After Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics, a phone was tampered with to assassinate one of those responsible. Mahmoud Hamshari, of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, was killed by his ornate marble base desk phone in Paris packed with explosives that detonated when he answered a call.
Twenty two years later in 1996 Yahya Ayyash, of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, was killed by his Motorola Alpha cell phone, packed with just 50g of explosives that detonated when he answered a call (from his father). Notably Ayyash himself had become infamous as a bomb maker.
At this point you might have an impression there’s a particular theme, even a signature move, to explain exploding phones.
However, to be accurate, in October 2016 Brian Green’s Samsung Note 7 caught fire on Southwest Airlines flight 994 in Louisville, Kentucky, causing an emergency evacuation. And that was after September 2016 reports surfaced of a Samsung Note 7 exploding and destroying Nathan Dornacher’s Jeep in St. Petersburg, Florida. Not to mention a 6 year old boy also in September 2016, among more than 30 other victims, rushed to hospital after a Samsung Note 7 exploded in hand.
Fast forward to today, and Lebanon is reporting nearly 3,000 Hezbollah pagers have just simultaneously exploded this afternoon, killing nine people so far according to the FT.
Pagers belonging to Hizbollah members exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 2,700 in an apparent sabotage of the low-tech systems the militant group uses to evade Israeli surveillance and assassination attempts.
The blasts took place in several areas of Lebanon including the capital Beirut, the southern city of Tyre and the western area of Hermel, as well as in parts of Syria. Images circulated on social media of explosions and of people with bloodied pocket areas, ears or faces being taken to hospital.
The damage in the Lebanese reports suggests to me this was a supply chain attack. Pagers were recently deployed, perhaps with some sense of new urgency for new devices. These could have been intercepted and sabotaged were counterfeits inserted into the supply chain (as confirmed/protested by the authentic brands themselves). They may have all be the same, but also could have been many different models or devices.
The IRA, for example, knew some cars had been bugged by British intelligence. What they didn’t know was that the supply chain was compromised such that every single car entering Ireland allegedly was bugged by the British so any of them could be triggered.
The pagers deployed widely today in Lebanon are popular because one-way, used as a receive-only device. This leads people to believe without a transmit function they are hidden, with no target surface, while still being available for calls to action. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, had warned members against cellphones, arguably making them less safe by mandating a narrow and predictable attachment to legacy technology. In reality, it’s also possible to triangulate a one-way pager based on tower signal strength and direction. But the news of exploding and easily tracked cellphones generated a great fear of using them, which is how Hezbollah ended up being targeted today.
When everyone in a particular target group is receiving the same signal at 1530 in the afternoon, and they all have just been “upgraded” to a new pager device with a tell-tale vulnerability… the implications of membership are clear. Communications will be severely interrupted among a very narrow set of specific network links.
In terms of the method used, pagers tend to have very limited internal space, a few centimeters at most. This is a shift away from assassination levels of attack. A small explosive charge, even under 20 grams, would still cause significant damage, particularly when combined with a lithium battery known for volatility. Allegedly the GApollo AP-900 was the pager in this case, however, which specifies an AAA battery.
I mean why would such a small charge be detonated to disrupt communication and cause mass suffering across Lebanon, given a history of more potent explosive methods in phones used for assassinating terrorist leaders?
My guess is that someone, either intentionally or unintentionally, just exposed how pervasively Hezbollah has been operating in Lebanon, and how they are being organized… by brightly illuminating all the endpoints. Nearly 3,000 casualties, having no other indicators than a newly distributed pager, is the strongest angle in this story. Emergency response has little choice but to put the targeted on a public map. The more that is reported about injury by association, in theory, the better the case against Hezbollah has been made.
In conclusion a method of using everyday communication devices for remote explosions has historical precedent. Similarly, massive supply-chain compromise is quite old and far more common than most realize. This incident is most interesting because it seems to indicate a strategic shift, by loudly messaging that Hezbollah’s operational reach — even among civilians and diplomats — is no secret and is vulnerabile to large scale intelligence failures.
