Russian Trolls Fooled Sanders Voters, Including on Here
In the last months before the 2016 election, I was among the peole driven off Kos because of the pro-Clinton trolls. I found C99 to be a haven of sorts, a safe place to critique the Democratic party and its machinations, the corporate loyalties of Hillary Clinton, and to promote my preferred candidate, Bernie Sanders.
Then I began to notice a trend: Some posters on here were pro-Russian, and even giving rationalizations for voting for Trump. Seriously fake news stories got front page play. I stopped posting on here. But it wasn't just me, it wasn't in my mind, and it wasn't just on here.
Huffington Post has a piece by Ryan Grim and Jason Cherkis about this phenomenon. It isn't comfortable reading. But we've all seen it, if we're honest about it. We've all clicked on and passed on fake news stories generated in Russia or Macedonia. We've all been played.
Comments
The HuffPo story is weak
It gives very few examples of this "fake news tsunami", it doesn't actually link back to Russia, or even defend the claim that it is pro-Russian (only anti-Hillary), it doesn't prove that Bernie fans were targeted.
And lastly, it doesn't say anything about c99p. Which shows that you are trolling.
Get with the program. If you are against what Hillary stands for
then you are obviously pro-(insert name of current enemy of the state).
It's a very simple program. Works great with simple minds.
@CB
Even simple minds have their limits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1KCqWHhXK8&list=PLB0xGdhVdMlZD8vz0hHdHP...
Does not the dance of empire inevitably require confusion?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I remember this poster.
Couldn't take the heat at dailykos but wanted everyone here to toe his/her line in the sand about what was a line too far or not far enough. Now s/he is back with a neener neener. Ask me if I care.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Oh hey - it's sabir with a new name
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
You noticed a trend, eh?
Some posters are "pro-Russian"?
I'm "pro-Russian". For the life of me I cannot understand what, other than failing to lay down and die, Russian has done to the US that has made them enemy number 1. I understand why they piss off the oligarchs. What I don't understand is why I or any other member of the 99% ought to care. Explain to me where my anti-Russian attitude ought to spring from.
Seriously fake news stories got front page play.
OK. My first question is what stories did you consider "fake news". I ask because depending on who you are talking to, reality itself is fake news. So before I can discuss this I'd need to know what we are discussing. The other point I'd like to make though is that we live in an era when pretty much every nexus of power is seeking to lie to us. Pretty much everything printed in legacy media is "fake news". So me personally I'm willing to be OK with a bit of "fake news" so long as the community is diligent about policing it once the authenticity of a given piece is challenged credibly.
Huffpo Article
See also, everything in legacy media is fake news. Honestly, that story presents no facts, just assertions. It has as much meat as the CI's report on Russian hacking. Some guy somewhere claims some sites in eastern Europe are "linked" to some stories. Honestly, I have in fact passed on a few fake news stories but to my knowledge they were all DNC originated rather than Russian in origin. Huffpo's take on it seems laughable to me.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
^^^This^^^ 100%!
Every point, spot On!
I'm curious about those front page essays, in particular.
WERE they Russian trolls?
Or merely CIA trolls leaving Russian breadcrumbs?
As the mad tinfoil hatters say, "I may be paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?"
It seems these days even the most credible sources are incredible. Everything is suspect. We'll never know what is true until years or decades have passed. Critical thinking may keep you from running headlong off a cliff, but won't keep you out of the brambles.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
Damn it, mj55. Now I know.
I'm a gullible fool. I'm so simple-minded that a weak effort by anti-Clinton forces turned me into a Putin-lovin', Trump-votin' drooling idjit. Thanks for alerting me to my failures. Bless you, and may god bless Mother Russia, er, America.
Whos playing who mj55
I sincerely hope you don't think you are playing anyone here. but even if you do, it will be ok we will overcome our so called Trumpism and Russianism no worries.
It was me
I'm not Russian, nor am I a troll, but I don't give Putin his daily two minutes of hate, and I don't follow the neocon/neoliberal line.
I do like borscht and piroshkis though, and I've watched Russian movies, plus I despise Hillary and didn't vote for her, so I'm probably the traitor/shill that you're looking for. Which gulag are you sending me to?
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Can you give a link to your claims?
