#Pro Putin Bots
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politikwatch · 2 years ago
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Pro-#Putin-Bots in Sozialen Netzwerken, so viele #Bots unterwegs, dass man in Kommentarspalten lange nach #Klarnamen & richtigen #Bildern suchen muss.
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gryficowa · 7 months ago
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The biggest difference in my approach between Russians and Israelis is that both have a different mentality (Because attention, it's not about the fact that Israelis are Jews, seriously, as if it mattered, the only thing that can make it worse is the history where Jews were victims and the Zionists took advantage of this to colonize Palestine), it's just that in the case of a Russian, I usually met LGBT+ people and people who hated what Putin was doing in Ukraine, unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky with Israelis, many of them turned out to be pro-Israel (And of course they had an Israeli flag, because they are such patriots)
But probably because I look at Russians differently, Zionists will accuse me of anti-Semitism (Even though I'm on their pathetic list anyway), it's a pity that they ignore the things I mentioned, many Russians simply don't love Russia like Israelis love Israel, and that's a big difference, and many of them do not listen to their government's propaganda, so these are the key differences that make me more calm when I see Russians than Israelis, because unfortunately, but this difference just makes me look worse at Israelis, and not because they are Jews, but because they are fucking Zionists
Simply assuming it's anti-Semitism when you hate people for being uncritical of their country's crimes is fucked up on many levels
You can support LGBT+ Russians and those disappointed with the crimes of your country in Ukraine, just like you can support Ukraine, because the villain is one person, yes, Putin, he is the culprit, he hurts Russians and Ukrainians, unfortunately, it is not the same with Israelis, many of them they are blinded by Israel and it changes the context, you simply cannot support people who look uncritically at the crimes of their country and constantly justify them, it is simply impossible
I just can't look at Russians and Israelis the same because of all this
Russians are simply more critical when Israelis will still believe in Israeli propaganda and will look at you as inferior because they consider themselves better than you
I want to believe that there are Israelis who support Palestine, but unfortunately they are still victims of propaganda and they believe in many of them, because Israel has been lying for years and it is difficult to break free from many years of brainwashing, unfortunately, there are very few of them and Zionism is simply 3/4 Israel, which makes it not only the government that is the problem, but also the Israelis themselves, which is disturbing on many levels
And unfortunately, even Israelis who fight for Palestine still believe in a lot of propaganda about, for example, Hamas
So yes, the fight for Palestine with maintaining the status quo so that Israel will continue to be a country, which is rather more depressing, unfortunately, many Israelis have been brainwashed from childhood and this is still more than the rest, which does not change the fact that it is still problem with Israelis, because the problem here is not just Israel itself, but also its citizens (Zionism) and you cannot look at them as Russians, whose mentality, as I mentioned, is very different
I'm not saying that all Russians are against Putin, but I'm saying that compared to Israelis, they don't sound like programmed bots who write the same propaganda at every turn
I look at them as people and their actions, so it's sick that you can't be critical of Israelis because suddenly you're anti-Semitic, as if their being Jewish was an explanation for defending genocide, which is a sick way of thinking
I'm simply more willing to support Russians (Yes, I'm for Ukraine, I'm not crazy) than Israelis, not because I'm an "Anti-Semite" (Which is nonsense on many levels), but because they don't behave like bots and don't write propaganda all the time, and they don't have a fucking flag on their profile -_-
I hate Putin because he is a problem, if the Israelis weren't brainwashed like they are, I would be in the same situation, the problem is that everyone knows what it looks like and it's depressing on many levels, but no, it's better to use the "Anti-Semitism" shield instead of getting angry, think about why they don't like you
Yes, I'm talking about this key difference because I have the impression that few people want to notice it and prefer to call everyone anti-Semites rather than wonder why people don't look at Israelis the same way they look at Russians, because how can you support Israelis when many of them support genocide? Or does they deny it? Well, it can't be done
Why have we started using being Jewish as a defensive shield against genocide? This will harm future generations of Jews who will be victims of discrimination, because Zionism will be associated with Jews, and this shit needs to be separated, I don't want Jews to be associated with Zionism and Israel in the future, I just don't want it, I wouldn't wish this even on my worst enemy
But it's probably also anti-Semitic to think about people in the future…
I simply want the memory of the Jews who fought for Palestine to be preserved, and not covered up by the crimes of Israel and Zionism, because history has already erased many people who helped them (Poles, Muslims, there were also Germans, the two and the third were erased much more harder)
I simply do not wish this on the Jews who fought for Palestine, they cannot be erased, because they are heroes and greater ones, because they are hated by those who lie that they care about them, it is simply courage and strength that many people do not have, erasing them would be a crime, so we must take care of the memory of these heroes, so that they would not be erased like Muslims and Germans who fought the Third Reich and saved Jews in the past
I'll just end this post with that
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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months ago
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Billboard project
* * * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
September 6, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Sep 07, 2024
One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 
Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.
In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 
“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”
According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 
SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 
YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 
Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.
Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 
The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 
Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 
Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 
He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.
Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 
Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​
Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       
One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 
In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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tungledotedu · 3 months ago
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for your blocklist:
omgthatdress is still doubling down on accusing gazans of being scammers because... there are people who didn't vote harris.
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[image ID: a tumblr post by omgthatdress, dated 14 hours ago. it reads:
'huge personal fuck you to everyone who didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein
Vladimir Putin thanks you for your service to the global cause of fascism.
At least now we'll know for sure that the ask bots claiming to be Gazan are indeed scams because Gaza isn't going to exist any more'. end ID.]
more racists to block:
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(link)
[image ID: a tumblr reblog by takashi0 from someoneintheshadow456, dated 11 hours ago. it says: 'Supporting Israel might be the one legitimately good idea Harris had since that would PREVENT genocide but sure whatever you say lmfao'. end ID.]
this guy: you know what would stop this genocide? supporting a terrorist regime that has turned entire towns into rubble and ignored the icj's orders to prevent genocide. i am very smart.
