Midway through a podcast appearance, my host became distracted by a flurry of social media posts claiming that he was a paid agent of the Israeli government.

The host was Tim Pool; the accuser was Alex Jones, until then Pool’s friend and ally. The dispute began last month, when Pool suggested that Jones’s recent dip in online viewers had more to do with his wavering on Donald Trump than with any covert censorship. The argument quickly escalated, with Jones asking whether Pool was taking “marching orders” from Benjamin Netanyahu. I have no beef with Jones, but I doubt that Pool, who earns a healthy eight figures from his podcast, would torch his credibility for a little extra money.

Similar allegations fly when it comes to Qatar, the Gulf state frequently accused of covertly funding influence operations in the US. Suspicion has fallen especially on Tucker Carlson, dubbed “Tucker Qatarlson” by pro-Israel voices who suggest that the former Fox News host is somehow on the emirates’ payroll.

This makes even less sense than the Pool allegations. Carlson was earning more than $15 million a year at Fox. Multiply that over six years, add his current position as one of America’s most-watched podcasters, and it is clear he needs Qatari riyals even less than Pool needs Israeli shekels.

This is how political disputes now tend to go. As an online argument goes on longer, the probability that one or both parties will be accused of shilling for a foreign power – usually Israel, Qatar, China, Ukraine or Russia – approaches one. It is the new Godwin’s Law of the modern internet.

Weakening a rival country by propagandizing its public was once a task that fell to Cold War spies

Weakening a rival country by propagandizing its public was once a task that fell to Cold War spies

Adding to the general paranoia is the fact that influencers are not required to disclose whether a foreign government has paid them. Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna hopes to change that with an amendment to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Luna claims that “a large portion” of influencers “have been approached at one point to push a certain position that’s probably tied to a foreign country.” Such campaigns are indeed real, and they are quickly becoming more sophisticated.

Pool was embroiled in the last major story about influence campaigns. In 2024, the Tenet Media affair initially seemed like a major scandal: two individuals allegedly linked to Russian state media were accused of paying major influencers – including Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin – to produce content. It turned out to be a dud. According to the indictment filed by the Department of Justice, the two Russians had hidden their true background from the influencers, none of whom were implicated by the DOJ, and who were described by PBS as having been duped.

An analysis by the left-wing tech mag Wired, generally hostile to most of the figures involved, found that Tenet Media’s channel focused on topics the influencers tended to cover anyway: critical race theory, transgender men in women’s sports, and illegal........

© The Spectator