Does not being anti-Russia automatically put one in the pro-Russia camp? What about that huge area between the two? Is your world black and white like the latest darling of the Hillaryites?
What is your link between being "pro-Russia" and voting for Trump? From my vantage point it appears the link is being made from the opposite direction. You are the one making the claim that voting for Trump was due to being pro-Russia.
If, in fact, Russia did really have a part in releasing the DNC and Podesta emails, how could this revelation of what was going on in secret be anything but good for America's democracy? Isn't transparency one of the hallmarks of a true democracy? Isn't lack of transparency one of the things that we take issue with in foreign countries? Wasn't it important to know of the immoral/illegal machinations going on behind the scenes during the primaries? Weren't the primaries supposed to be truly democratic, honest and fair? Or is American 'democracy' nothing but a fraud upon the people?
You need to supply a link for your claim about "seriously fake news" or I'm calling bullshit.
We've seen this game you are playing EVERY fucking time the national security state wants to flex its muscles against some non-compliant nation in its quest for world hegemony and profit. Hillary surfing this wave is one of the (many) things that disgusts me about her.
Hillary in a nutshell:
Foreign policy - Qaddafi killed with a bayonet up his ass, hahaha, Putin is "Hitler", "Bomb Syria", "Bomb Iran".
Domestic policy - "deplorables". "I have a private position and a public position."
I could add many more, but, as I said, "In a nutshell".
I'm going to add something to this conversation because this constant insane shit about evil Russia destroying American democracy will lead to something that could destroy the world. I'm sick and tired, as is the entire world, of American empire building by killing millions of innocent people and bombing their countries into the stone age in every fucking corner of the world. This country needs to look towards its own internal problems which are increasing daily. Bread, circuses and external threats will eventually cease to work.
Did taking out Saddam and Qaddafi and shattering their countries make them a safer/better place for both their citizens and the world at large? Did you not know that would be the end result before even attempting these criminal destructions?
Was it fucking worth it?
How about another powerful country taking out Trump by bombing the shit out of America in order to "save" it because, in your mind, the election of Trump was based on a fraud?
I have been labelled lover, apologist, stooge, of/for Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad and Putin for trying to look behind/through the massive propaganda wall that is erected by the state. So far, history has proved me 100% correct. The real fake news emanates from within America and is propagated by web sites such as the Huffington Post, DKos and the deep state controlled MSM.
You need to wake up. You seem to have drunk the cool-aide. But, first you have to learn how to detect propaganda. Otherwise you will just become one in a flock of sheep bleating in unison with your leader. See how many of the following apply:
Why did it take this long to call bullshit?
On this piece of bullshit?
This monumental crapfest of a post?
Will this sickness never end?
Author? Please show us on the doll where Russia touched you.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
arghh, pluto, we don't call bullshit on trolls,
neither dailykos trolls, russian trolls or trolls from outer space. We love trolls. They are the spice of the gossip news we care most about. So, please, don't ask us serious questions. We want to have some more fun. /s
https://www.euronews.com/live
That's seriously funny Pluto! Good one.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Huffintoncompost?
Really? That's what you've got?
Please.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Whoever you are
Your barking up the wrong tree. I don't think Russian/Putin provocateurs have infiltrated cc99% why would they? To spread Hillary hate? lol. If they have so what? they do like to play so maybe we could all have fun badmouthing The Mad Bomber. This is not a partisan site so if they did come here they would also be barking up the wrong tree. I think maybe these agents of Trump & Putin are a figment of your paranoid delusions that somehow need to have an enemy outside the hot mess of the Democratic party and the farce of the political duopoly anti-democratic system. The scary boogiemen hiding under your bed must be quite a crowd at this point. USA! USA! USA! Have you now or ever been a Hillary hater or a Putin lover? Nah not me. I don't like any of the thug pols who are players in this sick global game. 'So be off or I'll kick you downstairs.'
Perhaps it was all about money
I've got to be at work in a short while, so I can't go deep here. However, as I read the OP's post, I immediately recalled a story of a little while back that many (if not most) fake news stories were generated from a teen based in Macedonia. He mostly made his bucks from wild-eyed Trump supporters, but I'm sure he tossed a baited hook into other waters as well.
