With support from the University of Richmond
History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Source: NYT
Roundup
November 26, 2018 (accessed)

Video of the Week: Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News

by Adam B. Ellick and Adam Westbrook
Adam B. Ellick is the Director and Executive Producer of Opinion Video at The New York Times. He has produced Pulitzer Prize and Emmy winning video journalism. 

Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination ofMoscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the faintest clue.

Episode 1: Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News

We reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984 AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-internet era. Meet the KGB operatives who invented it and the “truth squad” that quashed it. For a bit.

Read entire article at NYT