Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread 'Fake News' During Election, Experts Say (usatoday.com) 272
According to the Washington Post (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate source), the "fake news" phenomenon that circulated thousands of phony stories during the election was aided by a sophisticated Russian propaganda effort that aimed to punish Democrat Hillary Clinton, help Republican Donald Trump and undermine faith in American democracy. Slashdot reader xtsigs shares with us an excerpt from the Washington Post's report: The flood of "fake news" this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery -- including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human "trolls," and networks of websites and social-media accounts -- echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House.
Not (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Not (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks, jbmartin6, for some additional fake news. There has been no "disclaimer." I even question whether you're a native English speaker, as a native English speaker would know that the correct word is "retraction" or "denial." So this is now it happens, Some makes an unsubstantiated claim, and those who would like to believe, do believe. Next time you post something like this "disclaimer" story, post a link so your claim can be substantiated, researched for verification by a reasonably skeptical perso
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That's sorta the trouble with researchers (Score:2)
The public at large _hates_ all the uncertainty in real science. It makes science appear weak, and leaves it vulnerable to attack. This is why climate science is so easy to 'debunk'...
Experts Say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Experts Say? (Score:4, Insightful)
Until then I'm calling BS. You can call anything "fake news", and you can claim that everything online was written by the russians.
Re:Experts Say? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Good one. lol
Re:Experts Say? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, not a Russian then. And it was known many months ago that David Brock was hiring people to troll on Hillary's behalf.
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Re:Experts Say? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh Jesus. (Score:5, Informative)
Enough with the Red Scare.
Paul Horner isn't a Russian and was paid $10k to write fake stories [nydailynews.com]
The Macedonian kids aren't russian either. [slashdot.org]
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"Democrats paying people to protest at Trump rallies"
He may have thought that he was writing fake news but one of the DNC's thugs confessed on hidden camera that he did exactly that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Newsflash (not fake): The Russians aren't red any more.
Didn't stop them from annexing Crimea though.
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http://time.com/4472169/russia... [time.com]
" did not say whether the hackers were working for the Russian government"
http://time.com/4471042/fbi-vo... [time.com]
"It's unclear who targeted the databases"
"Cyber Division did not identify the intruders or the two states targeted"
really ? (Score:5, Insightful)
As if HC needed help in not being trusted and being generally despised. She is literally the only candidate who could have possibly lost to Trump. The only person actually susceptible to his style of personal attacks and no content.
With the DNC actions and the trickery and deceit they used to get Clinton past Sanders, no further propaganda was necessary to demolish HC. If some imaginary russian PR agency had been tasked with invention stories that put HC into a bad light, they couldn't possibly come up with such a shit. They would've been told "come on guys, it has to be at least borderline believable".
Russia didn't need to do anything here. HC demolished her chances all by herself.
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With the DNC actions and the trickery and deceit they used to get Clinton past Sanders, no further propaganda was necessary to demolish HC. If some imaginary russian PR agency had been tasked with invention stories that put HC into a bad light, they couldn't possibly come up with such a shit. They would've been told "come on guys, it has to be at least borderline believable".
This reminds of me of my favorite quote. I believe it was Tom Clancy (or at least I saw it attributed to him) who said something to the effect of, "the difference between the truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense."
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Yes but it's possible they did it anyway.
Putin has had intense personal hatred of Bill Clinton for years since Kosovo was bombed without Russia being informed - he just about built his political career on ranting about Clinton's America. He's not fond of Hillary either. Russia does that sort of shit and Putin has a motive so it can't be dismissed out of hand.
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That doesn't mean they didn't.
We've been seeing stories for a few years now about Russian "trolls" as they're called in the media pushing political agendas. IIRC, it was a big issue in Finland a couple years ago.
To think that Putin is really as non-chalant as he tries to appear to be about who the next President of the US will be is somewhat naive.
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Funny how those who are all for tolerance when it comes to "their" people (gays, blacks, minorities, women, etc.) now use the exact kind of language against the Trump supporters. You all need to go back and re-read "The Wave". Just this time don't imagine that you're the kids in the rebellion. You're not. You just need a different script, against poor and stupid rednecks.
You are all funny, from aside. I laugh about the Trump voters who really think a billionaire asshole will bring back jobs that he was busy
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Mod this AC up, he is right on the money.
There is so much arrogance in those crying over the defeat now. And too little sitting down and really understanding what happened, without name-calling and low-level psychological defense mechanisms.
