Russian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during election

theguardian.com

9 points·fishcolorbrick··4 comments

My favorite line: "“The task wasn’t to support Trump,” one of the factory’s employees told RBC. “We raised social issues and other problems that already existed in the US, and tried to shine as bright a light as possible on them.” The employee said that because Clinton was part of the current regime, she was also a target."

One wonders how much of this is still going on - both the disinformation campaign, and the paying US activists. In fact, it could explain a fair amount about why things have been so weird lately...

Yeah - in light of the fact that Russia isn't advocating for a particular political outcome in the United States... they don't want the US to step back from the Crimea, or stop criticizing their conduct in ex-Soviet states.

They just want to divide & conquer. They don't have a preferred outcome in mind, they're happy in any future state in which the US is weaker.

I think it's a bit more than that. Russia (or Putin, really) is terrified of color revolutions. He's afraid that people will rise up against the sham that passes for democracy there, and throw him out of power. To avoid that, he wants to discredit democracy elsewhere (particularly in the US, since it's held up to be the model for the world).

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