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(link)
[image ID: a tumblr post by stupid-fat-panda, dated 12 hours ago. there is a screenshot of another user's tags, which say: '#also muslim voters were NEVER going to support harris because she's half Indian #i don't think it was because she was a woman because that didn't stop ilhan omar #but harris being half tambram definitely would have turned off the muslim voter-base #which is funny because harris openly antagonized hindus to get the muslim vote #…which they would never give her'.
stupid-fat-panda's tags read: '#weirdly enough trump is actually more pro israel than kamala was #but i also know a lot of muslims HATE lgbt people and the pandering towards Igbt extremists is probably what lost their vote as well'.
end ID.]
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straightlightyagami · 1 year ago
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i might deserve your fate or worse
⚠️this blog’s url is normally isomorbism, using this url temporarily
hi, welcome to my blog! ^_^ you may want to read this post before following. edited when needed. (last updated: 11/12/2024)
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links: neocities / bluesky / mastodon / pillowfort (rarely active on these i just made accounts on everything to see)
invite to discord server on request for mutuals or people i’ve interacted with (you can dm)
free palestine! 🇵🇸
ask to tag (dm or ask) if you want to filter anything!
i got the checkmarks from a mutual when they were first added
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interests / stuff I post
I like pure math and I'm studying it at university (bachelor). kind of my "main" special interest and has been since I was a kid.
I write stuff occasionally like poems and "fanfiction."
I sometimes make semi-coherent poasts about my miscellaneous opinions on social and political issues, philosophy, etc.
not a fandom blog but I post about things I read or watch sometimes. I like death note (number one fan of light yagami).
currently reading: crime and punishment (again)
currently playing: disco elysium
currently watching: breaking bad
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general / rules
asks are welcome but I am very slow (as in it takes months sometimes) at answering them. I am not ignoring you I am just so bad at this.
for privacy I don't want to share some things like where I'm from and I would appreciate if you don’t ask this type of question.
you can ask nicely if you need something tagged. I try to keep this blog generally pg-13.
english is not my first language but I'm at c2 level. I generally use american rather than british terms where there is a distinction.
please tell me if you think something I said was mean, bigoted, or problematic so I can improve in the future!
sometimes I will talk or reblog something about the discourse du jour but this is not a discourse blog.
no dni; I may block you if: you harass me or my followers, if I think it's likely that you will, or for other reasons (although I rarely do and mostly accidentally). you can ask to be unblocked.
please make a post or some indication you are not a bot.
do not take any of my posts as a call to violence towards any individual or group of individuals. do not use my posts as a platform for this.
do not put discriminatory rhetoric on basis of race, skin color, ethnicity, nationality, assigned sex at birth, gender, sexual orientation, or disability on my posts. I want this blog to be safe for people of marginalized identities.
miscellaneous positions / opinions
you are not required to agree to interact or follow
I'm a state socialist (I try to stay open to learning about different ideas) and a (mostly classical) utilitarian.
pro free speech. generally i think more freedom for more people is good.
anti-imperialist as in I oppose imperialism by western countries and by other countries like russia too. putin apologia is not welcome here.
I try to have a nuanced view of historical socialist states (i am from an ex-socialist country btw).
I support the queer community, inclusionist as in I think it's fine if people have any good faith and harmless identities, even contradictory ones. this doesn't include "radqueer" identities. I don't participate in this sort of discourse.
I strongly disagree with the concept of collective guilt or collective punishment.
I do not want to hear about shipping discourse.
reblog ≠ endorsement of everything the OP ever said. also note I will sometimes interact or follow people I don't agree with on everything or even most things. I will sometimes reblog posts that are interesting but I do not necessarily endorse.
some posts (this section is a work in progress)
why i am anti anti civ
on autism: (x) (x)
on democracy under socialism
socialism vs communism vs regulated capitalism
sideblogs
(bold = my favorite and most active sideblogs, others have posts more rarely)
@this-is-trivial - aesthetics sideblog
@paxsovietica - soviet history and art blog
@autistic-light-yagami - “roleplay sideblog”
@hashtag-applecore - 🍎
@colibri-coruscans - birds (the other mod is @/rlydsntmttr)
@goncharovpilled - goncharov posts archive
@modularfacade - architecture photography blog
@did-henry-kissinger-die-yet - what it says on the tin (the answer is yes)
@jan-iso - toki pona blog
@wouldkirakillthem - poll gimmick blog
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misfitwashere · 5 months ago
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September 6, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Sep 07, 2024
One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 
Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.
In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 
“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”
According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 
SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 
YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 
Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.
Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 
The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 
Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 
Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 
He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.
Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 
Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​
Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       
One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 
In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 
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odinsblog · 11 months ago
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seeing people I used to like reblog from a fucking twitter tankie freak (all tankies are antisemitic btw idgaf) just cuz of their pro-palestine posts is making me wanna hallucinate. I am begging chronically online losers not to boost tankies just cuz theyre pro-palestine, also being pro-palestine and pro-russia is oxymoron. I wanna fucking die
Yeah, I agree.
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Netanyahu and Putin are authoritarians who have both remained in power far longer than any true democracy would have allowed, and they are both using their militaries to colonize peoples and take land.
And tankies?
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Unfortunately tankies are so easily manipulated that all you have to do is say America supports something and they’re immediately against it on that alone, with no critical thought whatsoever.
Finally, while I absolutely positively do agree that the Venn diagram of antisemites and tankies is almost a perfect circle, I need to stress, especially now, that not every criticism of Israel is antisemitism. But unfortunately, many criticisms of Israel’s war crimes in Palestine dO come from antisemitic people who have been waiting for the right moment to unleash their inner racist. So yeah, always gotta be on the lookout there.