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Jeb? You mean Jeb Bush? Like that was not another easy target.
the entirety of "the system" working to prop her up
You understand that that is exactly what Trump used against her, yes?
Re:really ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you think that the west needs to look up "propaganda" on Wikipedia? There has been anti-russian propaganda in Europe at least since the first World War. Of course there is Russian propaganda as well, and German, and British and American, and Chinese - everyone plays this game.
Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Someone send him a mail that he can save that money for other things, we're doing a splendid job at accomplishing that goal all by ourselves.
If you still trust our institutions after they've been taken over completely by neocons and neoliberals, after the financial crisis and the bank bail-outs, after (America) GWB and HC and all that shit or (Europe) the Cyprus robbery, the undermining of the elected government in Greece or the anti-democratic actions against the regional governments in Spain - if you still think that our institutions work for the good of the people, I have a lot of bridges that just got 10% off and you should buy them right away before someone else snatches them up.
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She didn't lose by voters despising her, she got 2 million more vote,
From what I could gather over here, basically half the people who voted for HC actually voted against Trump and would have preferred any other option if there had been one.
Fake news and propaganda built around the emails certainly helped. We'd regularly read selective misleading quotes here from her emails, hoping nobody actually would go read the full email.
I never read even one of the quotes, because the scandal is not in what the emails contained, the scandal is that a high ranking official breaks the rules in a way that would have landed a soldier or a low ranking official in jail.
he also had his hacker hack actual election related data and one voting machine manufacturer.
So why were these things hackable in the first place? If you can't run your election securely, you have no bu
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, the difference is that now, a lot of people get their "news" off the Internet. It doesn't really matter where it came from there was a lot of outright lies posted, mostly about Clinton (but some about Trump too) and a lot of people bought them.
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I think most folks get their "news" from Facebook or Twitter and fail to read further or check such "facts" against other sites.
[John]
I wonder if they get nerd virgins from Slashdot? (Score:2)
The difference is that people no longer trust the MSM. I doubt they pay that much attention to the memes, but the MSM pretty much burned their credibility with a lot of people so we completely ignore whatever you're saying the same way we do with the people who constantly try to sell us viagra.
I don't know why, but it might have something to do with crap like CNN lying and telling us it's illegal to read wikileaks [youtube.com] (as a lawyer, Chris Cuomo should've known better [popehat.com]), the DNC holding events with the Washington [wikileaks.org]
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"Nerd virgins" sounds like exactly the sort of insulting term political staffers would use for the people they employ for social media PR.
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If you click on the link, you'll find that "nerd virgins" is a direct quote :)
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In that context it does very much look like exactly the sort of insulting term political staffers would use for the people they employ for social media PR.
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The Turboencabulator thing dates to the 1940's btw, at least that's what Google tells me so it must be true.
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That's "Retro Entabulator", bubb.
(as I adjust my girdle spring and marzelpham)
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Please stop beating the Russian horse. Occam's Razor argues that either there is a deeply clandestine and inexplicably state backed multi-million dollar effort from Russia to sway american elections for an equally inexplicable reason,
It's not inexplicable. What is not explainable to you about a state pushing foreign elections in their favour? We've been doing it to others for decades, so it isn't inexplicable at all. In fact it would be more inexplicable if they weren't doing it (along with the Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians and every other enemy of the West
If you think this is too clandestine and too expensive then I suggest some reading on the Soviet Cold War effort. Putin and his cohorts are ex-KGB, they were trained exactly in th
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Please stop beating the Russian horse. Occam's Razor argues that either there is a deeply clandestine and inexplicably state backed multi-million dollar effort from Russia to sway american elections for an equally inexplicable reason, or, just maybe, hillary clinton was a turd of a candidate that rigged her own primary, had no tenable domestic or foreign policy outside the Harlem Shake, and spoke divisively against blue collar americans, and rarely if ever campaigned in their states on issues they cared about.
...or just maybe, that's a false dichotomy and multi-causal phenomena actually exist, like everyone knows they do except you.
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Sure the MSM will pile onto this, but it's no surprise that people are interested in the topic. After all, we got really interested in hurricanes and FEMA after katrina, real interested in terrorism after 911, and this disaster of an election, too, has focused the interest of the pubic. Telling people to ignore it is futile.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem is the folks who believe fake news _do_ vote.
[John]
Re:Bah! Who needs Russians? (Score:5, Interesting)
Putin is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, intended at undermining trust in our democarcies and our institutions.
Putin did?