A sales executive at the U.S. subsidiary of Japanese walkie-talkie maker Icom told The Associated Press that the exploded radio devices in Lebanon appear to be a knockoff product and not made by Icom. “I can guarantee you they were not our products,” said Ray Novak, a senior sales manager for Icom America’s amateur radio division, in an interview Wednesday at a trade show in Providence, Rhode Island. Novak said Icom introduced the V82 two-way radio model more than two decades ago and it has long since been discontinued.
The GApollo pager manufacturer CEO also has said today that the explosive devices were not made by his company, although he referred to it as a licensing deal with a Hungarian distributor. Since he calls it licensing, it almost supports the notion that no laws were broken by manufacturing an intentionally explosive model.
This basically confirms that the supply chain attack was not interception of newly made goods, and instead a targeted insertion of counterfeits or sabotaged old models into the Lebanese electronics market; remote control bombs were made to look like popular communication technology brands, to suit Hezbollah’s own stated preference for dated and inexpensive (grey market) technology.
Although it’s not uncommon for households in the Middle East to have at least an AK-47 around the house, it’s incongruous to see the three rifles and grenade launcher beside a baby’s bassinet.
American politics is experiencing a disturbing revival of anti-immigrant propaganda tactics, eerily reminiscent of some of the most shameful and harmful periods in the nation’s history. At the bottom of the barrel today is Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, whose weird and racist antics have thrust a larger, more insidious narrative into the spotlight. The following analysis examines the historical context of his tactics, their modern manifestations, and the urgent need to counter their toxic effects.
For those versed in the history of disinformation and wartime propaganda, recent events are particularly alarming. The spectacle of political candidates, vying for the highest offices in the land yet openly disseminating highly racist memes and infographics through official channels and personal social media, is more than just troubling — it’s a national security risk and should disqualify people from running for office. The fact that both the candidates for Vice President and President are engaging in this behavior represents a profound embarrassment for America on the global stage.
Their use of xenophobic rhetoric isn’t some political misstep; it’s an intentionally dangerous echo of historical tactics that have long served to divide and weaken the nation. An examination of these current events uncovers their deep roots in American history and highlights the urgent need for action against such divisive propaganda.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” Vice President Harris looked away and laughed at the comments while moderator David Muir stepped in, saying there have been no credible reports of pets being harmed by Springfield’s immigrant community. But by the time the debate was over, THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS was trending on [Nazi-publication xTwitter].
Trump’s rhetoric is strikingly similar to the propaganda used during Stanford’s era, which often depicted Chinese immigrants as consumers of things meant to invoke disgust — particularly pets such as cats and dogs. The persistence of these tactics underscores how little progress we’ve made since the days of the Chinese Exclusion Act. And here’s what is meant when people say such vile speech has been “trending” on xTwitter.
At first, statements and images spread about pets might have seemed innocuous — featuring cats or other animals in various scenarios. However, as you can see, things escalate quickly. Those familiar with American history know the rhetorical “threat” from immigrants carries echoes of toxic aggressive hate speech tactics used during previous chapters of xenophobia.
Just to be clear about the seriousness of this study and topic, I had warned on this blog way back in 2015 (nearly a decade ago!) of this exact attack vector (integrity breach) within the cybersecurity domain because of CrowdStrike antics.
Imagine a ballot for voting, and you are asked to choose between a poisonous snake or a fluffy kitten. This is a very real world example.
Vote for me!
Social psychologists have a test they call Implicit Association that is used in numerous studies to measure response time (in milliseconds) of human subjects asked to pair word concepts. Depending on their background, people more quickly associate words like “kitten” with pleasant concepts, and “tiger” more quickly with unpleasant ideas. CrowdStrike above is literally creating the associations.
And what happened with CrowdStrike recently? They caused massive global outages from failing to properly stop harmful content, which arguably was predictable and entirely avoidable. The lack of integrity controls on speech in 2015, such as their targeted use of “kitten” messaging as propaganda, should have been treated as far more of a risk indicator than people realized. I said it then, and I’ll do my best to say it here again.
History Every American Should Know: From Stanford to Trump
To grasp a renewed significance of xenophobic politicians, it’s crucial to examine some of the most challenging periods in American immigration history. The United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, a toxic work of legislation that explicitly restricted immigration based on ethnicity and nationality. It emerged from the usual politics of misdirected economic concerns with misdirected cultural tensions, manifesting into an “America First” platform of the late 1800s that campaigned for white supremacist rule like the Civil War hadn’t ended.