That all said, I think that the main thing with tankies is, they’re authoritarians at heart. They’re perfectly okay with colonialism and imperialism and even ethnic cleansing and war crimes -as long as their side is the one doing it. Perhaps THAT is the main difference here, iMho. ( x )
If you look at any of the main pro-putin tankie accounts here on tumblrdotcom, the two things that you should immediately notice are 1. Despite some of their URLs, they’re almost all self-proclaimed “radical” 🙄 white dudes (sorry, but I’m Black and my personal belief is that ANY revolution for positive change ain’t gonna be led by a white guy, especially not the cringy ones who are stuck on Lenin), and, 2. Their hot takes on Russia and Putin are practically indistinguishable from Republican talking points.
Practically everything Tucker Carlson said, tankies wholeheartedly agree with. I’m surprised tankies haven’t made Tucker Carlson their pfp. But I guess that would be a bit too on the nose, wouldn’t it? To be clear, this isn’t me saying that anyone who disagrees with me is a Republican or a Russian bot, but have you ever read through a tankie skreed? Really read through it? I hear many of their exact same bullshit talking points on Fox News and from conservative news outlets. It’s just revarnished bullshit, wrapped up in ☭ for tumblr.
</endRant>
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tomorrowusa · 2 years ago
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NEXTA is a news aggregator staffed primarily by journalists from Belarus who are in exile because of the repressive pro-Putin r��gime in their native country.
In the tweet posted above they show how Putin’s bots are taking advantage of Elon Musk’s mismanagement of Twitter.
It’s doubtful that Musk cares about NEXTA’s problem, he has sporadically parroted the Kremlin’s line about the invasion of Ukraine. He probably is happy that Putin is able to squelch opposition voices.
Rather than wait in vain for Musk to do something (sorry NEXTA, he won’t), legit news organizations should form a consortium and launch a new microblogging platform which concentrates on news and current affairs and is bot resistant. Only member news organizations could post though visitors could repost on other platforms or forward stories to friends. This would effectively become a news feed to replace ones on Facebook and other platforms. 
Twitter will only continue to deteriorate under Musk. It’s time to work on something new before Twitter becomes totally unusable.
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@nexta_tv – perhaps you should consider posting at Tumblr. 😎
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aprilflowers2040 · 8 months ago
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youtube
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While I said in a previous post, I'd talk about my trip to Israel, I feel it's necessary to dive into issues when it comes to aspects of the Pro-Palestinian movement. So consider this as me swapping around parts 2 and 3.
While a majority of people in the movement are in it with the best of intentions, it shouldn't be ignored that there are those within it that are there for less then pure reasons. For starters, while not as prevalent as in the Pro-Israel, there have been neo-Nazis who have decided that their islamophobia and Arab-based xenophobia is secondary to their hatred of Jewish people.
I re-posted a video before talking about the subject so I will re-blog it after this is posted. In summary, it's how genuine anger towards the Likud led government of Israel is co-opted in certain circles to sneak in classic antisemitic talking points, such as Jewish people controlling the media, that the Jewish Diaspora and Israel are to be conflated with one another, by both antisemites, and extreme Zionists.
this goes into my next point, that there are those who proclaim support for Palestine, yet downplay the religious, ethnic and historical connections Jewish people have to the region in order to justify their own viewpoints, that extend to a denial of any nation-state representation. While I'm more for unity unless under certain circumstances, unfortunately, we live in a post-Balfour world, so we deal with the cards dealt. However, I digress.
Back to the matter of weaponized Pro-Palestinian elements. A trend I notice with far too much frequency in posts proclaiming Pro-Palestine is "Death to Israel" or referring to Israel as "IsNotReal" or "Israhell". This isn't even with any effort on my part, but seems to be baked into elements of the Pro-Palestine fringe. This is troubling given the above mentioned conflation of Jews and Israel. It seems downright hypocritical for people like this profess a desire to recognize Palestinian statehood, which it rightfully deserves and is now receiving, while denying Israel's own existence. While Likad propaganda isn't exactly in short supply on social media ,see the litany of porn bots on Tumblr and Twitter, there has also been enough disinformation from people who support Palestine that it should raise eyebrows. For example, footage of people in Ben Gurion Airport which was used to proclaim that people were fleeing back to places like the United States and that they were settlers, when in reality it was people returning home from Passover celebrations. However, it's not only those on the far-right that are spreading falsehoods. There are those in left-wing circles that ascribe to a "West = bad" mentality. While this isn't entirely wrong, as Western governments, including and especially the United States, have used their power for their own selfish interests, the views of Tankies are so black and white, that it borders on pure brain rot. This especially is apparent in their contrasting feelings when it comes to places like China and Russia compared to Israel. Each is currently enacting genocide, with China's CCP against the Uyghur people, Russia's Putin against the Russian queer population and the people of Ukraine, and of course Israel's Likud government on the Palestinians. However, while Tankies are quick to decry Israeli crimes, they remain slavishly loyal and excusatory about the crimes of Russia and China because they aren't "western powers" (looking at you, Hasanabi. Check out Lonerbox's videos on him and his Russian dick riding), which basically results in cutting your nose to spite your face, or in this case supporting one group of authoritarians to spite another group of authoritarians. Thus it extends to apologia towards Hamas and the actions of Palestinian groups both past and present, that used outright terrorism to get what they wanted. If these same people support Palestinian independence while preciously saying that Ukraine should kowtow to Russia's own territorial invasions, turn and run for the hills.
