Pro Publica warns about the fake news and doctored videos that are circulating on the Internet. While some are pro-Ukrainian, most are designed to support Putin’s narrative. The famous Russian troll farm that was active on behalf of Trump in 2016, ProPublica says, is now busily creating phony “fact checks” and disinformation.
It begins:
On March 3, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the pro-Russian separatist region of Ukraine that styles itself as the Donetsk People’s Republic, tweeted a video that he said revealed “How Ukrainian fakes are made.”
The clip showed two juxtaposed videos of a huge explosion in an urban area. Russian-language captions claimed that one video had been circulated by Ukrainian propagandists who said it showed a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
But, as captions in the second video explained, the footage actually showed a deadly arms depot explosion in the same area back in 2017. The message was clear: Don’t trust footage of supposed Russian missile strikes. Ukrainians are spreading lies about what’s really going on, and pro-Russian groups are debunking them. (Bezsonov did not respond to questions from ProPublica.)
In another post, ProPublica reports that the Russian troll farm is branding current events happening in Ukraine as “fake” and “Ukrainian propaganda.” The same sources are creating phony videos and branding them as Ukrainian propaganda. Experts say a recent wave of pro-Putin disinformation is consistent with the work of Russia’s Internet Research Agency, a network of paid trolls who attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election...
The pro-Putin network included roughly 60 Twitter accounts, over 100 on TikTok, and at least seven on Instagram, according to the analysis and removals by the platforms. Linvill and Warren said the Twitter accounts share strong connections with a set of hundreds of accounts they identified a year ago as likely being run by the IRA. Twitter removed nearly all of those accounts. It did not attribute them to the IRA...
The most successful accounts were on TikTok, where a set of roughly a dozen analyzed by Clemson researchers and ProPublica racked up more than 250 million views and over 8 million likes with posts that promoted Russian government statements, mocked President Joe Biden and shared fake Russian fact-checking videos that were revealed by ProPublica and Clemson researchers earlier this week. On Twitter, they attacked jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and blamed the West for preventing Russian athletes from competing under the Russian flag in the Olympics...
The Internet Research Agency is a private company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian entrepreneur known as “Putin’s Chef.” Prigozhin is linked to a sprawling empire ranging from catering services to the military mercenary company Wagner Group, which was reportedly tasked with assassinating President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The IRA launched in St. Petersburg in 2013 by hiring young internet-savvy people to post on blogs, discussion forums and social media to promote Putin’s agenda to a domestic audience. After being exposed for its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. election, the IRA attempted to outsource some of its English-language operations to Ghana ahead of 2020. Efforts to reach Prigozhin were unsuccessful.
But it never stopped its core work of influencing Russian-speaking audiences. The IRA is part of a sprawling domestic state propaganda operation whose current impact can be seen by the number of Russians who refuse to believe that an invasion has happened, while asserting that Ukrainians are being held hostage by a Nazi coup.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And the West doesn’t churn out phony ‘fact’ checks???
Would you fact check the size of Russia as a trading partner of the U.S. and report back?
lol
By their fruits they shall be known. Here in the United States, Russia under Tsar Vlad has dedicated itself to promoting a fascist, Trumpist alternative facts universe of political discourse on the right. There are signs that this is backfiring now because of the assault on Ukraine–that people are becoming as wise to this disinformation (via social media and agents and assets placed int he U.S.) as they are to emails from former Nigerian princesses anxious to receive your banking information so that they can wire you millions of dollars.
Putin has used this troll farm to break the UK away from the EU, decrease the number of democracies, increasing the leadership of autocrats like him that may be loyal to him, to elect Trump in 2016, and I suspect they are responsible for Biden low approval rating, too.
And Fox FAKE news, OAN (Trumps favorite fake news channel), and the Sinclair scripted Media network (the scripts are probably written in Russia), and the KOCH subversive propaganda machine, are all subsidiaries of Putin’s global asperations.
With Putin’s military support of Syria’s dictator, of North Korea, of Iran, the evidence stacks up that Putin wants to conquer and rule the world through puppet regimes that are loyal to him.
I think the world would be better off if we nuked Moscow to get rid of him. Sometime radical surgery is necessary to cut out the spreading terminal cancer in a high risk operation to save the patient.
Lloyd, this is nuts. You are advocating mass murder. Please, see a counsellor.
Lloyd, I agree with your first 3 paragraphs but not the last. If we nuked Moscow, we would be initiating a nuclear exchange between the 2 countries. You do realize that Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons of its own that it would use to wipe out Washington, DC, NYC, Chicago, etc. We can only hope that there is a cadre of plotters in Russia who want to get rid of Putin. But, given that it’s Russia, Putin would probably be replaced by an even worse monster and would-be autocrat/tsar. Russia was a free democratic country for maybe 3 seconds in its entire history.
