December 18, 2018
Yesterday we learned that Russian interference with our political process was longer in duration and wider in scope than we previously realized. According to reports prepared for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, the Russians used every available social media platform, during the 2016 election season, with a particular focus on riling up conservatives and suppressing the African American vote, (Source: “A New Report on Russian Disinformation Shows The Operation’s Scale and Sweep,” by Craig Timberg and Tony Romm, The Washington Post, 12/17/18).
Russian “efforts to manipulate Americans grew sharply in 2014 and every year thereafter,”(ibid). They deftly deployed Facebook, in particular, to dupe African Americans and conservatives. Any doubt that the Russian efforts during the 2016 campaign were designed to help Trump were dispelled by the further revelation that, beginning in 2017, Russian trolls trained their sights on attacking Robert Mueller, who they clearly viewed as the gravest threat to Trump’s continued tenure in The White House, (Source: “Russian disinformation teams targeted Mueller,” by Craig Timberg, Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin, The Washington Post, 12/17/18).
We should be alarmed by what these reports tell us about the social media platforms that dominate our lives. We have learned, yet again, that these platforms are dangerously opaque in a way that has already caused demonstrable harm to our democracy. These reports reveal conclusively that the tech billionaires that control these platforms are unwilling or unable to police them to prevent the spread of dangerous misinformation designed to divide and disrupt us. In spite of this knowledge we face a conundrum, because while these platforms need policing, neither Silicon Valley engineers, nor government bureaucrats, can be trusted with that power.
We should be most alarmed, though, that the Russian strategy of motivating conservative voters while suppressing African American ones is a deliberate echo of the Republican Party strategy. “Of the 81 Facebook pages created by [Russian troll farm] the Internet Research Agency, 30 targeted African Americans” and 25 targeted right wing audiences (Source: “Russian Election Effort Focused on Influencing African American Vote,” by Scott Shane and Sheena Frenkel, The New York Times, 12/18/18). These pages amassed millions of followers duped into believing that these were authentic groups espousing genuinely held beliefs, and we have no way (yet) to quantify what impact that had on the election.
The reports provided to Congress detail the shameful recalcitrance and evasion of social media behemoths, who resisted Congressional efforts to determine the scope and impact of the manipulation of the American public by a hostile foreign power. Google, in particular, was singled out as being most determined to stonewall the inquiry and the impact of fake Instagram accounts on younger voters was never mentioned in Facebook’s Congressional testimony (Source: ibid).
It is hard to believe that the manner in which the Russian operation– amplifying hard right voices while suppressing African American votes — dovetails with the Republican Party playbook is a coincidence, given what we have learned from the Special Counsel’s investigation and related federal prosecutions. Maria Butina’s guilty plea last week provided insight in how the Russians infiltrated the NRA and may have been the source of some of the $30 million dollars that the NRA funneled to Trump’s campaign.
As the Dallas Morning News first reported over a year ago, during the 2016 campaign cycle, Putin-linked oligarchs contributed $7.35 million to Republican Congressional campaigns and Republican operatives in Florida communicated with with Russian hackers in an effort to use stolen Democratic Party voter files. Coordination between the Russians and the Republican Party seems hardly limited to Trump and his immediate orbit . All signs point to an unholy alliance between the Republican Party and a constellation of Putin allies, linked by their mutual worship of money and white supremacy. If we follow this rabbit hole wherever it leads, we may find that Russia may have dozens of assets at the highest levels of our government. Trump may just be the highest one.