Which brings me to Hamas and previous Palestinian leaderships. Oh God, where do I even start. Firstly, I should clarify that I believe that armed resistance isn't an inherently bad thing. There are times where it's the only solution remaining. However, what you do with it can still be judged, and in this case, Palestinian "liberation" groups have shown a far too common trend of targeting civilian populations such as what happened on Oct.7th. It would be one thing if it was on military or government spaces, yet these actions on civilians screams of utter cowardice on the parts of Hamas. While both the IDF and Hamas have done these things, I've only noticed the IDF being called out, and although their blatant disregard for life should be decried, it's troubling how identical behavior by Hamas and other Palestinian leadership has been swept under the rug for the sake of "support". Hamas has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood which is a very ultra-orthodox sect of Islam that has multiple bigoted aspects to it which include antisemitism, which Hamas inherited from its parent movement after separating, that wasn't "officially" removed until 2017 (I have their manifesto linked above twice just to be sure of any inconstancies given these are translations.). As for previous incidents, the Munich terrorist attack of 1972, where a combined group of the Palestinian extremist group Black September alongside West German Neo-Nazis killed eleven Israeli Olympics athletes and coaches. While it has been weaponized for darker purposes, it should be noted that while the Palestinian factions had every right to be upset by the destruction of their communities which was what led to this event, their way of dealing with it was horrifically misplaced.
For those who say that Hamas doesn't represent all Palestinians, then you are correct. They don't. They were elected in 2006 before a large portion of Palestine's current population were even born, and yet here they must suffer because the leaders they never elected, chose to break a ceasefire and murder 1,200 people and kidnap 240 more, that opened the gates of Hell upon them from an equally genocidal government with a trigger happy military, and a civilian population primed by 2,000 years of exile and (understandable) generational trauma at the hands of multiple countries and empires, mixed with propaganda and exposure to only the worst of Palestinian society in the form of terrorism to explode in anger with zero consideration for the innocent. That being said, there are Israelis and Jews who support Palestinian struggles that also point out that the Likud don't represent them either, yet those of bad faith are willing to blind themselves to this fact.
This went on longer then I meant it to, if I'm being honest. I wish this was more put together, but this was something I feel I needed to talk about. Still, for those wishing to learn more, I've linked to other sources that are more articulate. For now, I leave it here. Next time, I will get to my critiques of Israel outside of its "relationship" with Palestine.
I just want this to end. I want things to heal. All we can do is take action however we can, and cling onto hope for those who are gone, and those who continue on.
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mariacallous · 8 months ago
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Within minutes of the news breaking on Wednesday afternoon that Slovak prime minister Robert Fico had been shot, a widespread Russian disinformation campaign to blame Ukraine for the assassination attempt was launched by state-run media, hugely popular pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, and bot accounts on X.
Fico was shot five times in the town of Handlová as he greeted supporters following a government meeting. Videos circulating online show a man raising a gun before the prime minister crumples into a patch of grass. He was then rushed into a car by his security team. “At this point his condition is stabilized but is truly very serious. He will be in the intensive care unit,” Miriam Lapunikova, the director of the hospital in Banská Bystrica where Fico is being treated, told journalists this morning.
The perpetrator has been named as a 71-year-old pensioner and amateur poet. In a video posted on Facebook and verified by Reuters, the alleged shooter said he opposed attacks on Slovakia’s public broadcaster and judges. "I do not agree with government policy," he said. On Thursday morning, police charged the pensioner with attempted murder. The shooting is the first assassination attempt of a European leader in more than 20 years, after Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic was shot and killed in Belgrade in 2003.
What appeared to be a coordinated disinformation campaign rolled out by the Russian government immediately after the shooting took place—even before the shooter was officially identified—highlights just how ready the Kremlin appears to be to take advantage of Europe’s deep political divides. Other right-wing figures around the world have followed Russia’s lead, boosting allegations about Ukraine’s involvement as well as positing even more outrageous conspiracies about who was behind the attack. This comes as divisive back-to-back election campaigns have stoked anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Slovakia, despite its NATO membership.
A key part of the Russian campaign included bot accounts linked to the inauthentic Doppelganger network, which explicitly blamed Ukraine for the attack despite there being no evidence to back up this claim. “A man recruited by Ukrainian terrorists carried out an attack,” one Doppelganger account wrote on X, alongside a video of the attack.
The accounts spreading the claims were linked to the Doppelganger network by Antibot4Navalny, a group of anonymous Russian researchers who have been tracking the campaign for years. The Kremlin-aligned Doppelganger campaign has, in recent months, been deployed to target Europe as well as US audiences, most recently helping to sow division around the Gaza protests on US campuses. In June, a French government agency dedicated to combating disinformation described the network as part of the strategy “Russia is implementing to undermine the conditions for a peaceful democratic debate.”
The Doppelganger network was just one part of a wider push by Russia’s disinformation apparatus, which also included state-run media outlets. Headlines about Fico’s attack in Russian publications emphasized his opposition to supporting Ukraine. One article highlighted on the site’s homepage listed dozens of Fico’s quotes criticizing aid to Ukraine and defending Russia’s right to invade the country.
Margarita Simonyan, Russia Today’s editor in chief, went further in a comment on her Telegram channel, blaming Ukraine for the attack: “The Slovak Prime Minister is injured. The one who said that the war began as a result of rampant Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Putin had no other choice. That's how they work.”
The company Logically, which tracks disinformation campaigns, assessed more than 100 Russian-language pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and found they were uniformly claiming the attack was motivated by Fico’s “pro-Russian stance” while also claiming that Western media outlets were justifying the attack because of Fico’s lack of support for Ukraine.
The Telegram channel of military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, which has 1.2 million subscribers, claimed it was highly likely that a “Ukrainian trace” will emerge in the attack on Fico. The post has been viewed more than 300,000 times. The official Telegram channel of Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claimed that Fico is “known as a friend of Russia.”
“It is likely that Russian language channels and Russian disinformation operations will use the attempted assassination of Fico as a new theme to claim that the West supports violence against pro-Russian politicians, and more broadly to expand on the already present narrative that the world engages in widespread ‘Russophobia,’” Kyle Walter, director of research at Logically, tells WIRED.
Most of the posts on X linking the assassination to Ukraine were in English, not Slovak, says Dominika Hajdu, policy director at the think tank Globsec, speaking from Slovakia's capital Bratislava. “With the assassination attempts, I haven't seen any accusations [on social media] in Slovak linking the assassination to Ukraine or Russia.” These English-language posts, she says, imply a target audience of international users, not Slovaks.
