Tag Archives: misinformation

In 2022, shortly after Russia’s illegal expansionist invasion of Ukraine, I took to Twitter to keep up with any updates.

One post in particular caught my attention: a Russian ambassador pushing the Kremlin line of “saving persecuted Russians in the Donbas region”. I clicked on the comments, only to find a small group of people with cartoon dogs as their profile pictures, sharing memes mocking Putin and the Russian army. I first thought nothing of it until I saw a follow-up post from the ambassador, in which he said, “You pronounced this nonsense, not me.”

I remember commenting, over and over, until another post of his went up, demanding we stop. We carried on. And then, just like that, he blocked me. Nearly everyone who had commented shared screenshots, showing he had blocked all of us. A bond was created in those posts; a bond that would go on to become “NAFO”, or the North Atlantic Fella Organisation.

I’d like to explain what NAFO is. Simply put, it’s a grassroots network that exists to do two main things:

1. Counteract disinformation spread by Russia and its allies
2. Raise money to support Ukrainians

Despite the F in NAFO standing for Fella, it isn’t meant to denote male-only membership. A “Fella” in this case is the name of the small cartoon dog, often associated with the “bonk” meme (for those who don’t know, don’t worry about it.) 

But NAFO’s membership consists of cis men and cis women, trans men and trans women, non-binary and gender non-conforming people. There is no set political allegiance, either. I made many good friends through NAFO, some of which are anarchists, conservatives, Trotskyists, social democrats, and many more who believe in very different ideologies. There was one universal truth that united us all: Ukraine is a sovereign nation who has been invaded, and they need our support.