Anti-Russian polemicist Edward Lucas, whose paranoid ramblings were relics of the previous cold war until he latched himself onto the new one as an apparent expert, seems to be upset about the ability of bloggers to be quoted in the foreign press.
In a Twitter tirade, the established British Economist journalist expressed astonishment at the idea of the foreign media agency Sputnik quoting a marginal blogger from the United Kingdom when reporting on the state of the media in the west.
Who is the "british author & publicist" quoted here?!I've been covering CEE/FSU for 30+ years & never heard of him http://t.co/yVXFwiJjdp
— Edward Lucas (@edwardlucas) March 12, 2015
The great Edward Lucas has never heard of a blogger, so who could that blogger be? Note the guy's bluster about his own importance, and why we should all give him a pat on the back as a hero and veteran keeping our world safe from the sinister Russians and their spies. James Bond has spoken.
Perhaps the great master of espionage and subversion, Edward Lucas, is going to save us all from the evil super-villain Vladimir Putin and his sneaky undercover agents on Twitter.
The contents of Lucas's Twitter rant embedded above contains no small amount of irony, considering British and American publications quote equally marginal bloggers and dissidents in countries like Russia and China - including figures so marginal that they continue to blog about these regimes while literally cowering behind the British or American state from imaginary assassins. Perhaps, in Lucas' narrow idea of journalism, Russian or Chinese bloggers can be experts on the countries they don't live in, but a western blogger living in the west can't be an expert on the west.
Rants like Lucas' may be part of a larger effort by to dramatize the propaganda employed by the Russian Federation against the west beyond its superlative reality, mistaking anyone who opposes warmongering or stampedes of lies from the British and US governments as a Russian saboteur sent by Putin. It has often been predicted that mainstream media commentators, unable to grasp how empty and discredited they are, would resort to paranoid claims and fantasies about mind-controlled trolls and spies sent to sabotage the Internet, just as they believe Putin's phantom armies are sabotaging Ukraine and making it murder its own people in front of European observers.
It should be noted that Edward Lucas' career is built upon the sand of fear-mongering and conspiracy theories against dissidents. Lucas believes Edward Snowden was an agent of Putin, and indulges in rampant paranoia against the whistleblower in his offensive book, The Snowden Operation (2014).
To redeem a career based on fear-mongering and McCarthyism, Britain's celebrated "James Bonds" like Lucas prance around accusing British and American dissidents of being no more than agents of Putin, while pretending oligarchs and criminals cowering in the UK or US are bona fide dissidents.
Lucas is the witch-finder general. He desperately wants to believe in a world filled with perfidy, espionage and conspiracy against the west, and will add anything he discovers on Twitter to boost his fantasy and his credibility as a sycophant of the British state.