The Republicans spent the last 40 years undermining trust in our institutions and democracies. The whole fucking last 8 years was a de-legitimization campaign against the executive branch. Stupid shit like "starve the beast" and the "norquist pledge" are the rallying cries for a race to the bottom in governance. And the Democrats let them do it. Because they've been running away from "common man politics" because anything left of the John Birch Society is "socialism." Political cowardice has governed the Democrats ever since Reagan won.
And the Press have shown even more cowardice, refusing to call out obvious bullshit and giving bloviating idiots like Trump FOUR billion fucking dollars of free air time. Because a clown-car wreck is more entertaining than covering issues. And any politician caught talking about issues (and their supporters) was ridiculed or ignored. And anything coming out of Hillary's mouth was golden, somehow, even if it was disingenuous (standing on stage next to Bernie mouthing the issues we all know damn well that she would abandon if elected).
Hillary's only selling point that she emphasized was that she "wasn't Trump." Big fuckin' deal. If you're going to elect "not trump" then a ham sandwich could stand in for that position. At least a ham sandwich didn't have the awful negatives that Hillary had. Hillary's campaign was the most tone-deaf thing I have had to waste my time watching go over a cliff.
The cynicism, self-dealing, gas-lighting, all of it made voters turn their noses up in disgust.
Putin didn't have to do a goddamned thing to undermine faith in our democracy and institutions. The people charged with running them have abdicated their responsibilities in favor of their own prurient interests.
I suggest that it's you who has to wake up.
--
BMO
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Great, it is so refreshing to see an analysis which sums the whole thing up in so few words. Trump and Hilary were both dreadful candidates and neither the American people or Putin have won anything.
Feel free to stop fucking that Russian chicken... (Score:4, Insightful)
...at any time. There is no evidence that Russia did anything whatsoever to influence this election, just assertions from the same people that told you that Saddam had dies to Al Queda and had a nuclear weapons program in 2002. This is asinine for two more reasons as well:
1) The idiots pushing this story tend to be the same sort of person who scream and sneer that you're a conspiracy theorist for suspecting Saudi involvement with 911, that the OWS crackdown was federally coordinated, that the DNC conspired with the Hillary campaign to ratfuck Sanders...until information is leaked that confirms those "theories". At which point STFU because it's old news.
2) The United States has been in the business of trying to spy on the communications of every person on the planet. As 911, the anthrax attacks, and the Boston Marathon bombing show, it's completely worthless in its advertised function - catching terrorist attacks before they happen. It would, however, be a great system if you want to engage in the exact sort of influencing of politics and elections that the U.S. is accusing Russia of doing.
Lets be real here. Under Obama, the United States has been willing to murder American teenagers with drones, bomb hospitals, start wars without Congressional authorization, and overthrow democracies - and you think they're just sitting on all this illicit information that could be used to discredit or blackmail people it doesn't like?
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Apart from loaning Trump a lot of money?
OK, you have a point, it's Trump, he probably won't pay that money back to the Russian banks and if he's been told to do something he won't do it, but he certainly has had a lot of direct financial support from Russia.
Without their help he couldn't have done it. That looks like some sort of influence on the election to me. This fake news thing is shaping up to look like the financial
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Russia has been running a disinformation campaign 24/7 since the Ukraine war started.
Just because the US knows how to snoope and spy doesn't mean the Russians unlearned that trade since the cold war. And you can be assured the NSA had nothing on KGB and Stasi.
Vulnerable moment (Score:2)
Russians spread 'fake news' (Score:2)
As does Slashdot.
Russian "Fake News" Made HC Lose? (Score:2)
Bwaaahahahahaa!
Oh, wait...you're serious? Let me laugh even harder!
Bwaaahahahahhahaaaahahaha!
https://youtu.be/_n5E7feJHw0 [youtu.be]
Strat
Gagh (Score:2)
This site is loaded with post-truthers.
Don't forget CBS (Score:2)
"Fake but accurate", he said.
Re:Don't forget CBS (Score:4, Insightful)
Controlling the flow of information (Score:2)
I've been reading/hearing about people wanting to gatekeep/curate the news for the masses for many years now. This latest election will push that effort into overdrive.
Educate people about what the Internet is [imgur.com], but don't allow greater controls on the flow of public information.
And in other news... (Score:2)
American news outlets helped spread fake propoganda about Republican candidate Trump. Chiefly among them the Washington Post and New York Times. Remember the story about the flight attendant that was supposedly fondled by Trump? Yeah...until she mentioned lifting the armrest in 1st class....except seats in 1st class don't have a movable armrest....and she claimed to be flying on a plane that was not in that airlines fleet - then or ever.
