People repeatedly suggest that the Russians could not have had much effect on the US elections… This is naïve at best, and is probably a resistance to recognizing how easy it is for us all to be manipulated in our online societies.
What I did observe, and I assume many other people observed, is that within a year and a half maximum, many people on the right seemed to shift from believing that Russia was the evil empire that could never be trusted, into thinking that the Russians were the victims of Obama’s aggression, and that their interventions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Syria, showed that Vladimir Putin was an all-round good guy just doing his best to defend his country from external aggression. Anyone who opposed Putin’s dominance, like George Soros, became seen as a devil. This was and is proclaimed with very high confidence.
This change was truly remarkable. One I would not have believed possible if I had not observed it. It demonstrates that Russians have remarkable knowledge of how to do propaganda in the “disinformation age”.
Given that we know that the Russians were interested in making sure that Donald Trump became President (or making sure Clinton did not), then it seems probable that they worked towards having an effect on the election and it was probably successful. They may well be still having an effect on maintaining his support.
It needs to be emphasized that President Trump won by an extremely small margin in a few states (and lost the popular vote), even with the help of the FBI re-accusing Clinton over the emails. Consequently the effect of Russian work, could be much smaller than the change in opinion towards Russia suggests is possible for them to obtain, for it to have had an effect on the election. I have in earlier posts discussed some of the factors which may have helped the spread of this propaganda.
One thing we know for sure is that Putin would never support anyone who he thought could make America Great again – so he clearly does not think President Trump is much of a challenge to his projects.
The other thing we know for sure, is that in the Trump Tower meeting, members of Trump’s campaign sought to conspire with the Russians to gain dirt on Clinton, and then lied about it. So clearly the Trump campaign thought contact with the Russians was worthwhile; the only question is how deep that conspiracy went.
Tags: Disinformation
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