Andy Burnham has said Russia did interfere with the Brexit referendum and warned that similar activities were taking place in France and Germany.
The prime minister told The Rest is Politics podcast that upon arriving in No 10, he had asked about possible Russian interference in the 2016 vote, adding: “I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.”
“I think we’ve been too much on the back foot on that actually and we haven’t informed people sufficiently about the extent to which people are seeking to disrupt the political process from overseas,” he added.
No mention of Cambridge Analytica? I mean, I’m sure the russians put in a coin or two because the breakup was very much in their interest, but I’ve yet to see clear public proof of it other than various politicians claiming ‘it’s clear’.
Meanwhile there’s actual proof CA influenced elections and are probably working with the christo-fascists whose open goal is to break up the EU, so to me, in retrospect, it looks like maga and the US are the bigger fish here.
Cambridge Analytica had a number of ties to Russia. And using some sort of intermediary is kind of common Russian practice, in terms of how they handle foreign influence ops.
Even if the company is western, it’s Russia to blame?
If they’ve sold out to Russia then yeah, obviously? Being “western” doesn’t make some incorruptible unwavering bastion of “the west” serving only “western” interests and using “western” thought
“IF”. Do you really think that west is not interfering all around the globe?
Being a campist is playing out pretty badly for you in this thread, eh?
How does this comment add anything to the conversation? Instead of showing proofs that Russia is behind CA interference in Brexit I hear only insults.
If there were no such thing as front companies, your comment might make sense.
Right, every such company is a front to Russia, eh. Even without evidence, but yes, it has to be Russia everywhere.
The clear implication is that there is classified proof.
Cambridge Analytica provided data that allowed their clients to influence elections. If we’re pointing fingers we should start with the people pulling the strings, not the enablers. And in the case of Brexit, CA were apparently not that involved.
I had a recruiter from CA pushing hard to get me to interview. So glad i noped out of it.
No shit…
It was obvious while it was happening. At the same time the US was electing Trump and a far right nationalist was gaining popularity in France. You weren’t connecting the dots?
I genuinely think that Europe didn’t have US capitulation on their bingo card.
At the same time, Canada, of all places, had a hard right showing.
We know Russia was in on in, and doing dirty work, but were they the Origin? Is this a multi-national cabal? Is this Oligarch central?
Reap what you sow
What did Britain sow in Russia? Are you still mad about them supporting the Whites in the civil war?
Western European countries disrupting Democratic institutions globally for centuries. From propaganda and misinformation to outright assassinating elected leaders. The fact it’s happening to western countries is karma.
Wait you mean
checks notes
Exactly what Putin did to get in power and stay in power?
There are only so many times you can say no shit sherlock.
We need to normalize bombing AI not factories like this. Precision strikes to IRA locations. Russia wouldn’t do shit in retaliation or Putin goes down as well.
I knew it!
Politicians being so out of touch with international politics that they’re not aware of outside interests in destroying the EU… That they’ll do a Brexit without expecting international interference. That’s the ridiculous thing.
That Britain went ahead and did it, is the ridiculous thing.
What’s more elections these days are becoming questionable and will only become more questionable with the prevalance of AI culture bots.
Look at it this way: States that don’t have democracy are common in the world today. States that don’t have democracy tend to be rightwing and authoritarian.
It should be assumed that outside interference will then be rightwing and authoritarian in nature… And we’re seeing that trend play out globally now. Gee I wonder why!
…and also masquerading as left wing goons to spread confusion
this is why social media needs authentication. can’t be social media without real people
also check out mr hindsight blaming the victim lol
The internet does not need authentication, that is single-handedly the worst thing that can still happen to us is to lose our free spaces.
If you want authentication. Go join Facebook, Reddit, and all the other large corpo sites that are rolling it out en masse so your face can end up in a Palantir or similar database which will not lead to anything good happening for you.
I agree with this. Getting online in general should NOT require authorization/authentication. But the big guys - Facebook, reddit, tiktok, etc? I do see the argument there.
You think buck tooth farage didn’t know he was doing precisely this?
“Russia is behind the problems in our country” is the Liberal’s version of the Far-Right’s “Immigrants are behind the problems in our country” - blame the foreigners rather than the extremely wealthy people who own the news media that relentlessly pushes this shit and subsidize far-right politicians and lobbyist offices and hard-neoliberal “Think Tanks” pushing for laws that help their economic interest whilst making life worse for everybody else.
Specifically for Britain and Brexit, it takes some seriously selective memory to “forget” how the Newspapers owner by Murdoch and the Rothermere family were pushing extra hard nationalism and anti-immigration for decades in the run-up to Brexit, very openly for people voting Leave during the Referendum and some seriously unhinged takes on how Britain should negotiate the Exit Treaty with the EU.
Also, don’t get me started on how the choices made by both New Labour and Tories in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash, both the unconditional saving of the wealth of the Asset owners (both the way banks were saved and the choices of the BOE which went way beyond just setting interest rates and even included buying corporate bonds from selected companies) and making most of the population pay for it with crushing Austerity. very much plowed, fertilized and seeds the field upon which Brexit was born.
Next to what was done by 100% local billionaires and their politician minions, foreign interference was minuscule.
And I think it is worth repeating because I don’t see enough of it being mentioned when reflecting about Brexit. It was a non bing referendum. They could have done another one, especially after the first years before the deadline when people started to realize what Brexit really means. Or they could just ignore it, is not like the UK thinks twice before enacting some wide unpopular legislation (like the Internet porn ones). The people that could have stopped wanted Brexit, new how shit it would be and they just needed a scape goat, referendum, foreign influence, it is all shifting blame.
