Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday's Midterms (nytimes.com) 289
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol. The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to supportUkraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine's president as a caricature straight out of Russian propaganda. The fusion of political concerns was no coincidence. The account was previously linked to the same secretive Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, according to the cybersecurity group Recorded Future. It is part of what the group and other researchers have identified as a new, though more narrowly targeted, Russian effort ahead ofTuesday's midterm elections. The goal, as before, is to stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system. This time, it also appears intended to undermine the Biden administration's extensive military assistance to Ukraine.
"It's clear they are trying to get them to cut off aid and money to Ukraine," said Alex Plitsas, a former Army soldier and Pentagon information operations official now with Providence Consulting Group, a business technology company. The campaign -- using accounts that pose as enraged Americans like Nora Berka -- have added fuel to the most divisive political and cultural issues in the country today. It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort. The campaigns show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceptive content. The agencies urged people not to like, discuss or share posts online from unknown or distrustful sources. They did not identify specific efforts, but social media platforms and researchers who track disinformation have recently uncovered a variety of campaigns by Russia, China and Iran.
These are much smaller campaigns than those in the 2016 election, where inauthentic accounts reached millions of voters across the political spectrum on Facebook and other major platforms. The efforts are no less pernicious, though, in reaching impressionable users who can help accomplish Russian objectives, researchers said. "The audiences are much, much smaller than on your other traditional social media networks," said Brian Liston, a senior intelligence analyst with Recorded Future who identified the Nora Berka account. "But you can engage the audiences in much more targeted influence ops because those who are on these platforms are generally U.S. conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims." Some characteristics of an inauthentic user to look out for include: no profile picture, no identifying biographical details, and posts exclusively on political issues that often include false or misleading posts and little engagement. They may also link to obscure websites like electiontruth.net, which Recorded Future said was almost certainly linked to the Russian campaign.
"It's clear they are trying to get them to cut off aid and money to Ukraine," said Alex Plitsas, a former Army soldier and Pentagon information operations official now with Providence Consulting Group, a business technology company. The campaign -- using accounts that pose as enraged Americans like Nora Berka -- have added fuel to the most divisive political and cultural issues in the country today. It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort. The campaigns show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceptive content. The agencies urged people not to like, discuss or share posts online from unknown or distrustful sources. They did not identify specific efforts, but social media platforms and researchers who track disinformation have recently uncovered a variety of campaigns by Russia, China and Iran.
These are much smaller campaigns than those in the 2016 election, where inauthentic accounts reached millions of voters across the political spectrum on Facebook and other major platforms. The efforts are no less pernicious, though, in reaching impressionable users who can help accomplish Russian objectives, researchers said. "The audiences are much, much smaller than on your other traditional social media networks," said Brian Liston, a senior intelligence analyst with Recorded Future who identified the Nora Berka account. "But you can engage the audiences in much more targeted influence ops because those who are on these platforms are generally U.S. conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims." Some characteristics of an inauthentic user to look out for include: no profile picture, no identifying biographical details, and posts exclusively on political issues that often include false or misleading posts and little engagement. They may also link to obscure websites like electiontruth.net, which Recorded Future said was almost certainly linked to the Russian campaign.
How the times change (Score:2)
Remember back during Soviet times when it was the left that sucked up to Russia and the right was hellbent on considering anything coming out of that country equivalent to a message from hell itself?
And suddenly the right tries hard to be Putin's suppository. One has to wonder why...
Re: How the times change (Score:3)
The tankies loved Communist Russia because it was a story of tremendous progress from feudalism to superpower in 35 years. Rightists love Putin's Russia because it is a story of a dramatic return from atheism to faith and from anarchy to authority.
Re: (Score:3)
from atheism to faith
Too little has been said about this. From Medvedev's recent comments, to just the general integration of the Russian Orthodox church into Russian politics, there is no doubt that religion is playing a huge role in Russia's situation. And unlike the Catholic church, which even it has had to moderate itself a tiny bit to fit into the modern world, it doesn't seem like the Russian Orthodox church has moved away from its medieval ideas.
from anarchy to authority
Well, from anarchy to oligarchy. The right wing loves oligarchies, because t
Re: (Score:2)
Leftists suck up to leftist authoritarian dictators..
Right-wingers suck up to right-wing authoritarian dictators.
Always has been, always will be. Don't know why anyone is even remotely surprised since it's been happening for hundreds of years.
Behold! (Score:2, Funny)
Gab, a Texas based 900K users strong social media is being corrupted into anti-democrat mouthpiece by Russians!
For sure, with such a massive blow, democracy is done for.
Re: (Score:3)
You fail at logic.
Just because this behavior has been publicly identified at Gab, does not mean that the same behavior is not taking place on Facebook and Twitter.
Re:Behold! (Score:5, Insightful)
You never learned about Russian subversion and how it's what MOST of what the KGB did and Putin was in charge of it; later he supercharged it when he came to power. I learned about it in the 1980s and defectors were trying to tell people how it worked. It's amazingly close to what Republican propaganda is today and Trump could have been their best student if he was a spy. It's easy to see once you learn and you can look up 80s history just so you can feel it's not tainted by current biases.
