Active Measures, Disinfo, Propaganda

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13516]

[956 Worldwide 34190]

2 hours ago, TexasEd said:

How many times is Tucker Carlson mentioned?

Tucker was just a bit too on the nose for the RT financiers. 

[tx 3 putt 75850]

[tx 3 putt 75850]

30 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Tucker was just a bit too on the nose for the RT financiers. 

 

imagine if they had stopped at an heb !!!

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php

 

[tx 3 putt 75850]

👀👀👀👀

 

[cactusflinthead 27586]

Thread 

[pacman 7272]

No surprise where Waters and Fox News stand...

[Francisco 2.0 32289]

 

 

 

[tx 3 putt 75850]

50 minutes ago, pacman said:

No surprise where Waters and Fox News stand...

 

if they didn’t know anything, they shouldn’t be worried about the DoJ checking all their cell phones, emails, chat accounts, and all their spouses electronic devices 

no worries for them 

[Sawbonz 27136]

It’s completely normal to get hundreds of thousands of dollars from people and not question where it came from

[Jive Turkey 12495]

3 hours ago, Deej said:

Damn straight we should be more aggressive.

[956 Worldwide 34190]

7 hours ago, pacman said:

No surprise where Waters and Fox News stand...

“We spew Russian talking points totally organically, the Russian money doesn’t change our ideas” isn’t the defense Watters thinks it is. 

[Pam Cummings 9472]

String them up. Seriously. You have to make an example out of traitors.

[Francisco 2.0 32289]

 

 

 

[Francisco 2.0 32289]

 

 

 

Quote

The new DOJ charging documents raise a curious question: DOJ charges two lower-level employees of a Russian front company, but despite providing chapter and verse about the complicity of the two "Founders" of that company, the Founders are not charged. My Suspicion (based on my prior DOJ experience): the Founders were charged a while ago, under seal, and flipped, i.e. are cooperating with the USG.

 

[956 Worldwide 34190]

I also would place money that the American owners of Tenet are already singing, it’s all fun and games till the FBI shows your “what time in Moscow” google search while waiting for a paycheck. 
 

Conservative media is all so completely astroturfed and fake that this should not at all be surprising, and conservative influencers are accustomed to just taking huge sums of money to say shit and not ask questions. 
 

Example: Rod Dreher, a weird little mini-influencer who is a niche celebrity BUT— wields real influence.  His viral book review launched JD Vance into the national convo and he introduced Tucker to Viktor Orban. 
 

Last year when he had to leave his blog at The American Conservative behind, it came out that the entire time he was bankrolled by one weird man: 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/rod-dreher-blog-weird-american-conservative 

 

Quote

But one particular reader, upon reading the last of said posts, determined the blog had simply gotten too weird, according to two sources familiar with the publication. That disgruntled reader was Howard Ahmanson Jr., the heir to a California banking fortune and the sole benefactor of Dreher’s six-figure salary at TAC, which is published by American Ideas Institute, a nonprofit. This unique funding arrangement—a single donor choosing to cover one writer’s entire salary—was paired with an even more unusual editorial arrangement: Dreher was allowed to publish directly on TAC’s site without any revisions or legal oversight, according to the two sources.

Rod has now decamped permanently to Budapest and more or less openly serves as Orban’s chief English propagandist from his sinecure at a state think tank, where he has agreed to “write about his experiences” in Hungary. 
 

The point is this pipeline and jump is baked into right wing media operations.  You take money from people to spout whatever authoritarian talking points they want.  That’s how the system works and you don’t ask questions or think too much about who is funding you and why.  It’s the exact inverse of real journalism and that’s why it’s ALMOST plausible that the Tenet talent lineup might have just shrugged and said that the scheme must be some weird Thiel or Koch shit.  

[DigglerontheHoof 20917]

1 hour ago, Pam Cummings said:

String them up. Seriously. You have to make an example out of traitors.

This.  It's time to start playing for keeps. 

[TwiceHorn 30971]

5 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I also would place money that the American owners of Tenet are already singing, it’s all fun and games till the FBI shows your “what time in Moscow” google search while waiting for a paycheck. 
 