The 1882 act was preceded and accompanied by a widespread propaganda campaign that sought to portray immigrants as fundamentally different and incompatible with American society. One of the most notable tactics employed in this campaign was the portrayal of Chinese as consumers of things meant to invoke and represent disgust — particularly pets such as cats and dogs. A key figure behind this act was Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University and former governor of California. He gave speeches from government office that called Chinese immigrants a “degraded” race and perpetuated myths about their dietary habits, fueling discriminatory policies and violence against them (e.g., mass murder and firebombing their assets as I wrote on this blog in 2018).
1871 Chinese massacre in Los Angeles where hundreds of armed whites entered “Negro Alley” to murder its Chinese residents.
1885 the white supremacist “Knights of Labor” group was involved in fomenting a Rock Springs massacre that left dozens of Chinese miners dead
1887 white “schoolboys” tortured and murdered thirty-four Chinese miners in Oregon
1897 Lattimer massacre saw Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German miners killed by being shot in the back; a sheriff decided to end a labor protest by murdering the protesters
Such historical details are crucial to understanding how the racist attitudes of politicians like Stanford — a man very credibly accused of genocide, combined with his pattern of engaging in racist fraud — persist all the way from the end of Civil War to the 2020s unaddressed and often unaccountable in American politics and public institutions.
When was the last time you saw someone wearing a “Hitler” sweatshirt in Germany? Following World War II, American military occupation made such displays unthinkable. Yet here in the U.S., figures like Leland Stanford still have their names proudly emblazoned on universities and public spaces, despite his well-documented direct role in genocide. This stark contrast exposes America’s unresolved reckoning with its own past. While Germany underwent “denazification,” removing Nazi figures from public life, the U.S. continues to honor Stanford, allowing his harmful legacies to be swept under a rug in the heart of big tech companies and quietly normalized into public memory.
Political cartoons reflecting Stanford’s political sentiment in his day, which should be seen as almost identical to Vance’s posts today on social media, unfairly painted immigrants as a threat instead of a benefit. A particularly striking example appeared in an 1882 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, showing Chinese people cooking cats and pigs. Images were manipulated and spread, just like Vance promotes today, to heighten feelings of cultural divide as well as reinforce negative stereotypes about immigrants, falsely invoking a sense of “defense” for “vulnerable” American pets against people unfairly branded as outsiders.
Racist Propaganda as Power in America
Why is there such a focus on such a seemingly trivial aspect of culture? Because it’s a well-known military intelligence doctrine, where the real danger of this propaganda is in its ability to create charged emotional responses out of the most “innocent” and even “peaceful” symbolism. Associating immigrants with a direct threat to “defenseless” pets (let alone women and children) allows men like Vance to spin emotions, intentionally bypassing rational thought with a visceral appeal into contrived fears and revulsion. Let me remind everyone Vance briefly served as a military propagandist (as Cpl. James Hamel, news correspondent), and readily admits he has been exploiting sentiment via false claims and targeted attacks — information warfare tactics.
Vance says false claim he spread against Haitian migrants may not be true but urges followers to keep posting ‘cat memes’
Such warfare methods to “other” groups is simply a prelude to attack them, stoking conflict and strife in society to shift power through non-democratic methods. Alongside unjustified depictions of immigrants as disease carriers, drug users, and job stealers, the portrayal of them as cat eaters by Vance and Stanford is a lasting, harmful stereotype generated by American elitists who crave abrupt gains in power. The method provides a simple, emotionally charged image to be easily spread and remembered, fueling fires of xenophobic conflict, exclusionary policies and tactics meant to destabilize and poison democratic processes.
Dangerous Tactics: Food-Based Othering
The use of diet in propaganda to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment or hatred towards specific groups has been a political tactic employed throughout history. It has been used across different cultures and time periods to dehumanize and marginalize targeted groups, such as in these examples:
Nazi Germany: Propaganda systematically dehumanized targeted groups through false claims about their dietary habits and cultural practices. The infamous “blood libel” Nazi myth weirdly accused Jews of attacking children to take their blood, for example. Such baseless cannibalism and ritual murder claims were designed to falsely invoke a sense of danger to children, stoking fears to generate strife and hate. Shockingly, similar tactics were entered into modern American politics by Trump comparing immigrants to a fictional cannibal character, Hannibal Lecter, with dehumanizing food-based propaganda as xenophobic rhetoric.
