In order to understand Russian Active Measures, we must first understand Russian Active Measures: Active Measures are RECURSIVE

I've been struggling for a couple years now, trying to explain the scale and depth of Russian Active Measures in America.

It's an uphill battle, because Russia has employed a rather sophisticated tapestry of Surkovian truths and untruths to conceal what is has been doing.

But it's important to explain it, because it helps people understand how media narratives ("transgenderism" and the Kardashians, anyone?) become front and center, in the age of Russia's modern day active measures.

My own journey to identify and expose Active Measures have revealed a sort of inherent recursion.

What do I mean by "recursion"?

For those who are familiar with recursion, it's a difficult concept to explain, but I found a pretty succinct description of recursion on Wikipedia:

"Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other, the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematics and computer science, in which it refers to a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. Specifically, this defines an infinite number of instances (function values), using a finite expression that for some instances may refer to other instances, but in such a way that no loop or infinite chain of references can occur. The term is also used more generally to describe a process of repeating objects in a self-similar way."

Interestingly, when I read through the Wikipedia page, there was our old "friend" Noam Chomsky again, who I have written about in previous articles.

So, let me explain why I see recursion in the implementation of Active Measures, and use a little software engineer's humor while doing so.  Hopefully, I won't lose my readers with the analogy:

In order to understand that certain mainstream media venues are peddling Kremlin narratives and talking points, you have to understand what the Kremlin talking points were.

In order to understand what those Kremlin talking points were, you have to understand the goals of Russian foreign policy.  And so on and so on.

But here's the beauty in this...

Once you understand who is influenced, a picture emerges and you begin to see Russian strategy very clearly. You learn that Russia loves Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ron and Rand Paul, Lincoln Chafee and John Kasich.  You ALSO learn that they hate Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (yes, I know that will surprise many of my more left-leaning readers, who are most welcome here, by the way, same as my more right-leaning readers).

News media like Forbes, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, Infowars, RT (Russia Today), Salon, DailyKOS, Alternet, Gawker, Daily Mail, Buzzfeed, Quartz, Business Insider, Mediaite, Adbusters, Drudge Report, etc., post articles that are like mirror images of each other, the only difference being which side they stand on. But on certain issues, they tend to stand together in a Libertarian sort of way. On issues like "police militarization", genetically modified foods/Monsanto and fracking, for example. The point is to divide us along partisan lines and destroy the Center, as I've referred to in previous articles.

What's interesting is how they all tend to, in their own way, push concepts that benfits Russia's foreign policy goals.  For instance, even though Huffington Post is by all accounts a Progressive-leaning news venue, they will publish articles that benefit the Conservative candidates that Russia endorses. The point is to target centrists and "non-Russian" candidates. I mean, does anyone really not understand that Huffington Post is PRO-Bernie Sanders and ANTI-Hillary Clinton.

All of the above-mentioned media venues are anti-Clinton, anti-Christie, anti-Bush, anti-Cruz and anti-Rubio.  In truth, they are all pro-Trump and pro-Sanders.  And, as mentioned in previous articles, they are not the only influenced players in this group.

There are telltale signs that help us further understand who is influencing these media outlets.  For example, there's Adbusters, a mouthpiece for the "Occupy" movement, that pushes the Kremlin's apocalyptic memes of police militarization and paranoic antisemitism and receives free advertising from Hacker group "Anonymous".

All of this is literally in plain sight, which is entirely the point.

Yesterday, even though I was rushed for time, I was quickly able to find two simple examples to illustrate my point...

Note the following below, including The New Republic, which I had observed before as a new addition to the list of Russian-influenced, albeit not very much yet:

Anyway, here's the second example...

A classic "honeypot" story:

You may recall that Brett McGurk's nomination to be Ambassador to Iraq was embroiled in controversy when cryptome.org, which I am flat out calling a front website for the Russian government, leaked emails exchanged between Mr. McGurk and Gina Chon, a Wall Street Journal reporter who he had an extramarital affair with.

So, let's look at the media exploiters in this case:

This recursive pattern repeats itself multiple times, DAILY, and it's ALWAYS varying combinations of the same media venues who are involved.

Finally, it should be noted that McGurk reports directly to Rob Malley now, Obama's ISIS "Czar".

Remember Rob Malley?

But the MOST important thing about all of this, which I CANNOT UNDERSTATE, is that understanding who is Russian-influenced and who is not, PROVIDES THE ANALYST WITH A NEARLY FLAWLESS ROADMAP INTO RUSSIAN OBJECTIVES.