Gab would be perfect; they could fund the whole thing, get involved in the algorithm ranking, simply have an agent be in HR and hire the staff at the place. They don't directly do anything, that gets you noticed-- they hire or influence people that create ripples it's more like a grass roots but to amp up and empower the worst possible people who would likely not succeed without a little push (or a huge one in the case of massive loans to the Trump org after no bank would touch him.)
You should start by reading the list of all facebook ads they posted in 2016. I did. it gives you a clue (and it fits their tactics perfectly.) They did ads for extreme BLM and woke stuff too-- the purpose is to create powerful chaotic groups to rip the society apart from within. Ideology isn't that important; you want something approaching a civil war.
You must be noticing their success by now, with many people bringing up the idea of civil war when not long ago almost nobody ever entertained the idea.
Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing! (Score:5, Informative)
At least Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: The elections are rigged. They just slightly disagree by whom and to who's favor. But its rigged!
No, in fact they don't agree.
Democrats had said that Russians secretly used hackers to spread disinformation and discord in attempts to sow discord, and in particular to disrupt the voting process, including breaking into computer accounts. These accusations have been pretty well proven. They do not include any allegation that the voting process itself was rigged.
Republicans (or, the Trump faction of Republicans) say that the voting process itself was rigged. These accusations have been quite well disproven.
Re: (Score:3)
Democrats also said that Trump had secretly colluded with Russia to win the election.
Not precisely, no. And, as the Mueller report pointed out, "collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States code."
That charge is heavier than the charge that the voting process is rigged.
Not at all.
The charge that the voting itself is rigged is far worse of a charge than saying that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians.
It implies that the candidate -- now President -- deceived the voters through clandestine and illegal actions,
Clandestine, yes, but illegal-- not at all clear.
and that the corruption took place at the highest level of the state.
That makes no sense. Trump was not a member of the state when he ran for office in 2016.
Re: (Score:3)
Democrats also said that Trump had secretly colluded with Russia to win the election.
False. Democrats said that the Trump campaign had secretly colluded with Russia to win the election. And there is ample evidence of collusion in the Mueller report [justsecurity.org]. If you weren't afraid to read it, you'd already know this.
In other words, they are bastards.
You are a disingenuous douchebag who's stumping for a foreign adversary. In other words, a traitor.
Disinformation factory (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking of attempts to manipulate the election one thing that really struck me the last week was how brutal the Fox News propaganda machine has gotten.
Just look at the attack on Paul Pelosi [wikipedia.org]. Where a mentally unstable individual, who for several years had been on the fringe of the left, and in recent years fallen into the fringe of the right. And he ended up radicalized until the point where motivated by Q-anon and other right wing conspiracy theories, he broke into Nancy Pelosi's house with the intention of doing harm to her and other democrats.
Fox's extensive coverage [foxnews.com] routinely talks about his history as a nudist activist and other things to associate him with the left but makes almost no mention of the fact the right wing conspiracies and specific targeting of Democrats that actually motivated his attack!
Or this sneaky little gem [foxnews.com] where NBC got tricked into running a report that was complete BS (and furthered right wing conspiracy theories). So what does Fox do? Report on this by repeating all the BS from the NBC report and instead of pointing out the inaccuracies spin it like a cover up so their readers believe the inaccurate report!
If you actually believe that Fox is being honest with you I urge you to read their coverage of the Pelosi attack with an open mind then actually step back and look for the real facts. Fox News is trying to give you a false version of reality.
Re:Disinformation factory (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure if this was a prostitution gone wrong or simply a drug deal, but there are so many gaps in the story and no one is being forthcoming. It screams cover up.
One thing you will never, ever, convince me of, however, was that this was some deranged lunatic that somehow managed to ninja past some of the highest security in the nation. That's a load of shit and everyone knows it.
Not really. The story is fairly straightforward.
Some places have "the highest security in the nation" but generally it's a lot less fancy than what you see in movies.
In this case the security was largely secret service (why have an alarm system when you have a bunch of guys with guns?), but it was attached to the person (Nancy Pelosi) more than the residence. So while she was away there wasn't really anything to stop a crazy guy from breaking in through a window.
Once he got in, bad news! You're stuck in the house with a crazy guy with a tenuous grasp of reality!!
But also good news, the person holding you is a crazy guy with a tenuous grasp of reality. So it's not that hard to manipulate him so he lets down his guard enough so that you can get a call to police. Then when the cops show up, and the guy is freaking out, you make a run for the door.
Pretty clear as those things go.
On the other hand, there's absolutely zero evidence of "prostitution" or a "drug deal" other than anonymous sources that seem to have completely made things up. And those narratives are contradicted by the fact that DePape was very clearly going there to target Nancy Pelosi with a hit list of Democratic politicians in hand.
The only reason you're skeptical is the folks you listen to keep insisting "things don't add up" or referencing undisclosed information that somehow never pans out.
In short, you're being played.
Re:Disinformation factory (Score:4, Informative)
where is your evidence he broke in ? Where is your evidence that there was no security? Talk about misinformation.
Well the fact there was a broken window and both him and the victim claim he entered through the broken window seem to be about as much evidence of a break in as one could possibly imagine.
