Beware the Trolls
Be wary. Be vigilant. Be discerning. Don’t engage with the trolls.
Alternet writer Carl Gibson darkly asserted last week:
Foreign governments influencing American elections is now a fact of life that the U.S. government will have to contend with for the foreseeable future, according to various geopolitical experts.
Like COVID, malign foreign actors meddling with American elections, specifically from Russia, are now endemic.
The fact we’re here shouldn’t come as a surprise; after all, the Mueller Report confirmed Russian operatives, both official and unofficial, helped bend the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor. While they were unsuccessful four years later, they still tried.
The fact we’re talking about it, though, and the US Justice Dept. (DOJ)’s seizure last week of 32 internet domains the Russian government directed specifically “to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections,” is proof we are no longer powerless to it.
The problem lies now not in whether we handle it, but how.
Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland explained the DOJ would be “relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran — as well as China or any other foreign malign actor — to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”
As revelations last week revealed, not all the malign actors are so blatantly foreign. The DOJ indictment accusing Russia of shoveling $10 million to myriad far-right social media personalities includes Nashville-based company Tenet Media podcasters Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern. Since beginning of last year, Tenet Media is responsible for 2,000 YouTube videos and other social media posts.
A broadcaster on the Russian government propaganda network RT quipped about the Biden administration’s response to Russian interference in the 2024 election:
Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections. Somewhere Secretary [Hillary] Clinton is sad that it’s not because of her.
Like 2016 and 2020, the goal of the foreign malefactors is to get us hooked on the disinformation dividing us so we tear ourselves apart. There is no fear of Russia, China, or Iran marching soldiers down Pennsylvania Avenue if we’re willing to end democracy on our own.
Darren Linvill, Clemson University professor and Media Forensics Hub director, explained:
RT does still have a fairly significant reach in this country. There are plenty of right-leaning Americans that share RT news stories, and RT Espanol is also very popular, at one time the fastest-growing news outlet in Latin America.
Much of the pro-Putin propaganda infiltrating society and threatening elections is through the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a guide to help people identify and report AI-generated misinformation through “deepfakes,” images and audio recordings that appear genuine but have been altered in some subtle way to distort their original intent; and “chatbots,” programs that respond to users’ requests and questions.
A recent example involves a pro-Kremlin fake website and video alleging Vice President Kamala Harris involved in a hit-and-run in 2011 when she was California Attorney General.
According to fake-news debunking site Newsguard:
The video was first published in a Sept. 2, 2024, article on KBSF-TV.com, a website made to look like the website of a TV channel. The website is not associated with any broadcast outlet and was created three weeks earlier to pose as a local San Francisco news outlet.
It is unclear who is behind the site, but the campaign strongly resembles previous disinformation campaigns by John Mark Dougan, a fugitive former Florida deputy sheriff who fled to Russia in 2016.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission records show that no TV station uses the call letters KBSF-TV. The KBSF-TV.com site was created on Aug. 20, 2024, and published stories copied verbatim from actual news outlets.
When we factor in internet algorithms nudging us toward more similar content, widening our filter bubbles, further expanding our polarization, we give what Russia and other foreign adversaries want.
Try insisting to your conspiracy theory-addled MAGA uncle Ralph the fabricated story about Kamala Harris is a fraud when he has “evidence” right there in front of him. Try convincing him it’s the product of Russian trolls.
One way our polarization plays out is through de-legitimizing our electoral system.
How many times have we heard someone say, “Voting doesn’t matter?”
That frustration and lack of confidence in the foundation of democracy allows republican secretaries of state to purge voters from voter roles, such as what’s happening in Georgia.
Another tactic is to enlist election skeptics as poll workers, such as the so-called “Christian” group “Lion of Judah,” which, according to its website, describes a “Trojan horse” strategy to get Christians in “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers” to help identify alleged “voter fraud” — “the first step on the path to victory this Fall”.
Get ready for phony state electors.
Get ready for county election officials loyal to MAGA refusing to certify the election.
The slew of potential hinky mischief is not lost on President Biden, the first president in history to express doubt over a peaceful transition of power after his predecessor became the first former president in American history to upset that process.
In a CBS News interview, when asked if he believed there would be a peaceful transfer, President Biden replied:
If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all. He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about “if we lose there’d be a bloodbath”.
The election in fifty-six days, as of this writing, is definitely going to be historic. We are either going to elect the first woman, the first Asian American, and the second person of color elected President of the United States, or…we’re going to see occupy the Oval Office again a racist reality-TV adjudicated rapist, convicted felon, and tax cheat who stole from veterans with a scam online “university” for which he was ordered to pay a $25 million education fraud settlement (as a sitting president); who stole classified documents, some of which contained nuclear intelligence information; who was impeached twice — once for attempting to extort the Ukrainian president into finding dirt on Joe Biden, and again for inciting the January 6, 2021 attempted coup to keep himself in power.
If the latter occurs, it will be the end of the American experiment, due in large part to the proliferation of foreign influences suffusing our social media feeds. We’ve gotten better at detecting them the past eight years, but they still convince unwitting recipients.
The war against the United States doesn’t need to happen with missiles, bombs, soldiers, and planes. It’s happening as you read this right on our screens right in front of us.
Be wary. Be vigilant. Be discerning.
Don’t engage with the trolls.