#Russian disinformation campaign

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Dave Whamond]

* * * *

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday underscoring a facet of the presidential election that’s familiar to regular readers of the Editorial Board. While Donald Trump is popular with the Republican base, and while his nomination is all but assured, his weakness is increasingly on display.  

The former president has galvanized support in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Followers are “overwhelmingly white,” over 50 and without college degrees. But this, the AP said, is very different from the US electorate. “He’d have to appeal to a far more diverse group and possibly win over supporters of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.”

Not only must he expand the base, the base itself has gotten smaller. The AP: “A large portion of Trump’s opposition within the Republican primaries is comprised of voters who abandoned him before this year. … At least 2 in 10 of the voters in South Carolina’s Republican primary and the Iowa caucuses said they won’t back Trump in November, while approximately 3 in 10 in New Hampshire felt that way (my italics).

But the more he accepts Russian aid, the more Russian aid will change the Republican Party, making it unrecognizable to actual principled conservatives and “that female independent suburban voter,” who are now leaving the party and making their way toward the Democrats.

Finally, there are the suburbs, “where the plurality of general election voters live,” the AP said. Voters there were not “particularly welcoming to him in this year’s GOP contests. He split the suburban vote with his opponents in Iowa and New Hampshire and won the suburbs in South Carolina by a smaller margin than in the state as a whole.”

This double trouble – the need for expanding the base even as it’s shrinking – has been understood among Republicans who are good at politics. (Trump is bad at politics.) This is why there’s a “growing chorus” of allies urging him to focus less on “grievances” and more on issues, or “hitting” Biden, to bring back GOP voters who’ve strayed.

But either he isn’t listening or he can’t help himself. (Actually, it’s both). Recently, Trump sat with Fox host Bret Baier, who asked: “What do you say to that female independent suburban voter to win her back?” Trump: “First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot. Let’s get that straight.”

While that clearly works with most Republicans, it doesn’t work with all, because, to these holdouts, it sounds like he’s “talking about being a victim,” as Haley said last week. “At no point has he ever talked about the American people. All he’s doing is talking about himself. And that’s the problem — it’s not about him. It’s about the American people.”

But even if Trump were to stick with campaign issues, like the “crisis at the border,” there’s a problem. He doesn’t care about them strongly enough to remain focused on them. He cares about defeating his enemies, to be sure, especially Joe Biden, whose administration is “victimizing” him. But actual problems? No. He doesn’t care. Problems are for exploiting to gain power to liquidate enemies, not for solving.

Republicans who are good at politics, and who are urging him to “pivot” to the general, also know who their party’s presumptive nominee is. He can’t adjust, won’t adjust. He’s running the same campaign in 2024 that he ran in 2016, only it’s a thousand times more dictatorial. Even when coaxed oh-so-gently into adjusting, Trump reverts to form. During a recent interview involving a question about government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, Fox’s Sean Hannity suggested that he wouldn’t really commit crimes, would he? In essence, Trump said, ‘Sure, I would.’”

All the above is why Trump needs the Russians. His base is shrinking. He’s alienating “that female independent suburban voter.” He can’t adjust, won’t adjust. He doesn’t care about problems enough to solve them. All he can do – the one thing he’s good at – is hold steady while the Russians, in coordination with the Republicans, attack Joe Biden, smear him, wear his people down, “flood the zone with shit,” as advisor Steven Bannon once said, in a nihilistic act of “voter suppression.”

Indeed, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, 2024 will be the third election cycle in a row in which Vladimir Putin’s saboteurs are once against attacking American sovereignty and interfering with our democratic decision-making, Meanwhile, GOP leaders will either stand by and watch it happen (as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did in 2016) or participate (as the House Republicans are now by pursuing an impeachment inquiry against the president, or as Joe Conason put it, by pursuing “a bogus case invented in Moscow.”)

[John Stoehr]

[lookninjas]

You know, it's interesting to me that I saw an article as I was scrolling through my dash this morning that (supposedly) blames the U.S. for being deeply involved in a genocide in Sudan. You might think from such a description that we'd be talking about U.S. military aid or boots on the ground or the CIA or something like that, and not just the Trump administration tanking our diplomatic efforts and Biden's administration not making the best decisions to right the ship. You might also think that such an article would not include a section like this:

David Satterfield, who replaced Feltman as US special envoy to the Horn of Africa and who has since resigned, said that Washington did not have anything but bad choices in Sudan, and therefore had to strike deals with the Sudanese military. According to Satterfield, “If there is ever an opportunity to return to a path towards restoration of a civilian-led government, you’re going to have to talk to the military then as well.

