From the New York Times: The Plot to Subvert an Election
The Plot to Subvert an Election, from New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, does not contain everything we know about the Russian incursion into our culture and our 2016 election. This compilation is, however, comprehensive enough to provide a good, quick survey course on the subject.
Because, as Rachel Maddow pointed out this week, Hillary Clinton was relentlessly in the bull's eye of the Russian efforts, the entire anthology should be of interest to her 2016 supporters and voters and to Democrats in general. We know it has not stopped. We know they are still doing this in the run-up to the primaries that are almost upon us. Worse, we know that the primaries are not and will not be the prime target. 2020 will be. The presidential election will be - once again. We had better be prepared.
The Russian leader thought the United States, and Hillary Clinton, had sought to undermine his presidency.
The Russian leader believed the United States had relentlessly sought to undermine Russian sovereignty and his own legitimacy. The United States had backed democratic, anti-Russian forces in the so-called color revolutions on Russia’s borders, in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004. It had funded pro-democracy Russian activists through American organizations with millions in State Department grants each year.
With little evidence, Mr. Putin believed this American meddling helped produce street demonstrations in Moscow and other cities in 2011, with crowds complaining of a rigged parliamentary election and chanting, “Putin’s a thief!”
And Mrs. Clinton, then secretary of state, cheered the protesters on. Russians, she said, “deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted, and that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”
The two tangled again the next year when Mr. Putin pushed for a “Eurasian Union” that would in effect compete with the European Union. Mrs. Clinton sharply dismissed the notion, calling it a scheme to “re-Sovietize the region” and saying the United States would try to block it.
We must remain wary of social media presences that play to the disaffected. What we saw, among many other ploys from Russia in 2016, were seemingly American accounts admonishing Bernie Sanders supporters not to vote for Hillary Clinton. Also from the article:
The Russian operation also boosted Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who had dined with Mr. Putin in Moscow, to draw votes from Mrs. Clinton. It encouraged supporters of Mr. Sanders to withhold their votes from Mrs. Clinton even after he endorsed her.
If you are a disaffected Hillary voter, I caution you to be wary of "Hillary supporters" masquerading as Americans on social media. Typically, they praise HRC to the skies but also embed lies within their posts and/or the comment threads, e.g. claiming that Guccifer was not Russian (refuted in the Mueller July 13 indictmentand in this article) or that Russian organized crime deals exclusively in politics and not in weapons or drugs. (They will sell you a mothballed USSR military submarine to transport drugs, if you have the money. With a nuclear weapon if you have even more money. This is documented.)
There are several writers of varied levels of English Language Proficiency (ELP). The "ops," i.e. sock puppets, troll, bot controllers, access content from databases on cloud platforms as outlined in the July 13 Mueller indictment. The ultimate plan is very likely to skew the 2020 top line vote in ways that would dismay Hillary Clinton and re-elect Donald Trump.
This is not a short read, but it can be taken in episodes if necessary for a weekend read. It is rich with graphs, stats, videos. It is well worth the time. You will not likely find this much information on the subject all in one piece. It is probably also well worth a bookmark.
Have a lovely weekend. Fall is coming.