Conservative media is all so completely astroturfed and fake that this should not at all be surprising, and conservative influencers are accustomed to just taking huge sums of money to say shit and not ask questions. 
 

Example: Rod Dreher, a weird little mini-influencer who is a niche celebrity BUT— wields real influence.  His viral book review launched JD Vance into the national convo and he introduced Tucker to Viktor Orban. 
 

Last year when he had to leave his blog at The American Conservative behind, it came out that the entire time he was bankrolled by one weird man: 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/rod-dreher-blog-weird-american-conservative 

 

Rod has now decamped permanently to Budapest and more or less openly serves as Orban’s chief English propagandist from his sinecure at a state think tank, where he has agreed to “write about his experiences” in Hungary. 
 

The point is this pipeline and jump is baked into right wing media operations.  You take money from people to spout whatever authoritarian talking points they want.  That’s how the system works and you don’t ask questions or think too much about who is funding you and why.  It’s the exact inverse of real journalism and that’s why it’s ALMOST plausible that the Tenet talent lineup might have just shrugged and said that the scheme must be some weird Thiel or Koch shit.  

God almighty.

I suppose he was always fucking nuts, but he maintained something of a veneer of sanity while at the DMN.

[sasquatch69 576]

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

God almighty.

I suppose he was always fucking nuts, but he maintained something of a veneer of sanity while at the DMN.

Rod lived a block away from me in Munger Place in the early 00s during his DMN days. He was a nerdy academic conservative back then, not too far off the path of normal - but in the ensuing two decades he’s gone totally off the rails.

[TwiceHorn 30971]

32 minutes ago, sasquatch69 said:

Rod lived a block away from me in Munger Place in the early 00s during his DMN days. He was a nerdy academic conservative back then, not too far off the path of normal - but in the ensuing two decades he’s gone totally off the rails.

Yeah it was the DMN, so you'd expect a level of conservatism, but by-and-large not this insane shit that Dreher himself calls Crunchy Con.  I think I kind of like that, as a derogatory term.

[Biff Tannen 45384]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

The right eats this up and doesn't think more than one level deep on it.  Shit like this is why we are so fucked.

[956 Worldwide 34190]

44 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah it was the DMN, so you'd expect a level of conservatism, but by-and-large not this insane shit that Dreher himself calls Crunchy Con.  I think I kind of like that, as a derogatory term.

He left Crunchy Con behind, the thesis there was that conservatives should care about the environment and invest in building communities instead of fighting culture wars.

His new thesis is that the right should unite behind an autocratic strongman like Orban to crush the shitlibs, gays, and immigrants. He writes all about it from Budapest and also about how UFOs are probably demons. 

[chainsaw 9784]

11 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

So there's a zero percent chance Elon Musk isn't wrapped up in this scheme.

Two pillars of this hypothesis: First, there is little doubt that Elon has provided material assistance to the occupying forces responsible for invading Ukraine through Starlink. Second, we know Elon wanted to back out of the Twitter acquisition and did not have the cash to buy it until Saudi benefactors fronted him the money, after which he immediately platformed Tucker Carlson's "actually these corrupt far-right European autocrats are the good guys" show, which is mentioned in the indictment, and virtually overnight changed the content moderation policies to transform Twitter into the toxic shithole it has become.

It's like Lenin said, you look for the person who will benefit and uh you know, you know what I'm trying to say.

[Horn Dog 9497]

12 hours ago, pacman said:

No surprise where Waters and Fox News stand...

 

Its a simulation...

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

5 hours ago, Pam Cummings said:

String them up. Seriously. You have to make an example out of traitors.

The unfortunate part is once again we see the low level dumb foot soldiers foot the bill for the high level professional traitors that continue to get away with it. 
 

ETA:  still me this morning 

Edited September 5 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Francisco 2.0 32289]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 7 by Francisco 2.0

[956 Worldwide 34190]

23 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

 

 

The thing is that all conservative media is astroturfed bullshit financed by one shadowy megalomaniac or another.  The business model of “some dude just pays me to say things” is well established.