You also might not think that such an article would outright reference Russian involvement in Sudan, which it does.

Russia believes that its strong presence in Sudan will augment its status in Africa and the Middle East, which is considered an American redoubt. Since 2014, and with Moscow’s aspirations to exploit African mineral riches, the Kremlin has strengthened its ties to Sudan in order to ameliorate western sanctions following its invasion of Crimea, sanctions that became even harsher after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.16 In 2017, former Sudanese President al-Bashir visited Russia and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two countries agreed to establish a holding company run by the paramilitary Wagner Group to mine gold ore. Russia also signed a 25-year lease in December 2020 to build a military base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea that can receive nuclear-powered ships. It was also interesting that Hemedti headed an official delegation to Moscow on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And while we're talking about Russian involvement in Sudan, which is why I'm here in the first place, it's really really really interesting to me that this article was phrased as proof that the U.S. was heavily involved in genocide in Sudan, despite the fact that the Russian Wagner group (accused of war crimes in Ukraine) has been providing missiles and military training to the Sudanese paramilitary group RSF while smuggling gold out of Sudan to fund their own activities in Ukraine. Fun fact about the Wagner group: They're also heavily involved in social media misinformation campaigns.

Wasn't there a Russian misinformation campaign on tumblr leading up to the Presidential elections in 2016?

And despite the "mysterious" death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash (a short time after his aborted march on Moscow), Russia is still working on bringing the Wagner organization back under their control. Because, you know, they still have that whole invasion of Ukraine they're working on. An invasion of Ukraine that would sure be a whole lot easier for them if they could convince Americans to stop providing military support to Ukraine. They're already doing pretty nicely with the Republican party, but the Democrats (and the American left in general) have been harder to get on-side.

It does kind of feel like tying American military involvement in other countries to active genocide would be a great way to discourage people on the American left from supporting continued involvement in Ukraine, wouldn't it?

We're slightly less than a year away from the next American presidential election. There is no reason to believe that the Russian propaganda machine, which has already been operating at full blast since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, is going to slow down. This quote from the linked article is particularly chilling:

A particular challenge is that people tend to spread falsehoods “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth”; this is particularly the case for false political news (Vosoughi, Roy and and Aral, 2018[7]). For example, one study found that tweets containing false information were 70% more likely to be retweeted than accurate tweets (Brown, 2020[8]). Another study found that false information on Facebook attracts six times more engagement than factual posts (Edelson, 2021[9]). In addition, feedback loops between the platforms and traditional media can serve to further amplify disinformation, magnifying the risk that disinformation can be used to deliberately influence public conversations, as well as confuse and discourage the public.

I think it's important to remember, especially now, that we are capable of spreading misinformation. The article about U.S. involvement in Sudan wasn't placed on there by an algorithm. This is fucking tumblr. That was one of my mutuals. Because they're concerned about American military intervention and they're against genocide and it sounded bad and they were upset and they didn't think to read the article. Because they didn't spend the time of Prigozhin's march on Moscow mainlining information on the Wagner group the way that I did, so they didn't go "Hey, Sudan? Wait a minute --" the way I did. Because misinformation that isn't targeted at your group is designed to be easy to spot, so you'll think that the misinformation that is targeted to your group will also be easy to spot, and it fucking isn't.

Because this culture of "If you care, you'll share" has gotten people to click that reblog button without thinking twice about it.

Don't keep falling for it. You don't have to spend an hour digging up sources and pulling out quotes for a ten-note post the way that I did. I'm like this as a human. It's fine if you're not. But if you're not even going to click the link to read the article and actually read it critically (or if there's no sources at all except a twitter screenshot, which I've also seen quite a bit of), then don't reblog it. Save it as a draft for when you have time to do the research, or just don't do anything with it at all. You're not obligated.

And if you have the relevant background to spot the disinfo, I mean -- again, look, you're not obligated to take that hour and search those sources. Even I don't do this all the time. It's hard, it's frustrating, and it will not spread the way the disinfo does. I'm gonna see that genocide post like five times at least on my dash, and I'm probably going to see it at least once from someone who has at least liked this post (if not reblogged it as well). But if you can. If you have the energy and the time. Try to put a little info out there. It might help someone.

