Thread: How Russia exploits American racism and xenophobia for its own gain

How Russia exploits American racism and xenophobia for its own gain.

By William Saletan
MARCH 31 2017 9:59 PM

Putin capitalizes on this.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Bryan R. Smith/Getty Images, Christian Petersen/Getty Images, and John Moore/Getty Images.

Last year, one of Donald Trump’s favorite campaign themes was that Americans were being played for suckers. We were “the stupid people,” ripped off by foreigners, immigrants, and refugees. We let them in, they took our money and our jobs, and they raped and killed our people. As president, Trump says he’s fighting back. He’s banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries. He’s set up an office of “Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement.” We’re finally getting “smart.”

WILLIAM SALETAN Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.

All this talk about getting smart and standing up to immigrants is a giant con. Trump is part of it, wittingly or not, but the guy pulling the strings is Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. That was the message of Thursday’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 election: Putin’s propagandists helped Trump, and weakened our country and our alliances, by posing as right-wing Americans and stoking fear of immigrants and minorities.

Most people who believe Putin interfered in the election think this took the form of backstage collusion. But the witnesses at Thursday’s hearings, who have studied cyber operations and Russian propaganda campaigns, said we’re missing the point:

The interference was right out in the open. Several witnesses—including retired Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency from 2005 to 2014—explained to the committee how Russia systematically exploits divisions in the United States and other countries. The exploitation is done by online trolls and bots, synchronized to spread messages and false stories that promote cultural tension.

Ethnicity is central to this strategy. In his written statement to the committee, Clinton Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, explained:

“Russia targets specific audiences inside electorates amenable to their messages and resulting influence—in particular alt-right audiences incensed over immigration, refugees and economic hardship.” In oral testimony, Watts described how Russian-orchestrated trolls and bots, tracked by his research team, have targeted voters in Europe, “promoting fears of immigration or false claims of refugee criminality.” Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, testified that in Germany, Russia is helping the far-right “Alternative for Germany” party and fomenting anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel for accepting Muslim refugees.

Sen. Marco Rubio—who, according to Watts, was targeted by Russian agents online in last year’s Republican presidential primaries—illustrated the Russian technique with a story:

We all know that Angela Merkel has taken a tough line on Ukraine against Russia. We know that there’s a lot of controversy in Germany around migrants. In early 2016, a 13-year-old known only as Lisa F., a dual Russian–German citizen whose family had moved to Germany from Russia in 2004, told police she had been kidnapped in East Berlin by what appeared to be Middle Eastern migrants and raped for over 30 hours. There was outrage in Germany and obviously protests against Merkel. The Russian foreign minister almost immediately jumped on the story, talking about the need to defend “our Lisa,” and of course this story was spread far and wide by Russian-speaking entities and Russian media outlets. Subsequently, the prosecutors in Berlin announced that they had clear evidence that during those 30 hours she was missing, Lisa F. was actually, in fact, with people that she knew, and a medical examination showed that she had not been the victim of rape.

Rubio gave other examples: “a false story … claiming that Germany's oldest church had been burnt down by a thousand Muslims chanting ‘Allah akbar.’

Another story claiming that the European Union was planning to ban snowmen as racist.” Again and again, these internet campaigns appealed to white European ethnic and religious anxieties. And all of the stories have been debunked.

When Rubio asked the witnesses whether Putin was trying “to sow instability, pit us against each other as Americans,” Watts answered in the affirmative. Since 2014, Watts said, he and his colleagues have monitored Russian media, trolls, and bots, watching them target “nearly any disaffected U.S. audience.” In one case, for example, they spread reports of “chaos among Black Lives Matter protests.”

Trump is part of the con. From 2011 to 2016, he promulgated the lie that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake. Russian state-operated media avidly promoted this fiction. “Part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the commander-in-chief has used Russian active measures,” Watts told the committee. “He’s made claims of voter fraud, that President Obama’s not a citizen, that [Sen. Ted] Cruz is not a citizen. … They parrot the same lines.”