Don’t get me wrong, it is absolutely worse and disgusting to take money from the GRU vice Thiel, I’m just saying that the template is in place for this.  

[pacman 7272]

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/08/2024/mysterious-influencer-network-pushed-sexual-smears-of-harris

 

I had not run across semafor prior to today.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/18/semafor-debuts-new-media-startup.html

Sent by Copilot:

Explore

Semafor is a digital media company that focuses on providing transparent, global news coverage.

The company was co-founded by Ben Smith and Justin Smith (no relation)

[Brisketexan 104194]

40 minutes ago, pacman said:

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/08/2024/mysterious-influencer-network-pushed-sexual-smears-of-harris

 

I had not run across semafor prior to today.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/18/semafor-debuts-new-media-startup.html

Sent by Copilot:

Explore

Semafor is a digital media company that focuses on providing transparent, global news coverage.

The company was co-founded by Ben Smith and Justin Smith (no relation)

I'M BAAAAACK!!!

[pacman 7272]

Yep, talentless, desperate piece of shit who wants to be gifted fame and fortune joins GOP example 5,234,678

[C-Man 26895]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

I'M BAAAAACK!!!

 

1 hour ago, pacman said:

Yep, talentless, desperate piece of shit who wants to be gifted fame and fortune joins GOP example 5,234,678

The crazy thing is that Santos apparently said he wasn't down with this strategy on the call and left.

[WhatTheBuck 28690]

33 minutes ago, C-Man said:

 

The crazy thing is that Santos apparently said he wasn't down with this strategy on the call and left.

When George Santos thinks your bullshit is too much. 

[pacman 7272]

Grift within a grift

[956 Worldwide 34190]

Finally, Meta decides that Russian intelligence doesn’t get to post on Facebook like its news.

 

[chainsaw 9784]

On 9/10/2024 at 5:23 PM, pacman said:

Grift within a grift

He MMM-bopped himself

[Gap03 3223]

1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Finally, Meta decides that Russian intelligence doesn’t get to post on Facebook like its news.

After how many years???

[texastough 1122]

Right now everyone is postgaming WTF happened. But I think most of the reasons being thrown out there are at best non-productive and many are counterproductive. Candidate quality, democrat platform or ineffective messaging, racism, misogyny, half of Americans are stupid, etc.  There is undoubtedly truth to some of that, but to me it misses the big reason we are here: propaganda and the demonization of liberals by right wing media.

Harris was a really strong candidate but was sunk by being in an administration blamed for the inflation of the last few years. Its not just racism, see Obama. Saying half of Americans are abject morons may make us feel better, but it is truly unhelpful. Thats just the human condition and its been the same for our whole history.

The real problem is people being told what to think, and being intellectually lazy and/or disengaged enough not to realize their opinions are being fed to them based on bullshit. The consistent message from right-wing media for decades is that librul=bad, and it has so permeated a majority of the electorate that no amount of Trump insanity, hate and bullshit could break through.  

The conditions that lead us here started about 40 years ago. First it was Limbaugh who conditioned many Americans to infotainment and talking heads spouting opinions masquerading as news. It also revealed Americans' appetite for it. That eventually led to Fox News who perfected the formula. Anything bad, blame on the liberals. Downplay, spin, or ignore anything bad done by republicans. Technology compounded it by splintering the information environment, which lets people seek out the info/news they want and reinforces echo chambers. And of course right-wing power brokers realized how effective that kind of propaganda can be at setting public opinion.

Over about the same period of time, corporations amassed fantastic wealth and became truly multinational. That plus things like Citizens United and superpacs gave corporations, billionaires, and special interests a lot more control over the levers of power. Republicans were apparently easier to buy off than Democrats, so over that time the Republican party became the party of the oligarch class almost exclusively. But obviously in a democracy, the 1% can't outvote the rest of the population. So, in order to win elections Republicans were able to put together a coalition of basically single issue voters (pro life, pro gun, anti immigration, and the people who still think the GOP is better for the economy despite all the evidence to the contrary). But here's the kicker: today's GOP doesn't really stand for any of those things except abortion and gun rights. I believe that until the last 20 years or so, there was a good-faith argument whether the conservative or liberal policies of the day were best for the country. (There used to be conservative posters in here, I was one of them, that would argue policy in good faith, now it is just drive by shit talking). Its because Republican policies are mostly indefensible today. Today, all the GOP basically does is cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and kill democratic bills -- or even kill conservative legislation like the immigration bill when they think it will help politically. They have a really hard time actually passing legislation. In other words, Republicans have conned their electorate into voting blatantly against their best interests. The overwhelming reason is effective propaganda.