That's all. Be good. Be skeptical.

[prolibytherium]

I'm going to be real I don't have any doubts that there are trans people on the tumblr/auttomatic staff who sincerely want to improve circumstances for trans users on this site but I'm really not going to care about apologetic gestures until there is material improvement. I won't trust vague assurances of improving anti-harassment measures until I see it. It's not like any of these patterns of abusive moderation against the most vulnerable demographics is new.

[calicojack1718]

The Firehose of Falsehood: Drowning Trust and Destroying the Foundation of Our Democracy, part 1

Reading time: 5 minutes We seem to be drowning in a flood of lies and weird mishegas coming out of Trump, his cabinet, and the Republican Party. The only way to understand it is to understand the Firehose of Falsehoods.

Summary: In part one of a two part series, the ways Trump and the Republican Party have utilized the Putin-esque “Firehose of Falsehoods” propaganda technique to erode trust in society is analyzed. By flooding the information landscape with overwhelming, contradictory messages, they create confusion and undermine the reliability of sources. This strategy leverages high-volume, multi-channel…

[russianreader]

National Unity Day

Monterey, California, 4 November 2024. Photo: The Russian Reader I’m worried about the left’s demonization of America’s origins and the future of Western civilization, as many conservatives feel that the basic tenets of society as we’ve known it are under attack. Source: Scott Jennings, “Opinion: Why I’m voting for Donald Trump,” Los Angeles Times, 1 November 2024 Carolina Performing Arts,…

[traegorn]

do you unironically believe russian psyops are a real thing. be serious.

And to be clear: Every government engages in psyops. Psyops is literally a term that comes from our own government's actions.

[classyclips]

Things going on behind the curtains...

[dontforgetukraine]

Ukraine Donation Guide Master Post

(Ver. 2 updated Aug 13th, 2024) I will be reformatting this and adding more in the future when I have time.

Also a quick note, all of the groups I have found through twitter have been around long enough for them to be vetted by each other and the brigades they work with. In fact, a lot of these groups collaborate with each other too. Those that are in the fight for Ukraine have been diligent in calling out those that are grifters. Word spreads around quickly if an organization doesn't show up with what they promised. They also use their social media (often Twitter) as a means of transparency for their work.

Remember: When considering on whether to donate, always use your best judgement and donate to those you trust if you do not see what is listed is up to your standards.

Multi-Purpose

United 24 has various fundraisers dedicated to defense and drones, medical aid, rebuilding Ukraine, humanitarian demining, and science and education. You can pick which one you want to contribute to under their various projects.

Liberty Ukraine uses funds for humanitarian aid, medical supplies, protective gear and equipment, and rehabilitation therapy. You can choose which campaign of theirs to donate to.

Come Back Alive is a charitable foundation that supports Ukraine's military with competent assistance while also focusing on security and defense. They also have projects that use sports to help veterans rehabilitate. You can choose which campaign to donate to.

Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation works to help both civilians and Ukraine's army. You can choose to donate to an active project or any of their general campaigns. Civilian aid campaigns cover temporary housing, supporting crisis and emergency responses, schools, demining, and healthcare. Military aid campaigns cover drones, optics units, communications equipment, and support of air defense teams.

Food Aid

World Central Kitchen works with local partners wherever they are providing food aid. They make sure meals and meal kits are what the local population eats. Even though there is no separate fundraising campaign for Ukraine (that I can see), they still do great work.

Animal Rescue

Hachiko Foundation works to help displaced pets and strays in frontline areas. They help with veterinary care, outdoor shelters, setting up feeding stations, and rehoming animals.

Medical Aid

Hospitallers (Website) is a volunteer organization of paramedics that was founded in 2014. They evacuate the wounded, provide medical aid on the frontlines, assist in rehabilitation, and transfer of the deceased to burial sites. They are also supported by Ukraine Charity. Visit Hospitallers' website to see how many they have evacuated, different methods you can donate, and more information about them.

Other

Saint Javelin (Twitter; Website) is a great place to get apparel, gear, and other cool loot to show your support for Ukraine. They don't take donations, but instead raise funds through their shop with a portion of their sales going towards humanitarian aid and critical items needed by the defenders (generators, pick-up trucks, medical supplies etc). Part of their shop has items made in Ukraine to support Ukrainian businesses. Overall, their products are high-quality. I include them due to their impactful presence in the Twitter community I follow and how they make Ukraine visible in an alternative way. Consider buying someone a gift from their shop.