British Colonial India: Propaganda often tried to stoke hate of Indians based on spice in foods. Flavor in food was framed as uncivilized or primitive, in contrast to tasteless “refined” British habits. Phrases like “curry eater” were derogatory.
Anti-Italian America: Italians face discrimination based on eating habits. Garlic and olive oil, despite being staples of fine cuisine, have been used to portray immigrants as smelly and unhygienic. Phrases like “garlic eater” were derogatory.
Islamophobic EU and America: In recent years, far-right groups in Europe and North America spread misinformation about religious food practices. They manipulate information into false claims about Muslim meat preparation, presenting humane practices as the opposite.
Anti-Mexican America: Mexicans face discrimination based on eating habits. Spices, ingredients and preparation (grease) all are used in anti-immigrant rhetoric. The phrase “beaners” is a derogatory term for someone of Mexican descent.
Another way of framing it is to see how Nazi propagandists will use “beautiful” images to stoke fear about loss. They hold up something they expect to invoke attachment, such as an innocent looking idealized child or pet, and then they falsely allege a threat to it from immigrants and outsiders. The above examples, along with the historical Chinese immigrant propaganda in the US, demonstrate a clear pattern of using such simple methods for othering and dehumanization.
By focusing on diet and coupling it with notions of idealized vulnerability, the Trump campaign propagandists know they can ramp small differences or preferences into public disgust, making it easier to justify anti-American discriminatory policies and even domestic terror.
Fueling the fire, President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as “the China virus.” “That old-school rhetoric that we eat bats, dogs and rats — that racism is still alive and well,” said Clarence Kwan, creator of the anti-racist cooking zine “Chinese Protest Recipes.” The speed with which such false stereotypes resurfaced during the pandemic is “a reflection of how little progress we’ve made,” Kwan said.
MAGA Weirdos Take America Back to the Worst Times
Nearly a century-and-a-half after the 1882 Exclusion Act, we witness a disturbing resurgence of similar xenophobic rhetoric from politicians like Trump and Vance. This deliberate continuation of historical tactics persists as if immune to scrutiny, raising alarming questions about how little has changed in American political discourse. The recent incidents involving Vance are particularly troubling, given his background as a veteran of military intelligence and propaganda. His actions demonstrate that these disinformation strategies are not mere relics of the past, but active tools in the present-day arsenal of those seeking to sow division and manipulate public opinion for political gain and even “race war”. The persistence of tactics from Stanford’s mouth to the present day politicians underscores the urgent need to finally and more comprehensively confront and dismantle these harmful narratives allowed to undermine the American political landscape.
The use of cat imagery by Vance in this modern context is particularly insidious. It provides the veneer of innocence and plausible deniability. Imagine how the Swastika was used in the years up to 1933, rapidly shifting from innocent symbolism into racist hate, dictatorship and then genocide. If challenged, the growing number of assets spreading the seed images can claim ignorance, misinterpretation or overreaction. Yet, for those familiar with the historical context, the message is clear: intentional and unmistakably aggressive attempts to campaign for fascism and an end to democracy.
Specific examples of this tactic in action include:
The use of seemingly innocent memes featuring cats to subtly invoke anti-immigrant sentiment
The spread of misleading statistics about immigrant crime rates, echoing historical tactics of portraying immigrants as threats
The promotion of “America First” rhetoric, which directly mirrors the language used by nativist movements in the early 20th century
The Stakes (Pun Not Intended) Are High
The implications of politicians like Trump and Vance using tactics reminiscent of Stanford’s era extend far beyond a single group or set of images. It raises serious questions about the penetration of xenophobic ideologies into the national security apparatus and the potential for widespread domestic terrorism attacks like those seen in the early 1900s. How are sentiments within military and intelligence communities tracked and measured relative to historic propagandist methods? What impact might such a topic (e.g., the naming of American military bases after enemy leaders) have on recruitment, unit cohesion and a capabilities to serve, especially given evidence white nationalists continue to infiltrate the armed forces?