Fico is a divisive figure in Slovakia, a small EU country situated between Austria and Ukraine. Considered Russia-friendly, the 59-year-old Fico was reelected for the third time in October, following a campaign in which he called for the withdrawal of military support for Ukraine while saying he could never support the idea of LGBTQ marriage. Since his Smer–SD party won the election, he has proposed shutting the country’s anti-corruption office and has been accused of cracking down on civil rights groups and limiting press freedom.
“The typical current government supporter is mostly rural, usually an older voter, who is not super thrilled with how things turned out with their economic success,” says Sona Muzikarova, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council focused on Central and Eastern Europe. “On the other side is the more liberal, a bit more woke, pro-EU, pro-Western, urban voter.”
More liberal voters were unhappy with the return of Fico, whose last period in power ended with his resignation in 2018, following huge demonstrations over the killing of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. Kuciak had been uncovering government corruption.
“He got voted in through a democratic process, but still there is a huge chunk of the population that's very unhappy with this kind of person being in the lead again,” adds Muzikarova.
The politically charged atmosphere has been exacerbated by back-to-back election campaigns in Slovakia, Hajdu adds. The parliamentary vote in October was followed by the vote for a new president last month. In both elections, disinformation was a prominent feature. In the parliamentary election, Fico’s opponent was attacked with audio deepfakes. In the presidential election, false claims circulated on social media and pro-Russia websites. “Within this constant political campaign, there were a lot of heated discussions and the spread of hate,” she says. Now the country is in the midst of yet another political campaign, ahead of EU elections early next month.
Slovak allies of Fico called the assassination attempt “politically motivated” while others blamed the “liberal media” for the attack. Interior minister Matúš Šutaj-Eštok described the perpetrator as a “lone wolf” who was “radicalized recently, after the presidential election.” Šutaj-Eštok also said the suspect had told police he was motivated by Fico’s policies related to abolishing the special prosecutor’s office and reforming the public service broadcaster, as well as the decision to stop supplying military assistance to Ukraine.
The suspect’s motivations were jumped on by conspiracists of all stripes on Wednesday, and quickly spread outside of the Russian campaign.
Many popular verified accounts on X that subscribe to the platform’s Premium service—and are therefore allowed to monetize their content—instantly spread unconfirmed and wildly inaccurate information about the shooting. Many of them repeated the claim that the attack was linked to Fico’s stance on Ukraine.
“Twitter became a useless morass of disinformation around the Robert Fico shooting,” John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at Citizen Lab, wrote on X. “Try searching for his name, almost the entirety of the top results I get are contradictory conspiracy theories. Good luck even surfacing fact-checked, substantiated information.”
Because Fico was an outspoken critic of the World Health Organization and its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-vaccine groups and channels also quickly pushed the narrative that Fico was shot because of this anti-vaccine stance. Other X accounts variously blamed Jews, the CIA, and Muslims for the attack.
As Fico remains in the hospital, researchers note that attacks against politicians have become increasingly common in Europe. “This is not only Slovakia,” says Milan Nič, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe expert at the German Council of Foreign Relations. Two members of Germany’s ruling center-left Social Democrats were attacked separately this month. Both were treated in hospital. Two far-right AFD politicians were also attacked last week and suffered "light injuries," according to police. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said he received a death threat through X, following the attack on Fico.
“In this era, when a lot of frustration and resentment is accumulated then amplified by social media, there is more and more confusion,” says Nič.
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cbk1000 · 6 months ago
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I just got what I assume is a bot in my inbox, because there is no way an actual human thought they could paste a poorly-spelled pro-Trump form letter in the inbox of a blog that's been hating on Trump for nearly a decade and actually persuade them to vote for him.
Is Putin getting nervous that his useful idiot might lose?
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alwida10 · 11 months ago
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Writing this here to get an official time stamp so I can check in a few years if I had been right or wrong. (Technically, this theory is from November 2023, but I never posted it publicly in detail.)
So, my observations.
1. Back in October ‘23, the war in Ukraine was pretty much at a stalemate. The Russians were running out of ammunition and getting lower on soldiers. The Ukrainian offensive had run out without reaching the enormous expectations put into it.
2. It was already known that Russia had gotten drones from Iran (possibly trading methods to enrich uranium for weapons for them) even though Iran had long denied this. By now (march ‘24) it’s known that Iran, Russia and china are doing joint military exercises, implying there might be an alliance behind the scenes.
3. In October ‘23, Russia knew that the biggest factor for its losses in Ukraine were the support from NATO for Ukraine. So, how fight that? A distraction, in best case paired with a dividing influence on the western world.
4. Russia calls Iran -> iran makes the Hamas attack Israel. But not any part of it. They aimed for the people who were pro-Palestine. Young, leftist people, people who employed Palestinians and offered them shelter, people who drove Palestinian citizens to hospitals.
Second part of the plan: they flood social media with posts highlighting the Palestinian suffering. Posts that condemn Israel. They make the “kill or drive away all Jewish people from the Middle East” war chant a world wide catchphrase.
4. It works like a charm. Israel’s right-leaning head of the state does what Trump would have done, too. Aggressively attacking, not caring much for wording and not caring how his plans play into putin’s hands.
First result: Ukraine vanishes from the public eye. Help stops. The care for the indisputable war crimes there disappears.
Second result:
Since the reports about the bad things in gaza made it quicker to sm than the reports from the Jewish victims (but also for other reasons) the pro-Gaza news had been more far support online and were shared more.
On traditional news however, the pro-Israel news seemed to be more prevalent. Naturally, young people are more likely to get to know stuff from a than older people. The reverse is true for traditional media (newspapers, tv news).
A generational division appears, additional to the leftist pro-Gaza fraction and people who are either neutral or pro-Israel leaning. Most likely this division also separates Muslims and Jewish people (which in many western countries are a very small minority) plus certain subtypes of Christians.
