Monday, February 19, 2018

If Your Voters were Persuaded by Bad Russian Ads, They Were Never Your Voters by Jim Geraghty

If Your Voters were Persuaded by Bad Russian Ads, They Were Never Your Voters by Jim Geraghty
Excerpt: The New York Times looks at Russia’s propaganda efforts and offers an unflattering assessment of how easily Americans could be influenced by foreigners posing as out-of-town activists: Heart of Texas and Blacktivist were phony groups, part of a sweeping Russian disinformation campaign that was funded with millions of dollars and carried out by 80 people operating out of St. Petersburg, Russia. The Russian attempt at long-distance choreography was playing out in many cities across the United States. Facebook has disclosed that about 130 rallies were promoted by 13 of the Russian pages, which reached 126 million Americans with provocative content on race, guns, immigration and other volatile issues. The Russian efforts were pretty devious, planning rallies for and against a particular perspective in the same time and place and hoping the two groups would confront each other. The Heart of Texas group had more success with a Houston rally to “Stop the Islamization of Texas,” which provoked an angry confrontation in May 2016. United Muslims of America, another Russian creation, called its own rally to “Save Islamic Knowledge” for the same time and place, outside the Islamic Da’wah Center. (if you get most of your news from "Social Media and/or you don't bother to check the sources, you are an idiot. In the original sense of the Greek word. ~Bob)

No comments:

Post a Comment