The Kyiv Independent (Twitter; Website) is a great English language resource for news about Ukraine. I include them because I think supporting good journalism is incredibly important, especially now when the information space is fraught with Russian propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation. My followers have probably noticed I've pulled a lot of quotes from their stories in an effort to amplify Ukrainian voices and experiences. Look on their website for more information on different way to support them, such as their Patreon.

---

If you're on twitter, there are a number of groups and people that fundraise for Ukraine and for specific units fighting on the frontlines. If there is no official website, a PayPal for donations is listed in their profiles. When considering on whether to donate, always use your best judgement and donate to those you trust if you do not see what is listed is up to your standards.

@/Teoyaomiquu almost always has a fundraiser for Liberty Ukraine with a specified purpose. At the time of writing this, he is currently raising funds for engineering equipment such as excavators. One such excavator is already in Kursk. Follow him to stay up to date with what he's fundraising for.

Dyga's Paw (Twitter: @/dzygaspaw) is a smaller group that has recently raised funds for starlinks, drones, batteries, and Ecoflow generators. You can look at the fundraising campaigns they currently have on their website.

@/DefactoHumanity represents and founded Planet of the People with their website U(a)nited for Freedom. She frequently posts updates about their fundraisers and what their partners need. They are known for providing Frontline medical aid supplies, protective equipment and other military aid, technical equipment (starlinks, drones, scopes, etc), and infrastructure equipment (generators, vehicles, power stations, etc). They even have a merch store of the battalions they partner with if that's your jam. Here is their link tree if you wish to explore more. And in case you're curious, there is an article bout the founder here.

@/wilendhornets (Website) specialize in making high quality drones that have gotten a lot of praise from Ukraine's army. They have attracted a lot of media attention too. Check out their website for the list of articles that have been written about them. Their Twitter is very active with strike footage.

Ants Kitchen Hub (@/ants_kyiv) is a volunteer kitchen that makes dry rations for the Ukrainian army. They are more active on their other social media. To learn more about them, check out their link tree.

@/frontlinekit (Front Line Kitchen) is represented by Richard Woodruff. Originally they made shelf stable food for the Ukrainian army, but now their fundraising has branched out to other campaigns such as raising funds for medical supplies and drones. They are a well known group that many battalions have come to for help.

@/bekamaciorowski (Rebekah Maciorowski) is as combat medic and nurse who helps provide medical care to soldiers and civillians at the frontlines. She raises funds for medical supplies and other equipment, but also helps train soldiers in first aid. More of her social media that features her work can be found in her link tree.

@/UkraineAidOps (Website) is another organization battalions frequently go to for help. They fundraise for all sorts of equipment from medical supplies to drones. If you're interested, they also have a shop with patches from different brigades and flags signed by soldiers. Their shop also includes a separate section called the Victory Gallery where artifacts from the war are turned into art. This includes shells that are painted on, scrap metal from downed enemy planes are turned into keychains, and pieces of a rocket are turned into lamps.

Chris Garrett is the co-founder of Prevail. His organization deals with humanitarian demining as well as training for trauma care, training of bomb disposal, and education to the public. Prevail works with local agencies in Ukraine as well as the army.

Project Konstantin (Twitter; Website; Linktree) is still going strong after the death of their founder, British paramedic Peter Fouché. His digital ghost can be found here. They collaborate with the military, thus giving them an insight into what is dearly needed. They often raise funds for starlinks, personalized first aid kits (IFAKs), generators, portable power stations, and other nonlethal military equipment. I regret forgetting them the first time this post went around. Visit their website to see everything they have done and more. It has more information on what and how they do it than this post can cover.

One Team One Fight (Twitter; Website; Linktree) has some of the original members that worked for Ukraine Aid Ops. They formed their own group after differences with the previous one, and are still helping Ukraine. They are very visible on various social media showing what they have accomplished in their deliveries to various brigades. They're another group that seeks to bring starlinks, drones, medical supplies and protective gear to the battalions that come to them for help. Check out their website for more information on their current fundraisers, their achievements, and received recognition.

NAFO 69th Sniffing Brigade (Twitter; Website) Another small group that focuses their funds on delivering drones, generators, vehicles, and saving the occasional furry companion. They are very diligent in their updates for their fundraising campaigns. Check out their website for more information and the articles written about them.