As for security, it's true I'm making an assumption that there were no security guards there at the time. I could be wrong as I haven't seen that literally stated... but I haven't actually seen any reliable suggestion otherwise either and it seems to fit the other facts best.
From an outside perspective ... (Score:2)
Having watched the US system from the outside for 3 decades, it seems to me that your two party system is the real problem.
It makes it easier for Russian/Chinese/Martian bots to create simplistic issues to confuse your voters and play one side off the other.
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, this guy sure ain't [apnews.com]
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously while a lot of what I said just now is kind of incendiary it's only incendiary because you've been taught your whole life that politics is dirty and we're not supposed to talk about it. Politics is something you do when you elect a student council that doesn't actually do anything or have any power. One of the worst things we do is teach kids about politics with pretend politics. It makes people think politics isn't real and doesn't affect their lives.
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
Another issue is that Trump vehemently denied Russia was ever involved in any possible way. The reason he said that was purely ego; he won the election and any hint that there was help would imply that he needed help. This is unacceptable to a person who thinks he is literally the greatest human who ever lived. This was never about "collusion" and yet that's what he focused on, if he disproved "collusion" then obviously (to him) it meant Russia never did anything on US social media that favored him or disfavored his opponents and kept strictly to their own business. Remember, Russian interference is NOT Russian collusion with Trump, but Trump and his supporters don't seem to understand this.
Russian interference absolutely happened, there is no doubt, but Russian collusion with Trump very probably never happened.
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Informative)
Russian interference absolutely happened, there is no doubt, but Russian collusion with Trump very probably never happened.
There is ample evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the Mueller report, which says he wasn't asked to prove such and then goes on to include the evidence he found anyway. There are also credible allegations that Trump is and has been a Russian asset (not agent, of course.) Whether Trump himself intentionally colluded with Putin (etc.) is an interesting question, but not the only question.
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are also credible allegations that Trump is and has been a Russian asset
Absolutely there is. And it's well documented [theguardian.com] for over 40 years.
Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”
The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.
The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.
“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Informative)
Another issue is that Trump vehemently denied Russia was ever involved in any possible way.
I think russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin would disagree Putin ally admits interfering in US elections [politico.eu]:
Asked by a journalist whether Russia was interfering in the U.S. midterms on November 8, Prigozhin answered: “Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere”, ...
and A Putin Ally Says Russia is Interfering in the Midterms [nytimes.com]:
Mr. Prigozhin — the founder of a shadowy mercenary force closely linked to the Kremlin — has been accused of being deeply involved in such operations. In 2018, he was indicted by the United States in a case involving the troll factory that spearheaded Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 elections in the United States.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Trump's supporters are supposed to understand that the Democrat's political machine and media hacks and online astroturfing agencies and advertising buys funded to the tune of hundred of millions of dollars were no match for a bunch of vodka swilling propagandists who know English as a second language.
Those supporters also need to understand that 100k of ad buys on Facebook and Twitter can be devastating compared to the likes of Google and other big tech curating news feeds and what's trending to the benefi
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the above post: DARVO [uoregon.edu], a longrunning tactic of conservatives peddling bullshit. Note that every accusation the fake account "will_die" makes is demonstrably false, but the account's owner repeats a litany of falsehoods trying to hope that people will grasp onto one or more.
Also spoken of by one Goebbels as "the most effective tactic, to accuse others of what you yourself are doing." Thus the fake account must continually try to accuse democrats of affiliation with Russia, because it is in fact the republicans who are affiliated and accepting help from Russia. The COVID denialism and "but but china" nonsense is tossed in as a non-sequitur just for distraction value, as is the "funding to the biden family" horse shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is just a line in a Postgres database.
Bad assumptions are bad. This is Slashdot. It's probably still on MySQL, and not even a recent version, either.
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:2)
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:4, Insightful)
Um most of what you just posted is untrue and just part of the formula pushed by the pootinists.
Do you also believe any of their current posting lines of lies:
"Zelensky is a secret billionaire from money he made on-selling western weapons to terrorists, ...(add in concepts like border control),
Zelensky is a drug addict and a pawn of international secret cabals,
Americans will quickly tire of foreign news and want their taxes spent on things like
There is a server hidden in Kiev that Hilary used to plot against American interests,
Hunter Biden was the head of an international effort based in Ukraine to funnel illegal electoral funding to the US."
It goes on in the same vein.
They use many fake identities to push the same lines over and over to support a post. Each troll runs about 15 IDs and they often use a technique where they use perhaps one account to imitate an angry, abusive "Liberal" who argues against the lead post in a grating manner, so as to amplify the cognitive dissonance effects of the material.
There is a PHD for Psych graduate right there amongst the horror of it all.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem isn't Russian's meddling and American politics
I wouldn't be so quick to disregard it as a non-issue. It's not just about influencing who wins, Russia is also exporting their own hate and prejudices over here as well. All of the "don't say gay" shit that the GOP has been pushing as of late is taken almost verbatim from laws passed previously in Russia. [wikipedia.org]
Seriously while a lot of what I said just now is kind of incendiary it's only incendiary because you've been taught your whole life that politics is dirty and we're not supposed to talk about it.
