Most people have had the unfortunate luck of knowing someone who’s in the middle of their red-pill-alpha-extreme-right-wing phase. You know the type. Maybe it’s your cousin’s friend, or some guy on Instagram. Either way, most of us roll our eyes when we hear them mention infamous influencers like Andrew Tate. We’re all aware of the terrible effects spreading rhetoric like that has on young men and women, but most of us focus on handling the immediate consequences, such as holding our hands over our cups, never walking alone at night, and having tasers close by. However, it seems that these particular starlets were unwittingly part of a larger scheme in chipping away at democracy.
Madina Nurmanova / Shutterstock.com; Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons
In early September, the Department of Justice charged two employees—Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva—from social-media company RT, the Russian state media broadcaster, as part of a scheme to fund and direct the production of videos and posts that racked up millions upon millions of views. Some of these videos seemed intent on pushing and swaying followers towards a particular set of political views, especially regarding the November elections and their voting choices. Although around 32 other internet domains were seized in the indictment as well, what set RT apart was the fact that it used real influencers, not just AI generated ones. “Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” wrote Renée DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, in a post on Threads. And she’s completely right: RT had half of the battle won by just hiring people who had a fanbase already hanging onto their every word.
RT had briefly been taken off the air after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they engaged in a video scheme to reach viewers without being caught on the airwaves. Seeing the changing trends, RT worked closely with Tenet Media, which was founded by conservative commentators Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, in actively recruiting radical voices for their company. Think of Tenet Media as part of RT’s larger factory, generating videos and content faster than you can scroll through your feed.
According to NPR, Tenet launched in November 2023 with six notorious influencers known in right-wing media, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin, and Lauren Southern. The videos they made for Tenet regularly covered typical conservative highlights including “migrant gangs,” transgender people, online censorship, and attacks on Vice President Harris and President Biden.
As stated by the original indictment, the content of said videos was consistent with Russian interests in boosting domestic divisions within the United States in order to weaken the country abroad, like continued American support with the war in Ukraine. More than that, it accuses the two original founders of Tenet of knowingly working with the two Russian staffers to conceal the true origins of the company, instead claiming that the influencers were sponsored by a rich European banker, Eduard Grigoriann—someone entirely made-up.
Of course, the influencers, true to form, posted on X proclaiming their innocence and painting themselves as victims. Yet, their content—which they were pushed to churn out at consistent rates—often aligned with views that would benefit the Kremlin. For instance, they publicly claimed that Ukraine was behind a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall back in March, even though ISIS had claimed responsibility. Despite that, one had the audacity to say that most of their videos were entirely apolitical, without any external input.
Still, some influencers are utterly baffled that they were duped in such a fantastic way—even though the pay was arguably good enough for them not to ask questions. After all, for $400,000 a month and a $100,000 signing bonus, as one content creator was paid, many would happily keep making videos, if only to keep the checks coming in and the bank account numbers ticking up. Because sure, more than $400,000 a month paid by some shadowy sponsor just to make content doesn’t raise any red flags, right?
So, the next time you hear some guy in one of your classes—or just walking around—babbling whatever he heard from one of those many influencers, it should now be much easier to brush his words off as ignorant. Still, it’s worth it to be aware, and ask ourselves: Who does this benefit? Who do these words really serve? Because it’s definitely not the truth.