Straight from the Huff Post, you can read it here. A search will reveal other sites discussing this, but I thought it was appropriate to use the Huff Post version ... considering.
I'm moving to Macedonia. That guy was making $60,000 just for
playing the rubes on both sides of the fence. It worked for the Repubs for shit to use against Her and it worked for Her as an excuse why she failed so miserably.
I'm really disappointed now. All Putin gave me was this goofy looking shapka
I can't hear a damn thing when the flaps are down and it's completely useless in the rain.
Those teenagers did build fake Bernie sites.
They didn't make it any money off of them. Although the article implies there were many. Sander supporters knew bullshit. I doubt if the teenagers could attract traffic to Bernie Sander sites, anybody else could.
Here is link to Macedonian teenager about fake Bernie sites
https://politics.slashdot.org/story/16/11/04/238235/teenagers-in-macedon...
Their is a lot of evil propaganda being perpetrated
I mean come on, the President's chief advisor, and probably the guy who chose Trump in the first place, Steve Bannon, is all about propaganda. Breitbart is an evil rag. All of us here know who the real enemy is and partisan affiliation is just an irrelevant false front to keep us fighting each other while the enemy robs us blind. Whether we voted for Hillary or Jill or Trump or nobody we can't play their game and be enemies of each other.
Beware the bullshit factories.
When You Play With Fire, You're Going To Get Berned...
This started out to be a comment and in a short while I had written and essay in response to your essay...
When You Play With Fire, You're Going To Get Berned...
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."
~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
That would be me.
I was the most outspoken about about voting strategically to to defeat Hillary — and voting to deliver a crippling defeat to the Democratic Party, itself. Toppling the Democratic Party and kicking it to death was necessary payback for turning their Neoliberal backs on American workers and the New Deal. It was also important to crush the Democratic Establishment for betraying the Decent class of Democrats by running that blood-soaked Neocon collaborator and war criminal for president. They were warned well in advance.
Is the Party dead yet?
I think it is.
Anyone who voted strategically for Hillary's defeat was well aware of the terrible sacrifice they would be making. It's a horrible thing, but that's what happens in those wars the Democratic Party loves so much.
As for this:
Oh yes it was just you.
It was all in your mind.
You are completely delusional.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
I still advocate the Norquist take no prisoners strategy.
We may not be strong enough to push our candidates to a win, but we are strong enough to make their crappy candidates lose. If we destroy enough of them, they'll have to give us something worth a vote sooner or later.
I have zero regret that Hillary lost, and I'm happy to have been a part of her justice in Michigan where it counted. I'm waiting for MI superdelegates to hit the ballot so I can vote against them next. Even though Trump is the vilest of humans to ever defile the White House, I didn't leave the party so I could vote for Democrats anyway. Shoveling the horse manure out of the barn to fill it up with pig manure still leaves a barn full of shit. Sorry, crude but fitting.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
When your democracy is rigged in such a way
...that no matter how you vote your life becomes increasingly insecure — then you must turn the votes into weapons. It's the only leverage that the people have. Burn it down.
The agenda is being set at a meta-level above the two parties, anyway. The elected millionaires are just blocking the way, wasting everyone's time.
The Dems made a big mistake in 2016. Huge!
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
@dkmich
Actually, as long as the unconstitutional Homeland Security, which exists to spy upon American citizens, corrupt State Departments and/or others control the voting process - which may also include corporate-owned voting machines/vote counters which give unverifiable results - without citizen/independent oversight, actual voters matter only so far as wins by candidates preferred by donors/TPTB can be made to appear plausible enough to prevent wholesale citizen uprising.
There needs to be such an obvious and wide-spread 'outside party' sweep that it cannot be denied, in order to get away from the Two-Faced Corporate Party Trade-Off Trap, and for that criminal corporations need to be weakened by such self-protective actions as whole-sale citizen boycotts, divestment and shifts from banking/investment to credit unions - before the 99% have been drained to the point at which they can no longer make a difference and have already been written off as entirely disposable by corporations and billionaires.
That means a lot of informing and organizing, much of it face-to-face and on-your-feet, starting yesterday, with a solid, binding party platform addressing the most wide-ranging concerns of the American people, but perhaps what remains of civilization, the concept of democracy and life on the planet is worth that last effort?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Russia lovers? They're not even commies anymore.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I am fairly certain
trolls didn't fake those countless numbers of vids showing Clinton making faces and staggering.
