this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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politics

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[–] TropicalDingdong 197 points 10 months ago (16 children)

Bro this isn't news. Its r/TheDonald, Lemmygrad, and half of youtube and facebook. This has been happening since 2016.

[–] jeffw 87 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I’d still say it’s news, it’s just confirming that Russia has continued their same pattern of behavior. Early on the troll farms actually infiltrated communities (I remember reading that they targeted the Bernie subreddit too), but now they just upvote, like, and share unwitting US pawns

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (10 children)

Yeah I thought it was weird when so many Bernie supporters switched to Trump. They're political opposites.

[–] jeffw 49 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Not just that. The whole “Bernie or bust, never support democrats again!” Stuff

[–] BeardedSingleMalt 10 points 10 months ago

There were waves of people who claimed that because their guy Bernie didn't get the nom, they threw a fit and were outright voting 3rd party instead of Biden. Of course, none of them ever went to the polls to vote in the primaries because [insert 14 different excuses]

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[–] toasteecup 12 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I know a former Bernie bro. He switched to trump because "the system fucked Bernie and trump is trying to fuck the system"

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It wasn't even subtle.

I remember posts with thousands of upvotes from this website called thedurian. I googled the people who ran it, one of them had a linkedin which mentioned his location as Moscow and that he had previously worked for RT.

Given I was banned for posting screenshots, I suspect the mods of /r/thedonald were in on it.

[–] Serinus 9 points 10 months ago

TheDonald started as a joke that was legitimately funny. As soon as anyone tried to call it out as a joke, that person would be banned within seconds. That's not normal, volunteer moderation.

There were people with the power to ban paid to control that sub. They took shifts, likely from Russia.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Id rather be a Russian than a Democrat"

Right around the time Russians stopped being "damn commies" to "antidote to the degenerate west" to them.

[–] asteriskeverything 9 points 10 months ago

Oh SHIT I actually forgot that was a thing commonly heard. Frankly it's been brain breaking news headlines (and usually the even with context it was accurate headlines) since 2015 so hard to remember it all.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 17 points 10 months ago

It's also Tucker and Talk Radio.

[–] Hazdaz 16 points 10 months ago

And there is literally nothing to declassify. This has been happening out in the open for years. The FBI has been warning us about this shit multiple times. Yet the funny think is that people don't think it is happening to them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

This has been happening for way longer than that

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[–] Wrench 104 points 10 months ago (4 children)

That's a shock to no one.

My anti-mask friend kept linking Zero Hedge articles to support his stance. Not recognizing the source, I did 10 minutes of research and told him his sole source of information appeared to be a Russian propaganda vehicle. He went on a very aggressive rant about my arrogance at dismissing his "alt media" out of hand.

About a year later, the FBI publicly outed zero hedge as pedaling Russian propaganda. But apparently that was fake news too.

It's impossible to talk to that guy anymore. He doesn't live in reality.

[–] Fades 28 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I too have lost friends to “anti-western alt media”

They tell me how YouTube is censoring everything and thus rumble is the place to go. Gave that site a quick search and learned all I needed to know lol.

They also claim Russia a victim of western aggression but cannot put together a reasonable answer in relation to the invasion of ukr. To no surprise, they also have nothing to say in regards to the persecution of lgbt and non-Roman Catholics, the joke that is their “democracy”. The US is disgusting to them, will trot out foreign policy…. but Russia is A-Okay somehow!

“Oh well I’m not sure of the specifics so maybe they have a good reason”, and yet you’re so sure Russia is the victim? Fucking sad as hell. Lost fucking cause

They say shit like how Iran is one of the most moral countries around. I pointed to the uprisings of women after killings related to hijabs and I was told that I can’t be sure of what’s happening over there. It’s just so fucking obvious that it’s propaganda being parroted, I just don’t understand how you can be so fucking dumb

[–] Serinus 10 points 10 months ago

Not all of the online ones are that dumb. Some are just straight up Russian. Meanwhile 80% of the GOP won't speak out against it because they don't want to lose their seats.

I can't believe we still have operational coal plants in 2023. That fact alone is insane. We should be making a bipartisan plan to phase out the common use of gasoline and diesel. Even just saying we'll tax gas to a price of $10/gallon by 2030 would be enough to make the transition happen.

We should be taking action against anything on the seas burning bunker fuel.

The easiest shit to combat climate change really is low hanging fruit. Of course at this point we'll need active measures as well. We've gone too far to just stop polluting.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Had a similar experience on a forum during peak pandemic, all the sources provided ended up being linked to Russia and mostly to the same person that was involved in a bunch of "news" websites. Try explaining to someone that they don't know how to validate a source... Yeah...

[–] Wrench 21 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Yuuup. One of his sources saying that covid was overblown was Frontline Doctors of America. I spent 20 minutes looking into who they were. Not a single virologist, pathologist, etc in the bunch, claiming that covid was curable.

He literally said "he lost respect" for me that day when I laughed that one of his source's doctors was on video saying vaginally cysts were caused by demon rape in your dreams. He gave me a back faith victim argument about being disrespectful to other people's cultures.

Yeah dude. Sure. That's what you're upset about, dude who literally told me, verbatim, "emotions are stupid" after I gave him a long thought out multiple page explanation of my side, telling him about seeing my parents waste away because they couldn't go outside because my mother's immuno compromised from chemo, etc etc.

Fuck your bad faith bullshit.

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[–] Landmammals 44 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The report was released by a top ranking military official known as "Captain Obvious".

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[–] TwoGems 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Literally everyone knows this

[–] BeardedSingleMalt 23 points 10 months ago

Literally everyone who wasn't duped knows this

[–] Daft_ish 26 points 10 months ago (15 children)

I'd bet $100 the FSB is directly responsible for all the red scare propaganda on lemmy.

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[–] fox2263 23 points 10 months ago

I am shocked. This is my shocked face 😮

[–] dhork 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Aww, how cute. They think these people are doing this unwittingly. I'm convinced there are some people doing this quite wittingly -- and a bunch are in office...

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

Tucker Carlson is the prime example of this.. he's been doing real estate deals with Russians for a long time, and they feed him his "news"..

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago
[–] Touching_Grass 14 points 10 months ago
[–] The_Picard_Maneuver 12 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Makes you wonder what kind of disruptive narratives they're pushing online that aren't Russia-related.

What kinds of trends would they want to amplify in western online communities to cause the most harm over time?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Like how a remarkable proportion of pro-Russia social media accounts were also antivaxxers during COVID?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget climate change denial.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Which is particularly beneficial for Russia as their useless land will become prime agricultural land and they'll have access to more warm water ports.

[–] someguy3 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

They say the same for Canada and it doesn't work like that. It isn't going to warm enough, increased variability is even worse for crops, and the soil typically isn't good for agriculture anyway even if the temperature was better.

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[–] xkforce 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Anything the modern far right champions today is destructive to the US so... the entire conservative political ideology.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Russian information doctrine is to fuel any fire that has two sides. They don't actually pick sides, they just want nations more divided, because nation that is divided cannot function properly.

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[–] Alexstarfire 11 points 10 months ago

Everyone is focusing on "unwitting Westerners" while I'm focused on "laundering propaganda." Like, that's just how propoganda from other countries works right? Starts from a source, then people who believe the source spread it around their own country.

This seems to be acting like it's some new fangled way to spread fear and misinformation when that's the way it's always worked. The only difference now is that it's all online and people rarely verify sources so they take what they read as facts at face value.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

"Unwitting Westerners" they definitely be witting.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't think you can call Tucker Carlson or Fox "unwitting". Nor a number of Republican Congresscritters.

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