Over the same period of time I have been talking about, the biggest demographic shift between parties has been more educated voters to the left and less educated voters to the right. This is the biggest piece of evidence that it is propaganda to blame, not candidate quality or any of those other things. The more educated tended to see through the Fox News bullshit, the less educated believe what they are told to believe. Fox News has spent a couple decades demonizing democrats/liberals, and it has worked. More people blame Biden for inflation when it was actually kicked into high gear by the guy they just reelected, and brought under control by Biden. I know Trumpers who are normal people in a larger sense. When I talk to them about this stuff, thats what it always comes down to. No actual discussion anymore, they just can't be on the side of the libruls. 

You have to correctly diagnose a problem to properly fix it. I think if all democrats do is try to tweak their platform, find better candidates, outreach certain demographics, we will keep ending up here in the same place wondering what went wrong. This election has made me want to get more involved, but I don't want to spin my wheels.

So, how to neutralize the conservative media and demonization of liberals? Say it with me, its far easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled. I don't have great answers and would love Surly input. Democrats are facing an uphill battle due to the education gap, in other words the voters they need to win back are the gullible ones now under the librul=bad spell. I don't think laws dealing with disinformation would be that effective. First, you'd run up against free speech/freedom of the press before you got too far. But more than that, most of the propaganda isn't true disinformation anyway. For instance, Fox doesn't air the obviously false stuff -- rather it mentions the real news, but then spend 99% of its airtime spinning and telling people how to think about the it (libruls bad). Its that constant, pervasive, simple message that is driving this.

I do think we have an opportunity in the next two years (hopefully not four) to help try to lift the veil for some voters. Thats because conservative media bitching about democrats isn't that compelling when republicans control all the branches of government. In fact, to keep viewers tuned in, Fox will probably spend plenty of time crapping on republicans and far less time reinforcing the bad librul message.

The first way I can come up with to fight back is to try to make propaganda part of the conversation. For instance, do some studies of americans that demonstrate how effective propaganda is. Make some documentaries featuring those studies, showing how effective propaganda is today in places like Russia and China, drawing parallels to things like Germany 100 years ago to show what can happen, and showing clearly how the GOP's actions today doesn't match most of its purported policies or the right-wing media narrative. And get everyone involved trying to keep it front and center in the national conversation. Enough to where people have to think about and question whether they have been duped. MAYBE that can start to break the spell on just enough voters. I think that Americans will get fed up with Trump again and for that reason alone and regardless of conservative media, democrats will win back the White House in 2028. But to keep winning consistently enough going forward, enough people are going to have to realize they have been conned. Those people that do won't flip back to republican -- at least until it becomes a party operating in good faith again and not just trying to represent 1% of its constituents.

My only other thoughts are that even getting rid of right wing media and lifting the veil on the electorate probably would not solve the biggest impediments we have to a better functioning democracy/society. Stuff like overturning Citizens United, changing the electoral college, etc. are not going to happen in our current system under business as usual. Its going to take a major event that causes a lot of hardship/privation. A world war, a pandemic worse than covid, climate change causing famine/supply chain disruption, giant meteor hitting the earth. In other words, we have to face a large enough problem or threat collectively for politicians of all stripes to truly work together to solve it and not just try to score points -- or a problem so big we throw out the government who won't solve it and start over.

Sorry for the long post but it is my way of making sense of what just happened and to start trying to take more positive proactive steps to make a difference. First being diagnosing the real problem!!