Watts told the committee that among the troll accounts monitored by his team, “The most common words found in English-speaking Twitter user profiles were God, military, Trump, family, country, conservative, Christian, America, and Constitution.”

These social cues helped the trolls connect with Americans who might vote for Trump. “If you inhale all the accounts of people in Wisconsin, you identify the most common terms,” said Watts. “You just recreate accounts that look exactly like people from Wisconsin. So that way, whenever you’re trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it’s much more simple, because you see somebody, and they look exactly like you.”

Leftists can be played in similar ways. At the hearing, Rumer observed that Russia had exploited the Occupy Wall Street movement to feed class antagonism and discredit American democracy. Rubio pointed to another case, described by Adrian Chen in the New York Times Magazine, in which Russian-orchestrated accounts circulated a false rumor that “an unarmed black woman had been shot to death by police” in Atlanta. Alexander said Russia also targeted supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders in last year’s Democratic presidential primaries.

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What experts in Russian propaganda learned from the 1980s was that you could be an honest antiwar liberal and still be manipulated as part of a campaign to weaken NATO.

In fact, your sincerity made you a more attractive target. “Soviet-bloc disinformation specialists preferred the art of exploiting what was then called unwitting agents,” said Thomas Rid, a cyberwar expert from Kings College London, in his testimony to the committee. “There is no contradiction, in their reading, between being an honest American patriot and at the same time furthering the cause of Russia.”

Today, it’s conservatives who are manipulated this way. And what Russia exploits, to turn them into devices of American and Western self-destruction, is xenophobia. Your conviction that you’re protecting your country—and that the guy on Twitter who told you about the latest Muslim outrage is a Christian who lives near you—is what makes you an easy mark. And the fake nationalist who promised to save you from being “the stupid people” is either stupid himself, or part of the scam.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...enophobia.html

What did you think of the article you posted, JD2?

Originally Posted by Judy

What did you think of the article you posted, JD2?

Informative.

Leftists can be played in similar ways. At the hearing, Rumer observed that Russia had exploited the Occupy Wall Street movement to feed class antagonism and discredit American democracy.

Rubio pointed to another case, described by Adrian Chen in the New York Times Magazine, in which Russian-orchestrated accounts circulated a false rumor that “an unarmed black woman had been shot to death by police” in Atlanta.

Alexander said Russia also targeted supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders in last year’s Democratic presidential primaries.

“Soviet-bloc disinformation specialists preferred the art of exploiting what was then called unwitting agents,”

When I read it, it struck me as more Fake News about Russia Fake News. The Fake News is a very strange phenomena. It kind of all started with the Onion, which was a satire site that would often be confused with real news, and then there were offshoots of the Onion, that weren't satire, just Fake News, made-up stories, and then it spread like a wildfire during the election, and it had something to do with hits, clicks and advertising money. Then the MSM tries it on some level to create news from innuendo and possibilities to try to help Hillary win the election, but in spite of it all, none of it worked in the Presidential election so I guess it was at the end of the day to use a worn out phrase, a big fizzle.

I guess Fake News worked for awhile before people couldn't tell the difference between it and real news, and failed as soon as we could.

We just have to wait and see how many people Flynn takes down with him when he tells his story to congress. Only time will tell.

Flynn won't be taking down any Trump people. I think he might take down some Intel leakers and some Obama people, which I'm sure is why the Senate Intelligence Committee ruled against his testimony with immunity. I expect the House Intelligence Committee will operate similarly. Democrats don't want Flynn talking about the Obama Administration he worked in, and Republicans don't want it to look like they gave Flynn some deal. The FBI is in a quandary because the only information they have for an interview is government surveillance information that was illegally unmasked and produced nothing criminal to investigate.

But like you said, JD2, only time will tell. I personally feel a Big Fizzle to this whole "story" of "Trump's Ties With the Russians".

A rather ironic claim isn't it? And who is exploiting racism and xenophobia against Russians? I'm seeing more of that than anything inspired by Russians.

