17 August 2023
Information warfare wouldn't be as effective if it didn't target both sides of the political aisle. The rise in both black and white nationalism is created to stoke division and tear the US apart.
“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.
The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.
Renee DiResta, one of the report’s authors and director of research at New Knowledge, said the Internet Research Agency “leveraged pre-existing, legitimate grievances wherever they could.” As the election effort geared up, the Black Lives Matter movement was at the center of national attention in the United States, so the Russian operation took advantage of it, she said — and added “Blue Lives Matter” material when a pro-police pushback emerged…
While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.
Van Jones attended Yale Law School, a World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leader” and a Rockefeller Foundation "Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship, and a self-described former “rowdy black nationalist.” He hid his work on police reform with Jared Kusher while advocating the policy on CNN.
I still don’t understand how not voting for the Anglo-American establishment (Hillary Clinton) in 2016 equated to being racist against African Americans? It was meant to be a divisive statement.
“In 1994, the young activists formed a socialist collective, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, which held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin and dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia. They protested police brutality and got arrested for crashing through police barricades. In 1996, Jones decided to launch his own operation, which he named the Ella Baker Center after an unsung hero of the civil-rights movement. Jones wedged a desk and a chair inside a large closet in the back of Paterson’s office. He brought in his home computer and ran cables through the rafters to get the operation humming.”
He became affiliated with many left activists, held study groups on the theories of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and aspired to a multi-racial socialist utopia.
Jones defended fellow WEF Young Global Leader, Tulsi Gabbard, when she was accused of being a Russian asset.
It was revealed that Elena Branson, a dual US-Russian citizen accused of spying for the Kremlin, donated to Gabbards campaign for reelection to Congress in 2019.
In 2021, Sharon Tennison was the largest single contributor to the political action committee formed by former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI).
Like Tennison, Gabbard has advocated closer ties between the U.S. and Russia.
Tulsi may not be a Russian asset, but what about an Israeli one?
Comments