Lloyd, you’ve been posting some pretty crazy things lately.
Russia is like Ukraine’s abusive ex-boyfriend turned murderous armed stalker. Ukraine is now sending a strong message: Dear Russia, I’m free of you and dating someone else now. Get used to it.
NB: I suspect that the TikTok-ers could understand this if it is put to them in this way.
These eight members of the House voted against suspending normal trade relations with Russia. Some of these representatives are the same ones that spread misinformation. Please remember the “hateful eight” during the next election cycle.
YES!!! Remember this Rogues Gallery!!!!
Trolls Can’t “Control” Or Spin The Fact that Putin wore a £10,000 Loro Piana jacket which is worth 25 times the average monthly Russian’s monthly salary at his recent pro-war rally.
His value system lifestyle is a luxury jacket worth 1.5million Russian roubles. Imagine!
Putin’s Blood Money Men’s Wear! Loro Piana’s pure vicuña jacket costs $15,000. Their Gift of Kings Collection jacket commands $24,000. Peruvian Andes camelids, Australian Outback sheep and Mongolian goats are key.
For the sake of this Fascist Fashion Plate, Ukraines are murdered and Russians are enslaved.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10628565/Vladimir-Putin-dons-10-000-Loro-Piana-jacket-worth-twice-average-yearly-salary-rally.html
!!!!
Russia’s troll farm and disinformation campaigns are probably very effective in South America, India, Africa and Indonesia, for example. We in the USA get to see hundreds of cell phone videos coming from Ukraine plus independent reporting from other parts of the world that show the daily horrors going on in Ukraine as a result of Putin’s sociopathy.
It is important to understand what the critics are saying here.
“Putin did not invade Russia. There are no Russian troops in Ukraine. He did send a small number to Donbas and Crimea to stop the genocide of Russians who live there. That is a limited military operation, not an invasion or a war. Why do we see videos of mass destruction? Most of those videos are fake. The only destruction in Ukraine was committed by Ukrainians bombing their own cities. Ukrainians just bombed their own military barracks. The other day they bombed a theater where 1,000 people were sheltering. They did that to win sympathy. Oh, and Zelensky is a Nazi surrounded by Nazis. He pretends to be “Jewish,” but who knows if he is even circumcised? Why doesn’t he prove it by pulling down his pants? This whole charade is based on Russiaphobia.”
Putin and his dog, Trump, both depend upon creating these murky, alternative fact universes in the minds of the dim-witted.
“But, as captions in the second video explained, the footage actually showed a deadly arms depot explosion in the same area back in 2017.”
So, wait, where’s the lie? If the footage actually shows an arms depot explosion from 2017 and it’s being presented as a supposed Russian missile strike in Kharkiv is 2022, then the video is, as the Russians claim, being falsely used for propaganda. It’s the same way video footage of bombs exploding over Baghdad were presented as bombs exploding over Kiev. Or the “brave little Ukrainian girl” who told the “Russian solder: to go back where he came from who just happened to be a brave little Palestinian girl telling an Israeli soldier to go back where he came from.
Yeah. It’s all just a VAST conspiracy on the part of Ukrainian toddlers, trained by the CIA, to pretend to be blown to pieces by Russian artillery shells. This is why they chose Zelinskyy, an actor, to train them! And CRT has been digging in my rose bushes again! And is attempting to woo my brother’s husband! And then there is the reptilian extraterrestrials’ space port under the Vatican! Keep posting the alternative facts, Dienne! Enquiring minds want to know!
Unborn baby sings like Elvis!
How to make your fortune in time shares!
Russia liberates Ukraine; greeted with flowers and hosannas!
Russian troops on Ukrainian border are only there to conduct exercises! You know, like pilates or zumba or tai chi.
BTW, two different events are being confused here. RUSSIA posted yesterday that it had used a hypersonic missile to blow up an underground arms depot in Deliatyn, a village in south-western Ukraine only 100km from the border with Romania.
Yes, Dienne, if you look hard enough on the Internet, you will find false reports posted by some idiot. Wow. What a surprise that is.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60806151
“Popular Info. (behind a paywall) revealed a network of pundits and groups funded by Koch have been publicly advocating against imposing economic sanctions on Russia.”
“40 companies digging in (in refusal to leave Russia)”. “Koch is the 2nd largest private company in the U.S.”
Raw Story reports Halliburton is out of Russia (3-19-2022).
Lloyd:
An Existentialist Perspective on Russia v. the West. This is an excerpt from a PBS interview with the brilliant, profound, learned, and witty Russian political scholar and former member of the Russian DUMA Ekaterina Schulmann. It’s from a series called The Putin Files. I say that this is an Existentialist perspective because Existentialism is all about individuals being self-creating and, ultimately, responsible for themselves.