The lady is only 5 years older than me, and I climbed to the top of Pyramid No. 4 in Tikal, Guatemala, last week.
Pizzagate was entertaining as hell, but didn't sway my vote.
The DNC email leaks didn't sway my vote. They did, however, convince me to Demexit for good.
I have lived through one cold war.
No more of that crazy shit.
I wasn't driven away from GOS. I left of my own volition.
When you wallow in shit, you start to smell like it.
Anytime you don't like a blog, go to another one. Talking smack about how you are just to smart and savvy to hang around makes you look like an ass. Nobody gives a flying damn why you are gone.
The only people who need me are in the real world.
edit:vids
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Trolls most certainly didn't fake the 9/11/2016 footage
that showed Madam Hillary folding up like a cheap umbrella and being stuffed unceremoniously into her big black van. We got a lot of conflicting stories "explaining" that incident, and we still don't know which, if any, was the "truth".
She didn't faint. Faints make you go limp, not stiff. She went stiff. Don't know what was going on with her, but it looked like something neurological.
That was when I began suspecting that no matter what she said or did, and no matter how many people she got to cheerlead for her, she just might not be able to close the sale. It was very, very bad optics.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
60 Minutes doing story about Putin poisoning people right now
Wonder when 60 Minutes will do a story on the bodies trailing the Clintons for decades?
Oopsie! I just outed myself as a Rooskie troll. /s
@Deja Deja. get a grip! 60
Deja. get a grip! 60 Minutes is real. Like Huffpo, dammit!
(You can pm me and share a borsht recipe.)
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Maybe 60 Minutes should interview Kara-Mur's father who stated
that his son wasn't deliberately poisoned.
https://www.rt.com/politics/376834-opposition-figure-kara-murza-out/
Kara-Mur has been communicating with his wife by blinking his eyes. I believe he was poisoned by her leftover borsch and she is attempting to mislead everyone.
No worries on the Ruskie troll thing
Just go ahead and put it in your sig line as I have so all and sundried can know your sordid underbelly.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I really feel like shit after the TOP posting on the article
I go to TOP to read headlines to get what the latest DNC propaganda themes are for the week. I saw that TOP article after I saw the Huffpost article right before. I un-banned my temporary ban, and responded to the article. The crux of the Huffpost article was to smear Sander supporters as dupes of Putin. I responded with a bunch of links showing, at least I hope, that the Huffpost was utter dishonest horseshit.
Just a few points. The Huffpost dumbshit writers found nefarious activities coming out Macedonia. Somehow they never read about the Macedonia teenagers who setup a shit load of fake news sites for the sole purpose of generating clicks to make money!!! It made international headlines for chrissake. You should see the absolutely horrid, shit comments that Bernie was Putin's punk. The article implied that Russkis were behind it all and implied fake news site that looked like American news sites were created by those Russkis but were in fact in one case, created by an American, again to generate click-bait-money.
One interesting point is that the Huffpost tried to argue that Bernie supporters fell for these fake sites, but according to one teenager, they got next to nothing in terms of profits building fake pro-Sander sites. Maybe Sander supporters were like smart enough to smell shit?
I felt like shit. I need some beer or wine.
Omg, DailyKos is still braying the praises of Rachel Maddow.
Talk about a piss hole into a fake reality, DailyKos is at the front of the veal pen .
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
@MrWebster
Lol, in other words, Bernie still scares the Clinton clique (there are reasons) but they can't plausibly get rid of him and have to allow him to bring the concepts of democracy into the corporate news where the off-line public can hear it and think about it, so they need to discredit him and, most importantly, his 'commie' message of government of, by and for the people, and are using anything their shriveled minds can come up with.
And that's what these co-opted sites are for - to spread memes from 'just people' posting on a 'left-wing' and once-trusted site to real people, to influence their perceptions and limit their choices.
Edit to belatedly remove two words remaining from a reconstructed sentence.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Democratic Trolls fooled Democrats and are still trying to do so
That's the whole story here. Throughout the primary and the general, all of the DNC, the Hillbots, the party bigwigs and party faithful daily Kos, the Neoliberals and most of the self styped liberals had the same response to any and every piece of information, no matter how well established, how true and how documented, that reflected at all badly on her and/or her candidacy or campaign.
