“80 million people were not persuaded to follow Hitler because they knew he was going to murder people … they did not follow him because he seemed evil, but because he seemed extraordinarily good. And what convinced them of this was Goebbels’ brilliant propaganda.”

— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) February 2, 2020

Note that Putin’s KGB specialty was monitoring Western media. Is he as brilliant a propaganda manipulator as Goebbels? Probably not. The Russians have made many mistakes in their campaign. For example, they have tried to treat the “Texas secession movement” as a serious separatist campaign rather than the long-running joke it is. They have also perhaps been too obvious, though this hasn’t hurt them so far and may have a kind of brilliance all its own.

Otoh, they have incomparably greater resources than Goebbels did. This obviously includes modern media but, more crucially, they have recognized, mobilized, and exploited a vast, ready-made complex of willing accomplices in the target country. This is what could be called the “Grift Sector” of the American economy; crooked evangelists, MLM hucksters, pseudoscience profiteers, talk-radio shills and commercial conspiracy theorists among many others. This is the raw material of subversion.

I do not think that Boris Badanov type characters are routinely handing bags of cash to these American hucksters, though that could be happening in a few cases. Instead, the Russians support and direct the traitors and opportunists with their bot-troll operations and provide guidance with sources they control directly, like zerohedge and RT.

Is Putin as evil as Hitler? Probably not, though the final chapter has yet to be written and he may well be more destructive to this country (indeed, already has been). Like Hitler, though, he cannot do his work and achieve his goals without willing accomplices.