Now why is that of importance? Because there are elections coming. Both in the US as well as in Europe.
My analysis/predictions:
When Biden got elected 2021, it had been mostly the young people who tipped the wage towards the democrats. Young people who tend to be more on sm than listen to traditional news (tv or paper).
We know now that Russia massively influenced the election that brought Trump to the White House. They leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails and using a lot of bots on sm.
Twitter is now swarming with bots, and Elon supports a lot of pro-Russia stuff. There are a lot of pro-Hamas bots, too.
——-
If this gets repeated, if Trump returns to office, he’ll cut all support for Ukraine, making Putin’s plan a full success. He won’t help Gaza. lol, he probably would tell Netanyahu to up his game. Please google “Trump Muslim ban” if you don’t remember what he thinks about the topic.
TL:DR: you’re not immune to propaganda. Learn to recognize it.
And if you care about Gaza think how YOU would solve the conflict. What YOU would tell the people getting bombed or crying for relatives who are still hostages and sex slaves of the Hamas. Go look for a compromise, for the bigger picture. Those are the posts that are most likely the only ones helpful.
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beardedmrbean · 11 months ago
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Russia is already spreading disinformation in advance of the 2024 election, using fake online accounts and bots to damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, according to former U.S. officials and cyber experts.
The dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO, experts said.
A similar effort is underway in Europe. France, Germany and Poland said this month that Russia has launched a barrage of propaganda to try to influence European parliamentary elections in June.
With Donald Trump opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine and claiming that he once warned a NATO leader that he would "encourage" Russia to attack a NATO ally if it didn't pay its share in defense spending, the potential rewards for Russian President Vladimir Putin are high, according to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy of the German Marshall Fund.
“Not that they didn’t have an incentive to interfere in the last two presidential elections,” said Schafer, who tracks disinformation efforts by Russia and other regimes. “But I would say that the incentive to interfere is heightened right now.”
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that there’s “plenty of reason to be concerned” about Russia’s trying to interfere in the 2024 election but that he couldn’t discuss evidence related to it. He added: “We’re going to be vigilant about that.”
U.S. officials and experts are most concerned that Russia could try to interfere in the election through a “deepfake” audio or video using artificial intelligence tools or through a “hack and leak,” such as the politically damaging theft of internal Democratic Party emails by Russian military intelligence operatives in 2016.
The type of pro-Russia online propaganda campaigns that thrived on Twitter and Facebook ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is now routine on every major social media platform, though it’s rare for individual accounts to go as viral now as they once did.
Those influence operations often create matching accounts on multiple sites, which vary drastically in their moderation policies. Accounts from one pro-Russia campaign that Meta, the owner of Facebook, cracked down on late last year, an English-language news influencer persona called “People Say,” are still live on other platforms, though some are dormant.
A “People Say” account on X is still visible, but it has only 51 followers and hasn’t posted in almost a year. Its counterpart on Telegram, which has become a home for some Americans on the far right, is still actively posting divisive content and has almost 5,000 subscribers.
A perfect storm
Moscow and its proxies have long sought to exploit divisions in American society. But experts and former U.S. officials said Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the country's deepening political polarization and sharp cuts in disinformation and election integrity teams at X and other platforms provide fertile ground to spread confusion, division and chaos.
“In many ways it’s a perfect storm of opportunity for them,” said Paul Kolbe, who worked for 25 years in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and is now a fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “I think, for a lot of reasons, we will see the same approach, but amplified and, I think, with some of the constraints that you might have seen taken off."
In the 2022 midterm elections, Russia primarily targeted the Democratic Party to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine, as it most likely blames Biden for forging a unified Western alliance backing Kyiv, according to a recently released U.S. intelligence assessment.
In what appears to be an effort to deepen divisions, Russia has amplified the political dispute between the Biden administration and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over security at the Texas border over the past month. Russian politicians, bloggers, state media and bots have promoted the idea that America is headed to a new “civil war.”
It was a quintessential move by a Russian regime with a long tradition of trying to manipulate existing political rifts, like immigration, to its advantage, experts said.
But there’s so far no sign that Russia’s disinformation operation in Texas has had any significant impact, said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council.
“So far, Russian operations targeting the U.S. have been opportunistic. They see whatever narrative is rising to the top, and they try to push it,” Brooking said. “Disinformation isn’t created in a vacuum. The more polarized a country is, the easier it is for foreign actors to infiltrate and hijack its political processes.”
The artificial intelligence threat
The bigger Russian threat to the 2024 election, Brooking and other experts said, could prove to be artificial intelligence-created fake audio.
An orchestrated deepfake or leak may not unfold on the national stage; instead, it could target a particularly crucial swing state or district, experts said. It might aim to discourage some voters from going to the polls or sow distrust about the accuracy of ballot counting.
The most likely disinformation scenario will be “hyper-personalized, localized attacks,” said Miles Taylor, a senior Trump administration homeland security official who has warned of the risks of another Trump presidency.
Deepfake audio, which is easy to create and difficult to detect, has been used in recent elections in multiple countries. In the U.S. last month, a fake Joe Biden robocall told New Hampshire Democrats not to vote in the state's primary. In the United Kingdom in November, a fake audio of London Mayor Sadiq Khan called for pro-Palestinian marches.
And two days before Slovakia’s parliamentary elections in September, a fake audio clip purported to show the leader of a pro-Western political party discussing how to rig the election. The audio was eventually debunked, and it’s unclear what effect it had on the election. But a pro-Russia party opposing aid to Ukraine won the most votes.
While an emerging cottage industry claims that software can identify whether audio or video is authentic or a deepfake, such programs are often wrong.
Past Russian efforts
Alleged Russian information operations against Ukraine over the past two years open a window into some of the Kremlin’s tactics.