PS: That is not to say there was no interference, but that it was a welcomed one and they could have done something about it, even post referendum, because, again, IT WAS NON BINDING
More things can be true at the same time, it’s absolutely possible tha both russia influence and rich idiots influence politics
Oh, I have no doubt in my mind that Russia put their thumb on the balance to try and move things towards Brexit - geostrategically it makes sense for them to do so.
Most definitely America did the same - again it makes sense for the nation were many politicians saw the EU as an adversary and who lost tons of influence in Europe when the countries pooled together into forming the EU (especially amongst small countries, which used to be a kicking ball for great powers).
Quite possibly China did too - weakening an adversary Trade coalition makes sense for them.
It’s just that their ability to influence Britain and Britons is minuscule compare to the influence of Britain’s own elites, especially the ones who own newspapers that have been spouting rabid far-right bullshit for decades.
Brexit was build in Britain layer by layer over the last 3 decades or so, it wasn’t just cast into being in an otherwise perfect country by nasty Russian magicians.
The point I’m making is that in this Russia is an excuse to, as usual, move people’s attention away from far more powerful people in Britain and from the politicians who willingly act as their minions.
Further, having seen Brexit first hand as an immigrant in Britain, the “blame Russia” from the politicians given the huge amounts of Jingoism in Britain (much more than other European countries I lived in) stinks with the same smell as the “blame the EU” so beloved by politicians in both New Labour and the Tory Party before Brexit and shares the same ideological foundations as “blame immigrants” - blame foreigners so that the 100% British people that did most of it suffer no repercussions for their actions.
Hey I’m from the Soviet Union. I’m sadly pretty familiar with how russia does shit. Your “omg libruls tussia lol” comes from a place of abject ignorance. Just don’t say anything. Don’t pretend that you know. I know you’re full of BS. I can see right through you.
I’m not denying that Russia put their thumb on the balance, I’m saying that this shit has long been brewing in a country were amongst other things it was for years common for politicians from both main parties to blame the ills of the country on the EU.
In the “List of people who are to blame for Brexit”, Britons come first, then far behind comes America and then Russia.
I lived in the bloody place since before the 2008 Crash and throughout the whole Brexit thing and for me as an EU immigrant there it was painfully obvious that the Media and Politicians kept pushing Nationalistic Delusions Of Grandeur, anti-immigration and anti-EU, all of which then used very openly by Tory Party politicians to weave ideas such as that EU regulations where what was stopping Britain from recovery after the Crash (and beyond, to almost a British version of the MAGA ideation), that EU immigrants were the ones making cost of living go up and keeping salaries low and that when Britain left the EU the EU would give Britain the same rights as an EU member but without the obligations.
That shit was coming out of TVs, Newspapers and the mouths of British politicians.
He was either paid, or was a useful idiot.
It’s almost certainly both.
they’re not aware of outside interests in destroying the EU
They’re aware. They were just avoiding the issue.
Rightwing authoritarianism benefits corporations (helps them consolidate power) as well I think.
So… Are you going to correct the mistakes caused by this?
Yeah look back into uk political news over the past few weeks, this is almost certainly an indirect follow up to comments made about rejoining.
Gosh, now if we’d only get that kind of honesty here in the United States.
Way too many Tone Police, so-called “independents”, Murc’s Law Media, and of course wingnuts, will jump on you if you mention it here.
“Burnham did not provide further details about the type or extent of Moscow’s activity during the Brexit referendum.”
is the government/corpo complicit media equivalent of ‘trust me bro’
Getting us stoked up for a war with Russia be like.
Don’t believe their lies.
Way to keep up. Good job being ten years too late to figure out what anyone with half a brain saw a thousand times a day on the internet.
How dumb are our world leaders?
Hes only been in power a few months…
Of fucking course they did. And they did in the US and they are doing so in Canada. If you wanted to destabilize your enemies and all you really had to do was get a bunch of bots and people (paid, or coerced) to play on pre-existing dissent and fear, why the fuck wouldn’t you? Sure a lot easier and less traceable than shooting them. Best part is once you feed it enough, it turns into a self sustaining organism, and you can relax in your wing chair by the fire, vodka in hand, and watch any set of outcomes (all of which benefit you) play out.
Then, when your enemy is weakened, you gobble up the bite sized pieces you can.
It’s how they used Gaza to get trump elected in the states. The kids there cry genocide at one another and voilà! Millions of protest votes and non-voting helped elect Putin favorite puppet.
Keep in mind that none of these kids could have pointed to Gaza on a map prior to their willful sacrifice of the democracy of an entire country over it.
In before .ml users tell them it’s in their head and to stop believing imperialist lies
The actual Kremlin shills are popping up everywhere, haven’t seen anything but the normal cognitive dissonance from .ml. They’re clearly cheap and not well organized this time though. Its very odd
I wonder if there’s a connection to the Russian bot farm that was destroyed recently
It wasn’t a bot farm, it was a search engine data centre. The impact of that on trolling is likely to be minimal to none, though there’s been evidence that search spidering originating in Russia has declined a bit.
I doubt it.
Most of them have been created before the destruction of it, and are still active after.
Plus those data centers targeted much more popular platforms. Around smaller parts like these they use astroturfing on a much more manual basis.
First time?