Postmaster General Boomer (Twitter; Website) focuses on humanitarian aid, animal aid, and logistics. Boomer is the beloved pet of one of the founders and the secret boss/mascot. They have many transparency reports and are diligent in reporting the various "tours" they do in getting supplies where they are needed to go. They are based in Germany but have built up many connections during their existence. They have also worked closely with Ukraine Aid Ops.

--

I am sure I have forgotten some, so please reply or comment with any more I should add to this master post. I will edit and update as I see and evaluate more.

Last updated: Aug. 13th, 2024

Version updates listed below

August 13th, 2024 Added:

Hospitallers

Saint Javelin

The Kyiv Independent

Project Konstantin

1 Team 1 Fight

NAFO 69th Sniffing Brigade

Post Master General Boomer

[spale-vosver]

First they came for the Jews, which I cheered on because Isnotreal is a colonialist state.

Then they came for Californians, which is okay because they're all rich hollywood Jews.

Then they came for the Palestinians, and I was conveniently quiet about that despite making a big ruckus about ethnic cleansing for the past year and a half.

Then they came for queer people, and I finally spoke up, because I am queer and everything is about me, don't forget that the Nazis killed queer people too and burned the Institute of Sexology!!

But by then it was too late, because I was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to convince millions not to vote for the one candidate who could have stopped all of this. But at least #KillerKamala didn't win and Jill Stein got to show up!

[contemplatingoutlander]

All the Americans who died in WWII fighting fascism would be appalled by JD Vance's speech in Munich and his later meeting with the a neofascist AfD leader.

Vice President JD Vance urged European leaders on Friday to end the isolation of far-right parties across the continent, an extraordinary embrace of a once-fringe political movement with which the Trump administration shares a common approach on migration, identity and internet speech. [...] The vice president singled out his German hosts, telling them to drop their objections to working with a party that has often reveled in banned Nazi slogans and has been shunned from government as a result. He did not mention the party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, by name, but directly referred to the longstanding agreement by mainstream German politicians to freeze out the group, parts of which have been formally classified as extremist by German intelligence. “There is no room for firewalls,” Mr. Vance said, bringing some gasps in the hall. He punctuated the message by meeting on Friday with Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor in this month’s election, as well as other German leaders. [...] Mr. Vance aggressively challenged the diplomats in the hall in Munich, telling them that their biggest security threat was not from China or Russia, but “the enemy within” — what he called their suppression of abortion protests and other forms of free speech.

It was breathtakingly hypocritical for Vance to scold Europe for not being true to its democratic ideals--much less to do so in a speech delivered in Germany, which in the mid-20th century had lost its democratic institutions because some Germans allowed Nazis to get a foothold in their government.

If you give fascists an inch, they will take a mile.

In his speech, Vance was indignant that Europe has erected "firewalls" against far-right political parties. Ignoring the fact that fascism took over Germany through a democratic, legal process. Specifically, once he became prime minister, it only took Hitler and his Nazi cronies 53 days to destroy the Weimar Republic through legal, constitutional means.

Germany in particular KNOWS if they give fascists an inch, they will take a mile.

It doesn't help Vance's case that in less than a month's time, Trump, Musk, and MAGA Republicans have taken a sledgehammer in the U.S. to the law and the Constitution, and appear to be trying to establish an autocratic if not downright neofascist state.

No politician has a "mandate" if they were elected because of disinformation and lies.

Vance clutched his pearls that the Romanian government just nullified an election because it was proven that there was a deep Russian disinformation campaign to propel a far-right party into power.

Besides the fact that Vance hypocritically works for Trump who attempted "coup" to overturn a fair election, Vance wants the world to ignore the fact that any political candidate who is elected into power based on lies and disinformation is in fact NOT a representative of the will of the people because they were elected fraudulently (i.e., if they had told the truth, they might not have been elected).

Consider Trump. If he had not lied and distanced himself from the deeply unpopular Project 2025, but had instead said he planned on using it as a blueprint for his second term, how many of those swing state voters would have actually voted for him?

Therefore, Trump has NO mandate that reflects the "will of the people" not only because he was NOT elected by a majority of the voters (just a plurality) but because he lied about his true intentions for a second administration during his campaign.

[See more about how Vance hypocritically turns "free speech" on its head below the cut.]

Vance turns "free speech" on its head.

