Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
According to the indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russian trolls, operating out of St. Petersburg, took American identities on social media and became players in our 2016 election.
On divisive racial and religious issues, the trolls took both sides. In the presidential election, the trolls favored Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Donald Trump, and almost never Hillary Clinton.
One imaginative Russian troll urged Trumpsters to dress up a female volunteer in an orange prison jump suit, put her in a cage on a flatbed truck, then append the slogan, “Lock Her Up!”
How grave a matter is this?
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This Russian troll farm is “the equivalent (of) Pearl Harbor,” says Cong. Jerrold Nadler, who would head up the House Judiciary Committee, handling any impeachment, if Democrats retake the House.
When MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pressed, Nadler doubled down: The Russians “are destroying our democratic process.” While the Russian trolling may not equal Pearl Harbor in its violence, said Nadler, in its “seriousness, it is very much on a par” with Japan’s surprise attack.
Trump’s reaction to the hysteria that broke out after the Russian indictments: “They are laughing their (expletives) off in Moscow.”
According to Sunday’s Washington Post, the troll story is old news in Russia, where reporters uncovered it last year and it was no big deal.
While Mueller’s indictments confirm that Russians meddled in the U.S. election, what explains the shock and the fear for “our democracy”?
Is the Great Republic about to fall because a bunch of trolls tweeted in our election? Is this generation ignorant of its own history?
Before and after World War II, we had Stalinists and Soviet spies at the highest levels of American culture and government.
The Hollywood Ten, who went to prison for contempt of Congress, were secret members of a Communist Party that, directed from Moscow, controlled the Progressive Party in Philadelphia in 1948 that nominated former Vice President Henry Wallace to run against Harry Truman.
Soviet spies infiltrated the U.S. atom bomb project and shortened the time Stalin needed to explode a Soviet bomb in 1949.
As for Russian trolling in our election, do we really have clean hands when it comes to meddling in elections and the internal politics of regimes we dislike?
Sen. John McCain and Victoria Nuland of State egged on the Maidan Square crowds in Kiev that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. When the democratically elected regime of Mohammed Morsi was overthrown, the U.S. readily accepted the coup as a victory for our side and continued aid to Egypt as tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members were imprisoned.
Are the CIA and National Endowment for Democracy under orders not to try to influence the outcome of elections in nations in whose ruling regimes we believe we have a stake?
“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?” Laura Ingraham asked former CIA Director James Woolsey this weekend.
With a grin, Woolsey replied, “Oh, probably.”
“We don’t do that anymore though?” Ingraham interrupted. “We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?”
“Well,” Woolsey said with a smile. “Only for a very good cause.”
Indeed, what is the National Endowment for Democracy all about, if not aiding the pro-American side in foreign nations and their elections?
Did America have no active role in the “color-coded revolutions” that have changed regimes from Serbia to Ukraine to Georgia?
When Republicans discuss Iran on Capitol Hill, the phrase “regime change” is frequently heard. When the “Green Revolution” took to the streets of Tehran to protest massively the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, Republicans denounced President Obama for not intervening more energetically to alter the outcome.
When China, Russia and Egypt expel NGOs, are their suspicions that some have been seeded with U.S. agents merely marks of paranoia?
The U.S. role in the overthrow of Premier Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, and of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and of President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon in 1963 are established facts.
When the democratically elected Marxist Salvador Allende was overthrown in Chile in 1973, and committed suicide with an AK-47 given to him by Fidel Castro, the Nixon White House may have had no direct role. But the White House welcomed the ascendancy of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
What do these indictments of Russians tell us? After 18 months, the James Comey-Robert Mueller FBI investigation into the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails has yet to produce evidence of collusion.
Yet we do have evidence that a senior British spy and Trump hater, Christopher Steele, paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC to dig up dirt on Trump, colluded with Kremlin agents to produce a dossier of scurrilous and unsubstantiated charges, to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump. And the FBI used this disinformation to get FISA Court warrants to surveil and wiretap the Trump campaign.
Why is this conspiracy and collusion with Russians less worthy of Mueller’s attention than a troll farm in St. Petersburg?
Ever since radio became the first global information medium nations have taken to the airways to express themselves politically.
Having a shortwave receiver was a criminal offense in totalitarian nations.
To dress up the political message national broadcasters often produce superior programming than the commercial broadcasts our own ‘free media’ offer. They offer free language instruction as well as their take on news and they don’t have advertisements.
It is ridiculous to imagine, now that the internet has become the dominant information medium, we can ‘wall off’ foreign opinion from our own. There is even a word to describe this “Hasbara”. It describes the pro Israeli comments generated by any negative comment regarding a story on Israel. From whom or where these comments come is unknown but it is clear it is not random opinion.
People have become so dumbed down that they believe the first thing they hear. A good example is the Black Lives Matter bullshit.
Mass communication via the internet could be the downfall of our society.
Russia Troll Farm?
That’s CNN, right?
Why does anybody take these ‘hacks’ seriously whatsoever. It’s too bad that most american’s view politics as a ‘team sport’ where the only thing that matters is that their ‘team’ wins. Things will change when people realize that the 2 party system is setup in such a way that no matter who wins, we lose.
I just got an email from a company offering the following-
Hello,
Do you want to promote your business?
Likes & Followers Services:-
1) 10k FB page likes only in $50
2) 10k FB photo post like $40
3) 10k FB Video Post like $40
4) 10k Instagram followers only in $70
5) 10k twitter follower $70
6) 10K YouTube subscriber $300
How is this any different? And why did the DNC pay so much money for their fake followers when they could have gotten a stellar rate from Monika?
Assuming the Russian government had a hand in the trolling, are we really ready to nuke a country because a few people made posts on Facebook? Seriously?
Apparently.
Hey, you gotta nuke somebody!
All this talk of evidence – about Russian trolls (laughable) or about the Obama FBI and DOJ’s spying on the Trump campaign (incontrovertible by honest people) is sort of beside the point. If the Dems take back the House, they will impeach. Their real motivation will be that on June 16, 2015, Trump said “they’re rapists…” and then a few months later, he called a guy a Mexican. Whether they get 67 votes to remove depends upon how many Ben Sasseholes there are in the senate. Flake will be gone. Hopefully McCain will be dead. This further explains Trump’s endorsement yesterday of Romney’s senate run in Utah. Co-opt.
I don’t think the Dems will take the House. Their platform of gun control and open borders isn’t that popular among midterm voters. They can try to register people attending the Black Panther movie, but those people are unlikely to vote.
The neocons won’t be able to precipitate a war against Russia as long as Trump is president. He’ll have to continue paying lip service to their belligerence so that they don’t have him bumped off.
I think that’s a reasonably accurate analysis, one I mostly agree with but maybe just a bit optimistic in the last two paragraphs.
But things can and probably will change over the next 8 months, and there are many people in positions of power that have the ability to pull things off that will change them.
Keep in mind that the average American voter lets someone else do their thinking for them without even realizing hey are doing so and never steps out of the box and thinks for himself.
“According to Sunday’s Washington Post, the troll story is old news in Russia, where reporters uncovered it last year and it was no big deal.”
Did Mueller plagiarize the Russian story, or did Putin send him the story so Mueller could cover his ass with evidence he;s doing something?
Iska, there are enough RINOS to convict and initiate the 4th Turning Crisis.
What was AIPAC doing during the election?
If what Russia did (sending a few dank memes on social media) is an act of war, then what do you call Obama inviting illegal aliens to vote?