In other words, the whole story was made up and once it was discovered
If you would have paid attention ... (Score:2)
... to how they approached the disinformation war when the Ukraine conflict was underway, you could have seen this from miles away.
Open societies are vulnerable to this kind of attack, and other Western countries like Germany, with an upcoming election are ramping up their counter-intelligence efforts to not be rolled like the US.
hue (Score:2)
Ah yes, the Washington Post, perhaps the most virulent and rabid anti-Trump publication, eclipsing even CNN in the vitriol and shameless bias it displayed in its coverage.
The prosecution fucking rests.
Obama is responsible for it. (Score:2)
Obama in 2013 signed in a bill that among other things, allows the use of propaganda on US citizens. That includes fake news. So whether or not the Russians did fake stories, our government allowed that sort of stuff to be used against us.
I call BS on blaming the Russians (Score:2)
If the Russians needed a strategy to influence the US election and control the next President, consider 2 choices. Which one is easier to implement and more reliable?
1. Use negative propaganda to knock down a candidate who is blatantly supported by the mainstream media -- in the hope of electing a billionaire who is (a) notoriously unpredictable and (b) difficult to bribe because he doesn't need the money. It may not be possible to add enough propaganda to overwhelm the lapdog media shills.
2. Write a chec
Re:I didn't need the Russians (Score:4, Interesting)
Our fake news said Hillary had a 99% chance of winning the election.
We don't need Russians for fake news. The US can do pretty well making its own.
In other fake news... (Score:4, Funny)
Russian fake news deemed more credible than American fake news!
Re:In other fake news... (Score:4, Funny)
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Thanks for the input, Comrade.
Re:WaPo? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: WaPo? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: WaPo? (Score:2)
This is incorrect. Up until the 2000 election, networks were highly inconsistent in how they colored the parties, but there was a general pattern that blue was republican and red was democrat. The change was unusual - the network's got together and actually synchronized on it for some unknown reason prior to the election, although they deny it now and claim it was a post-election development (it wasn't; I was there).
See the section on origins of these colors, which also mentions that the 2000 presidential [wikipedia.org]
Re:WaPo? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Truth is not absolute.
Scenario: Dad asks child if mom gave permission to have a friend over. Child says yes, but doesn't tell dad that mom changed her mind after the child got in trouble. Did the child tell the truth?
This is exactly the type of manipulation that Fox News uses all day every day. Just look at the scrolling news alerts. How many are questions that imply an answer?
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I forgot to mention. I don't mind when commentators advocate for conservative positions. In fact I think it's critically important that they do. I do however mind when someone like Rush Limbaugh takes no responsibility for telling the truth. He has been confronted time and again for making false statements. His answer is that he's an entertainer and not a reporter.
Also, people on the left don't describe themselves as socialist or communist because they are not either. They shy away from the liberal label b
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A little boost (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we're seeing the groundwork laid for an attack on news reporting on the net.
Phase 1 was identifying a problem and giving it a name: "fake news".
This has been going on for about a week, it's in the minds of the people, and we're now ready for phase 2.
Phase 2 is proving that Russia swayed the election using an army of internet trolls, botnets, and malware (such as DDS attacks). It's important because it's an attack on Democracy.
Once that's complete, we'll start to see a selection of possible changes that could fix the problem. Such as individual companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) implementing strategies to identify and weaken the effects of "fake news".
Then we'll see a lot of complaints from lesser-known news sites who lose their advertizing, or domain name, or twitter feed, or facebook feed, and whatnot. Maybe a popup from Google similar to "possible malware site" saying "Breitbart might be a fake news site".
Note that during the election reddit had an algorithm that automatically suppressed the "r/The_Donald" subreddit from appearing on the front page "hot topics" list. This became notable in October [breitbart.com] when the algorithm failed to work properly for a short time, allowing r/TheDonald to take over the front page "hot topics" list.
I've just now created a mantra we can use to help the process along: "The truth can't survive on it's own".
We need to give truth a little boost if it's to survive online.