People love talking about politics, so long as the discussion is a circle jerk and everybody participating passes the purity tests. It's just a touchy topic over here on Slashdot because geeky/techy ty
Re: (Score:2)
The problem isn't Russian's meddling and American politics the problem is the Republican Party is actively helping them along with Donald Trump. The links between NRA funding and Russia and the Republican Party are stupidly obvious and the only reason why we're not throwing people in jail for sedition is because we're too afraid to because Republican party is full of nut jobs willing to throw their lives away for an orange buffoon.
Though I find it interesting how quiet Trump has been regarding Ukraine.
Right now, Putin is losing the war due to western (mostly American) weapons. And if Putin loses it's not only his leadership but his legacy that dies.
If Putin really did have major dirt / leverage on Trump I'd expect he'd have Trump going full bore politicizing support for Ukraine in order to cut off the military support. The fact that Trump hasn't been doing so makes me think that Putin doesn't actually have much leverage on him after
Re: (Score:2)
Putin knows that Trump is largely played out as a political force. For all that Trump talks a game, (a) if he runs for office the GOP cuts off paying his legal bills and (b) many of his endorsees have lost in general elections when it mattered. He mostly "endorses" people in largely-uncontested races to pad his average.
At this point Putin knows that he gets more 'bang for the buck' by peddling money and influence to talking-head pundits, like Tucker "Treason Shit" Carlson [youtube.com] on Fox Noise, because if he can g
Re: (Score:2)
Putin knows that Trump is largely played out as a political force. For all that Trump talks a game, (a) if he runs for office the GOP cuts off paying his legal bills and (b) many of his endorsees have lost in general elections when it mattered. He mostly "endorses" people in largely-uncontested races to pad his average.
Played out or not Trump still talks and Putin is desperate. If Putin could get Trump to start trashing Ukraine he would.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The thing that pisses me off about the NRA is many shooting ranges around here actually require that you have a NRA membership as a condition of range membership. Sure, they all have some sort of public day if you're willing to get up at the ass crack of dawn on a few specific inconvenient days each month, but if you actually want to go shoot on your own time you really do need a membership.
It might be a somewhat controversial belief, but I actually feel more people on the left side of the political spectr
Re: (Score:3)
I personally don't understand why the DNC doesn't have an NRA membership drive, so that their members could vote out the current leadership and adopt a plank of responsible gun ownership policies and regulations.
They'd get a lot farther doing that, then they would in what they are currently doing. And it would also have the nice side effect of being a democratic process.
Re: (Score:3)
Guns are generally a rural vs urban divide. R and D don't always divide the same way.
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:4)
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey it gets me off to troll you guys. What is it to you? It is amusing that you guys are so fucking self important that you think the Russians are spreading disinformation here. For what purpose?
Because they troll all the sites that they can get pseudonymous accounts on.
They aren't being paid to spend their time researching sites to decide which ones are the best choice to use to spread their disinformation, they're being paid to spread garbage on all the channels they can reach.
Re: (Score:2)
A bunch of self important bozos.
You just described every single "community" on any platform on the Internet. Like, every single one.
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:2)
Hey it gets me off to troll you guys. ... A bunch of self important bozos
I think I can see who feels they're self important.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As soon as you use the word "disinformation", you reveal that you are out of touch with reality.
For thousands of years human beings have made serious and sincere attempts to understand reality. Many of them talked or wrote about their conclusions. You can study what they said if you choose. They have always argued - usually civilly and according to accepted rules of debate - and often agreed to disagree about those matters they couldn't resolve by discussion.
Then along came science with its experimental met
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the Dallas Morning News
GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia [dallasnews.com]
We are awash in foreign money being funneled through the Republican party.
Moryath provided links, I provided more,
All you have is mewling.
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:3)
Serious question as an outsider: How did America go from Reagan and Rocky 4 to this? Open treason is now mainstream. Holy shit, can't you see the confected universe you inhabit?
Take another hit. It's only sugar. What's it gonna do? So sweet. Go on. Read the label: Drink Me.
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:4, Informative)
Can't deal with the actual links and any facts contained? Attack the publisher!
Could you fail a little more?
We are not giving up our guns, ever [...] Thank you for your hysterical conspiracy theories
Yep. Sounds like you can fail a little more. There is no pending action or even suggestion of making people give up guns, because it's constitutionally illegal to do so. Talk about a hysterical conspiracy theory that never seems to go away. That's been absolute bullshit since we started hearing it in the early 1990s out of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.
Re: Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
The average American figured it out. The red wave is here and we will not forget what you have done to the middle and lower classes.
The average American doesn't care about the wave and mainly wishes the D and R team would stop playing stupid games because it affects us.
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:4, Insightful)
The republicans are getting desperate. And Putin knows his best chance to undercut Ukraine is to help Republicans win. Take one look at how conservatives have been parroting Putin's propaganda [youtube.com] and it's clear; republicans are 100% willing to sabotage both the USA and Ukraine, to ally themselves with Putin, if it means conservatives grab power.
Re: (Score:3)
Go back 10 years and ask the average US Republican if their party was pro-Russia and the NO would have been deafening. It's amazing how this changed so fast.
