Censorship, Surveillance, and Spin: EU, UK, and Ukraine Try to Drive the Narrative

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The EU, UK, and Ukraine are using a mix of expanded surveillance, censorship, and spin in an attempt to control the narrative in Europe and influence it in the U.S.

As I wrote in the first installment of this mini-series, Delusion, Deception and Dipshittery: Hasbara on the 8th Front, the western powers seem to be making competing desperate bids to maintain narrative control, and it is very hard to parse the difference between deliberate deception, delusion, and what is just plain dipshittery.

I’ve covered Israel’s battles on its “8th front” in part one and will talk about the Trump administration’s narrative management efforts in part three.

This edition will cover the efforts of the EU, UK, and Ukraine to redirect the narrative energy in their home countries and especially in the U.S., with a goal of re-establishing the proxy war in Ukraine as a top priority.

They are also resorting to expanded censorship and surveillance in an effort to keep their local populations onside with increasingly unpopular policies and governments.

Ukraine has always been winning

One sign that things are getting desperate is the revival of 2022-style agit prop from The Financial Times:

https://t.co/o2DEyLO1rT pic.twitter.com/AJXZssGUu5

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 29, 2025

The article itself isn’t worth engaging with as the content is just a rehash of Biden-era gaslighting that even the NY Times has been moving away from in recent months.

In August, Gallup revealed that their polling showed support for continuing the war had plummeted among Ukrainians:

https://t.co/dKq76XgkbR pic.twitter.com/8yRvfmLbZX

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 29, 2025

Much of the urgency, which is also expressed in recent calls to shoot down Russian jets allegedly flying in Estonian airspace, alleged Russian drone attacks on Poland, mystery drones over Denmark, can be attributed to concern over Donald Trump’s “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form” Truth social post, which seems to be abandoning Europe and Ukraine to their fate.

Naked Capitalism covered that previously and noted:

For anyone looking at the conflict at a remove, Biden lavishing money on that “bring Russia down” misadventure and stripping the US and its allies bare of weapons stocks did keep Ukraine fighting and limited territorial losses, which is what the press and most observers focused on. And the press was only haltingly starting to become candid about Ukraine’s increasingly desperate condition in the second half of 2024.

By contrast, war-watchers are now providing many indicators of Ukraine’s military collapse becoming more and more imminent, such as extremely thin manning on the front lines and Ukraine’s one solace, its supposed drone prowess, now being outmatched by Russia.

With the pressure building Zelensky is trying to position Ukraine as the protector of Europe, as Tusk of Poland tries to declare a European war on Russiaper The Guardian:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking to a security forum in Warsaw, said his country was offering “to Poland and all our partners to build a joint, truly reliable shield against Russian aerial threats”, drawing on Ukraine’s experience.

He said his country’s military “can counter all types of Russian drones and missiles” and argued that “if Russia loses the ability to strike in the skies, it will be unable to continue the war”.

Poland, Romania and Denmark have all been subject to drone incursions during the last month, which have forced the closure of airports and revealed gaps in the ability of Nato to respond effectively.

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said the scale of the drone incursions was such that “the entire western, transatlantic community” needed to realise “this is war”. He added: “We didn’t want it, it’s sometimes strange, a war of new type, but it’s still a war.”

Starmer, Surveillance, Censorship, and Digital Grift

German journalist Patrick Baab pointed out on the Glenn Diesen YouTube channel that:

My hypothesis is Western elites, especially Western European elites, are heading for war. They want to drive their own countries into a fullscale war with Russia. They let their countries into a dead end street and they they are unable to make a U-turn right now. So I’d like to substantiate that in terms of economic, political, cultural, psychological and military reasons and all these reasons and tendencies convene in a single direction the direction to war.

Baab also points out another angle behind European elite support for endless war, surveillance, censorship, and opposition to popular will, the opportunity to dramatically expand digital grift:

The next point is the digitalization and the digital capitalism. In war, states become the original venture capitalist for digital companies. You can see that at Elon Musk’s Starink with with its satellites that are monitoring the whole front line of 1,400 kilometers. Elon Musk is making billions of dollars completely paid by the military. With this venture capital of the state, Elon Musk brings himself in an econ economic pole position. These companies don’t have an interest to stop the war. …

And for the transformation from neoliberal capitalism to digital capitalism, war is necessary. And the enforcement of digital companies is exactly what the Trump administration wants for bringing the US economy into a pole position in the competition with China. Microchips and artificial intelligence are the important fields to make America strong again militarily and economically.