Vance took hypocrisy to a new level in his Munich remarks, when he talked about "free speech":

Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that. [...] You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. [emphasis added]

Well, what Vance said is laughable given that Trump, Musk & their cronies have been fully behind censorship of not only speech, but of ideas, which they have demonstrated by:

Purging federal departments of anything related to DEI, including any "words" such as "gender" or "diversity," and any personnel who have promoted those ideas, or who have even attended one diversity training years ago.

Threatening to prosecute private businesses that promote DEI or provide diversity training to their employees.

Purging the study of or mention of "climate change" from government websites.

Withholding government funds for public schools and even universities that teach subjects related to racism, sexism, and gender studies and (in the case of K-12 schools) who choose NOT to teach a whitewashed "patriotic history."

Threatening to go after the mainstream press if they criticize Trump or his policies too much. (Already he has cut access to the White House for the AP's refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, and has kicked important news media like The New York Times from their offices in the Pentagon, replacing them instead with right-wing media outlets.

Threatening to use the DOJ to go after the "enemy within" (i.e., politicians who do not support what Trump is doing, regardless of political party).

And lets not forget Trump's purge of civil servants who have different political views, and who will not pledge loyalty to Trump over the Constitution.

Through all of the above, Trump, Vance, and other MAGA GOP have shown us that they have no problems stepping all over the freedom of speech/of the press protections of the First Amendment over and over again.

I could go on and on about the hypocrisy of that speech, but the bottom line is that JD Vance embarrassed our nation by what he said in Munich. He also presented the Trump administration as being firmly on the side of the far-right/neofascist political parties in Europe.

At this point, many europeans must see very little difference between the US under Trump and Russia under Putin.

How far we have fallen as a nation in less than one month.

_______________ Image sources (before edits/captions): WWII meme photo source; "Inch" gif video source; "No mandate" photo source; "Freedom of speech" image source.

[qqueenofhades]

Honestly, between the Republicans' deliberate Russian-disinformation smear campaigns, and the Online Leftists' deliberate just-flat-out-stupid smear campaigns, it makes me want to get a big Biden 2024 flag and wave it overhead like a Trump Cultist and yell about how he's the greatest president ever. Because I want to be nuanced and mature and reasonable about his record, what he's done well and what remains to be improved, and otherwise treat it like a sensible adult human historian person, but my god, y'all make it hard.

[creature-wizard]

Why americans always think is the russians intervening and not their own country ? Like you know the cia is known to intervene in elections across the world right.

Also the main social medias are all own by right wing billionaires like elon musk.

But nahh it must be the evil russians!

Because Russian bots are a real thing, maybe?????????????? Because Russia pushed Jill Stein to split the vote???????????? Because we know damn good and well that the Russian government does, in fact, do this shit?

[i-merani]

This is a WIRED article from 2018 about Russia's propaganda/disinformation campaign on Tumblr.

The thing is, while Tumblr has addressed it in the past, it is very clear that Russia still uses trolls on this site. The list that they've provided of Russia-linked blogs back then isn't available anymore (I can't access it). The reason I'm posting this now is because I see a lot of people posting screenshots of pro-russian users and I want you to know that there's high chance that these users you are interacting with might be a troll spreading Russian propaganda. With the invasion of Ukraine these blogs must have intensified their activities so you can imagine the state of disinformation on this site.

Here's a useful article on how to spot russian bots/shills

[saywhat-politics]

The administration disbanded an FBI task force investigating foreign influence campaigns, and cut several Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency staff.

NEW YORK (AP) — When a suspicious video of ballots being ripped up in Pennsylvania gained attention on social media last October, federal agencies responded quickly and called it out as Russian disinformation.

On Election Day in November, bomb threats to polling places in numerous states caused relatively few disruptions to voting. It’s one of the many scenarios covered by the nation’s cybersecurity agency in its outreach to state and local officials.

[mariacallous]

In early September, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled a series of sweeping investigations and indictments into Russian information projects aimed at disrupting the 2024 U.S. presidential election. One of these projects, which secretly funded right-wing influencers to promote former President Donald Trump’s campaign, is an escalation from prior Russian information operations, such as their email hacks during the 2016 election.

But another Russian team, described in a planning document published by the Department of Justice, approached disrupting the election a little bit less directly.

The Russian plan describes the “Good Ol’ USA Project” as a “guerrilla media” campaign intended to target “sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Written by Ilya Gambashidze, a figure already facing sanctions for his disinformation work aimed at smearing Ukraine, the document suggests focusing influence efforts on the “community of American gamers, users of Reddit and image boards, such as 4Chan,” since they are the “backbone of the right-wing trends” online in the United States.

