Hot Type: When Will the Last Democracies on Earth Grow a Spine?

It's time for democratic nations to band together and kick out Russian infiltration operations for good, argues Heidi Siegmund Cuda

Vladimir Putin. Photos: PA Images / Alamy

If Europeans woke up one day to find toxins leaching into their air and water, what would their leaders do? More than likely, they would unite across borders to isolate and diffuse the source of the pollution and begin a massive and well-coordinated cleanup effort to ensure the safety and well-being of all citizens. Summits would be held to devise ways to ensure it never happens again.

For more than a decade, pollution of the mind has been occurring at scale in democratic countries — the perpetrator is well known — the impacts, catastrophic, and yet, year after year, nothing is ever done about it. Sure, there are talks, and talks that lead to more talks, a few strongly-worded letters, limited prosecutions and legislation, but in practical terms, the cost seen by the perpetrator never rises and the mind war rages on.

Citizens are left defenseless, often unaware of the mental toxins they’re consuming through media manipulation, and through organizations that are fronts to push false worlds on people — what cultural archaeologist Stephen Douglas calls ‘disinfolklore galaxies’. People’s minds are being carpet-bombed at scale.