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By their incessant slanting of the news for decades now, the MSM has lost its soapbox that it could have used to rail against fake news. Things like focusing and conjecturing on Trump's tax returns, on what he might have done since the mid 90s, whether he groped women 30 years ago, et al pretty much put them at par w/ lone wolves who report that Ru Paul alleged that Trump groped him. I for one believe MSM stories even less than I believe random stuff that I on Facebook bylines. So when I see fake news, I
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The good thing is, it's very easy to prove how much these sites actually vet stories. An example of a journalist [dailycaller.com] tricked into spreading a hoax because they wanted to be the first one firing off. Not even the first time that this has happened, not even the 100th time this has happened. If people really want to see fake news in action, look at the garbage written by the media against the Tea Party, or Gamergate. Why? Both didn't fit the narrative, one was against the political establishment the media has
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When a statement is propagated that is demonstrably false it should be possible to challenge it. That isn't possible with today's social media. If I challenge the truthfulness of a post only a small number of people will see it. That is an important difference between a publisher and a commenter on social media. If the Washington Post publishes something that's demonstrably untrue it can be challenged.
I do think it's important to find a solution that allows people to continue speaking freely. I may disagr
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Your truth is clearly not my truth, because I fully subscribe to your points (1) and (2).
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They're the kings of fake and misleading news. Take this with a grain of salt.
Precisely! It's the height of chutzpah for any MSM outlet to complain about fake news, and then blame the Russians for it. It's like the argument about identifying genuine vs fake psychics
Re: WaPo? (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from them holding clandestine events with the DNC [wikileaks.org] their own lawyers said they couldn't do?
Note the email subject is "WaPo party" (i.e. Washington Post) and in response to the statement "They aren't going to give us a price per ticket and do not want their party listed in any package we are selling to donors. If we let them know we have donors in town who will be at the debate, we can add them to the list for the party." we get the reply "Great - we were never going to list since the lawyers told us we cannot do it."
Also, we're totally ignoring that Hillary had her "nerd virgins" (their own words for these people [wikileaks.org]) from Correct The Record doing this.
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I should clarify that it's the DNC's lawyers who were against this arrangement of selling access to the WaPo party on their donor price list, not the Washington Post's.
I still haven't seen the Washington Post explain this. Please link me to it if you ever find a response.
Re: WaPo? (Score:4, Informative)
Kuwaiti incubator babies
Saddam did 9/11
Nigerian yellowcake
Iraq's WMD
That's just one set of and endless series.
I don't think the US needs help getting fake news on Page 1 lede.
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So just because the US has been doing it you think the Russians will not?
Propaganda is as old as warfare itself.
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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/lord-bell-ran-540m-covert-pr-ops-in-iraq-for-pentagon-m5js07xtr [thetimes.co.uk]
"Lord Bell ran $540m covert PR ops in Iraq for Pentagon"
The communications agency founded by Margaret Thatcher’s PR guru Lord Bell was hired by the US military to orchestrate a huge $540m “covert” propaganda campaign in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
In what is believed to be one of the world’s most costly PR contracts, equivalent to £416m, staff from Bell’s agency were bas
WaPo - leaders in the post-fact era (Score:3, Informative)
Fortune is already calling BS on this story: http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/ [fortune.com]
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As is Glenn Greenwald. Regarding the second set of "independent researchers", a group by the name of PropOrNot:
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald... [twitter.com]
And as for the first source, The Foreign Policy Research Institute's motto is:
"Bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests"
Re:WaPo - leaders in the post-fact era (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it's not BS. I'm multilingual and follow some main online news publications of different European countries. What the US has witnessed now has been happening in Europe since Russia annexed Crimea. Russian government trolls are flooding discussion forums with pro-Putin and anti NATO / western propaganda, linking to phony stories on Russian news websites for "proof". They try to undermine trust in our democratic institutions spreading all kinds of wild conspiracy theories while accusing others of conspiracy theories when they are called out.
Russia is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, trying to change public opinion while funding far-right groups across Europe. They are basically trying to destabilize us. It's no joke:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
http://www.businessinsider.de/... [businessinsider.de]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
I guess Russia has recently extended its operations to the US and has been disturbingly successful. The weakest candidate - Trump - became president, and the Duma applauded and cheered:
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
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Idiots posting nonsense in comments does very little when people post fact-based rebuttals.
Take for example China's "50 cent" party. They're well-known and rather openly mocked by the people.
Re:WaPo - leaders in the post-fact era (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots posting nonsense in comments does very little when people post fact-based rebuttals.
That's just flat out wishful thinking. Screw politics: just look at any one of the ludicrous EM drive threads that's come up recently. It isn't politics, it's physics. There are actual verifiable facts. You can go check them yourselves. You can read about them on hundreds of different books, websites, forums and so on. You can check all the maths from first principles too if you like.
And yet, people still believe the nonsense comments, and nonsense articles. Once people Believe no amount of fact based rebuttals will shift them.