The inclusion of gamers in this campaign points at emerging dynamics in a global struggle over human rights online—one that policymakers need to pay closer attention to.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group, around 65 percent of Americans—or 212 million people—regularly play video games. Globally, video games generate more than $280 billion in revenue, far larger than traditional culture industries such as film or book publishing. While a trickle of stories about other attempts to push Russian propaganda in video games have attracted some scrutiny from journalists, the question remains: Apart from scale, what is it about gamers that Russia thinks will make them receptive to its messaging?

For starters, video game culture has already become an important venue for extremist right-wing groups to share and normalize their ideas. Far-right groups modify video games to be more explicitly racist and violent than their designers intended. Even gaming spaces designed for children, such as Roblox, which allows players to create their own game worlds and storylines, have attracted thousands of people (many of them young teenagers) to use the game’s freewheeling mechanics to play-act fascist violence.

The prevalence of hate groups has shaped video games into a place where culture and politics are debated, often contentiously, with predictable fault lines emerging along U.S. partisan boundaries. While the industry itself has made considerable progress in improving representation and reducing acts of horrific sexual violence, it has received pushback from far-right figures who are angry at the so-called “wokes” for supposedly “ruining games.”

For a decade, repeated efforts to “reclaim” gaming from an imagined enemy composed of women, Black people, and LGBT+ folks have bubbled up from the darkest corners of the internet, often in places such as Reddit (where this Russian campaign aimed its influence activity). These movements have spilled over into more mainstream political movements that can shape election outcomes. Consider how Gamergate, a 2014 campaign to terrorize women working in the industry into invisibility, metastasized into an online troll army working to get former U.S. President Donald Trump elected in 2016.

These far-right efforts are ongoing, even without Russian help. Last year, a group of gamers who were angry at inclusive representation in games launched a harassment campaign—colloquially called Gamergate 2.0—against a story consulting company.

Earlier this year, when Ubisoft began promoting the latest installment of its popular Assassin’s Creed franchise, this time set in feudal Japan, the trailer prominently featured Yasuke, an African man who served as a samurai in 16th-century Japan. Despite being based on a real historical figure, this movement (egged on by X owner and billionaire Elon Musk) raged at the decision, as if acknowledging Black people in the past was somehow bad. In their quest to sow division within the United States, Russian information operations analysts do not need to look very far to find political allies in gaming communities.

It helps that Russia enjoys greater social legitimacy in gaming than it does in, say, news journalism. You can see this legitimacy reflected in the language gamers that use as they play. Around the same time as Gamergate, a vulgar Russian phrase began popping up in the chats that players use to communicate with each other in non-Russian game streams, primarily in the multiplayer first-person shooter Counterstrike: Global Offensive. The game has around 4 million Russian players, and as it grew in popularity in the mid-2010s, the Russian obscenity cyka blyad became common invective during frustrating moments of play. Its widespread adoption among non-Russian-speaking gamers struck many as odd.

Cyka blyad rose in prominence alongside Russia’s descent into becoming an international pariah, which has limited the spaces where Russian gamers can play games online. In 2014, Russia passed a law requiring websites that store the personal information of Russian citizens to do so on servers inside the country. This was compounded in 2022, when companies ranging from Activision Blizzard to Nintendo protested the invasion of Ukraine by either suspending sales or shutting down Russia-specific services. Despite its residents representing around 10 percent of Counterstrike’s player base, there are no host servers for the game anywhere in Russia.

So, when Russian players log on to find players for a match, they use servers based in Europe or sometimes North America. These servers place them into direct contact with players on the other side of international conflicts—something that many players within the European Union found deeply frustrating after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, as their games became places where people would argue about the annexation.

But another reason why Russian slang began infiltrating non-Russian gaming spaces is that after years of censorship and exclusion from both Russian and Western governments, games are one of the only spaces direct exchanges between ordinary Russian and Western people. Russians lack access to many Western social media platforms—such as Instagram (blocked by the Russian government in 2022, though earlier this year some Russian users regained access)—and were locked out of Western game stores, even as they kept access to many online games. As a result, matches in a game such as Counterstrike or Fortnite became one of the only places where these informal cultural exchanges could take place.

This narrowing of exchange spaces highlights how video games can become useful conduits for propaganda, and it demonstrates that video games are becoming an important, if underappreciated, site for ideological disputes over politics, speech, identity, and expression.

