Paul Robinson — Faux Flag Confession

According to the study revealed yesteryear the New York Times, New Knowledge admits that:

We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ functioning that planted the persuasion that the Moore drive was amplified on social media yesteryear a Russian botnet.

The New York Times states that this programme ‘involved a system to link the Moore drive to thousands of Russian accounts that all of a precipitous began next the Republican candidate on Twitter, a evolution that drew national media attention.’ These ‘Russian accounts’ were, however, zero of the sort; they were mistaken flags, designed to arrive await every bit though the Russians were backing Mr Moore, thereby discrediting him as well as energizing his Democratic opponents. The ruse worked. American media picked upward on the storey that Russian social media bots were campaigning on behalf of Roy Moore, as well as spread the prevarication further. The New York Post, for instance, published an article entitled ‘Roy Moore flooded amongst mistaken Russian Twitter followers’. As it turns out, this headline was inadvertently truthful – the Russian Twitter followers were indeed ‘fake’, but non inwards the trend that the Post understood it.…

To summarise, what nosotros get got hither are around Americans pretending to hold out Russians pretending to hold out Americans, amongst the aim of smearing a political candidate amongst what they knew to hold out a mistaken accusation. And yet nosotros are meant to trust these same people every bit neutral reporters on the affair of Russian ‘meddling’ inwards American democracy. It strikes me that they get got something of a credibility problem.

There is, of course, a lot of nonsense on social media, around of it but the outpourings of deluded individuals, as well as around of it the automated products of so-called ‘troll factories’. Unfortunately, the Pb inwards combatting this (in my mind, much exaggerated) occupation has been taken yesteryear highly partisan actors who are themselves less than trustworthy. New Knowledge is ane example. The Integrity Initiative inwards the U.K. is another. So also are the numerous reports virtually Russian data warfare produced yesteryear organizations such every bit the Institute of Modern Russian Federation as well as the Centre for European Policy Analysis, every bit good every bit the books churned out yesteryear Luke Harding, Timothy Snyder, as well as others, all of whom spread fearfulness of Russian disinformation field presenting a really strange version of reality themselves. In the instance of New Knowledge, they fifty-fifty acknowledge to deliberately deceiving American voters. As as well as thence often, those claiming to protect us against external enemies inwards fact threaten us to a greater extent than than the alleged enemies themselves.

The era of "truthiness" (h/t Stephen Colbert) is upon us. Or it's corollary, "gaslighting." Heaven aid us when truth evaporates.

Irrussianality
False flag confession
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public as well as International Affairs at the University of Ottawa