Russia also has media outlets that find their way into the US via the internet, they aren't obliged to be any less inciting than CNN.

I was thinking the same thing, pkskyali. What has Russia done that we can prove that is any different than what Americans do every day? "Influencing elections" is our entire political system. "Influencing elections", "manipulating elections", to "interfere with our democracy (or one side's view of it) with information, true or false, is what political parties and candidate supporters do every day. "My guy is great, yours stinks." "My gal is an angel, yours is evil." "My candidate is honest, yours is a crook and a liar." I mean, come on, "free speech" IS "information warfare."

Our founders didn't provide for us to have free speech to explain how to grow corn, they ensured us free speech to call them traitors, cheats, liars, crooks and anything else we might want to say in our political zeal. I'm not aware of any limitation on that for American citizens or anyone else under our Constitution. I don't think our Constitution excludes "information warfare", otherwise known as free political speech, for the Russians, either.

I sure hope not. After all, that would set a terrible example of our "democracy" wouldn't it? That would be, "Freedom for me, but not for thee"! And that would be a really icky democracy if you ask me. Of course, we all need to keep in mind through the continuing political zeal of Trump Haters, that we are not a democracy, we are a Republic.

Now, hacking into private property, that's a whole different story. That is a crime. And whoever did that should be hunted down and punished. But whoever received it and published it, as I understand it, is innocent under our freedom of the press, free speech rights.

If the New York Times isn't criminally liable for publishing information illegally obtained and subject to "sanctions", then neither is Wikileaks or anyone involved in the release of the information like the Russians. Only the person who hacked into the DNC computer has committed a crime under our laws and Constitution best I can tell.

Even those who colluded, conspired, goaded, pushed and/or insisted for a release of the information are innocent. New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CNN ... they all collude, goad, push and insist some anonymous source steals the information or copies of the documents for their "expose" to leak it to them. They do this every day and have done it since the beginning of our country.

Personally, I don't think Slate is a reliable news source.

Slate (Magazine)Posted 2 years ago under Uncategorized


Slate.com is a leftist daily online magazine founded in 1996 that offers dogmatic, editorial and highly opinionated commentary about politics and current event news. Slate uses witty banter to push consistently for Big Government, genetically modified food consumption and allopathic medicine. Owned by Graham Holdings Company, Slate is a member of Amazon Associates, selling products of all kinds, favorable or not. Slate has received awards for digital media “excellence” and participates in “Gabfests” that have won podcast awards. Slate was created by a former editor of NewRepublic, one Michael Kinsley, which was all formerly under the ownership (at least in part) by Microsoft and MSN. In 2007, Slate V was introduced as an online video magazine. Now managed by the Slate Group out of New York City, with an additional office in Washington DC, Slate is not fundamentally a breaking news source, but rather aimed at influencing readers to interpret and take ownership of the editors’ left-nut view of the world. Slate receives enormous amounts of criticism from professional Journalists and Reporters around the globe.

The slippery slope of Slate’s “pitches” and their supposed “counterintuitive” arguments
With the aim of logic appeal, Slates “pitches” are undercover attempts to use counterintuitive strategies to spread propaganda about their viewpoints on certain subjects where mental coercion can take place for mass audiences. In Slate’s retort to this criticism, they call their pitches simple branding, but a closer look reveals not only arguing for the sake of arguing, but playing the devil’s advocate in order to stir up propaganda and discussion of that propaganda is not genuine or authentic journalism (or reporting) in any “shape of the word.”

