It began on the evening of Sunday 25 May, when Emmanuel Macron arrived in Vietnam with his wife, Brigitte, at the start of an official tour of Southeast Asia. As the pair disembarked at Hanoi airport, a few press agency cameras caught a fleeting moment: Brigitte Macron’s hand moved toward her husband’s face. He appeared […]
A far-right racist conspiracy theorist who once claimed that “Hitler actually had some decent points” is now being welcomed as a thought leader by the U.S. Secretary of State. Michael Benz’s ideas—once confined to anonymous white nationalist forums—are now being cited to justify the dismantling of American institutions like the foreign aid agency USAID and […]
Russia’s long-term objective in the global information war has never been to convince the world of its version of events. Instead, it seeks to erode the very idea that objective truth exists. The Kremlin’s goal, as described by British journalist Peter Pomerantsev, is to create a world where “nothing is true and everything is possible.” This strategy […]
Donald Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has attracted global ridicule for spewing Kremlin conspiracy theories about Ukraine being a “false country” while lauding war criminal and dictator Vladimir Putin as “super smart and gracious”. In an extensive interview with pro-Russia far right broadcaster Tucker Carlson, Witkoff declared that Putin “was not a bad guy” and […]
In the first edition of the DFRLab’s Narrative Warfare series, released on the first anniversary of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we examined narratives that claimed Ukraine had developed biological weapons that were sponsored by the West. Now, on the third anniversary of the war, we reexamined this narrative and found the conspiracies and false […]
From his early work as a journalist to being founder and editor-in-chief of Russia and Iran-supported "independent media" platform The Grayzone, Blumenthal has developed a dubious reputation for disseminating the disinformation of dictators while pushing antisemitic narratives. Beloved by fellow America-hating anti-Western "anti-imperialists" like the late John Pilger, George Galloway and Oliver Stone, his propagation […]
A relentless Kremlin campaign of disinformation and destabilisation aimed at bringing Marine Le Pen’s pro-Putin extreme right party to power in France has failed - for the moment. The upset result in the snap legislative elections placing the Rassemblement National (RN) in third place among parliamentary parties is a significant blow to Russian interests. Even […]
As France prepares to vote in the snap legislative elections’ runoff, with Marine Le Pen’s extreme right, Putin-admiring movement pushing at the gates of power, conspiracy theories are running amok. A clutch of notorious propagators of narratives spanning pro-Kremlin conspiracies, anti-vax theories, climate change denial, QAnon, and Holocaust negation have already been elected outright in […]
The French Embassy in South Africa has used humour and sarcasm to unmask a propaganda video fake being spread by official Moscow accounts purporting to feature a so-called “French soldier/mercenary” being “captured” in Ukraine by Russian forces. The video had been spread by conspiracist accounts claiming Western/Nato forces are already on the ground in Ukraine […]
Tucker Carlson’s much-hyped interview with Vladimir Putin was touted by the former Fox news anchor as a serious journalistic endeavour. But it principally offered the Russian President a cosy global platform on Elon Musk's X to promote some of his most-favored conspiracy theories, notably about Ukraine and its western allies. The Russian leader surpassed even […]
