Fossilized Kremlin Psyops

Jack A. Bryan discovers the Rosetta Stone for two decades of Russian propaganda, and the origin of “Q”

Yesterday, my friend Jack Bryan, director of the incredible podcast American Psyop sent me a website that I hadn’t seen — “Rumor Mill News.”

This innocuous sounding website turned out to be, as Jack said, “like finding a fully preserved T-rex” of Kremlin propaganda.

Jack Bryan @jackabryan

Anatomy of an incredibly well-preserved Russian disinformation site, a thread.

While there are many websites of this sort in the wild, this one is completely devoid of all pretense of being anything but Kremlin propaganda and psyops. It also reveals how much of what we’re seeing today has been getting quite literally workshopped and reused for decades.

But within a few minutes of getting the archive from Jack, I found something that shocked me — which is extremely rare these days. This website has a near-perfect prototype of QAnon sixteen years before the first “Q drop” — in March 2001.

The parallels between QAnon and this webpage are striking.

A mysterious figure referred to as “The Q” is posting cryptic messages designed to target Hillary Clinton. Despite her being just a freshman Senator at the time, “The Q says “« HILLARY IS IN THE LIMELIGHT!! »” and refers to itself, as the 2017-2020 “Q” did, as “we.” It also accuses her of “parrot[ing] the [“New World Order”] line that she and Bill embraced to get into the White House.”

“The Q” also mirrors “Q” by cloaking itself in nationalistic phrases like “Patriots” and “Warriors of Truth.” And for bonus points, Kremlin mafia lieutenant Rudy Giuliani.

A few weeks later, Kremlin propaganda website “Rumor Mill News” posted “THE BOOK OF ‘Q’: Why It is ALL Happening Now…”

In isolation, this could be just a very unlikely coincidence. Or perhaps some troll found this old website and plagiarized it. But in context, which is 100% Russian propaganda, it’s impossible not to see this as a 22-year old prototype of the QAnon psyop by the Kremlin.

That is a big deal.

However, since 2001, the website continued its unbroken run of being at the very leading edge of Kremlin propaganda operations and psyops, including all the psychological operations weaponized against Americans by Michael T. Flynn and his allies. “Rumor Mill News” started pushing Mike Flynn as Vice President simultaneous to the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Jim Stewartson, Antifascist, #RIPQ 🇺🇸🇺🇦🏴‍☠️ @jimstewartson

“Rumor Mills News” pushed “FBIAnon” which was a pre-Pizzagate neo-Nazi LARP on 4chan. FBIAnon and RMN were very interested in @GenFlynn for some reason and pushed for him as VP. When Flynn was fired RMN blamed then-VP Pence’s “pedophile” “best friend.”

Mike Flynn never got over this insult.

“Hang Mike Pence” — Mike Flynn’s Plan to Become Vice President

This is a remarkable post from two days after the first “official Q drop” on 10/28/17 which points to a different “anon” on 4chan who posted on the same day that “official Q” did — with a more prose-like version of the same propaganda as the first “Q drops.”

This demonstrates that Kremlin propaganda website “Rumor Mill News” was at a minimum informed about the psychological operation that would go on to become QAnon. Here’s the full 4chan thread which is a solid recapitulation of early QAnon — on the first day.

And currently this website continues to push false “messages from the Q” in the form of QAnon propaganda, for example “X22 Report” aka Dave Hayes, one of the original and most prolific “Q drop” writers and propagandists.

Jim Stewartson, Antifascist, #RIPQ 🇺🇸🇺🇦🏴‍☠️ @jimstewartson

22 years later on the front page of Kremlin website Rumor Mill News you will find “X22 Report” aka Dave Hayes which is a massive QAnon account on Bannon’s War Room network. Hayes wrote a lot of actual Q drops btw. Here’s Mike Flynn on his show six months ago. #ArrestMikeFlynn

Here’s Mike Flynn pushing for a war with China on X22 Report six months ago.

Jack Bryan, myself and others have just begun to uncover what’s here. Feel free to take a look yourself, but needless to say, this material is all radioactive. Proceed with extreme caution.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230115040709/https://www.rumormillnews.com/

Much more to come.

#ArrestMikeFlynn