Slate has several blogs also that make more of their counterintuitive points to suit their umbrella agenda of Big Government, Big Food and Western Medicine. Those blogs include but are not limited to:

• The Vault, Slate’s history blog
• Future Tense, a technology blog produced as part of a partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation and Arizona State University
• Brow Beat, Slate’s culture blog
• Wild Things, Slate’s animals blog
• Behold, Slate’s photo blog
• The World, a blog about foreign affairs
• Moneybox, Slate’s business and economics blog
• XX Factor, a blog about women’s issues
• Lexicon Valley, a blog about language
• The Eye, a design blog
• Crime, a crime blog

Actively Promoting Lies is BIG BUSINESS for online Magazine Slate
Vaccine salesmen have a name: shills (2). In America, parents with young daughters are waking up to the fact that the HPV vaccine, the human papilloma-virus, is more or less a scam, and is dangerously loaded with carcinogenic, neurotoxic chemicals that cause many teenage girls to go into convulsion within minutes of inoculation, some end up in comas after anaphylactic shock wears off, and some wind up dead. Still, somehow, ridiculous news outlets like Slate.com are now actively promoting lies in response to a study’s findings. Slate editors and writers are STILL claiming that HPV vaccines have yet to be linked to serious side effects, and that parents are rejecting it for “mysterious” and “invalidated” reasons (sic). According to a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, more than 15 percent of parents in 2010 rejected HPV vaccines, such as Cervarix and Gardasil, citing MAJOR SAFETY CONCERNS. This rejection was below 5% in 2008. Something major happened. The number of “side effect” cases became such a financial detriment and was threatening the whole operation with exposure, so the slush fund and the vaccine court handle the rest – which is shutting up the parents of the victims with large cash payouts and agreements that they’ll never speak of it again, not on talk shows, not to lawyers, not anywhere or anytime. There IS reliable research available now, and Gardasil CAN cause many deadly side effects, despite the lies of mainstream media, like Slate, the Washington Post and the New York Times. (1)

According to data compiled by SaneVax, Inc., the actual number of serious injuries and deaths caused by HPV vaccines is FAR HIGHER than the “adverse events” that remain as “reported.” Gardasil has since been exposed for manufacturing a toxic stew of deadly chemical adjuvants, including genetically modified DNA fragments (GMO) that cause the human body neurological damage that can easily result in paralysis, coma, and death. The HPV vaccine has NEVER been shown or proven by its manufacturer (or the CDC for that matter) to provide ANY legitimate protection against cervical cancer. None of this matters to the writers and editors of Slate and the Slate Group, who have an agenda that may be confusing to the reader, but not them.

The Dr. Oz “letter” – Slate supports Monsanto’s evil agenda to continue dousing US food with Roundup’s deadly glyphosate
When Doctor Oz was attacked in a defamatory letter after he did a show that exposed glyphosate – Monsanto’s #1 weed killer Roundup – and told the world that the World Health Organization, WHO, classified it as a probable human carcinogen. Probable of course means you MOST LIKELY will DIE of cancer if you eat it regularly, which is what about 70% of Americans are doing right now, eating GMO glyphosate-ridden corn, soy, wheat and more. Slate was there to cover the story – all wrong, again.

The Slate headline blared: , “Letter from Prominent Doctors Implies Columbia Should Fire Dr. Oz for Being a Quack.” – – This based on a letter by a group of doctors (none from Columbia Univ.) who want Columbia University to relieve Dr. Oz of his position as vice chair of the department of surgery at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.” The letter went on to say, “Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops.”

Slate wants you to PRESUME that Dr. Oz is already a quack (a liar and medical fraudster) and then start thinking about whether or not Columbia University should fire him. But Slate calls this style of writing their branding and their pitches. It’s like having a mission statement where your organization does the exact opposite of what it says it does very well. The physicians who wrote the letter called themselves distinguished, but some of them were convicted felons and had nothing at all to do with Columbia University, but rather have deep financial ties to the Biotech, GMO food industry. (3)
Herein lies the collusion of the chemical-agriculture industry with the lying mass media, like Slate.com, that represents their agenda while trying to sound witty, catchy, or any other adjective that stimulates dissonance, conversation, and finally brainwashes the sick Americans who buy all the wrong food, wrong medicine and read the wrong news. And those are the folks who ultimately shove their hard-earned money into industry “Big Wig” pockets, for decades. Call them clients for a shortened, expensive, chronic care life.

