects to reap from his.

As the Cold War receded into history, Russia launched a 19th-century-style war of conquest against Ukraine, with a 21st-century twist: the dangling sword of nuclear holocaust, a saber Putin does not hesitate to rattle. Balancing on that razor edge, Joe Biden did his best to back Ukraine in a 20th-century-style proxy war without pushing Putin’s button.

But the invasion of Ukraine turned out to be a brilliant diversionary tactic in an altogether new kind of war. Writing in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum gave it a name: “The New Propaganda War.” Like the Cold War, it’s a battle of ideologies, pitting Russia and its allies against the U.S.A. and the “Free World.” This time Russia’s allies are a loose coalition of authoritarian regimes, from Iran to China, along with far-right movements in virtually every developed nation; the ideology is not Communism but dictatorship itself.

The Pentagon was caught off guard because Putin’s offensive – an amalgam of cyberwar and psy-ops – threatens no military targets. Cyberwar is conventionally understood as an attack on a country’s digital infrastructure, subject to defense and counterattack. But Putin aimed not at our computer networks but at our minds, launching salvo after salvo of viral assaults through thousands of human trolls, automated bots, and bogus social media accounts.

Most right-wing extremists have no clue how many of the memes and “alternative facts” they propagate were seeded by Russian propaganda. People attempting to track the spread of disinformation, including nonprofits, academic institutions, even the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, found themselves under attack in the courts by Republicans who insist that “freedom of speech” protects the right to lie. Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Applebaum that we were even less prepared to detect foreign election interference in 2024 than we were in 2020.

The U.S. is not the only target. The New Propaganda War operates through hundreds of radio, TV, and internet outlets, mostly in developing nations, which broadcast propaganda disguised as news and entertainment 24/7. Russian propaganda was instrumental in the Brexit campaign, and tirelessly paints Ukraine as the villain rather than the victim of Putin’s war.

The objectives are twofold. One is to discredit democracy and the relatively open society it has fostered by exposing the injustices and hypocrisies behind its egalitarian facade. The other is to fracture the alliance of democracies that has maintained peace in Europe since 1945, chiefly by denouncing U.S. neocolonial aggression in other parts of the world.

But Applebaum’s revelations came too late. Flush with victory over Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” in the Old Propaganda War, the world’s mightiest military machine was hopelessly outclassed in the new one. On November 5, 2024, by the slimmest of majorities, the United States of America officially surrendered.

“Cyberwar” Is Not a Metaphor!

What we are witnessing now is the giddy fulfillment of the radical right’s longtime dream of cutting the federal government down to bathtub size. But it’s also the ultimate objective of any military campaign: not just to conquer the enemy but to dismantle its government and military capability. Trump has fired the top brass in every branch of service, including the U.S. Cyber Command. His Defense Secretary is a loyal amateur. Putin is decapitating and dismembering our nation without the bother of landing troops, marching on Washington, and raising the Russian flag over the Capitol.

The triumphant Republicans in Congress seem completely unaware that they have overthrown their own Republic by ushering the wily Greeks inside the walls of Troy. But does Trump himself realize that he is Putin’s Trojan Horse? He obviously shares the ideology of dictatorship. He is gleefully betraying his duty to the Constitution. But is Trump consciously committing treason?

The Mueller Report found plenty of evidence, but no proof. Veteran war correspondent Lucian Truscott, however, asks a more practical question: Cui bono – who benefits? He enters as evidence Trump’s executive order gutting the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which houses the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

A White House press release accused Voice of America of spreading lies and “radical propaganda.” Putin would agree: it’s an open secret that VOA is a CIA operation. So is another agency eviscerated by Trump, according to Truscott: the National Endowment for Democracy, home of the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, the Journal of Democracy, the World Movement for Democracy, and the Center for International Media Assistance.

All these propaganda efforts were deployed throughout the Cold War in our government’s ideological offensive against the Soviets. As reprehensible as the CIA’s role in the Old Propaganda War was – and as ineffectual as it’s been in the new one – Truscott’s question stands. Cui bono?

I found more evidence, but still no proof, in Craig Unger’s 2018 book House of Trump, House of Putin, chronicling Trump’s dealings with the Russian “mafiya” and its kingpin, Vladimir Putin. Trump lacks the discipline and discretion to be an undercover agent, but has the street smarts, the heartless avarice, and the criminal instincts of a born gangster. As early as the 1970s he drifted into the orbit of New York City’s underworld, and after the fall of the U.S.S.R. began doing business with Russian gangsters transplanted from the Old Country.

