Some Useful Idiots Were Even More Useful to the Russians Than We Thought

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

18 December 18

But it wasn't just the Intertoobz talking about Jill Stein.

ore of this, courtesy of the New York Times.

The New Knowledge researchers discovered many examples of the Russian operators building an audience with one theme and then shifting to another, often more provocative, set of messages. For instance, an Instagram account called @army_of_jesus_ first posted in January 2015 images from The Muppet Show, then shifted to The Simpsons and by early 2016 became Jesus-focused. Multiple memes associated Jesus with Mr. Trump’s campaign and Satan with Mrs. Clinton’s.

Lured in by Kermit and Homer and then...Jesus trickeration! The Times report also demonstrates that several useful idiots were more useful than previously thought.

Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency in the Senate’s data, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers. Just seven pages focused on the political left, drawing 689,045 followers. 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.

Seems I heard a lot of that from people in September and October of 2016, and it didn't all come from the Intertoobz. There's some reckoning due here, and a lot of soul-searching about performative socialism.

After the election, the report says, the Internet Research Agency put up some 70 posts on Facebook and Instagram that mocked the claims that Russia had interfered in the election. “You’ve lost and don’t know what to do?” said one such post. “Just blame it on Russian hackers.”

Well, them and the electoral college.