Adam Garrie, or how Russian propagandists play their game

A unique hybrid of Ceaser Flickerman (from the “Hunger Games”) Withnail (from Withnail and I), and a fat Sherlock Holmes, Garrie is someone who wants to be noticed.

Still, investigating the screenshot of Garrie on Twitter, I found that it came from an interview on Wednesday with the Kremlin’s foremost West-focus propaganda TV station. Garrie’s performance on that show was a true gem. Not for any analytical substance, but rather in the insight it provides us on Russian propaganda messaging towards the West.

Garrie begins by explaining how the United States is “no longer a democracy,” but instead a kleptocracy. Here we see the Kremlin’s never-ending effort to spread scorn about American political credibility and social stability. In the long term, President Vladimir Putin wants the U.S. to retreat inwards into our own doubts and fears and thus leave the world free for Russian leadership.

Next, Garrie blurs his criticism of the FBI “oligarchy” with former President Andrew Jackson, the Bermuda Triangle, and British intelligence.

You read that correctly.

Yet the British intelligence component is the key. That’s because Garrie’s messaging illustrates the Kremlin’s desire to portray Western intelligence services as collectively and inherently undemocratic and corrupt. The advantage the Russians have in this line of attack is the current U.S. domestic feuding over the FBI. After all, that feuding playing out across our national discourse enables Moscow to drive forwards its narrative into even more extreme areas. Put simply, the Russians take the most extreme U.S. media criticism of the FBI on a particular day and then double it the next. What is said before gives credibility to what is said next. So go the active measures.

Finally, Garrie brings out the big guns. He throws scorn on U.S. concerns over Russian election hacking, downplaying the scale of that Russian intelligence operation and instead presenting the U.S. as the greatest offender in terms of electoral interference. With his sporadic mix of humor, his jolly but odd dress sense, and his reinterpretation of historic facts, Garrie is the perfect messenger for English-speaking audiences. He seems credible, kind, and knowledgeable. And in the context of the universal agreement of his fellow panelists, Garrie’s just-too-tight suit carries arrogant credibility.

It’s all nonsense, of course, but the Russians know all they have to do is persuade one more viewer to become just a little bit more disillusioned.

They’re in this for the long game. And while their tactics might be simple, they’re also extremely clever.