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Russian bots are using #WalkAway to try to wound Dems in midterms (NYT)
| Stubborn sadistic space dog poop | 07/19/18 |
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Date: July 19th, 2018 1:02 PM Author: Stubborn sadistic space dog poop The recent announcement that 12 Russian nationals have been indicted by Robert Mueller for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election is another reminder of how vulnerable our democracy is to such breaches.
David A. Love
The indictments charge that via hacking, phishing attacks, money laundering and interference on multiple other fronts, Russian officials worked to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. This arguably helped conservative efforts to usher Donald Trump into the presidency. During the US-Russia summit Monday in Helsinki, Trump sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin and accepted his denial that Russia interfered with the election. Now, in this 2018-midterm election season, as some predict a blue wave of resistance to Trump, his policies and alarming authoritarianism, Republicans want to split up the Democratic political opposition and divide black and Latino voters. And Russia looks like it wants to help here, too. But this time it won't work. The most recent example of this strategy is the #WalkAway hashtag, which is presented as a grassroots effort by former Democrats who are critical of the party's alleged intimidation, confrontation and lack of civility and want people to walk away from the party.
However, #WalkAway has also now been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots, and it is now the seventh most popular Russia-influenced hashtag as of this writing, according to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian influence on Twitter as part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund. The purpose of this now-astroturf campaign is to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion that this is a popular movement. In reality, #WalkAway has become pure propaganda, a psychological operation. Some of the tweets using the hashtag condemn illegal immigration, claim "Blacks were sold a false bill of goods," and proclaim "the African-American community is leaving the Democrat plantation in droves." Candace Owens, an African-American conservative and communications director of Turning Point USA -- a pro-Trump student political group with a "Professor Watchlist" database that tracks professors who "discriminate against conservative students" — has promoted the #WalkAway hashtag. Owens, who has called police brutality a myth and said "unlimited illegal immigration has harmed the black community for decades," claims black voters are walking away from the Democratic Party.
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