Irish Syrian Activist Exposes Russian Propaganda Fake Image Aimed at Discrediting The White Helmets
The black propaganda campaign against the White Helmets was brought into sharp focus for me recently in terms of how implausible and absurd negative stories Russia gets away with spreading about them on social media. A well known Irish Syria activist on Twitter using perhaps the most basic open source investigative technique — a reverse image search on Google — exposed as fake-news a doctored image tweeted by Russia’s Syrian embassy making the point it had been exposed many times but was still retweeted several hundred times. In fact, when I first saw the Russian fake I immediately tweeted seeking to expose it becauase it was so absurd. The idea that brave men and women who make up the Syria Civil Defence who save lives 24/7 in opposition held areas would allow themselves to be photographed with heavy weapons and dressed like Jihadi militants with a White Helmets arm band when they know about attempts to discredit them by Russia beggared belief. And let me stress all the more so for me having met these amazingly courageous volunteer first responders when making our feature documentary SYRIA — THE IMPOSSIBLE REVOLUTION.
But after my tweet was published @1963Wren tweeted me her open source investigative scoop and showed how the Russian propagandists had sourced and altered the image in question. This resonated profoundedly with me because we are covering the role of open source investigations in exposing warcrimes and crimes against humanity in the documentary we are making at the moment BRINGING ASSAD TO JUSTICE.
As news breaks that Russia is spreading misinformation online about the coronavirus pandemic to create alarm and discord in the United States and European Union member states both the EU Comssion and the Trump administration have met leaders of Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Google in an effort to combat this potentially lethal challenge which could cost many lives if people are misled. However, this only serves to underline that if the US and the EU had taken a much firmer stand against Putin’s information and cyber warriors when they first began slandering and libelling Syria’s White Helmets online in 2015 a line could have been drawn in the sand, and even prevented the even more ambitious meddling in the American presidential ellection in 2016?
“Never believe an image on Twitter unless you can verify its source!” A bit of advice I received from @1962Wren who has been trolled and stalked by the online Russian army of propagandists and Putin apologists some of whom are no doubt well paid for their fake-news stories.
As a post script it is very important to be reminded that the Russian became involved in going after the White Helmets in 2015 when Putin sent his bombers into Syria to save Assad whose forces at that time were on the verge of collapse. He had suffered massive defections as many of his troops did not want to kill their own people merely to save a regime they also saw as very brutal and corrupt.
The problem for Putin when he joined Assad’s scorched earth campaign was that it amounted to a series of crimes against humanity. In short, civilians are primary targets consistent with the regime’s message to peaceful protesters when the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011 — “Assad or we burn the country” — and the people gathering evidence of these crimes against humanity are the White Helmets. They were the only respected humanitarian source on the ground as the Western media had been scared away from opposition held areas by the murder of Marie Colvin and many other media workers so the Russians believed it was vital to discredit them to undermine their efforts to expose their crimes against civilians with Assad.
There is no question the Russian propaganda campaign has done some damage. Worst of all many well meaning people have been deceived by the stream of egregious lies pumped out by Putin’s fake-news conveyor belts including the Russian news network RT. But there is hope as the world’s most famous open source investigators have begun to expose this very sophisticated operation.
However, the optimistic development for me is that @1962Wren told me, and proved it herself, anyone can expose these lies — you just need some knowledge of basic open source investigation techniques.