A study published Wednesday by the Slovakian cybersecurity company ESET found that a pro-Russia campaign has been spamming Ukrainians with false and dispiriting emails about the war with claims of heating and food shortages.
In a coordinated effort near the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022, cyberattacks temporarily knocked key Ukrainian websites offline, while residents received spam texts telling them that ATMs in the country were down.
Other apparent Russian efforts to sow division are much simpler.
Last year, celebrities who sell personalized videos on the website Cameo, including Priscilla Presley, Mike Tyson and Elijah Wood, were tricked into inadvertently recording messages that denigrated two major enemies of the Kremlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Moldovan President Maia Sandu.
The messages were overlaid with text falsely claiming that the celebrities were calling for those leaders to step down. Representatives for Wood and Presley said the celebrities recorded the videos thinking they were helping a fan with addiction. A representative for Tyson said the videos of him were fake.
In the American mainstream
In the U.S., though, Russia’s propaganda themes are now often echoed in comments from some Republican lawmakers and pro-Trump commentators, including the portrayal of Ukraine’s government as deeply corrupt.
The adoption of Russian state rhetoric in America’s political debate is a victory for Moscow, experts said. Putin’s goal is to spread doubt and division among Americans.
“An equally nice outcome for them is just what we had last time, where a third of the country doesn’t believe the vote,” Schafer said. “Democracy is questioned; the system gets questioned. So they don’t necessarily need to see their guy win to have it be a good outcome for them.”
It remains extraordinarily difficult for a remote cyberattack to take over voting systems in the U.S. and change vote counts. The American intelligence assessment of the 2022 midterms found no indication that Russia had tried to hack into election systems or ballot counting that year.
But Kolbe, the former CIA directorate of operations official, said the Kremlin would most likely see trying to penetrate U.S. voting systems as a low-risk undertaking.
“I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t,” he said. “You’d be hard-pressed to find where they would see the risk part of the equation. It gets close to zero.”
Such interference could come with plausible deniability. On the day of the 2022 midterm elections, the Mississippi secretary of state’s website, which hosts the official polling place finder for voters in Mississippi, was knocked offline most of the day after pro-Kremlin hacktivists on Telegram called for supporters to join in a low-level cyberattack against it.
Still, U.S. officials and disinformation analysts say Russia’s ability to manipulate voters shouldn’t be overstated. When it comes to spreading disinformation and fueling distrust in election authorities and election results, the biggest threat comes from within America’s fractured, polarized society, not from the outside.
“I am very skeptical, whether it’s 2016 or 2024, that the United States political and media culture needs any push from Russia,” said Gavin Wilde, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who specializes in Russia and information warfare.
“The Kremlin has every interest in seeing an American public, or American leadership, that’s less inclined to support Ukraine, that’s less inclined to punish Russia. Those incentives are certainly there,” he said. “But we’re already doing a pretty good job of that at home. I don’t know how much of a nudge the Kremlin thinks it needs to lend it.”
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stingray-gun · 4 months ago
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Intro bc I'm not a bot:
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DNI: Anti-mogai, Pro-life, Trump &/or Putin supporters, NSFW only accounts, anti-LGBTQIA+, racists + zionists, etc.
This is a pro-Palestine, Pro-Ukraine, Pro-Choice, a minor LGBTQ+ account
Extra: we're endo-neutral ,, Endo & non-Endo sys feel free to interact👍 aka Endo safe ! (We don't want discourse, please don't start discourse.)
Also please use tone tags when talking to us, we are sensitive bugs /hj
Hi, I'm @stingray-gun
Key notes about the system thing: we don't label ourselves as anything besides plural - we just are! We exist, we live and we like sharks collectively. We don't want a diagnosis, and we live as we are! Though, on note: we aren't Endo, but are chill with endos as long as they're chill with us ^^ /lh + gen
We're Ukrainian (speaking Russian, not writing/reading), but live in the States; EST timezone
Collective: Oreo + Pronouns: They/Them
Fandoms: SAM AND MAX, Ghost BC, TMA, TMC, GF, IHNMAIMS, PHIGHTING, Pressure, Regretevator, TADC, etc
Please interact with me I am desperate for friends😭🙏
(I'm sorry if I post anything bad/wrong - please message me to lmk,, thank you :))
Idk what else to say😭,, have a good day !!
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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years ago
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DeSantis's "Russia, if you are listening . . . ." moment. ::  March 15, 2023
Robert B. Hubbell
         As Joe Biden took decisive action to stabilize the US banking system, the media-created aura of Ron DeSantis's inevitability and invincibility suffered major hits. DeSantis has barely dipped his toe into the presidential primary waters but has already demonstrated his manifest unfitness to hold public office, much less serve as president. We can't count on Republicans to defeat themselves, but neither should we assume they are free of the laws of political gravity. We can beat them, especially if we exploit the stumbling, erratic performance by DeSantis and the rightward lurch of Trump in response to DeSantis's culture war in Florida.
         As to DeSantis, after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, he blamed its collapse on the bank's "woke" policies—specifically citing its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity in employment practices. The blazing ignorance of the remark makes it appear that DeSantis does not understand what a bank is, how it generates revenue, or why banks fail. See Business Insider, DeSantis, and other prominent Republicans blame 'woke' politics for Silicon Valley Bank's collapse instead of bankers miscalibrating risk. His big-money donors must be having second thoughts about a guy who doesn't know the difference between a bank run and a book ban.
         DeSantis followed his fatuous comments on the SVB failure with a disturbing description of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute." He made that comment in response to a questionnaire that Fox disinfotainment czar Tucker Carlson sent to all GOP presidential candidates. Calling Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine a "territorial dispute" amplifies Vladimir Putin's effort to rewrite history to conceal his expansionist policies.
         Moreover, the comment is an insult to the tens of millions of Ukrainians who are engaged in an existential struggle for their country's survival. DeSantis's statement was too extreme even for the Russian apologists in the GOP, who condemned DeSantis's comment. See Insider, Top Republicans bash DeSantis for calling Ukraine war a territorial dispute: 'Obviously, he doesn't deal with foreign policy'.
