Canadian ‘Protecting Democracy Unit’ supported video claiming Lenin co-led Soviet Cold War ‘disinformation’: Emails
Written by: Aidan Jonah
Emails obtained by The Canada Files reveal the new Canadian 'Protecting Democracy Unit (PDU)' supported an ‘anti-disinformation’ video including a claim that Lenin rose from the grave during the 1940s.
This unit, which cost the Canadian taxpayer $10 million CAD back in March 2023, is run by the Privy Council Office (PCO).
Emails confirm that Global Affairs Canada (GAC) shared a “Pilot Video Strategy for a ‘Disinformation and Democracy’ video series that would include interviews with experts” with the PDU in Fall 2023 (Page 125, A-2024-00014). The series’ aim was, among other goals, to “bolster support for Ukraine”.
The history of GAC’s first interviewed ‘expert’, DisinfoWatch founder Marcus Kolga, in bolstering support for Ukraine, includes leading the Central Eastern European Council (CEEC) to be “a main force behind the infamous [2023] Toronto Ukraine memorial which contained apologia for the fascist OUN-B leader, Stepan Bandera.”
Kolga, the valiant fighter against disinformation, also has worked to spread apologia for Estonian “Nazi collaborators such as the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), the Estonian Legion, and the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade”.
Kolga’s brave fight against disinformation includes disinformation about the origins of disinformation. The Canada Files has already noted that disinformation, referred to as “Black Propaganda”, was used against Indigenous nations by the Americans in the late 1700s. ‘Disinformation’ itself was “used in its original English in American papers as early as 1887”. But according to Kolga, disinformation was pioneered by the Soviet Union in the 1940s.
Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, apparently had special help in developing disinformation. Kolga attributed disinformation’s origins to Stalin, Lenin (2:00-2:20), and the KGB’s supposed ‘Desinformationstiya’/‘Dezinformatsiya’ department during the Second World War and Cold War era. A man no other than Vladimir Lenin, first leader of the Soviet Union who died in 1924, rose from the grave after World War II to help Stalin ‘create’ the ‘disinformation’ tactic during the Cold War era. The KGB also engaged in time-travel to help Stalin and Lenin develop disinformation before Stalin’s death in 1953, since there was no KGB until 1956; only the NKVD.
Does Kolga think disinformation began 100 years ago (0:50-1:05) or does he think Dezinformatsiya/'Disinformation' was a tactic created by the Soviets during World War II and the Cold War (1:57-2:15)? Who knows? Certainly not disinformation warrior Kolga.
But there’s two sides to such claims being spread: the person who makes them, and the people who spread their claims around.
More than two months before releasing the first Kolga interview, Global Affairs Canada got support from ‘Protecting Democracy Unit’ for the interview’s content. The transcript of the video shared to PDU on February 6, 2024, included Kolga’s aforementioned claims (Page 125-126, A-2024-00014). Sandra Boudreau, ‘Manager, Engagement & Operations’ at ‘Privy Council Office - Democratic Institutions’ in the PDU, thought the video was “very well done” and that “it’s the right level of detail and length” (Page 124, A-2024-00014).
The video went through numerous further checks, as indicated by the full document containing the internal emails obtained by The Canada Files, yet GAC’s publicly released version contained Kolga’s exact same claim.
Jeremy Harley, a ‘Deputy Director, Strategic Communications’ at GAC, said its ‘Disinformation and Democracy’ series “aims to help build resilience to state-sponsored disinformation narratives… and state-sponsored disinformation”, and “bolster support for Ukraine”. It appears that the only aim the video could even meet is bolstering support for Ukraine, though even that isn’t going so smoothly for Canada’s government, as revealed by their network’s attacks on Canadian Conservatives’ Russia viewpoints.
Canada’s foreign ministry, Global Affairs Canada, and the Privy Council Office which runs Canada’s $10 million ‘Protecting Democracy Unit’, would do well to shift their anti-disinformation fight back home. GAC and the PCO should go to war against their own ‘state-sponsored disinformation narratives’ and ‘state-sponsored disinformation’, before claiming to have any capability to expose supposed disinformation coming abroad. Only then would they be helping Canadians.
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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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