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
Go back 10 years and ask the average US Republican if their party was pro-Russia and the NO would have been deafening. It's amazing how this changed so fast.
It is fairly appalling but if you think about it, it really makes sense, because conservatives don't actually believe any of the shit they say. Literally any of it.
They claim to be Christians, but then the vast majority of them ignore everything Jesus supposedly said, like love thy neighbor and give to the poor. They claim to care about the law, but they consistently scoff at it and break it just to troll, e.g. "Rolling Coal". They claim to care about the deficit, but they always increase it, and vote for people who are going to increase it. They claim to care about workers, but then they attack unions. They literally do not believe in any of the shit they say they believe in, and will happily shoot themselves in the foot if they can shoot a liberal in the foot at the same time. (Rolling coal led directly to increased regulations that are killing diesel tuning, and let me tell you, conservatives love diesel tuners more than even apple pie or incest.)
So it really, really doesn't surprise me that Conservatives have adopted Russia. For one thing, Russia is the modern mecca of white supremacy...
Re:Bueller, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even think that is even remotely their objective. It might be an unintended side effect, or even an ignored one. A more honest assessment would be:
Republicans are simply grasping at anything that would allow them to gain unilateral power, regardless of who they need to align with in order to do it, regardless of how hypocritical that makes them, and regardless of legality.
They want power for the sake of having power. And then they intend to do everything they can to lock it down so they never lose it. And then that's when the real agenda starts coming about, just as we've seen with recent Supreme Court decisions.
The Republican Party is finally showing us who they really are, rather than making sure there's a feel-good layer of thick frosting over the top of the bitter grievance-fuelled racist / sexist / homophobic / transphobia / antisemitic / authoritarian / fascist shit cake underneath.
All they've done is stop spreading the frosting on.
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I have trouble believing people would throw you and your partner under the bus over gas. At least at this point. Maybe at the point where there are fuel rations.
I really feel like what we're really running into is the fact that large portion of the country are fucking homophobic racists.
They become more and more emboldened as the powers that array against them become more and more impotent due to their own missteps.
It sounds so... fucking reductionist, I hate it.
But the more and more y
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"Granddad, why did democratic norms not survive the 2022 election?"
"Well, gasoline prices were kinda high..."
"Granddad, what's gasoline?"
If there was ever an issue that people are focusing on that is the stupidest thing to pick out of all the issues we're facing right now, gasoline prices have to be the ultimate example.
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They shouldn't be. Why would a bad faith actor stop acting in bad faith, when there has been no consequences to that bad faith acting?
If we live in a world where there are not consequences for bad-faith acts, then all actions eventually become bad faith.
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I am. I thought there were embargos or something and that Russia was a hermit kingdom now.
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You wouldn't happen to be from Russia would you?
A bipartisan committee concluded that Russia interfered with the US election in 2016. Noticed I said "interfered", not "hacked voting machines". There's a difference, but whenever it's brought up, the Russian trolls (and those that consume their propaganda) raise the strawman of voting systems being hacked.
Re:"Russia hacked the elections" (Score:4, Informative)
If these guys want such incompetent boobs we would be a fascist dictatorship right now. And Ron DeSantis of Florida is going to take another crack at fascism with himself as president for Life next. If that guy makes it into the White House that's it for democracy in America
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What a joke. While there have been extreme left-wing groups that engage in fascism, it's most commonly on the right-wing. The Nazis were right-wing fascists. Current day Nazis and those that have similar view points are also fascists.
It's not the socialism part of the government that people dislike, it's the fascism.
Fascism is about hierarchy (Score:3)
This is why every single fascist nation starts out with left wing rhetoric and then moves hard right. Look at Trump, if you just listened to his speeches he's a socialist.
Re: (Score:2)
Socialism is about workers' control of the means of production, not government control.
Fascism, to a fair extent, like Stalinism, is about perverting socialist ideas (because the idea that everyone deserves a fair share of the wealth is always popular) until they can be made to serve the far right. For instance, fascists love their global Jewish conspiracy ideas so they can take the left-wing idea that rich people are exploiting the common worker, and substitute "Jew" in there, so that non-Jewish rich peopl
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But there are also outright falsehoods.
Fascists were not socialists.
It is true that they rose from socialist groups (in the case of Mussolini- as in, kicked out of socialist groups), and in the case of Hitler, subverting one.
There was absolutely nothing in the fascist platform about giving the power over the means of production to the working class. In fact, the Fascist powers universally put the means of production into the hands of capitalist industry.
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@rsilvergun, you need to do some research on Fascism. You've got it backwards. Fascists are all about government control of private ownership and is a socialist ideology. Look it up. The founding of the Fascist Party in Italy was by leftist socialists, not conservatives. Painting your opponents as Fascists regardless of their real political philosophy is name-calling on the order of the USSR. Pravda regularly blamed their opponents for what the USSR was actually doing.
Nice try.
Every extremist ideology devolves into everyone in the country being forced to the same thing, that doesn't make them all leftist, that makes them all dictatorships of one kind or another.