And that brings us to the UK’s moves to impose Digital ID, with the help of Larry Ellison of Oracle.

But first, let’s look at some of the pressures surveillance, censorship UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under. He’s historically unpopular:

Keir Starmer is now the most unpopular British Prime Minister in recorded history.
This is what happens when you make endless pledges you don’t keep, and do endless things you promised not to do. pic.twitter.com/CkFcZaAEfp

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 28, 2025

Starmer’s unpopularity is only encouraging the Labour government’s enthusiastic enforcement of increasingly draconian censorship laws, as Taylor Lorenz wrote in the Guardian last month:

the UK has reportedly blocked internet users’ access to everything from SpongeBob SquarePants gifs to Spotify playlists. Information about Joe Biden’s police funding plan has been restricted, along with a post about an up-and-coming political party. Gamers say they have been unable to tweak colours in games such as Minecraft. And it’s all because of a new age verification law.

…the law and others like it claim to be narrowly focused on pornographic content and material that promotes suicide, self-harm, eating disorders or abusive and hateful behaviour, the subjective nature of the restrictions has led to mass censorship, with the de facto removal of vast swaths of content from the web. Tech companies find it easier and cheaper to simply remove mass amounts of information than have something slip through and be deemed non-compliant.

Starmer has adopted an anti-immigration frame for the introduction of Digital ID:

I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration into this country. A secure border and controlled migration are reasonable demands, and this government is listening and delivering.

Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK. It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure. And it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly – rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.

We are doing the hard graft to deliver a fairer Britain for those who want to see change, not division. That is at the heart of our Plan for Change, which is focused on delivering for those who want to see their communities thrive again.

So far the opposition to the UK Digital ID scheme is coming from the right-wing Reform party and certain elements of the online left. Time will tell how it plays out, but I doubt it will reverse the general trends of Starmer’s unpopularity.

Unfortunately for Starmer, the more he clamps down, the more unpopular he becomes, which leads to more clamp downs, which leads to…a surveillance, censorship doomloop.

The EU says digital currency will protect freedom

Not to be left out, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, is pushing a digital euro, per Politico and she’s even made some concessions to national governments to get it done:

The Frankfurt-based ECB wants to get its plan for a purely digital version of the euro signed off as soon as possible, fearing a major delay will mean it loses ground to U.S.-based private sector payment systems — particularly dollar-denominated “stablecoin” cryptocurrencies that have become a popular cross-border payment method.
…
The earlier proposal, seen by POLITICO, gave governments three months, potentially extended to six, to decide on the limit and the chance for a qualified majority to veto it. In case of no decision, the ECB could go ahead and set the limit and issue the digital euro.

The last pitch, again presented just one week before a ministers’ meeting, doesn’t change the silence-approval mechanism in case of no decision by governments, but in exchange sets a clearer and longer timeline, requires more countries to agree on the limit, and also addresses doubts raised by countries such as Germany and Austria on what will happen after the launch.

Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, saw no need to compromise on his utopian/Orwellian rhetoric when extolling the promise of the digital Euro in a recent speech entitled “Digital euro: protecting our freedom, autonomy and security.”

The EU is also working on a major new step in online surveillance, chat control:

The Danish presidency of the EU Council is pushing for a vote on the proposals, dubbed “Chat Control” – which advocate mass scanning of mobile phones and computers to identify suspected child abuse material sent by encrypted communications services used by the pubic – by 14 October.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sums up the case against:

Chat Control is a dangerous legislative proposal that would make it mandatory for service providers, including end-to-end encrypted communication and storage services, to scan all communications and files to detect “abusive material.” This would happen through a method called client-side scanning, which scans for specific content on a device before it’s sent. In practice, Chat Control is chat surveillance and functions by having access to everything on a device with indiscriminate monitoring of everything. In a memo, the Danish Presidency claimed this does not break end-to-end encryption.

All in all, these surveillance, censorship and spin moves are not the moves of confident powers enjoying broad public support for their proven policies. Rather, this is some weird mix of deception, delusion, and dipshittery.