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Cake day: March 1st, 2024

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  • So your point is that Russia does try to interfere in American and other foreign elections, they just aren’t very good at it?

    The electoral college makes it easier for foreign actors to influence American elections. Instead of convincing 3 million people to change their votes from Clinton to Trump in order to effectively influence the election, the entities spreading FUD only need to influence a few thousand in key swing states.

    From your Brookings article:

    The bottom line is that the Mueller report clearly shows that the Russian information operations were highly adaptive to the political context in the United States, followed a seemingly well-thought out strategic plan akin to a marketing or public relations campaign, involved direction from Russian intelligence, and were incredibly effective in infiltrating American media while influencing public debate around the 2016 election.

    The article from the Nation is a poorly sourced opinion piece from someone who seems to have a very poor understanding of how the Russian intelligence works. The key “gotcha” in the article is that IRA is not a Russian government agency, rather a private company run by Russian individuals.

    This isn’t in contradiction to the Mueller report, it’s common for Russian intelligence (and other intelligence agencies around the world, including CIA and other American intelligence agencies) to use private corporations to carry their agendas. As pointed out by the Brookings article Russian intelligence directed the actions of IRA, even though IRA and its employees weren’t directly employed by the Russian Government on paper.


  • Also unnecessarily hostile.

    I’ve read the Mueller report and nothing in there supports your claims, which makes your statement even more confusing.

    From the Wikipedia article on the Mueller report:

    The report concludes that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”.[4][5][6] Investigators had an incomplete picture of what happened due in part to some communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved, as well as testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined.[7][8][9]

    More importantly:

    However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred “in sweeping and systematic fashion”[10][11][12] but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts.[13][14][15] It also identifies myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies,[16] about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations.[4] Mueller later stated that his investigation’s conclusion on Russian interference “deserves the attention of every American”.[17]



  • The point you’re trying to make here isn’t very clear.

    Are you saying:

    1. That Russia didn’t try to interfere with the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections?
    2. Or are you saying that Russia did try to interfere, but they were incompetent and couldn’t actually do it?
    3. Or are you saying the Muller report clearly stated that there is a deep connection between Democrats and Russia, and only a much weaker connection between Russia and Republicans?
    4. Something else entirely or some combination of all of these?




  • Sorry for not making it more clear, that is an example of how FUD works and not something I know for certain is FUD.

    It has a lot of the hallmarks of a Russian FUD campaign. It’s catchy, it’s easy to explain and understand, it has a very strong appeal to emotion, it’s easy for someone to participate in and feel good about themselves, it allows participants to feel connected to a cause without actually having to really do anything, it undermines Biden’s presidency to the benefit of Russia and Trump.

    Given the timing, the nature of the campaign, how it seems to be spreading, and who benefits from it, I think that there’s a really good chance that Russians or some other group are amplifying and spreading the campaign even if they didn’t originate it.

    I am open to the possibility that it’s a purely organic campaign, however we’re unlikely to ever know with certainty if the vote uncommited campaign is FUD or organic. Unfortunately that’s just the nature of FUD which makes it so effective.









  • That’s not really a conspiracy theory. It’s exactly how propaganda and state sponsored FUD works.

    The spreaders of propaganda find a point where they can create dissension, create a talking point around that point of dissension, convince people that it’s their idea to buy into the dissension.

    Example of how FUD works. This is not something that I know happened. This is just a hypothetical example of FUD works, it is not known fact. I was not sitting in a room with a bunch of Russian agents that decided to AstroTurf beehaw or some other radical left wing Lemmy instance with a trendy talking point so they can influence the 2024 American presidential election in an effort to get a president elected who will withdraw American support for NATO, eleminate funding for the Ukraine war effort, and support Zionist ambitions in Israel. This is just an example of how FUD works.

    Russia/RNC/whoever see they can exploit the genocide in Israel to weaken Joe Biden by framing him as a perpetrator of genocide. They go on internet forums that are sympathetic to this cause like Lemmy. They pose as upset Democratic voters that are going to teach the DNC a lesson by refusing to vote for Joe Biden and help get Trump reelected. They have bad faith discussions with well meaning but gullible Lemmings (known as useful idiots or “UI”) and convince the UI that not supporting Joe Biden is the right thing to do and that the UI is a reasonable person that is just responding the facts in front of them. They do this by coming up with catchy nicknames like Genocide Joe and appealing to the UI’s need to feel heard and be represented. The UI then goes about their day spreading this message far and wide never realizing they were manipulated into believing something and engaging in an action that will ultimately harm them.

    It’s standard procedure perfected by the Russians over the last 10 years or so. People are incredibly easy to manipulate, that’s why advertising and marketing are so effective.