Fascism is all about extreme nationalism. That everyone in the nation should be dedicated to furthering the goals of the nation. That's why they're so racist (if you're not a proper member of "the nation" you must be working towards another goal), and it's why private enterprise is expected to work for the purpose of the s
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Fascist parties did rebrand socialism to mean conservative nationalism, that is a fact. It was its schtick.
Read this. [wikipedia.org]
If you have any questions that the wiki article doesn't address, I'll do my best to share what 3 years of PoliSci education gave me on the matter.
I would be happy to go over the entire history of the German Worker's party, before they adopted the term "National Socialist" (which doesn't mean what you think it means) including the point where they pu
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Here, friend. Educate yourself. [wikipedia.org]
Parent (and myself) should have said, "The piece does not insinuate any such thing", that's true. But I'm pretty sure it was clear what was meant.
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But that's not what this is about. Nobody is claiming that's what this is about.
This is about widespread disinformation campaigns on social media for the purpose of sowing chaos.
It's about spreading misinformation to support candidates you think are favorable to your politics, and taking down politicians that aren't.
This is hardly special- the US has engaged in this kind of cond
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Parent said:
Insinuations that publishing propaganda is the same as cracking voting machines.
I replied with:
Anyone who claims that the Ruskies broke into the voting machines and changed the election results is obviously full of shit.
Agreeing with them.
I then pointed out that nobody is actually doing that.
It's a straw man.
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This is about widespread disinformation campaigns on social media for the purpose of sowing chaos. It's about spreading misinformation to support candidates you think are favorable to your politics, and taking down politicians that aren't.
Sounds about right. Every time elections come along, both of the U.S. parties sink billions into their own disinformation campaign. It has become a tradition that part of this campaign is convincing the public that Russia is somehow able to influence U.S. elections by spending a few thousands (yes you can look up the numbers) on shitposting. And at the same time, somehow the billions that this or th
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I would also take time to reflect on the number one disinformation campaign that is the U.S. elections itself.
No question about that. US elections are literally fucking disinformation slinging contests.
It has become a tradition that part of this campaign is convincing the public that Russia is somehow able to influence U.S. elections by spending a few thousands (yes you can look up the numbers) on shitposting.
If you accept that domestic influence-via-shitposting is effective, then you must accept that foreign influence-via-shitposting is effective.
If you think that domestic influence-via-shitposting is not effective, then you know something that a multi-billion dollar industry does not know.
The thing is that it's just not allowed to reflect on your own shortcomings in the U.S. anymore. You have to find someone else to blame. It's like when Hillary spent years after the loss systematically blaming every single group, person and media she could think of for her election loss. The only thought that did not cross her mind was that maybe, just maybe, she lost it herself. And let's be real, if you lose to fucking Donald Trump, you are doing something very very wrong. The loss is supposed to make you think about whether there is something you could improve upon. No chance of that in the U.S., no sir. Each and every one of them is more perfect than the other.
These are orthogonal problems.
But if the Russians had actually found some magic way to get so much value out of their money, you can rest assured the U.S. parties would be tripping balls on it. I mean this would be Snow Crash level of brainworming. But let's not bring reason into this, it's out of season right now... Right now our patriotic duty is to be foaming at the mouth on election hysteria, lest the wrong guys get to loot the country for the next few years...
Magical?
There's no magic involved whatsoever. They're simply playing by the rules we set for our own
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What I'm going for is the comparative size of the efforts, and therefore, of results. If you want to do some analysis, you have to look at both the qualitative and the quantitative side of things.
Russia spent tens of thousand dollars on FB ads in the 2016 election. US spent billions. Because both of them did essentially the same thing, bullshitting, you can expect essentially the same result per unit of effort. That is, unless you can demonstrate some yet unknown Holy Grail of brainwashing that Russia has m
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What I'm going for is the comparative size of the efforts, and therefore, of results. If you want to do some analysis, you have to look at both the qualitative and the quantitative side of things.
Fair.
Russia spent tens of thousand dollars on FB ads in the 2016 election. US spent billions. Because both of them did essentially the same thing, bullshitting, you can expect essentially the same result per unit of effort. That is, unless you can demonstrate some yet unknown Holy Grail of brainwashing that Russia has managed to hide from us, yet use on us.
Keep in mind the Russians troll farms were far more effective with their money.
If US campaigns avoided prime time commercials, their cost would shrink to a thousandth of what it is.
As you say, we must evaluate the qualitative differences. Are perhaps social media disinformation campaigns more effective than the campaigns have caught up with, yet?
This year is the first year I've been bombarded with political commercials on YouTube, for example. Clearly, a light-bulb clicked in someone's head that t
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insightful post, he said with no mod points.
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As far as I'm informed such allegations of cracking voting machines were made before, during, and after last election where the allegations undermined the very process of voting in the US and it was labelled as "the Steal" and people were supposed to "Stop" it.
Other interference allegations were made about propaganda, even back in the 2016 elections, though no significant allegations (I'm sure you can nutpick some from the internet if you looked hard enough) that th
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And when they admit it [npr.org], does that change your view at all?
Actual disinformation (Score:2)
Russians are trying to get Republicans elected again. I wonder if that is because many right-wing Republicans are parroting Russian disinformation and talking points.
