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Comment by hallihax | Hacker News Reader

It's been pretty obvious from day 1 that the whole xenophobic anti-Russian scaremongering was being inauthentic and confected.

It's all just noise. There's no substance to any of it - just vague circumstantial nonsense and wild, unsupported allegations.

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Just because the US is doing this doesn't mean that Russia isn't doing the same. There is evidence they have done it before [1], plus, why wouldn't they? It's a cheap way and easy way to spread propaganda.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

I didn't make any comment at all about whether Russia does the same. I assume that any major power is constantly propagandising its own people, and those of other countries.

The issue is that this propaganda has become a mainstream news story which is:

1) Endlessly repeated on-air by trusted individuals

2) Almost universally accepted as a truth by politicians and pundits despite there being zero concrete evidence of any Russian conspiracy

3) Rarely, if ever, challenged by politicians, pundits or guests on any mainstream news channel.

Okay, I misunderstood, your message seemed to imply Russia doesn't try to spread propaganda online.

You're right, it is blown way out of proportion. Russia is most likely doing it, but yeah, I've never understood the focus on Russia when literally anyone can, and basically everyone tries to influence US politics, many (like Israel, or certain media outlets) do it openly.

> Okay, I misunderstood, your message seemed to imply Russia doesn't try to spread propaganda online.

I don't really see how anything I said could be construed that way, but ok :P

Sure you're a not a fed yourself? :P /s

>2) Almost universally accepted as a truth by politicians and pundits despite there being zero concrete evidence of any Russian conspiracy

What? There's quite a bit of evidence, and an entire special counsel was appointed to investigate and litigate the evidence!

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Muel...

Sections 2 and 3 are particularly relevant in this case.

There's no evidence. There's a handful of (allegedly) Russian facebook posts / members, and then spurious, inconsequential allegations about specific individuals.

The special counsel is an obvious stitch up which has achieved almost nothing aside from some irrelevant indictments, and which has produced no credible evidence of any conspiracy with Russia.

If your terms of investigation are just 'Russian interference', then you can classify literally anything which comes from a Russian as being 'interference'.

Is my post 'UK interference' in US politics? It's a joke. The entire world is laughing at the US over this.

That's a misrepresentation of the extent of Russia's espionage and propaganda campaigns during the elections. Considering Russia's propensity to kill people on UK soil, you'd think you'd be more willing to accept that their intelligence services can be brazen.

No, no evidence was produced that Trump or his campaign conspired with them. But massive amounts of evidence was produced that Russia tried to influence the election.

> That's a misrepresentation of the extent of Russia's espionage and propaganda campaigns during the elections. Considering Russia's propensity to kill people on UK soil, you'd think you'd be more willing to accept that their intelligence services can be brazen.

The Skripal narrative is nonsense too. The whole story is a farce.

> No, no evidence was produced that Trump or his campaign conspired with them. But massive amounts of evidence was produced that Russia tried to influence the election.

Having preferred outcomes and posting memes on Facebook isn't a crime under any law - national or international.

If it were just posting memes, there wouldn't be this fiasco in the first place. No, Russia didn't commit any crimes when it came to the propaganda, but the US also isn't committing crimes when they spread propaganda in other countries. Espionage, influence, and intelligence operations can be very effective without necessarily being illegal.

Also, propaganda aside, Russia did certainly commit crimes when it comes to the US politics-targeted hacking performed by their GRU and SVR intelligence departments during 2016.

> Sections 2 and 3 are particularly relevant in this case

Are you able to excerpt a few sentences from sections 2 and 3 that you believe are the most compelling?

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