Your Favorite Podcasters are Supported by Dictators

A growing contingent of left wing political pundits have utilized edgy and anti-establishment platforms to promote the stances of far-right dictatorships Russia and Iran.

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On October 19th, in the aftermath of former Defense Secretary Colin Powell’s death, Rage Against the Machine frontman Tom Morello shared a series of graphics to his 1.5 million Instagram followers listing alleged war crimes committed by Powell. This in itself is not news, plenty of columns have been written about Powell’s controversial legacy. What makes Morello’s post different is a large watermark in the corner of each graphic labelled “Redfish,” which represents the organization who first made the graphics. This was a nice bit of publicity for Redfish, an independent media outlet with 400 thousand followers. It also happens to be controlled by the Russian government. In recent years, Russia has built a faux-grassroots media ecosystem designed to draw in left-wing youth and ultimately disenfranchise them. This loose network has grown to include internet bot farms, propaganda news outlets, and even prominent American commentators. A growing contingent of left wing political pundits have utilized edgy and anti-establishment platforms to promote the stances of far-right dictatorships Russia and Iran.