         As a matter of politics, these events confirm the rap on DeSantis—that he is a stilted, flat-footed, uncomfortable politician who cannot extemporize beyond the four corners of the flashcards in his pocket that say, "Woke = bad. Grievance = good." If DeSantis tailors his policy positions in the 2024 campaign to please Tucker Carlson, he is charting his path to defeat.
         As a matter of substance, however, DeSantis's support for Putin's war of aggression continues the unholy alliance between the GOP and Putin that Trump created in 2016. The only explanation for the continued effort to win Putin's favor is the need of a dying party to secure foreign assistance in corrupting US elections. Candidate Trump was explicit in his quid pro quo to Russia:
Russia, if you're listening — I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."
         Russia couldn't find the 30,000 emails, but it did flood swing states with social media bots that spread disinformation about Hillary Clinton. See Indictment, US v. Internet Research Agency, dated 2-16-2018. ("By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton . . . .").
         DeSantis's description of Russia's war of aggression as a "territorial dispute" is his version of "Russia, if you are listening". But DeSantis's offer to Putin is more dangerous and deadly than Trump's invitation. DeSantis has essentially promised Putin that if Russian troops can hang on for another two years, DeSantis will cut off aid to Ukraine—threatening the elimination of Ukraine as an independent country.
         Worse, it will teach Putin that he is right in his (thus far) erroneous belief that the West will waver in its commitment to check Russian expansionism. DeSantis's reckless statement threatens not only Ukraine but NATO nations in Europe and, ultimately, the peace and security of the US.
         The problem for DeSantis is that complex questions of international relations do not fit neatly into the mindless syllogism created by his campaign handlers that asserts, "Woke = bad. Grievance = good. Despite his Ivy League education, DeSantis does not appear to be smart enough to navigate the complexities of American electoral politics, let alone the more difficult issues of international relations in a nuclear era.
         What's the takeaway? That we must do all we can to defeat DeSantis and Trump early. Each is worse than the other—and neither deserves the GOP nomination for president. Tell a friend!
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
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bonnielass23 · 9 months ago
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I originally didn't have an opinion at the time because I didn't have the time and spoons to look into it other than what was on social media, and my stance has been that if I don't have an informed opinion then I don't voice an opinion. So in some ways I'm definitely not condemning people who had an opinion based on the information they saw on social media and didn't enter the fray. If it was kept to themselves, then I don't necessarily blame them for having an uninformed opinion. People who went on social media and blasted Amber I have an issue with.
I recently looked into all the evidence with an open mind. Didn't go in believing one person over the other because I wanted to go off the facts, not confirmation bias. This website does have a pro-Amber bias, but it's also a good resource for looking at all of the evidence, both presented at trial and sealed. Again, I went in without bias and allowed the evidence to shape my opinion, I did not look at commentary about the evidence until after.
First off, in terms of the unsealed documents. This was a civil trial based on an article that Amber wrote. Although whether or not Johnny abused her was integral to whether or not it was defamation, it was not a criminal trial to prove Johnny abused her. It was to determine if Amber lied. So just because evidence was not allowed in the trial does not mean it's not actual evidence. It's only because he had an entire team of lawyers on his side and Amber had one local defense attorney who came in at the last minute that he was able to keep so much of it out. When going up against a legal team of equal standing he lost the defamation case against The Sun. He only won against Amber because her legal team kept changing due to insurance issues, and was not prepared to go against his legal team. I think it's very telling that he sued Amber and not the Washington Post, because he knew he had an unfair advantage.
Going into the evidence, both presented at trial and unsealed documents, I had to stop. Johnny's behavior outside of the sexual violence was so similar to abuse I received as a child, that it was triggering my CPTSD. This is stuff that was backed up by the notes provided by medical professionals. Both Amber's personal therapists and then the doctors and psychiatrists that he forced Amber to use instead. So no. That wasn't he said she said, it was medical professionals' official notes that went into their charts said.
Also to note. She didn't abuse her sister and she didn't abuse her girlfriend. Her friends who had to give statements about her did so because Johnny's lawyer Adam Waldman threatened and coerced them. Waldman also fabricated evidence. He also has ties to Putin and was kicked off the case by a judge in CA for leaking confidential information.
The way Johnny talks about women, not just Amber, is disgusting. Including when he saw the woman who "broke his heart" in high school and how happy he was that she was "a mammoth" after having 4 kids, and it was a fitting punishment for her. The burn her body then fuck her corpse texts were sent in 2013, before they were engaged because he was aggravated about her "haranguing him" about his substance abuse. He was violent around his ex Ellen Barkin
He also abused their less than 10lb yorkies, one of which slept on the bed and they knew was incontinent and had shit on the bed before. A UK judge ruled that it was unlikely that Amber or her friend popped in the bed and it was most likely the dog. This judge did see the pictures of the poop on the bed.
He has an epic bromance with MBS, the Saudi prince who had the Washington Post journalist brutally murdered. Additionally, the social media hate was started by Saudi twitter bots. I suggest listening to this podcast six part series "Who Trolled Amber Heard", I'm linking episode one. Even if you hate Amber, it's very informative on how social media bots are used to spread misinformation and influence public opinion. Also how affordable it can be for the average person to create a bot campaign. Not necessarily as sophisticated as those used by wealthy individuals and government agencies, but still dangerous.
Johnny Depp is an abuser, and I also hope he never has a moment of peace the rest of his life.
amber heard had to legally change her name, abandon her career and move to spain because she had the audacity to write an article about how she was abused (without even naming the abuser) and the fucker sued her for it and made sure it was televized for maximum humiliation. I truly hope depp never knows a moment of peace for the rest of his pathetic life and the same goes for anyone who supported him. you people are genuinely the scum of the earth
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