Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/01/russia-linked-facebook-ads-and.html
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Russia-linked Facebook ads and Twitter accounts from 2016 campaign released by House Intel Committee
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Sorry to be dense, but how do we tell these from regular right wing memes?
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Is nothing to see hear. Stupid Amerikans did not need Russian help to elect great beeznusman to Round Office, so why you say Kremlin does this?
Signed,
John Johnson Johnson
Odessa, TX
[I’ll let someone else do the “Useful Idiot/Nothing to See Here” comment. Based on past threads, I’m sure there will be at least a couple of volunteers]
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Photo of me and wife, on return home to Amerikan homes, which are in Amerika, where we were born and are from.
See, neighbor Jon agree. We are Amerika family with Amerika values.
Unlike meddling Moose and Squirrel who ruin motherland election process for fellow Amerikans.
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Which ones are those again?
Would be funny to learn all their memes come from Mother Russia.
Conservatives are notoriously creative and unlikely to fall in line with those they see as powerful, after all. /s
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The struggle between good and evil, as embodied by Jesus and Satan, is merely an arm wrestling match? I never would have guessed that. There better be a thumb war variation of that meme somewhere.
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I don’t THINK I saw any of these, but many of them read like satire.
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not everyone in the USA has that level of literacy. Thanks primarily to… the USA.
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That’s not fair. Since at least the days of Nixon, American conservatives have been creative when it comes to “black propaganda” and dirty tricks. They even coined their own term for it:
What’s clear from these ads is that the GOP establishment, Il Douche’s campaign, and the Kremlin all shared the same goal during the 2016 election.
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I’ve lived in the DC area for 17 years now, and I’ve seen protests come and go. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that left wing protesters aren’t always the most creative with their slogans, but damn if they do love them some DIY signs. Right wingers, OTOH, will throw their money at anyone with a screenprinter for premade apparel.
The irony here is that this is the most support I’ve ever seen conservatives ACTUALLY give to small businesses, whereas liberals are supporting big box places that sell craft supplies.
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You’re not wrong.
I think Nixons reign was the highpoint for that sort of thing, in the creative sense. Reagan, Bushes, and Trump - all brute force. Cheney SHOT his own lawyer FFS!
Even Johnson was better at it than any of our modern cons.
Might explain the outsourcing? We used to be able to do this on our own, just fine!!
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One additional benefit of using poor grammar, misspellings, mispronunciations, and obvious fallacies in the memes is that doing so drives educated liberals nuts and makes the memes seem more “authentic” (in the phoney baloney “you can have a beer with him” sense of the word). The Russians at the trolley farms are likely not doing those things deliberately, but ever since the Cheney Regency the GOP has seen the value of doing things like that on purpose (the “nuke-yuh-ler” option, we might call it).
Why not? Despite the populist rhetoric, the GOP is America’s biggest political promoter of offshoring to save a few bucks.
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You realise that in Russian “Businessman” means “criminal oligarch with Mafia links”?
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Democracy compromised? Never…
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Hi, useful idiot here.
First of all, a lot of these are simply reposts of other people’s content, so, who gives a shit? For example, that “Buff Bernie” thing comes from this book available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Buff-Bernie-Coloring-Book-Berniacs/dp/1530297443 - I presume that after passing through Russian hands, this whimsical bit has suddenly become sinister and evil.
Second, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this content is a TINY TINY FRACTION of what went on in the 2016 election cycle, where an estimated $2.65 billion was spent on the presidential election alone. The idea that Russia got Trump elected is laughable, and only through severe chicken-littling can you convince yourself otherwise.
Finally, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the actual clusterfuck our country is in. Three decades of neoliberalism, a completely bankrupt political establishment, massive infiltration of private wealth into the political process, extreme income inequality and a breakdown of political discourse along partisan lines should all come well before any discussion of Russia as a problem. Instead, we’ve had half a year of this Russia nonsense to no end (or point, as far as I can tell, because no one has suggested doing anything coherent in any of these threads as a result - just for a start, can there be some reflection on how busted our political discourse has to be in the first place for it to even be conceivable that Russian propaganda of any sort could sway our elections?).
Instead of going on and on about Russia, we should be (a) rebuilding our political party system, which clearly thrives on the sort of corruption illustrated by this small example (e.g., see Tony Podesta resigning as a result of Mueller’s probe) (b) removing the influence of money from politics © developing a reasonable fucking plan for our economy and country that will pull us out of the tailspin we are in.
But don’t mind me, i’m just a “useful idiot”. Carry on with this hysteria.
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That word:
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You would think with all the ads we’re bombarded with daily we’d have better bullshit detectors.
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I think one can be concerned about foreign melding with out being hysterical. You’re right these memes probably didn’t have a lot of direct affect, and were only a fraction of the memes being circulated, but they didn’t help. They helped fanned the flames.
And while yes, it would be nice to revise our political system (which would take a lot of work all over), asking ONE company to revise their system to help weed this out is also a prudent request, and much more doable.
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