And that's about physics. It's way worse when it comes to anything remotely political.
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Great. Now we've got fake comments. How you got around the lameness filter is a good one though. Especially since this has been posted half a dozen times, word-for-word.
Re:WaPo - leaders in the post-fact era (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting links. The Soviet Union and latterly Russia have maintained a strong propaganda presence in the media for decades. During the cold war the favorite channel was exceptionally attractive young women whom presumably could be trusted not to spout hateful lies whilst mellifluously catching the ear of the western strong men they were pitched at traducing. You can still hear this style of coercion in the spokespeople for Assad who are undoubtedly Russian trained. We also have the prospect of RT, the exceptionally effective television news channel which will have a video of any global event online. Most of the news is as solid as the BBC or CNN so it is probably widely watched outside the USA. The "alternative" viewpoint to the Americans is as obvious as "Al Jazzera's".
And then we come to whatever the bright young minds in the Russian secret service might have developed over the last 50 years from traditional propaganda. I for one would be surprised if they had not become aware of the internet and the possibilities of fake bloggers and news. Under Putin there has been a resurgence of military aggressiveness by the Russians and frankly it is their style to use propaganda to undermine and attack their enemies.
The Americans despite the amazing success of Hollywood appear unable to understand the concept of hearts and minds in furthering their interests, relying on brute military force and economic power. American propaganda is disorganized and unappealing, the message "I am rich and I have my boot on your neck" does not resonate. The USA in any case does not seem to understand the power of propaganda.
If the Russians truly have effected a shift in the result of the American presidential election then they are to be congratulated on their cunning. What we do about it is more problematic as it attacks a weakness of our own creation. The fact free hate propaganda of the American right has created the opening for this attack by Russian fake news. For example the question of Barack Obama's birth certificate was used to attack the president despite it being a complete lie. This has opened up a channel for malicious propaganda from any source, it would be fairly hilarious if the Russians had taken advantage of it to elect Trump.
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Some of their criticisms are fair. However:
I ended up blacklisting both of those sites on my Google News feed when they basically became indistinguishable from RT and Sputnik. These days they extensively source from Russian propaganda outlets, as well as
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Your feed must look very different than mine, I've literally never heard of CounterPunch before and I read Google news a lot.
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I'd say 'citation needed' but I don't think you can cite something so generalised.
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You can pick some sources that support your view, but that isn't the point I was making. How do you even define 'hard left?' Where does the regular left end, and hard left begin? What is the relation between them - does the regular left condemn the hard at all? Who speaks on behalf of them? How might you conduct a survey of this ill-defined demographic?
You can't even make the claim you made without first defining some terms that are very difficult to clearly define - especially as everyone involved will nat
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well, if RT has "debunked" it then I'm convinced.
What more do we need?
There's a big difference between accepting that Russia manipulates social media and believing they're behind every "fake" news story.
Re:WaPo - leaders in the post-fact era (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course RT denies it, that is the job of RT for goodness sake. It is the reputable source of news with Russian propaganda as and when needed. You really ought to look at the history of propaganda through the cold war. News sources are always used to put the party line because their general truthiness is used to mask the necessary lies used to undermine the enemy. Duh!
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Interesting article. But here we head into the territory where no point of view can be verified by the average reader in a reasonable time
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But fundamentally Hillary lost because her boss Obama promised affordable health care and delivered 100% premium jumps in some cases, averaging 40%.
Those were coming anyway, and the people that got hit the worst have mostly the saboteurs in their statehouses to blame.
That and a lot of the rest of the garbage exaggerations you seem to believe in are symptomatic of reading too much fake news.
Democrat coalition collapsed (Score:3)
The main reason that not just Hilary, but the Democrats lost heavily - both in congressional and state races - was that the group and identity politics that they played finally boomeranged on them.
By spending the last couple of years pandering to BLM in order to lock the Black vote, they also managed to alienate working class non-Blacks (not just Whites), who are not anti police, not pro terrorist and not anarchists. By focusing heavily on AGW when the economy is tanking and manufacturing is all but dead
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Hilary being ahead of Trump in the popular vote is just due to one factor - CA. The GOP is pretty much extinct in that state, which is pretty much inevitable when their last governor was Arnold, who became way Liberal after the first midterm in his state. The fact that both Senate candidates for the elections were Dems pretty much guarantees that a Republican can't be elected in what's a rigged state. But aside from CA, she has deficits in all the red states, except maybe NH and MI.
You're right - it's
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