Slate’s Push for GMO food is propaganda for sickness – Slate criticizes Chipotle for going 100% Non-GMO
“There is a lot of debate about genetically modified foods,” says Chipotle founder and co-CEO Steve Ells. “Though many countries have already restricted or banned the use of GMO crops, it’s clear that a lot of research is still needed before we can truly understand all of the implications of widespread GMO cultivation and consumption. While that debate continues, we decided to move to non-GMO ingredients.”

Meanwhile Slate tries to discredit the importance of not eating chemicals such as pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and dangerous, carcinogenic fertilizers. These GMO biotech-made “Frankenfoods” (as health enthusiasts refer to them) are banned by most countries around the globe, but not where the FDA and CDC are run like businesses that collude with genetic modification “specialists” who lobby in Washington DC with billions of dollars. Now that Chipotle is being BOLD (4) and removing pesticide food from their entire repertoire, the biotech shills that write articles for the Washington Post, Vox.com and Slate will join forces with the Monsanto Discredit Bureau to try to rain on the parade created by Chipotle for being the first essential “fast food” joint to have NO GMO, ever.

Slate is there to inform the public about the ” … Terrible French GMO Study” which proved on a short and long term basis that GM soy and corn fed to rats caused horrific cancer tumors to develop and kill most of the rats very early in their two year normal life span. Female rats especially were dying inside of three months. The French Scientist Seralini and his Team of researchers did everything by the book and the study was criticized by mainstream media and peer review boards (more paid shills of biotech industry). Slate shills still complain about “Political Fallout” from the Seralini cancer study that blew the whistle on GMO toxicity and carcinogenic corn and soy that Americans take so much “pride” in.

Now, by going 100% Non-GMO, Chipotle is proving that eating “fast food” doesn’t have to be detrimental to your health. They are getting a wave of positive feedback and mass business support from the organic communities. Chipotle is basically announcing that GMO-free foods ARE healthy and the science of biotech is a big fraud. Nobody should be consuming chemical pesticides, not even as a small portion of their food. Americans are waking up to this reality fast.

Peer review science and the allopathic Slate
The biotechnology debate relies on informed decisions and proper education to understand what society and the environment are really engaging. Monsanto, the King of biotechnology, sends out bad journalists to muzzle legitimate scientific discourse and warp any discussion of toxic pesticides (like Roundup) causing auto-immune disorders, Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and central nervous system disorders. Long term, peer reviewed science that has NOT been retracted is available, just don’t ask WebMD, Wikipedia or Slate search engines for any help. Slate will tell you “No. You shouldn’t fear GMO corn,” as Slate interviews a plant geneticist, also known as a planted shill who lies about health and environmental effects that have RESULTED from commercialization of genetically engineered crops, or “Frankenfoods” like US corn, soy, canola, and sugar beets (MSG).
Slate supports anything Biotech, tested, untested – doesn’t matter. Slate supports Bayer’s Crop Science, and Dow and Dupont, and BASF and of course Monsanto. Anything that contains toxic pesticides slate will endorse, write cheery articles about, and liken to the best thing since sliced bread. Food “science” has gone backwards and involves an insidious process of infusing the genes of toxic pesticides into the DNA gene sequence inside the seeds of American crops – – and this has been going on for thirty years, a cold, hard fact MOST Americans do NOT know a thing about.

If Slate is supposed to be reporting the news, the politics, and the research with points of light that they want people discussing and considering, why would they go way out on a limb again and again to support felonies, toxic food and toxic information that besieges the public with misleading and brainwashing propaganda? Money. Unfortunately for Slate and fortunately for news readers, Slate has lost nearly all credibility for reporting ANYTHING based on all of this.

Slate makes FALSE CLAIMS

Planned Parenthood (PP) is deep in the mire as they’ve been videotaped negotiating cash for aborted babies and their organs on the “black market” of their secretive underground negotiating that’s happening with top-level executives, per TWO separate videos that have emerged and gone viral. Dr. Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director’s Council, is seen in the undercover video trying to get top dollars for baby parts coming from an employee of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) who faked as a rep from a “start-up biotechnology firm.” (sic) Slate writers followed up with articles and posts on their website about PP’s great commitment to science and that any woman who donates her baby to science is doing a great thing.