Moreover, in an age where information spreads at the speed of pressing a button, the potential for these images and ideas to reach and influence a wide audience is unprecedented. They can contribute to the radicalization of both military personnel and civilians, potentially leading to widespread domestic terrorism attacks like the early 1900s again.
A Call to Action
It is incumbent upon American media and policy makers to recognize and respond to this threat. The public must be informed to be vigilant against a targeted resurgence of historical tactics of division and exclusion. This requires not only addressing individual incidents as they arise but also fostering a broader understanding of the historical context and implications of such propaganda used by Vance, not to mention foreign-born immigrants and extreme right-wing agitators Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
American institutions need to be strengthened against ideological infiltration, with enhanced training on dangers of propaganda and disinformation. Ideally commitment would be made to values of diversity and inclusion that made the nation strong enough to be on the right side in WWII, let alone undo the earlier Exclusion Act.
Key historical insights to understand when confronting nativist “America First” ideology and MAGA rhetoric:
The cyclical nature of racist propaganda in American history, from its origins to modern anti-immigrant sentiment
The persistent use of false or misleading claims about immigrants throughout U.S. history
The historical role of diverse coalitions in challenging xenophobic policies
The long-standing debate over education’s role in combating racist ideologies
The complex socio-economic factors that are manipulated and blamed for racist sentiments
The often-overlooked xenophobic and genocidal legacies of revered American men such as Leland Stanford
Conclusion
The resurgence of these propaganda tactics isn’t merely a recycling of old ideas, but a clear indication that the underlying xenophobic ideology persists. Trump and Vance’s rhetoric demonstrates a continuity of exclusionary thinking that has long served the interests of wealthy elites. Their approach echoes historical patterns where powerful figures manipulated public sentiment for personal gain, often at the expense of vulnerable communities. This persistence underscores the ongoing nature of the struggle against discrimination and highlights the importance of historical awareness. By understanding the roots and evolution of these tactics, we can more effectively counter them and work towards building a truly inclusive society that resists such divisive manipulation.
To face this challenge, it should always be highlighted that America’s strength famously comes most from its diversity, standing together rather than apart (as discussed in The Open Society and Its Enemies). Active measures, based on the paradox of tolerance, taken against hate and division can ensure the nation lives up to its basic ideals. In this context, it’s worth noting that Stanford should be seen as one of the most racist and genocidal leaders in world history. Ironically, today we see staff at Stanford publish research under his name showing that the Republican party’s current rhetoric closely mirrors the language Stanford himself promoted in building the school.
…hostile rhetoric toward Mexican immigrants today is very reminiscent of that used against Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s, when they were targeted by the nation’s first country-based restrictions on immigration. …in the past 20 years, Republicans [increasingly invoking Stanford’s horrible history] have referred to immigration much more frequently using words associated with crime, legality, deficiency, and threats.
Stanford’s recent publications on immigration attitudes highlight the persistence of anti-immigrant rhetoric, yet fail to reckon with the institution’s own past and present role. Stanford the man perpetuated myths about the Chinese including their diet, fueling discriminatory policies and violence, yet his name today somehow avoids the necessary and appropriate scorn and disgust.
The revival of pet-related anti-immigrant rhetoric by figures like Trump and Vance shows the enduring power of these propaganda tactics. It’s a stark reminder that the racist playbook in America hasn’t changed much since Stanford’s era – only the medium and targets have shifted.
Stanford University Alums still wear things like a “skin the cats” button to mock Native populations that were systematically murdered by Leland Stanford’s “killing machine”.
Persistence of hate group tactics underscores the need for institutions like Stanford to not only research current attitudes but to actively confront their obvious unaddressed harmful legacies. Until they stop acting like their namesake is outside the scope of assessment, Stanford remains highly complicit in perpetuating and enabling continuation of the very xenophobic acts that their research purports to analyze.
An illegal immigrant to America has a horrible record of racism, misogyny, drugs, crimes including fraud causing hundreds of deaths, and is obviously trying to destroy the government. What horrible things are left for him to do while still allowed to operate in public?
Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president and poured millions into a super PAC supporting the Republican, captioned the image with the false assertion, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”
The image, which appeared to violate X’s policy on manipulated content, resembled an AI-generated image posted by Trump last month during the Democratic National Convention, envisioning Harris addressing a crowd under communist symbols.
