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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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This might be old news.

A Swedish newspaper published a report, ostensibly a leak from RAND that purports to be a cynical summary of what anti-atlanticist Europeans believe to be the US strategy - sabotage Europe by denying it Russian energy, forcing investments and people to leave for the safer haven of US. Example of that is this substack post by disgraced academic Noah Carl.

The report is not very long and could very easily be a fake.

My intuitiojn says I think it's probably a fake, well within the capabilities of some of the less stupid Russian disinfo experts to create. Certainly I can imagine Russian spooks may have at least one or two people like Ilforte, but rabidly nationalist, who could make that up during lunch break.

Anyway has anything to say about it? I'm assuming the newspaper isn't a well-regarded one or a very professional one. But then I've heard very dire things about Swedish journalism, namely that it was extremely well aligned in the service of the 'liberal' left agenda of endless migration and self-hatred. That was years ago, things may have changed.

Having a brief read of it, I'm inclined to believe it's a fake. Honestly, the grammar in some parts is so odd I don't think it was even written by someone who has English as their first language. Some things that make me suspicious:

1. The page numbering. The pages are numbered using roman numerals rather than the normal arabic characters. This is common for things like the preface to reports but my general experience (admittedly limited) is that executive summaries tend to be part of the main body and numbered appropriately. Additionally there are no page numbers visible on the title page or copyright page but the "Executive Summary" page starts at "iii". It's normal for title pages and copyright pages not to be numbered but they also are generally excluded from the numbering system altogether such that the first page after them ought to be "i", not "iii". Either two numbered pages are missing between the copyright page and the "Executive Summary" titled page or something odd is happening here.

2. Some of the acronyms on the "distribution" line on the title page don't mean anything to me. "Dept. of State", "CIA", "NSA", and "DNC" are all presumably clear enough (although, an odd grouping) but "WHCS" does not seem to be anything I can find with a Google or Wikipedia search and the only ANSA that seems relevant is... an Italian news agency? Of course, just because I can't find any relevant hits doesn't mean they don't exist but I'm not sure what they are supposed to indicate and no likely matches suggest themselves.

3. Grammatical and general formatting problems. For example the final paragraph on page "iii" (which is also a single sentence) reads (emphasis added):

Besides, if the U.S. is for a certain period is engulfed by domestic problems, the Old Europe will be able to more effectively resists the influence of the U.S.-oriented Eastern European countries.

of course, it's possible the repeated "if" is something an editor missed, but it is suggestive. The document uses the "Old Europe" construction in a number of places, apparently intending to mean Western Europe. I've never heard this construction before and would be interested if anyone has examples of other RAND reports that use it. The first paragraph on the last page has the sentence

The scenario under consideration will thus serve to strengthen the national financial condition both indirectly and most directly.

"both indirectly and most directly" is not a construction I have ever read in English and does not read like natural English to me. There are other constructions that seem odd but these were the ones that jumped out the most.

4. The whole thing is written much more... directly... regarding its goal of harming various European countries to the benefit of the US than I would expect. Not that people planning bad things never write them down but this is, like, "notes on a criminal conspiracy" level. I would expect any descriptions of intentions, estimates of results, and desirability, to be written much more circumspectly. With much more room for plausible deniability, especially by an operation like RAND.

Note also that "the Old Europe" is suspect; a native English speaker would not include the article there.