[Balcones 421]

Great points.  If msNBC, The View, CNN, social media, every network anchor, debate moderators, school administrators, etc...  would have demonized Donald Trump, Kamala might have had a chance to win.  Maybe you should drop that suggestion in the box out front of the DNC?

[Captainant 27215]

18 minutes ago, texastough said:

For instance, Fox doesn't air the obviously false stuff -- rather it mentions the real news, but then spend 99% of its airtime spinning and telling people how to think about the it (libruls bad). Its that constant, pervasive, simple message that is driving this

I mostly agree with your post and thoughts, but I disagree with you here. The obviously false stuff was front and center the entire time. Every ad was about how teachers are giving sex changes in the classroom, and putting boys in girls sports. That is not a real thing that is happening anywhere. A school nurse can't even give out advil or tylenol without a form, and yet they're somehow doing gender affirming healthcare?

But you're right - it's the constant, pervasive, simple messaging that drives it. If you repeat the lie enough, people start to believe it.

[Balcones 421]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

putting boys in girls sports. That is not a real thing that is happening anywhere.

You really don't believe this is happening anywhere?  Like, for real?  

[Captainant 27215]

1 minute ago, Balcones said:

You really don't believe this is happening anywhere?  Like, for real?  

There's an order of magnetude more children getting pulped in their school hallways than are even trans people participating in competitive sports.

Why the fuck do yall care so fucking much?

Because it's been repeated to you over and over that trans people are the "enemy within". It's why Ken Paxton has been working on pulling that list together from government documents. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/14/ken-paxton-transgender-texas-data/ 

Just hand that off to the planned armed federal officers to be deployed on day one.

[Balcones 421]

13 minutes ago, Captainant said:

There's an order of magnetude more children getting pulped in their school hallways than are even trans people participating in competitive sports.

Why the fuck do yall care so fucking much?

Because it's been repeated to you over and over that trans people are the "enemy within". It's why Ken Paxton has been working on pulling that list together from government documents. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/14/ken-paxton-transgender-texas-data/ 

Just hand that off to the planned armed federal officers to be deployed on day one.

That's not what you wrote.  You wrote:

Quote

I mostly agree with your post and thoughts, but I disagree with you here. The obviously false stuff was front and center the entire time. Every ad was about how teachers are giving sex changes in the classroom, and putting boys in girls sports. That is not a real thing that is happening anywhere. 

Asking again, you really don't believe this is happening anywhere?  Like, for real? 

https://womenssportspolicy.org/253-male-victories-in-female-sports/

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Balcones
Added link for you read about real stories. Not the Fox News propaganda

[bolverk 29191]

How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts
The Kremlin did not bother to hide its efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election, as it did in the past.

In the final days before Tuesday’s vote, Russia abandoned any pretense that it was not trying to interfere in the American presidential election.

The Kremlin’s information warriors not only produced a late wave of fabricated videos that targeted the electoral process and the Democratic presidential ticket but also no longer bothered to hide their role in producing them.

A fabricated interview claiming election fraud in Arizona was conducted by the director of a Kremlin think tank, Mira Terada, who returned to Russia in 2021 after serving a prison sentence in the United States for money laundering. Another video on Rumble, the video-sharing platform, targeted the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and featured John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff from Florida who had previously denied working for the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus.

What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain. There is no doubt, though, that it reflected an increasingly brazen effort by the Kremlin, one that has left the American government with little to do to except to rebut the falsehoods as they gain popularity. More than one official compared it to the arcade game Whac-a-Mole.

“That’s the thing — it feels so impotent,” said David Salvo, a former State Department official who is now managing the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “I mean, all we can do at the moment really is call it out.”

This year’s election underlined how much foreign interference — and disinformation generally — has become baked into American politics. Increasingly unfettered social media platforms like X and Telegram, along with the country’s constitutional protections of free speech, have opened the door for foreign influence, even if American law prohibits it.

“The flood of disinformation from Russian troll farms is just seemingly part of the overarching information environment,” said Chris Krebs, who served as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first term, only to be fired when he called the last election fairly run.

cont'd:

Spoiler

For Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, the campaign was a risk, but clearly one he was willing to take. He has long brushed aside accusations of interference or interest in the outcome of American presidential politics — even joking at one point that he favored Vice President Kamala Harris. While many of Russia’s efforts presumably remain in the shadows, the ones made public as the campaign reached a climax left no plausible or even implausible deniability of Russia’s role.

