Russia bolsters its kleptocratic ranks in stifling international media
Around the time my last book came out, I created a Google alert for my own name, so I could see if anyone had reviewed it. I never got round to canceling it (it’s not like I’m in the news very often) and this week it turned up something genuinely odd. Apparently, a Dutch journalist has written a novel about money laundering, made me a character, and sent me to the Bilderberg conference, the annual networking event for the world’s most powerful people (and magnet for conspiracy theorists). Truth be told, this came as quite a surprise.
There are some pretty wild conspiracy theories about at the moment –on that note, I really enjoyed Gabriel Gatehouse’s podcast The Coming Storm, if you’re looking for a listening fix– and I get informed by anonymous folks on Twitter surprisingly often that I’m working on behalf of Bill Browder and/or George Soros to undermine Donald Trump by supporting anti-corruption groups in Ukraine. Under the circumstances, therefore, I want to put on the record that I have never had anything to do with the Bilderberg Group. This story is entirely fictional, so please don’t write me into any more baroque theories. I am not part of a sinister cabal attempting to take over the world.
But then again, that’s just what I’d expect me to say. If I were secretly a cog in the globalist ruling machine, I’d hardly admit it to a journalist like myself, would I? My denying it just makes this pernicious conspiracy more menacing. I need to get to the bottom of what I’m up to before it’s too late.
RT
Speaking of conspiracy theories, I can remember when RT – or Russia Today as it was originally known – first went on air. I was living in Moscow at the time, and a large group of fresh-faced young Brits came over to launch the channel. They were just out of journalism school and seemed far more focused on partying than working. The first day or two were a fiasco: the wrong stories got screened, the signal dropped out, the volume failed. Initial excitement about the Kremlin getting back into the propaganda game died away, and we stopped paying attention.