Other countries have begun to use video games for strategic communication. The U.S. government operates semiprofessional esports teams through the Defense Department, whose remit includes convincing young people to become interested in enlistment. China launched a military-produced first-person shooter game to boost recruitment and to humanize the image of the People’s Liberation Army abroad.

The Chinese developers of the hugely popular game Black Myth: Wukong instructed gaming influencers who were given early access to avoid discussing “feminist propaganda” while reviewing the game, apparently to adhere to government censorship rules. And Russian propaganda about the country’s war with Ukraine has begun appearing in games that allow user-generated content, such as Minecraft and the aforementioned Roblox, as the Kremlin seeks to persuade Westerners to end their support for Ukrainian freedom. In response, the U.S. State Department has begun developing its own games intended to train players to resist Russian disinformation.

This isn’t an abstract challenge. Scholars have drawn linkages between Russia’s propaganda efforts and President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as both bots and human agents aggressively pushed narratives about the need to “pacify” an ostensibly violent Ukraine by invading. The invasion was further justified by the myth of Novorossiya, or a pan-Russian identity that views Ukrainians as misguided Russians who need to be forcibly reclaimed.

These efforts to spread propaganda through gaming are rarely successful. Few people wanted to, say, join Hezbollah after the Lebanese militant group launched its own game, Special Force, in 2003. The terrorist group al Qaeda has used video games for recruitment since 2006, but there is little evidence that any meaningful number of people have been recruited because of it. Scholars have fretted for years over the “militarization” of video games as the Pentagon gets more and more involved in the industry, yet U.S. military recruitment is in long-term decline, and public confidence in the nation’s military is at a two-decade low. If games-based propaganda works, we do not yet know where or how it does.

The revelations about Russian video game propaganda hint at some intriguing innovation in how strategic messages might be spread through nontraditional channels, but they also point to the areas where traditional channels for propaganda have closed down. Despite efforts by Republicans in Congress to falsely accuse agencies such as the Global Engagement Center of partisan bias when addressing foreign misinformation, the U.S. government takes the challenge seriously and, as this 2022 report on the propaganda channels , is working to thwart many of Russia’s best efforts to target Americans with propaganda, like when they sanctioned several Russian oligarchs who had been financing US-directed misinformation.

But even beyond government counterprogramming, there are plenty of obstacles to Russia’s efforts within the world of gaming. For example, Ukraine’s video games industry is respected in the United States and Europe. The developer 4A, which was based in Kyiv before the invasion, produces popular games such as the Metro franchise. That company, however, had to fly its employees abroad to keep them safe from the indiscriminate Russian barrages against the Ukrainian capital and other cities. This sent shockwaves through the industry, as it made some of the consequences of the invasion seem more viscerally real even to people who do not follow politics closely.

As a result of American and European sanctions, Russians have a more difficult experience legally purchasing software and services such as online gaming. (Some Russian game companies have since relocated abroad to more neutral countries, such as Cyprus, to continue operating globally). Wargaming, the Belarusian company that makes World of Tanks, also fled to Cyprus, which has become an informal hub of Russian game companies.

Looking forward, there are real questions about what video games are going to become in the information war between Russia and the West. Russian censors have proposed deploying neural networks to search for banned content in games, but it is unclear whether those systems might disrupt gaming for everyone else.

Long before the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow forced Activision to censor the infamous airport sequence in the rerelease of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (in which players assume the role of a Chechen terrorist and can slaughter hundreds of screaming civilians at Sheremetyevo International Airport), and it has not been shy about using government coercion to erase LGBT+ people from gaming (paralleling to its embrace of the U.S. far right). Policymakers should look at ensuring that global communication platforms—and that is what video games are—remain open to free speech and safeguard other basic human rights.

While the latest Russian effort to target games seems to have been thwarted by the U.S. Justice Department, there will undoubtedly be more programs looking to repeat and extend the success of Gamergate in empowering the far right, perhaps this time by enabling it to obstruct effective governance in the United States. The Good Ol’ USA Project also targeted its influence operations toward websites such as Reddit and 4Chan, both of which are as central to the sustainment of far-right movements as gaming. Emerging platforms—which range from popular Chinese games to channels such as the online chat service Discord, which is difficult to monitor at scale and routinely hosts leaks of sensitive military documents—present new opportunities where Russian influence could be targeted.

These strange spaces are the frontier where a global battle for speech is being fought.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.