Musk’s post came a day after he shared another post with a screenshot suggesting that only “high status males” should be able to participate in government because women (and men with “low testosterone”) are not capable of critical thought. Musk posted it to his 196 million followers with the comment, “interesting observation.”
This “high status males” nonsense is the same thing Elon Musk’s grandfather used to promote as a elitist politician in Canada, before he was jailed as a national security threat and then fled to South Africa to build the racist Apartheid system. Whether you call it fascism, Nazism, Technocracy… it’s the same white supremacist disinformation garbage.
And it is of course rooted in classic dictator hypocrisy given how Musk censors speech on Twitter that he personally dislikes, while he keeps pushing speech that violates rules he imposes on others.
Clearly Canada should have revoked citizenship from these Hitler-loving agitators who fled accountability, and America should have blocked their unmistakable smell at the border or deported him decades ago.
President Grant decisively defeated such threats both on the battlefield and at the ballot box. It’s thus important to see a spoiled African prince of Apartheid trying his best to retreat to a monarchy in context of his 1988 South Africa loss, let alone the lessons of America 1868 or even 1778… we aren’t going back.
Who really wants to Seymour of this racism and misogyny being spread by a disinformation family business generations old? And how much has this family been sinking (including their big investors) into disinformation campaigns to overthrow American democracy?
Billions.
Dare I say, someone must soon Grant America the sense of real democratic justice as demonstrated in Brazil.
Pavel Durov, the French citizen and founder of Telegram, was arrested in France based on allegations his inadequate moderation of harmful content directly facilitated criminal activities, including extreme-right terrorism and trafficking humans, arms and drugs.
The twelve charges he is accused of include crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking, money laundering, withholding crucial information from investigators, and eight other crimes.
You know, the usual Nazi stuff. Does the “Terrorgram Collective” ring any bells? Dallas Erin Humber and Matthew Robert Allison clearly get away right now with using the Telegram platform to organize terror attacks in their attempt to start a “race war”.
Long before she was attempting to radicalize potential terrorists on Telegram, Humber was taking advantage of the opportunities that mainstream platforms provided her to espouse her newfound ideology to an audience who may not have otherwise been exposed to it. Unlike Telegram today, DeviantArt users did take issue with her evangelizing and recruiting for Nazism.
“Unlike Telegram today” used to be the buried lede on the very real potential for terrorism. That’s because headline writers weren’t ready yet to expose how Telegram today literally spreads Nazi “hit list” material on public targets with militant instructions and incitement for assassinations.
Earlier this month, a man carrying a hatchet killed four children between the ages of four and seven at their school in the same week as two other, non-fatal school attacks. Last month, a 13-year-old boy killed a teacher in a knife attack at a school in Sao Paulo. And last November, a 16-year-old shooter wearing a swastika killed four people and injured more than 10 others in twin attacks on two schools in Aracruz, in the southeastern state of Espirito Santo. The G1 news portal, citing police sources, reported the teenager had allegedly interacted with antisemitic groups on Telegram. According to a document from the federal justice authority in Espirito Santo, investigators had asked Telegram for the personal data of members of two stated antisemitic groups on the platform. The company handed over only data on the administrator of one of the groups, said the document, adding there was “intent by Telegram not to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.”
The ADL has pointed out with detail how Telegram has become known by law enforcement as a safe haven for white supremacists and other extreme-right domestic terror groups attracted by lax moderation policies. They explain that an intentionally flaccid harm moderation policy at Telegram has knowingly facilitated extreme anti-regulation, anti-democratic “free speech” groups to operate with abandon. This well known negligence is perhaps what predictably led to Durov’s predicament in France.
Related, Durov is reported to grossly neglect his own many children, and in some cases even harm them.
His arrest should underscore the question of legal scrutiny on CEOs and their products’ direct effects on society. Telegram also has become known for Russia using it during its invasion of Ukraine, as a significant tool of military intelligence operations including propaganda. Durov’s arrest thus perhaps complicates Russian-backed terrorism communication and coordination strategies targeting France (and NATO, especially Germany) to undermine support for Ukraine. In that sense the arrest has implications for other Russian-affiliated Private Military Company (PMC), such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, raising important questions about regulation of private entities.