But do these would-be-mother’s even know their babies are being chopped up and sold in pieces, including organs, tissue, entire babies in some instances, and who’s making the money again? Extortionists, abortionists, politicians, biotechnology firms, or the President of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director’s Council? Video proof is quite powerful in court these days. Will all the would-be-mothers step up to the plate and sue? Doubtful. Do they have grounds to sue? Slate doesn’t care. Science is in full swing, and so is the shameful corporate advertising on Slate.com. Slate encourages the selling of body parts and human organs on the black market, even as it is a felony to do so.

Here’s the President herself caught on video (5) negotiating. The Slate “Group” must have missed this:
“Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying,” states Gatter, clearly familiar with the negotiation process. When the undercover CMP representative asks her to throw out a number, Gatter responds, “Well, you know in negotiations the person who throws out the figure first is at a loss, right? So …” The video clip is available for viewing here. It currently has over 1.2 million views: https://youtu.be/MjCs_gvImyw

The other video showed Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Research, discussing with another undercover CMP representative how aborted baby tissue is routinely sold by Planned Parenthood for profit. Where are the felony charges? The current democratic administration supports the biotech industry and chemical allopathic medicine, so they simply don’t mind, besides, Planned Parenthood is all part of the Big Government mission.

Welcome to the abortion-for-profit industry Slate supports
“Planned Parenthood’s top leadership had admitted they harvest aborted baby parts and receive payments for this,” stated CMP’s Project Lead David Daleiden. That means they admitted to a felony crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to half a million dollars, per offense. So, as Planned Parenthood goes down in history as a human chop shop operation that murders and exploits unborn babies for profit, we can expect that Slate’s editors and writers will go “down with the ship” – the slow-sinking Titanic. At least the abortion-for-profit industry has been exposed for these heinous crimes against humanity. Committees in the US House and Senate are calling for investigations and several state governments are filing suit against PP. (6)
To top it all off, Slate writers had the nerve to lie and say none of this was true about Planned Parenthood and that they basically support anything that they do with these babies for science. (7) It must be that scruples and real journalism don’t exist at Slate but the writers are still getting paid. (

Slate’s leftist loonies
Left-wing politics are political positions (or activities) that support social “equality” and involve “concern” for those in society who are “perceived” as “disadvantaged.” Plus, left-wing politics supports the belief that there are unjustified inequalities that must be “reduced” or “abolished.” The term Political Left dates back to the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement where the leftists opposed the monarchy and supported the revolution. How things have changed! The term left applied later to socialism, communism and anarchism during the 19th and 20th centuries. Leftist loonies believe that the government should be DIRECTLY INVOLVED in the day-to-day workings of the US economy. Do you need your government nanny state to baby sit you and tell you how, when, why, what, where and how much it will cost you? If so, follow Slate news. Do you want to give complete control to the bureaucrats, the globalists, the bankers, the biotech shills and the cancer industry of chronic care management? If so, follow Slate news. If you want truth news, read truth media and Natural Health News.
“Slate.com is a home to left-wing nut cases.” – Rush Limbaugh, July 28th, 2015 episode

Sources:
(1) http://www.naturalnews.com/033715_Ri...V_vaccine.html
(2) http://www.naturalnews.com/039634_HP...#ixzz3jvKA8myp
(3) http://www.naturalnews.com/049476_ma...#ixzz3jvKtAhMk
(4) http://www.naturalnews.com/049510_Ch...#ixzz3jvMS5VvF
(5) http://www.breitbart.com/big-journal...nthood-videos/
(6) http://www.slate.com/articles/health...donations.html
(7) http://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/how-t...tack-on-dr-oz/
( http://www.naturalnews.com/050524_Pl...#ixzz3k1scwQbh

http://www.truthwiki.org/slate-magazine/