"It is all lies and propaganda, decades of lies and propaganda." (originally from & by the GOP, remember?) Sleazy attacks worthy of young Nixon were levelled at any who dared to contest the reality of the Hillary bubble. Then the damning e-mails were leaked and suddenly it was Russia as well as the GOP. And, of course, today they mock the e-mails and any who would point to them, to deflect from the fact that they exposed both the party and their chosen candidate as corrupt, sleazy, untrustworthy and prone to lying. Characteristics not of the perfect, but of those who should not be elevated to high office or other positions of power.
It continues today, to support the same narrative, "we wuz robbed, we were stabbed in the back and betrayed, all logic and reason were overthrown by lies, propaganda, ignorance and idiocy. She wuz perfek and we, the Dems, still are" and off down the yellow brick road they go. Meanwhile, yet another generation has got a good opportunity to see just how sleazy they are.
So now what, there is no campaign for office in which to embed their sleazy ass attacks on those who didn't are, in the future, might be reluctant to drink the cool-aid. Hence, news items and op-eds about false news and propaganda, from one of the worlds 3 biggest sources of false news and propaganda, the US media, the US Democratic party and the US Government as a whole.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I support Russia in these conflicts.
My government brokered, as President Obama described it, the coup in Ukraine which brought a Nazi paramilitary group into the government of Ukraine in the winter of 2014.
If I had lived in Crimea, I would have voted to leave Ukraine because of the Nazi coup, and I would have welcomed the Russian military support. I would have voted, as most Crimean voters did, to join the Russian Federation. In that sense, I am pro-Russian.
In Syria, Putin focused the world's attention on the fact that ISIS was not being effectively dealt with, and he began bombing ISIS's oil trucks and military facilities, whereas our government had said that was impossible. So again I found myself siding with Russia.
The CIA has no credibility for me. None. I'm 72 years old, and I have never seen them do anything but harm to our country and to the world. I have seen them lie to take us into war and to keep us in wars for the benefit of no one but the industry that profits from it.
In Ukraine my government has supported Nazis, and in Syria my government has supported Salafists. Therefore I have sided with Russia because it opposes both groups.
Were You Run Off by Major Kong and Crew, @CB ?
I was for a time.
I think it was Major Kong, perhaps it was another Major, but the guy was an asshole and had a crew of sycophants that were artfully tortuous while piling on.
I remember your name as well.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
@k9disc, what is CB? Edit: derp, never mind lol
And I remember Major Kong being a major dick. Or, as W once said of a reporter when he didn't realize the mic was hot, ". . . a major league asshole."
Not sure. A bunch of thugs jumped me with HR's. I didn't respond
Next thing I knew I received the prestigious award. It didn't matter. I had finally given up on DKos. It had gone completely off the rails with it's rabid neoMcCarthyism.
If some here still have posting rights, you could see the reason I was turfed in HR'd threads just before I got my award.
DKos was actually a microcosm of why Her lost. They alienated and pushed away more people than they attracted. They also completely failed to realize that the reasons for not nominating Her that Markos had espoused during the Obama/Hillary primaries were still valid; some even more so such as her fucking constant triangulation (this pissed me off to no end). They also refused to accept that it was Bernie's energizing and motivating of the base that was the reason for Her's winning the popular vote.
Any attempt to point out these truths was immediately attacked. Hillary was damaged goods, well past her 'use by' date. DKos'rs refused to look deeper into the package they were trying to market. They simply applied a new wrapper and truly believed it would sell, despite the vile odor emanating from it.
I took a short video of them just before I departed:
Not Major Kong... Major Danby? nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Isn't Major Kong the guy who writes interesting, ...
... non-political diaries about airplanes? I miss his diaries and those of other non-political writers. They have been unfairly ignored throughout all the betrayal.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Maybe it was Danby instead of Kong
Maybe Kong was the cool one. It's been so long since I've been there, I retract my comment (though I won't redact it because that's shitty) about him since I can't be sure.
There are others I am sure about, but won't list their names and feed their narcissism.
Yup. Kong = Cool. Danby Was a Dick. Pretty Sure That's Right nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
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