Last year one of the keynotes of the campaign of Donald trump was the idea that Americans are being taken for fools. We were those “fools” who Rob foreigners, immigrants and refugees. We let them, and they took from us our money and our jobs, they raped and killed our fellow citizens. Trump claims that he is now when he became President, he combats this trend. He’s already banned nationals from several Muslim countries to enter the territory of the United States. He created the office for victims of crimes committed by immigrants. Finally, we “wised up”.
All the talk about how to wise up and speak out against immigrants is one big fraud. And trump — consciously or not — takes part in it, but the person who actually pulls the strings is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such was the basic idea of the testimony that was given on Thursday, March 30, the Senate Committee on intelligence in the investigation of possible Russian interference in the presidential elections in 2016: Putin’s propagandists helped Trump, weaken our country and our alliances, posing as Americans who hold right-wing views, and stoking fear of immigrants and minorities.
Most of those who believe that Putin intervened in the election, confident that his intervention took the form of behind the scenes collusion. However, the witnesses who testified at the hearing on Thursday, March 30, and studied cyber operations and propaganda campaign of Russia, said that you’re missing the point: this intervention took place in plain sight. Several witnesses, including a retired General Keith Alexander (Keith Alexander), who headed the national security Agency from 2005 to 2014, explained how Russia consistently uses differences in the U.S. and other countries. She uses these differences through online trolls and bots that spread various messages and fake stories that encourage the growth of tension in society.
Ethnicity is in this case a Central place. In their written statement addressed to the Committee, Clinton watts (Clinton Watts), research fellow, Institute for the study of foreign policy, explained: “Russia chooses a specific stratum of the electorate, whose representatives are able to listen to her ideas and, thus, to succumb to its influence, in particular the ultra-conservatives, very unhappy with the immigration, refugee flows and economic problems.” In its oral presentation, watts spoke in detail about how the Russian trolls and bots, which his team some time monitored, influenced European voters, “strengthening the fear of immigrants and promoting false information about the criminal intentions of the refugees.” Eugene Rumer (Rumer Eugene), Director of the program “Russia and Eurasia”, Carnegie endowment, said that in Germany, Russia is helping the far-right party “Alternative for Germany” and fueling dissatisfaction with the actions of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened the borders to Muslim refugees.
Senator Marco Rubio (Marco Rubio), which, according to watts, was a victim of Russian agents online during last year’s Republican primaries, illustrated these statements with a specific example:
We all know that Angela Merkel has taken a tough stance against Russia in connection with situation in Ukraine. We know that in Germany is a lot of debate about migrants. In early 2016, 13-year-old girl, known as Lisa F., who has dual Russian-German citizenship, and whose family moved from Russia to Germany in 2004, told police that she was kidnapped migrants from the Middle East who raped her for 30 hours. After that, Germany saw a storm of outrage and has prompted protests against Merkel. The Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia immediately intervened and spoke of the need to protect “our Lisa”. Russian media and Russian-language publications are very extensively covered this story. However, later the Prosecutor’s office in Berlin announced that she has undeniable evidence that within the 30 hours when Lisa F. has been missing, she actually was with people she knew, and a medical examination showed that she wasn’t raped.
Rubio cited other examples: “the Fake story that the oldest Church in Germany burned thousands of Muslims shouted “Allahu Akbar”. Another story about how the EU allegedly wants to introduce a ban on snowmen because it is a manifestation of racism.” All these campaigns were designed for white Europeans and based on their concerns and fears. All these stories were fiction.
When Rubio asked the witness, did Putin “to sow instability, to set Americans against each other,” watts replied in the affirmative. According to watts, in 2014 along with his colleagues, he tracked the news in the Russian media, the actions of trolls and bots that tried to influence “almost all categories of disgruntled citizens of the United States”. For example, once they have disseminated information about the “chaos among the activists of the movement Black Lives Matter”.
Trump has become a part of this great deception. From 2011 to 2016 he spread the lie that the birth certificate of Barack Obama was a fake. The Russian media was delighted for this fiction. “The reason that the presidential election worked active techniques, partly was the fact that the Russian commander-in-chief used active techniques, said watts. He made allegations of fraud during the elections, that President Obama is not a US citizen, Senator Ted Cruz (Ted Cruz) is not a citizen of the United States… They repeat the same statements.”
According to watts, in the accounts of the trolls, which was followed by his team, “the most frequency words in the English language profiles on Twitter were the words, “God”, “army”, “tramp”, “family”, “country”, “conservative”, “Christian”, “America” and “the Constitution””. These key words helped the trolls to contact the Americans, who could vote for trump. “If you analyse all the accounts of the residents of Wisconsin, it is possible to identify the most often repeated words, explained watts. — Then you just need to create accounts that look exactly the same as the accounts of the residents of Wisconsin. Thus, if you want to influence them and to convince them that the information is true, to do it becomes much easier, because people will see the same person as themselves”.
Leftists can be fooled exactly the same way. At the hearing, Roemer noted that Russia has used the Occupy Wall Street movement to a certain class antagonism and to discredit American democracy. Rubio pointed to another example, described by Adrian Chen (Adrian Chen) in the New York Times: created by Russian Troll accounts appeared about the information that Atlanta police shot and killed the “unarmed black woman”. According to Alexander, Russia also tried to influence supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders (Bernie Sanders) in the period of the primaries.
The experience gained by experts in the field of Russian propaganda in the 1980’s, proved that you can be an honest liberal and a staunch opponent of the war and to become part of a campaign to weaken NATO. In fact your candor and frankness make you a more attractive target. “Disinformation specialists of the Soviet bloc, preferred to use those then called inadvertent agents, said Thomas Reid (Thomas Rid), an expert in the field of cyber warfare from king’s College London, in his speech before the Committee. — There is no contradiction in the fact that at the same time can be even an American patriot and to help the implementation of Russia’s interests”.
Today, this manipulation exposed the conservatives. And to turn them into instruments of self-destruction of America and the West, Russia uses xenophobia. Your belief that you defend your country — and that the person who told you on Twitter about new atrocities of the Muslims, is the same as you, a Christian living near makes you an easy target. And he is a fake nationalist who has promised to save you from the new nonsense, either a fool or is part of a General pattern of deception.
