By: Ben Norton | August 27,
2018
The United States has
repeatedly accused the Russian and Iranian governments of using social media to
spread “disinformation” and foment chaos. Under US government pressure, Big
Tech corporations have banned large numbers of accounts accused (in
some cases falsely) of being Russian and Iranian “troll” accounts.
At the same time, however, the
US government is doing exactly what it is accusing its enemies of: the US
Office of Cuba Broadcasting is secretly creating fake social media accounts to
inspire dissent and to spread right-wing pro-US, pro-capitalist propaganda in
Cuba.
During the Cold War, the US government tried
to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro more than 600 times.
Washington also simultaneously waged an information war. For decades, the US
has maintained an elaborate propaganda apparatus committed to toppling Cuba’s
socialist government.
In its 2019
congressional budget justification report — which was first
reported on by the Miami
New Times — the US government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
disclosed that it “is establishing on island digital teams to create
non-branded local Facebook accounts to disseminate information.”
The US government body noted
that these “native pages increase the chances of appearing on Cuban Facebook
users newsfeeds.”
And it is not just Facebook
where the US government will be creating these accounts. “The same strategy
will be replicated on other preferred social media networks,” the BBG added.
The propaganda office said it
“will continue to engage audiences on the internet using Facebook Live and
YouTube as distribution channels into Cuba as the Communist regime has been
wary of blocking these popular channels.”
Put more directly, the US
government is creating fake accounts on Facebook and YouTube inside Cuba and
going out of its way to portray these profiles as “local,” to more effectively
spread this propaganda among Cubans as if it were somehow organic.
“Working with Cuban
independent journalists and encouraging citizens to create user generated
content on the island for OCB’s platforms continues to be a top priority,” the
US government body continued in its report. “As Wi-Fi service has expanded in
Cuba and with substantial numbers of Cubans now using Facebook and other social
networking sites, OCB’s social media presence has increased.”
Propaganda broadcast to 11
percent of Cubans on a weekly basis
The US Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB)
presently has 117 employees and an annual budget of $28.1 million. It estimates
its audience at 1 million.
The OCB, which is
headquartered in Miami, Florida, runs the broadcaster Radio y Televisión Martí,
along with the website Martínoticias.com. These outlets publish extremely
partisan reports that have a very clear conservative bias, and give large
platforms to right-wing leaders in Latin America — not just from Cuba, but
also from
Venezuela and beyond.
The OCB also holds the annual Cuba Internet
Freedom Conference in Miami.
The US government body claims
that its propaganda broadcasts “currently reach 11.1% of Cubans on a weekly
basis with audio, video, and digital content delivered by radio, satellite TV,
online, and on distinctly Cuban digital ‘packages’ (paquetes).”
It also claims that 96 percent
of its audience say the US government propaganda “helps them form opinions
about current events and most users both share information they get from Martí
and would recommend it to others.”
Distributing propaganda on
DVDs and flash drives inside Cuba
The US Broadcasting Board of
Governors furthermore reveals in its 2019 report that its Office of Cuba
Broadcasting distributes propaganda on DVDs and flash drives inside Cuba, for
those who do not have internet access.
“To circumvent the blockage of
TV Marti signals, OCB is dramatically increasing the distribution of DVD’s and
USB drives with Marti content, radically altering its distribution strategy to
avoid dealing with bulk amounts of content entrance into the island,” the
report noted.
“The content is now downloaded
once inside the island, copied on the island and distributed immediately.
Previously, the information was downloaded elsewhere and carried onto the
island. Much of it was intercepted at the border before reaching its intended
audience,” the OCB continued. “This optimization of OCB’s content supply chain
will increase its availability on the island tenfold at the same cost level.”
A long history of US
government propaganda campaigns worldwide
This is far from the first
time the US government has been exposed for manipulating social media to spread
propaganda. And these US propaganda operations are by no means limited to
China.
The Broadcasting Board of
Governors noted in its report that its propaganda efforts are targeting
audiences “in Russia and its periphery, China, the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea, Iran, and Cuba.”
The US government has long
used social media to sow discord in Cuba in particular. In 2014, it was
revealed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID),
the government’s ostensibly “humanitarian” soft-power arm, had created a fake
Twitter-like app called ZunZuneo to
stir unrest inside Cuba.
In January 2018, the US State
Department announced the creation of a Cuba
Internet Task Force to try to undermine the socialist government in
Havana.
Cuban state media condemned
this new institution as an attempt “to subvert Cuba’s internal order.” The
Cuban government’s newspaper Granma wrote, “In the past, Washington has
used phrases like ‘working for freedom of expression’ and ‘expanding access to
internet in Cuba’ to cover up destabilizing plans.”
And back in 2011, The
Guardian likewise revealed that the US government was creating fake
“sock puppet” accounts on social media to spread propaganda and manipulate
public opinion.
Ben Norton is a producer and
reporter for The Real News. His work focuses primarily on U.S. foreign policy,
the Middle East, media criticism, and movements for economic and social
justice. Ben Norton was previously a staff writer at Salon and AlterNet. You
can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.
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