Phil Butler - Putin's Praetorians - Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls

Malinka first retweeted and followed me over a post on my personal blog back in December of 2014 in which I profiled some of the real NATO agents and their trolling activities. I recall this time when the Kiev Post’s Christopher Miller was just building up his reputation as a US State Department anchorman in Kiev. Miller would later go on to work with my old friend Pete Cashmore’s Mashable (as a kind of reward for Russophobia), but he and the now notorious Eliot Higgins (aka Bellingcat) got their start battling ordinary people like Malinka on Twitter. I’m now blocked from seeing Miller’s tweets, which is interesting since I’m unaware of anyone else in the world blocking me.

I mention Miller for one reason. While Vladimir Putin’s alleged plans for world domination apparently lean heavily on ordinary people, the anti-Russia side is mainly comprised of western media types who were supported and advanced by what is commonly referred to in the Trump era as the “deep state”. At this point, I can name many western “spooks” who took up the banner of the Obama administration’s war on Putin. However, one interesting fellow that comes to mind is Dr. John R. Schindler, who is a former professor at the US Naval War College and intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer for the NSA. He’s got upwards of 240,000 Twitter followers (half appear to be bought), and he calls people I know “Kremlin Troll”.

However else I gauge Schindler’s expertise on who is or is not a Kremlin Troll, his resignation from the US Naval War College [18] U.S. Naval War College professor resigns after probe into lewd photo found online, New York Daily News, August 12, 2014 via News Wire Services over allegations he shared pictures of his sex organs on Twitter spoiled my further investigations into his NSA Troll efforts forever. I’ll refrain from saying more on this, but an article by Schindler on his XX Committee blog [19] When Kremlin Trolls Attack , The XX Committee, February 23, 2015 entitled “When Kremlin Trolls Attack” bears scrutiny here. The piece begins with polemical sophisty:

“The reality that Russia buys, or at least rents, trolls by the battalion to harass, intimidate and make life unpleasant for anybody who opposes Moscow policy, while employing aggressive agitprop to further Putinist propaganda, isn’t exactly news, but it’s nevertheless welcome to see mainstream outlets doing some digging into what’s going on.”

Schindler at once embellishes himself as a leader of the anti-Snowden cadre of NSA counterintelligence supporters, while at the same time playing the poor and pitiful blogger that mighty Vladimir Putin ordered his troll armies to crush. The former Naval War College professor even went so far as to accuse Russia Insider of deploying “active measures” against him. Schindler is an insignificant player in all this new Cold War mess, but these grandiose traits are, for me, symptomatic of anti-Russia pundits out there. Another name that comes to mind is Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, who seems to alternate between being a confidant of deep state intelligence agencies and the victim of secret Kremlin troll measures to make opposition reporters have seizures. [20] Newsweek ’s Kurt Eichenwald Claims Twitter Troll Gave Him Seizure, Taking Social Media Hiatus , Alex Griswold, Mediaite , December 16, 2016

The social media landscape is littered with the virtual corpses of NATO and corporate media minions who thought they were prepared to do battle in the digital world. As somebody who’s been descended upon by the best internet search and hacker trolls in the business, I can honestly call these people crybabies too thin-skinned to even give social media a decent go. A final note on the man who created the ubiquitous Kremlin Troll “proofs,” A. A. Weisburd spent hundreds of hours comparing Twitter connections only to end up like just any other finger pointing globalist pawn. On “strategies” Putin is supposed to employ, Weisburd listed [21] How Russian Propaganda Machine Works , Kremlintrolls.com, February 10, 2015 every US State Department or NATO instruction for propaganda, like so:

“The eighth method is finding the scapegoat. In the Ukraine, the scapegoat is the Right Sector, oligarchs, Russia is also allegedly harmed by the West by sticking their nose everywhere.”

At the end of the book I will attempt to list most of the dutiful Kremlin Trolls, but for now, I must recall my interactions with them chronologically. From early 2015 my RT and Russia Insider contributions led to me being introduced to maybe the most fascinating or all “Putin fans,” an American engineer named Eric C. Anderson who currently lives in Manaus, at the confluence of the Rio Solimões and the Rio Negro, at the upper Amazon River, of all places.

If ever the mighty reach and influence of Vladimir Putin were in question, Kremlin Trolls in Amazonas speaks to this issue. Eric is my friend since our first encounters on Facebook, a humble man whose life has been an almost incredible adventure. Throughout a hundred or more conversation with Eric, I have been continually surprised at the Hollywood-like character he presents. Wearing his straw planter’s hat, the 6′-6″ Anderson reminds one of a character from a film like Indiana Jones or perhaps a rugged Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

With the epic Amazonas backdrop floating past his aluminum johnboat, [22] Johnboat definition, “a narrow flat-bottomed square-ended boat usually propelled by a pole or paddle and used on inland waterways”, Merriam-Webster the former software engineer is evidence that Putin’s infamous “troll army” is far more complex than any western propagandist or NATO analyst ever could imagine. The Virginia native who spent most of his adult life in Washington DC spends his retirement these days giving guided tours to Amazon nature researchers. What Eric does best though, besides gathering intelligence for Putin on the Amazon’s rare Hyacinth Macaw, [23] Hyacinth Macaw ( Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus ), a bird species native to central and eastern South America and are listed as “vulnerable” by IUCN, Audubon Nature Institute. is living and experiencing. Besides being a top secret operative of the Kremlin embedded deep in the middle of nowhere, Eric divides his time between solitary exploring all along the upper Amazon by boat and enjoying time with the locals in remote Manaus, which is a city that preserves the habits of native Brazilian tribes.

My journey into the pro-Russia camp was about unlearning American propaganda.

In some respects, I was always a very typical American. I was a workaholic who constantly stressed out over my projects. I was continually trying to stay up to date in my field of computer software, I also worried about my marriages, and I suffered from stress-related illnesses. Socially, I wanted people to think I was up-to-date, so I read the Washington Post and listened to NPR every day. Added to all this “so typical” attitude, I I wanted distraction and excitement, so I traveled at every opportunity. Computer programming is project-oriented, so I would just finish a project and go.

If imagery serves the reader, I was more Forrest Gump than a sexy investigative journalist, but I wanted to have adventures and to travel, and the more adventurous, the better. I hitchhiked to Mexico and Guatemala in 1983. Then I met a Syrian girl in Washington, married her in Damascus in 1984, backpacked with her around Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt. I even found myself in Haiti n 1987 for a while, later hiking it all around South America. It was then I saw the Amazon river for the first time in 1986 and moved here to Brazil in 1992. Divorced from my first wife, I married a local girl and bounced in between America and Manaus Brazil until retiring a few years ago.