So the connection between Telegram’s use by extremist groups to increase destabilizing racist violence, human trafficking, CP, money laundering and drugs, is really not news. The significant concern for authorities has resulted in a necessary scrutiny of Durov’s role in facilitating such activities, and his abandonment of responsibility.
It remains far from clear why Durov flew to Paris with Vavilova when he knew he faced possible arrest. The messenger app tech tycoon – living in self-imposed exile from his native Russia – is believed to have been aware of a potential French criminal investigation. He was held at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, less than a week after Vladimir Putin abruptly refused to meet him when both men were in Azerbaijan capital Baku when reportedly a meeting had been brokered. […] Russia has demanded consular access to Durov, TASS reports, but he is a French citizen and this is not likely to be granted.
A tiny footnote here, hopefully not lost on anyone wondering if France is serious about stopping another spread of Nazism via foreign-backed media platforms, is that Le Bourget airfield is where Hitler landed June 28, 1940 about a week after France had surrendered in WWII. Perhaps it’s a symbolic place for arrest, in terms of French history.
After WWII ended [Paul Ferdonnet of Radio Stuttgart] was tried, convicted and executed by France as a war criminal. His allegiance was with personal power and hate, not his own country, population or its democratic institutions.
The arrest of Durov thus could be an updated precedent for those accused of using their media platform to publish and spread hate, including Twitter’s infamous CEO who boasts of having Putin’s number on his phone.
Also, did you pick up the thread how Putin both allegedly refused to meet Durov in Baku, and then demanded from the French that they give him access to the guy in Paris? Do not underestimate the point about Durov being a French citizen being arrested in France by French authorities, yet somehow a very big concern to Putin who was trying to arrest him first.
Don’t listen to hot-take pundits who fail to understand foundational aspects of modern French history and its anti-fascism, mixed into this Russian asset story. The BBC has no idea what it is talking about here:
It is unprecedented for the owner of a social media platform to be arrested because of the way in which that platform is being used…
Really BBC? Really? Challenge accepted. Oh, how far you have fallen…
Let’s just say an obvious counter-point is that Durov claimed that he had been forced out of his “VK” company and his Russian citizenship too because of threats since 2014 that he would be arrested, putting him on the run from the law for a decade already.
Telegram CEO visited Russia over 60 times since ‘exile’ in 2014, investigation suggests… Durov’s “relationship with the Russian authorities in 2015-2021 was good enough that he was not afraid of being detained while crossing the border,” Kremlingram noted.
I mean the supposed threat of arrest of Durov that he himself spread as his backstory for French citizenship became a powerful precedent for the arrest of Durov in France. How very comically Putinesque. It seems at least the BBC is still fooled, indeed.
Is that pretzel-logic sufficient, or should we lay down some of the more straightforward and well-known precedents?
In 1998, Felix Somm, a former executive at CompuServe, an online services company, was given a suspended two-year sentence in Germany for complicity in the proliferation of pornography on the internet. He was later acquitted. In 2002, Timothy Koogle, a former CEO of Yahoo, faced charges in France for the sale of Nazi memorabilia on the website. He was also later acquitted. In 2012, Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, was arrested by U.S. authorities for copyright infringement related to his website. Ross W. Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road online black market, was convicted in the United States for facilitating illicit drug sales in 2015. In 2016, Brazil briefly imprisoned a Facebook executive for failing to turn over WhatsApp messaging data in a drug trafficking investigation. These instances were capped over the weekend by Durov’s arrest.
They say “capped by Durov” because the past isn’t without precedent. But as a historian I still say Paul Ferdonnet should be a more well known reference here. Spread Nazism in France, go to jail and maybe worse.
If any other Russian-funded platform’s lack of moderation is deemed to contribute to clearly illegal activities, a CEO maybe now should consider similar legal challenges as Durov not to mention those arrested before him. However, specifics depend on local laws and the platform’s level of involvement in or negligence toward Putin’s favorite activities.
In this case, it seems at least clear that as soon as Durov touched French soil/tarmac he was in a controlled environment with limited access, making it easier for authorities to isolate and prevent further law evasion by one of their own citizens.
