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As authors of a book on Russian disinformation, we see a striking resemblance between the Russian regime’s falsification of history and an eerily similar tendency now emanating from The White House.
Indeed, the new disinformation narrative being pumped out in MAGA world regarding Greenland sounds so familiar that it might as well have been written by the Kremlin itself: The Russian playbook on Ukraine is now being recycled in the US.
In Denmark, most people follow the facts on the ground and the attitudes within the Commonwealth closely. Eighty five percent of Greenland’s citizens have rejected becoming part of the United States.
Múte B. Egede, the outgoing prime minister of Greenland, has told the Americans in no uncertain terms to stay away, while his successor, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, disparages the American “disrespect”.
A recent documentary by the public broadcaster Danmarks Radio has fuelled a discussion about the actual wishes of the Greenlandic people, and you could always argue the merits of this or that opinion poll. Every analysis, including this one, is an interpretation. It is nonetheless one that is anchored in facts.
However, in MAGA media, viewers are presented with a different reality. This reality has nothing in common with our reality, but functions as a post-truth parallel universe. Loyalty does not gravitate around the truth in this universe, but is instead bound only by loyalty to the new Trump Government and attempts to please it through support of its disinformation narratives.
Within this postfactual media bubble, Greenland is portrayed as a malnourished and neglected urchin being oppressed by a distant Copenhagen regime. Annexation is simultaneously framed as a matter of US national security. The people of Greenland are in fact waiting for their liberators and their future role as a prospering American vassal.
Back in the real world, the US voluntarily gave up most of their bases in Greenland. In the post-truth world, Denmark is the negligent party and a “bad ally”. Greenland needs to be saved in other words — from itself.
If you think we’re being hyperbolic, here’s a little peak into the disinformation bubble, which is currently being erected around the US far-right media landscape.
On FOX News, Jesse Watters tells his audience that the US might: “… have to burn down a few bridges with Denmark to take Greenland. We’re big boys. We dropped an A-bomb on Japan and now they are our top ally in the Pacific… America is not handcuffed by history.”
On Real America’s Voice, Brian Glenn explains that the official Greenlandic rejection of the vice president couple’s overtures doesn’t reflect “the real attitude of the people”.
One is led to the conclusion that the US will soon be greeted by its people donning MAGA-caps and draped in the stars and stripes. Similar narratives are being disseminated on One America News Network, where Trump’s aggressive rhetoric on Greenland is being lauded as “the art of the deal”.
While the rest of the world laughs at JD Vance complaining about the weather in Greenland, being unable to find even a single local willing to meet and greet and waving into the nothingness, the disinformation bubble uses his failed trip to further a narrative which might be priming the public for an invasion.
Here, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the US interest in Greenland probably stems from a Russian disinformation campaign: A forged letter prompted senator Tom Cotton to contact Trump in 2019 regarding the possibility of Greenlandic annexation.
A Russian playbook, sure — but also one that quickly attracted an American audience. The US annexation plans are simultaneously a prism into the alternate reality which is now being erected in the whole country.
Every authoritarian regime draws its power from a core narrative of representing the true will of the people. Critique and dissent are in themselves acts of treason towards this imagined collective will.
The regime also needs an external enemy and a permanent state of crisis or war. From your average person’s perspective, war is a terrible thing, something to be avoided at all cost. To the authoritarian ruler, however, a quick skirmish against, say, Canada or Greenland, is merely a golden opportunity to rally the nation.
To this end, the new US regime can draw inspiration from the Kremlin’s repeated use of this technique, where the people unite behind a brutal war of aggression. Following the illegal and internationally condemned annexation of Crimea in 2014, Vladimir Putin’s popularity soared from 60% to 80% of the Russian people. This drastic rise was dubbed ‘the Crimea effect’. Perhaps Trump has started dreaming of a similar ‘Greenland effect’?
To support this dissemination of a revisionist, propagandistic narrative to its people, the authoritarian regime also needs to control the narrative in a wider sense.
In Russia, the Kremlin’s ruler has systematically eliminated independent, critical media since his ascension to power. Putin forced the oligarch Boris Berezovsky to sell off his Channel 1 media empire from his British exile in 2001.
One year earlier, the network had heavily criticised his handling of the Kursk disaster, where the eponymous nuclear submarine had sunk to the bottom of the sea, drowning all 118 sailors while Putin refused assistance from the West and arrogantly dismissed the tragedy on CNN. Berezovsky was later found hanged under suspicious circumstances, to say the least.
Around the same time, independent Russian news outlets like NTV had also started critically examining the circumstances around the 1999 terror attacks. Something seemed… off. Then the network’s owner, Vladimir Gusinsky was suddenly charged with phony allegations of corruption and thrown into a cell in the infamous Butyrka prison.
His release was expedited once he agreed to hand over the NTV reins to the Russian state. The Moscow Times stopped handing out physical papers in 2017 and moved its entire operation out of Russia following the full-scale invasion in 2022. Following in their path of exile was Novaya Gazeta, Proekt, Rain TV, and every other outlet even mildly critical of the government.
A similar purge has now commenced in the US media sphere. A few weeks ago, Donald Trump called on his loyal Republican foot soldiers in Congress to remove all funding of independent public broadcasters like NPR and PBS, framing them as partisan Democrat outlets.