Mr. Dougan, who over the last year created dozens of websites posing as American news outlets and filled them with articles generated by artificial intelligence, crowed as the results began to tilt toward Mr. Trump.

“Things are looking good,” he wrote in grievance-filled text message to a New York Times reporter on Wednesday morning, Moscow time, echoing themes that many Russians and Republicans shared about American foreign and social policies. “Goodbye warmongers.”

The brazenness, compared with 2016 or 2020, reflects the stakes Mr. Putin faces, two and a half years after ordering a full invasion of Ukraine. American and NATO support for Ukraine has helped thwart Russia’s war aims, at great cost in lives and materiel, and Mr. Trump’s return offers the best hope for undercutting it.

“In 2016, there wasn’t a grand strategic purpose to Russia’s disinformation campaign,” said Alex Stamos, who led Facebook’s efforts against it during that election and now works for SentinelOne, a cybersecurity company. “Now there is.”

It’s not just Russia. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the F.B.I. repeatedly warned that Iran, China and even, to a lesser extent, Cuba were also trying to sway Americans or at least to sow chaos.

Those countries took different positions — Iran, for example, opposed Mr. Trump — but all the activity contributed to the political cacophony online.

Iran hacked and leaked the emails of political advisers to Mr. Trump in an echo of the hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials, and created fake news sites catering to specific demographic blocs, including Arab Americans in Michigan. China unleashed bots online to discredit Republican candidates for the House and Senate in Alabama, Tennessee and Texas. (All three won anyway.)

Russia’s influence efforts, though, were the most intense and persistent. They involved at least two separate information campaigns, as well as a covert effort organized by the state television network RT and the domestic successor of the K.G.B. That push funneled money — at least $10 million — to prominent American political influencers, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, according to an affidavit filed by the Justice Department. The influencers said they did not know the source of the money was Russia.

“I see this stuff as brazen, but it still works,” Mr. Stamos, the former Facebook official, said. “If they throw enough stuff at the world, it will be picked up and amplified.”

Some of the fake videos found little traction, but one fabrication posted on X purporting to show Haitian immigrants voting in Georgia gained hundreds of thousands of views.

As the election approached, the Russian efforts targeted not only Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, but also the electoral process itself. Those included a fabricated video purporting to show ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pa., and another showing a “whistle-blower” being interviewed by Ms. Terada, the Russian who leads the think tank in Moscow, the Foundation to Battle Injustice.

Ms. Terada and Mr. Dougan have worked closely together as part of an information effort that Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center and other researchers have called Storm 1516, as detailed in a new report published by the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University. Mr. Dougan has created dozens of websites that act as American news outlets and feature A.I.-generated articles and many of the videos linked to the effort.

Although Mr. Dougan has repeatedly denied any link to those sites, he appeared in a podcast on Rumble, the video streaming platform, and staged an interview with someone claiming to be a former student who was accusing Mr. Walz of sexual assault. It was one of at least three similar false accusations, which particularly disturbed officials in Washington as they began to gain traction online.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence and law enforcement matters, said they had to make difficult judgment calls about which videos to highlight and how to attribute them to Russian actors. Even as the officials called the videos out, new ones appeared. They reached a crescendo on Election Day.

The Central Intelligence Agency refuted a video that claimed the agency had “identified deceased Americans allegedly voting.” Officials subsequently attributed the video to Russia, and industry experts said it was the work of the same group that undertook a second information campaign that had spread disinformation about the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.

The F.B.I., too, issued a statement about two more fabricated videos. One falsely claimed the bureau had issued a terrorist threat alert encouraging people to vote “remotely.” A second showed a fake bureau statement alleging that prison officials in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona were colluding with the Democrats to rig voting by inmates.

While much of Russia’s actions in the final days of the campaign appeared aimed at making a case that a close election could be stolen by the Democrats, their larger campaign appeared aimed at motivating people who could be supporters of Mr. Trump to become more engaged in politics.