Trump’s primary businesses, real estate and gambling, happen to be precisely the ones best suited for laundering money. Dozens of condos in Trump developments are owned through shell companies by Russian mobsters who paid in cash. Trump Taj Mahal, his flagship casino, has racked up multiple violations of the record-keeping and reporting requirements that combat money laundering. And after each of Trump’s six bankruptcies, Russian cash bailed him out and gave him a fresh start. Just follow the money. Cui bono?

What Would Ronald Reagan Think?

Naomi Klein devotes a chapter of her book The Shock Doctrine to post-Cold War Russia. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, Mikhail Gorbachev’s hopes of transforming Russia into a socialist paradise on the Scandinavian model were hijacked by Western business interests. Almost immediately the democratic institutions imposed by the West fell victim to what Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” Homegrown entrepreneurs stepped in to exploit the free-for-all that replaced the corrupt centrally-planned Soviet economy. State-owned industries, infrastructure, and natural resources – oil, timber, minerals, steel – were auctioned for a fraction of their value.

But Unger’s book fills a crucial gap in Klein’s account: these freshly-minted billionaires were not just entrepreneurs, but former agents of the KGB and members of the Russian mob, which according to Unger were one and the same. Under Putin’s protection, his KGB cronies emerged from the shadows as the notorious “Russian oligarchs.” Using the ruthless methods of secret police everywhere, they divvied up the spoils of privatization, exporting billions of rubles via a plethora of shell companies.

The profits of Russian industry, banking, and resource extraction have been disappearing into the world’s havens for untraceable wealth ever since. The suitcases of cash that floated Trump’s business empire came directly from the looting of the Russian economy, which has impoverished millions of ordinary Russians and devastated Russian society.

After a hostile corporate takeover, standard practice is to strip the target company of everything of value, sell off its assets and pocket the proceeds. This is what is happening to the Russian economy under the gangster oligarchs. And this is precisely the plan for the U.S.A. under Trump and Putin’s hostile takeover of democracy.

But as The Shock Doctrine demonstrates, this is the very model the One Percent has been following all along: hollowing out the global economy and privatizing the public sector to exponentially compound their own wealth. When local resistance arises, their dark-money minions send in the Marines, the CIA, or a Pentagon-funded proxy dictator. The CIA torture manuals, U.S.-trained death squads, and countless other examples reveal an underlying strategy indistinguishable from the B-movie gangster cliché, “Pay up or I break your legs!”

Until now, the geopolitical scenario has resembled a B-movie featuring three ruthless rival gangs – Russia, China, and the U.S.A. – skirmishing for turf, sweet-talking or strong-arming weaker nations into their respective spheres of “protection.” One of the gangs, however, was constrained by a code of democratically enacted laws that limited its ruthlessness, at least toward a protected class of citizens, and required a certain amount of transparency. Until now.

As corrupt and unjust as our political system unquestionably is, its gangland competitors are much, much worse. Naturally, since long before Trump the corporate kingpins have been striving to catch up – legalizing high-tech surveillance to catch up with China, criminalizing protest to catch up with Russia. But at this point, all that stands between us and the world of Orwell’s 1984, with its three contending authoritarian superpowers, is our deeply flawed democracy . . . and our willingness to defend it.

Donald Trump won re-election by pledging to run the Deep State “mafiya” out of Washington. When all but his most venal or dimwitted supporters realize which side he’s really on, that will forge the unity and outrage the American people need to “drain the swamp” ourselves.

Or should that be “if”? We can’t afford to wait and find out. Find a May Day protest here and join the resistance!

Note: These are my personal opinions and do not represent any organization I’m involved in. If my words resonate for you, please share widely. You can subscribe (or unsubscribe) at StephenWing.com. Read previous installments of “Wingtips” here.

References:

Anne Applebaum article: https://www.rsn.org/001/the-new-propaganda-war.html

Lucian Truscott article: https://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-usaid

An interview with Craig Unger: https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/05/craig-unger-trump-wont-betray-putin-after-40-years-of-russian-money/

Is Trump a Russian asset? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/2/21/2305351/-Magic-Disappearing-DB-Story-About-Allegations-Trump-Was-Recruited-as-a-Russian-Asset

Thom Hartmann, “Does Putin Own Trump?” https://hartmannreport.com/p/does-putin-own-trump-48b

America’s Oligarchs: https://www.rsn.org/001/why-americas-oligarchs-may-regret-their-obedience.html