I remain buried in Hillary’s Trolls, Bots, Fake News, and Real Russians chapter. The more I read there, the more certain I am that the Hillary Clinton coalition on Facebook has not only been infiltrated, but that the incursion is effective. A few points.
In this chapter, quoting a Time article she refers to “soft” Clinton supporters. I think that is what I was trying to articulate yesterday in this post. I referred to the “old guard” Hillary supporters that I met and friended in 2008 as opposed to the “new friends” that I accepted in the course of the last campaign and afterwards. That old guard consists of hard core, seasoned Hillary supporters who went through a great deal in 2008 and never had any impulse or intention of hiding their support in secret groups. They are the ones who waited for years for Hillary to declare again and were prepared to jump on the already moving train. The newbies were just meeting Hillary for the first time. Many had been Obama supporters in the past and never paid any attention to Hillary previously. I met many of these at early organizing meetings. Their eyes would widen as we related well known facts about Hillary. It was all new to them. I don’t count all the newbies as “soft” supporters, but I think all the soft ones were newbies.
These newbies are also the ones friending the Facebook trolls I have sniffed out. Not just friending. Believing. Quoting.
Further, in the same paragraph.
“It’s against the law to use foreign money to support a candidate, as well as for campaigns to coordinate with foreign entities….”
I know you knew this and knew that Hillary knew it. I raise it because I did publicly question one of these folks. She claimed to have worked for the campaign. I asked what she did, and she said she campaigned online (despite not knowing a single name of any of the folks directing the social media campaign) and donated money. I told her privately that she was impugning Hillary, whom she claimed to “love,” since foreign donations are illegal. There was no remorse. She fought back. Well, she would have donated if ….
Another, from a different Eastern European country, listed herself as having worked as a personal assistant, Hillary for America. When I confronted that lie, I was told she would have been a great personal assistant if she had worked for HFA which she could not because she was in and of the wrong country.
Wow! There’s a whole lot of subjunctivity going on there.
At this point, you might be thinking that they are just wannabes, and what’s so bad about that? I hear you. But there is something more insidious. A darker agenda hidden deep and disguised among the rhapsodies about Hillary’s big blue eyes.
In this chapter, Hillary quotes Charlie Sykes quoting Garry Kasparov.
“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking and annihilate truth.”
She cites Breitbart as a major source of the propaganda that flowed through Facebook and other social media in 2016. The Harvard study cited here confirms that. The origin of the more formalized posts these Facebook trolls share is unclear, but they are cleverly written and often contain one tiny alarmist kernel.
When I pressed on the issue of attribution, I was told by one of them that I was too academic. That social media is not academic, and citing sources is unnecessary (and, by the way, my kind of insistence on attribution is what lost the election for Hillary). I am very old-fashioned and unhip to expect attribution on social media.
The pending civil war she warned of – the one her friends picked up and posterized – came, it turns out, from a remark by Roger Stone. There’s a credible source!
On another occasion, the alarmist kernel was that the market is headed for a crash. One thing you can always predict about the market is that it will fluctuate. When it rises steadily for a long time, there will be a correction. That warning reminded me of a meme that circulated shortly after Obama was elected. Those on the right warned of a coming apocalyptic crash and encouraged investing in gold and on btc investing. It seems to be coming true with all the alt coins like Veridium coming out daily. Remember when tehy said this would happen?
There is some scuttlebutt about Breitbart, Bannon, and a dip, but what true supporter of Hillary Clinton would gloat over the prospect that her supporters, “fellow Americans,” might lose their investments in their 401Ks and 403Bs? I can tell you. A Fake American disguised as a supporter who is out there to circulate fake news – AKA propaganda.
When I say that these trolls know the language but not the culture, that is part of what I mean. This one did not know that Main St. is already invested in Wall St.
These little cultural items are clues to sniffing them out. But it takes careful reading not cheerleading. As I said, these are little kernels embedded in larger messages that appear to praise Hillary – while often condemning Trump. It is easy to get caught up in the “passion.”
I am still reading that same chapter, slowly, because every so often I have to stop and process the relationship between what I read and what I see happening with these trolls.
I don’t have a sense yet of why these Hillary trolls are soaking up Hillary friends. Of what the objective is. I can at this point say only that I know they are there. I have chatted with a few of them, and from those chats I know they are who I am saying they are. There has to be a reason. I believe we are being targeted every bit as much as these voters as Hillary quotes in her book.
“We know that swing voters were inundated. According to Senator Warner, ‘Women and African Americans were targeted in places like Wisconsin and Michigan.’ One study found that in Michigan alone nearly half of all political news on Twitter in the final days before the election was false or misleading propaganda. Senator Warner has rightly asked: ‘How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?'”
Your Facebook profile states where you live. These trolls hide their locations and masquerade as Americans. Just being friends with them, you are providing a lot of data. They know where you are, where you live, and a lot about what you think.
How can you tell if your Facebook friend is a foreign troll? Read posts and rants carefully and critically. Sometimes a gift will jump right out at you. I groaned about the prospect of jury duty on a case that will go into October. The response: “Just tell them you don’t want to do it.” Yeah, right. You’re an American! Ha!
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