The torrent of foreign disinformation is unlikely to stop — even with Mr. Trump’s return to the White House. Russia will almost certainly continue to try to undermine support in the United States for the war in Ukraine, as it has sought to undermine governments across Europe. Though social media platforms have made some effort to take down disinformation — X removed Ms. Terada’s post, for example — many of them have pulled back their investments in content moderation in recent years.

The F.B.I. and intelligence agencies are, at least for now, continuing to investigate the efforts, including whether Russia was behind a series of bomb threats at polling stations. The Department of Justice has already announced charges against a prominent commentator and former adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign in 2016, Dimitri K. Simes, for violating economic sanctions imposed because of Russia’s propaganda efforts surrounding the war.

Officials also wrestled with what to do with Mr. Dougan, who is already wanted on felony charges of extortion and wiretapping in Florida. The officials said they had concluded that the government could not take action against his efforts because he was an American citizen.

Mr. Dougan did experience a setback last week. Many of the websites he had registered with NameCheap, the American domain provider, went down, according to government officials, who did not discuss the reasons and said it was a decision made by a private company. NameCheap’s chief executive, Richard Kirkendall, did not respond to questions, though he did share a post on X on Wednesday morning criticizing the media.

On the eve of the election, Mr. Dougan once again denied any connection to the sites when asked by text message about their sudden disappearance. “Not my sites,” he wrote. “But that’s okay. The damage is done. Whoever had those sites accomplished what they wanted to do.”

 

[Balcones 421]

32 minutes ago, Captainant said:

But you're right - it's the constant, pervasive, simple messaging that drives it. If you repeat the lie enough, people start to believe it.

Russian collusion.  You believed it, right?

[Captainant 27215]

6 minutes ago, Balcones said:

Russian collusion.  You believed it, right?

I mean, for starters the Senate Republicans published a thousand page report on it. So there's ample evidence and a paper trail to back that belief. 

Edited 17 hours ago by Captainant

[Balcones 421]

15 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I mean, for starters the Senate Republicans published a thousand page report on it. So there's ample evidence and a paper trail to back that belief. 

Bwhahahhahahaha! Senate Republicans put out 1000 pages of evidence that Trump colluded with Russia beat Hillary Clinton. You really believe this?

[texastough 1122]

1 hour ago, Balcones said:

Great points.  If msNBC, The View, CNN, social media, every network anchor, debate moderators, school administrators, etc...  would have demonized Donald Trump, Kamala might have had a chance to win.  Maybe you should drop that suggestion in the box out front of the DNC?

This actually proves my point. No amount of sounding of the alarms about Trump -- not just by the mainstream media, but by almost everyone that served in his first term -- could break the spell against the headwinds of inflation etc.

Fox (I mention them so much because its the most watched network) talked about J6 but downplayed it to the point that more than half of voters said "ho-hum" and elected him again. A president who tried to stay in the White House based on nothing but fraud and lies, and against the will of the American people, should have been immediately shot into the sun by the entire country (he should be shot into the sun for a lot of other reasons too but I digress). Because fuck the libs

[wildcat09 29102]

Stop quoting him you stupid assholes.

[Balcones 421]

5 minutes ago, texastough said:

This actually proves my point. No amount of sounding of the alarms about Trump -- not just by the mainstream media, but by almost everyone that served in his first term -- could break the spell against the headwinds of inflation etc.

Fox (I mention them so much because its the most watched network) talked about J6 but downplayed it to the point that more than half of voters said "ho-hum" and elected him again. A president who tried to stay in the White House based on nothing but fraud and lies, and against the will of the American people, should have been immediately shot into the sun by the entire country (he should be shot into the sun for a lot of other reasons too but I digress). Because fuck the libs

I’m tracking you. If Rachel Madow, Whoopi Goldberg, Lesley Stahl, and David Muir were on Fox, then Harris would have won. Is that right?

[David Dennison 18344]

18 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Stop quoting him you stupid assholes.

Good luck with your Sisyphean task.