The Parkland massacre had already been bumped to below the fold by the Mueller indictment, but this morning we learn that national outrage at yet another school shooting is actually a subset of an all-encompassing Russian disinformation campaign.
The pattern by now is obvious. Whenever it looks as if the confused, apathetic American electorate is about to rouse itself and take action the media reminds us that it is actually a malicious Russian plot implemented by bots on social media.
The reality is that the purported Russian disinformation campaign is actually a U.S. disinformation campaign. Support for the political-economic status quo has disappeared -- Trump's election is all the proof you need on that score -- and therefore a scheme is required to secure the allegiance of the electorate. How about this? "You are under attack, and Russia is attacking you." It worked before. Why not try it again?
No evidence has yet been produced to document the extent of this Russian troll army. Neil MacFarquhar's story yesterday "Inside the Russian Troll Factory: Zombies and a Breakneck Pace" was built around interviews with two former employees of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg. The problem is that they didn't work as trolls targeting the U.S. They worked as trolls generating content for the Russian market.
This has been the fundamental weakness of almost all the reporting of Mueller indictment. No effort has been made to actually quantify the size and budget of the Russian troll army as it relates to the United States. The numbers we see bandied about in terms of the Internet Research Agency are for its overall activities, and based on what Moon of Alabama has written, "Mueller Indictment - The "Russian Influence" Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme," it is a standard clickbait factory.
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