Cue up the image : "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat"
I'm generally against censoring disinformation, but this is really the sort of thing that should be censored. "Many right-wing Republicans are parroting Russian disinformation" is clearly false, and stating a Republican-Russian link is an attempt to paint the party in a negative light in the reader's mind.
Any Republican (or Democrat, or independent) can *agree* with specific Russian points, this does not make them parrots of a disinformation campaign. Sometimes the leadership of a foreign nation can have co
Why care about Hunter Biden (Score:2, Insightful)
He's not in politics at all, he has zero responsibilities. Joe Biden didn't appoint him to any cabinet positions, unlike some other Presidents who have appointed nearly all of his children to some role in his administration.
Now if you want to get excited about conspiracies around Hunter Biden, you don't have to dig very deep to see some curious information sources [nbcnews.com].
kept Russia out of Ukraine while generally having cordial relations
We suspect that was more of a Manchurian Candidate scenario than one of any diplomatic acumen.
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump never kept Russia out of Ukraine. After the fact he tried to take credit for it, or claim that if he had been reelected that Putin would have been too intimindated to try to invade, but that's just standard locker room swagger from Trump. Trump was never the great negoiator that he thought he was.
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Yeah, it's not like he made any headway with Middle East peace accords between Israel and Arab states.
Oh, wait.
Re: Hunter Biden (Score:3)
> You think the Russians are the ones trying to put up false claims about Hunter Biden's shady business dealings in Ukraine
Giving special "deals" to children of prominent politicians is (unfortunately) a common practice. The problem is that it's hard to measure the motivation of the "givers" of deals or favors. If you want to investigate, investigate the Trump children also, for their dealings are at least as suspicious as Hunter's.
Such favoritism is essentially the foreign version of the "Citizens Unite
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I wonder if that is because many right-wing Republicans are parroting Russian disinformation and talking points.
I don't need Russians to tell me that I don't want money, weapons,
Why don't you want money and weapons sent to Ukraine?
First, there's the obvious humanitarian aspect of protecting an innocent country from conquest and genocide (yes, a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Ukrainian language and culture is genocide).
But second, the selfish interests of your country dictate that given the choice of one of your bigger rivals a) conquering a neighbouring country for the crime of being friendly to you, or b) showing the world you protect your friends, and that your supposed rival
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I remember when conservatives were all about being strong and using the military to prove it. Now it's "we should run away and abandon our friends, because Putin is scary." Remember Iraq and the neocons, where those not wanting to go to war were lambasted and congress came up with "freedom fries"?
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I don't need Russians to tell me that I don't want money, weapons, and troops sent to Ukraine
You do realize what we're getting is cheap, what we're spending is a rounding error compared to the military budget, and our troops aren't fighting.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
Ukraine is NOT a regional matter! It is an ally country, a friend of ours, invaded by a hostile country that we were rarely on good terms with. Ukraine is a democracy, same as US, Russia is a dictatorship. Why should we not side with Ukraine here? And by "We" this means NATO, I know Trump tried to get us out of NATO but we're in it and Ukraine is next door to NATO and Russia may very well decide to attack NATO if no one ever pushed back on Putin's cosplay of Hitler.
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It is an ally country, a friend of ours, invaded by a hostile country that we were rarely on good terms with.
Ukraine is not an ally of the US.
Ukraine is a democracy, same as US, Russia is a dictatorship.
Ukraine is somewhere in the middle, actually.
Why should we not side with Ukraine here?
Agree with you here. Geopolitically, using Ukraine to blacken the Russians' eye is a good move.
If they win, they essentially win their independence.
If they lose, that sucks, but it's better than facing Russia directly, and we've now seen that their country is a laughable fucking shit show of corruption so destitute that they couldn't protect their borders from an army of pissed off squirrels.
I know Trump tried to get us out of NATO but we're in it and Ukraine is next door to NATO and Russia may very well decide to attack NATO if no one ever pushed back on Putin's cosplay of Hitler.
This is fear mongering.
Putin isn't g
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Ukraine is ALREADY independent! It is not a province of Russia. It used to be a part of the Russian Empire, back before the Russian Revolution, but so what. It was not a part of the Russian SSR in Soviet days, and after the USSR collapsed it was independent and there were even signed agreements with Russia over this, where Russia agreed to defend Ukraine as long as Ukraine handed over the old Soviet nukes. Then it was Putin who broke the agreement, now that Ukraine doesn't have nukes, and invaded to tak
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Ukraine was a regional matter and we should have left it alone for the two countries to decide themselves.
Instead tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians are dead now that didn't have to be, because the whole thing would not have lasted this long if we were not pouring money and arms into Ukraine...
Sure, instead of tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians you'd have hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians because the goal is genocide. Sure, they wouldn't kill every Ukrainian, just the ones who show too much resistance to becoming Russian.
But still, it's very sweet of you to decide that it's better for Ukrainians to live under Russian dominion than to have the ability to fight for their own freedom.
You've got a fucking short memory. (Score:5, Informative)
Every single time we elect a Democratic president they stick our military somewhere it does not need to be, for way longer than it has any right to be.
Every single time? Let's examine some of that recent history:
George H. W. Bush: Sent troops into Kuwait and Iraq. 146 direct US casualties, in addition to lingering mental and physical effects. (e.g. Gulf War Syndrome).
George H. W. Bush: Sent troops into Somalia.
Clinton: Withdrew troops from Somalia.
Clinton: Sent 20k troops as part of a NATO and peacekeeping force to the Balkans towards the end of the breakup of Yugoslavia. No direct US casualties.
George W. Bush: Sent troops into Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11.
George W. Bush: Sent troops into Iraq on a completely false premise of WMD. Thousands of US casualties.
Obama: Didn't start any wars. Ended US military operations in Afghanistan (2014) and started the process of withdrawing troops.
Trump: Reversed Obama's withdrawals, then sold out the Afghanistan Government by making a direct deal with the Taliban, allowing them (with Russian and Iranian support) to retake the country. June 2020 was the bloodiest week in Afghanistan in 19 years.
Biden: Withdrew US troops from Afghanistan in accordance with the agreement made by Trump.
tldr; You're a fucking idiot who wouldn't recognize reality if it smacked you over the head with a hammer. Everything that Trump did played into Putin's hands. There's a reason why Putin wants him back on the throne - he's a useful idiot.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Translator: ON
Exactly, I support a strong military in the U.S., but I do NOT support using that military coin extended wars and other adventures - Ukraine was a regional matter and we should have left it alone for the two countries to decide themselves.
"I don't care if fascist dictatorships invade democratic neighbors, as long as they don't invade me." Very 1938.
Instead tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians are dead now that didn't have to be, because the whole thing would not have lasted this long if we were not pouring money and arms into Ukraine...
"I will completely ignore the next logical step in a genocidal war: the mass incarceration and subsequent death that comes with every past example of losing a genocidal war."
What's going to be really fun is the follow on effect when all of the money and arms we sent over start appearing in other countries around the world.
And yes we should never have been in Afghanistan either.
"I'm going to conveniently ignore that the only source of ammunition for highly controlled US-made military weapons is the US, or other NATO countries."
Every single time we elect a Democratic president they stick our military somewhere it does not need to be, for way longer than it has any right to be.
"I'm going to conveniently forget that the last two wars were started and conducted simultaneously by George W. Bush, a Republican; and then proceed to blame recent US military misadventures on Democrats that inherited those two messes, which were both ended by Democrat presidents (Iraq: 31 December, 2014, Afghanistan: 30 August, 2021)."
The people who are saying Republicans are Russian trolls are those desperate to stem a small portion of what is happening tomorrow. Why would you keep your head in the sand like this and not recognize how many, many real people feel about The Strategy Forever War at this point?
"I'm now going to point to the previous distortions and falsehoods to qualify a very hand-wavey conclusion that is absolutely not supported by literally anything."
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
The Ukrainian plan for this invasion was "resist hard at first, then head for the hills and the forests and wage guerilla warfare", before it became apparent that the resist hard bit was actually capable of stopping the Russian army. Without the weapons we (and note I am saying "we" despite not being American, US weapons are very useful to them but they could still fight with only European support) are giving the Ukrainians, there would still be a war, just a guerilla war instead of a conventional one. And Russians would be committing mass atrocities across the whole of the country rather than just the eastern edge of it.
But yes, we should never have been in Afghanistan. That's because in Afghanistan, we were the imperialistic invaders. In Ukraine, Russia are the imperialistic invaders. The two situations are completely different. Afghanistan was attack. It was warmongering. Ukraine is defence. It is opposing warmongers. It's Ukrainians who are deciding to fight for their freedom and self-determination. We aren't making them do anything. The nation "adventuring" here is Russia. We're just putting weapons to the only use which justifies their manufacture - genuine defence.
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US weapons are very useful to them but they could still fight with only European support
Debatable.
Certainly, if Europe were really trying- absolutely.
But as it is, the US is sending more materiel and funds than all of Europe combined.
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At the time the Russian advance had been brought to a halt, the largest economies in the EU were still dragging their feet. In some cases, the US was the one paying for European arms being delivered to Ukraine.
It can't be argued that the UK, and Scandinavia stepped up quick and hard and begin shoveling good gear East, but that's a quarter of a percent of teh GDP of 2 countries that frankly aren't very large.
At the same time, the US was supplying ~.25% of its GDP, which is appro
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With a little bit of honor or self respect, you could support your country, and your politics, while still decrying their meddling, though. It's a concept called "loyal opposition", and it's critically important to a functioning democracy.
In the meantime, continue to shoot the messenger. Or brush the dust off of your "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat" shirt.
Keep it up, and one day you may g
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When they admit it, yes I do believe them.
The question is why you don't.
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Trump set off a pandemic with his negligence, and was sinking the economy before that. The lower and middle classes weren't doing better under him, that's just a load of bullshit and lies that you cross burning sisterhumping inbredfucks tell yourselves because he enabled your racism and bigotry.
Republicans in the Senate torpedoed legislation to counter inflation. Republicans in the House voted uniformly against it. Republicans at the state level have been uniformly trying to take our constitutional rights
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If Jewish people are truly that powerful, intelligent, and sneaky at the same time; then we deserve to be controlled by them, because clearly such a race is far more advanced than we muggles.