MICHAEL KIRK: One of the things we know from talking to people close to President Putin is that he feels strongly that the United States has been involved in fomenting and causing things from the early color revolutions all the way up. What is your perception of the United States’ involvement and whether that argument works?
EKATERINA SCHULMANN: Of course, I can’t know what is passing in the heads of our decision makers. I have heard this rhetoric, of course, time and again, from many people on the top levels of our hierarchy—our power hierarchy. From my point of view, it’s some sort of psychological disorder called external locus of control, if you know the term. It’s the situation when a person thinks that everything that happens to him or her is determined by some external agent. It’s a very bad thing, because it makes you lose your existence as a real person. It makes you exist only as a focus of others’ wills. This is the strange and phantasmagoric picture of Russia today as painted by the state media. What is Russia? She is something that is threatened from the outside. And if there is any threat from the inside, this is also because of somebody external or some external will. It could not be more absurd. It’s absurd in itself, but it’s specifically absurd in case of Russia, which is a bigger, complex society, whose problems and victories and achievements and defeats are all determined by internal reasons, by internal factors. So, again, it couldn’t be more—more stupid.
MY COMMENT Applying this to Russia’s influence on the West, I would make the following observations: Yes, Trump has long been a Russian asset. The extent to which he is aware of this is unclear, but certainly, he willfully ignores his own usefulness to Russian bad actors. And yes, Russia waged an extensive social media disinformation and misinformation campaign to get Trump elected. And yes, the United States, being a free and open society, is awash in Russian assets and agents who foment right-wing disruption among gun nuts and white nationalists. And yes, all that contributed to the recent resurgence of the overtly and covertly fascist right in the United States—to things like Trump’s making people feel that it is again OK for them to be out about their explicit anti-immigrant and anti-black racism. But here’s the thing: Putin and Putin’s dog, Trump, would not have been successful in fomenting racist strife in the U.S., in bringing millions of racists out of the woodwork, IF THEY HADN’T BEEN IN THE WOODWORK TO BEGIN WITH. We must ourselves assume responsibility for this stuff. Fascism, racism, sexism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, extreme nationalism, opposition via state violence to protest and dissent and a free media, personality cult politics—these are all fundamental tenets and modus operandi of Putinism and official state policy in Russia today, and yes, Putin has worked hard to export this evil to the US. But he found fertile ground for all of it here, alas, and that’s what we need to worry most about—at stopping OUR extreme right. We must not see ourselves as victims but as agents, and we must concern ourselves most with those right here among us who are agents of all these evils. There are positive signs, if one looks at the beliefs and values of our youth. But before they come of voting age, there is a big danger that the fascists will seize control here, in 2022-24, and undo the voting rights that are our bulwark against them. We have met the enemy, and he is us, said the Pogo possum. I would amend that only to say, “he is some of us.”
cx: modi operandi
Judging from some of the comments we have been fielding, Putin has been almost as effective at stirring up people who style themselves as radical leftists. How does a former(?) Bernie lover morph into an apologist for Putin?
There will always be individual outlier nutcases. But that POV is also shared, alas, by the editor of The Nation.
The path to truth: Do not believe anything you see on television. Do not believe your own government or any Allie’s. They all lie. Believe only what Putin says. Believe only Russia media. (Sarcasm.)
Ah, Diane. That makes EVERYTHING so much simpler! Just follow Glorious Leader!
I’m a subscriber to The Nation, but I use my discretion about which articles I read and retweet.
Bob,
The articles I read in the Nation have NOT been like what dienne77 posts. Some may be thoughtful about the reasons that Putin attacked but I haven’t read any that have excused the abhorrent things Putin has done.
Those articles also criticize Putin, just like they criticized Trump.
Right wing trolls who professed to be Bernie supporters only as a ruse do not criticize Putin or Trump. I can’t say I have read every article in the Nation, but there are plenty of them calling out Putin and Republicans (something our resident pro-Putin troll does not.)
Our faux Bernie supporter turned against Bernie as soon as he no longer served their purpose to help destroy the Democrats and empower Trump. Our faux Bernie supporter was basically calling Bernie a liar when Bernie was making cogent arguments about why it was important to elect a democrat in 2016 (there was an open Supreme Court seat that very likely could have ended Citizens’ United! for gosh’s sake).
Our faux Bernie supporter just this week attacked the Squad with a preview of the right wing propaganda attacks on Bernie that faux Bernie supporters would have made if he had won the nomination. Bernie was secretly in bed with right wing Rep[ublicans. (But on another site our faux Bernie supporter would be saying Bernie was a Copmmie Socialist who would take away their private property.)
If you don’t believe me, just look at how every argument made against Biden and supporting Putin by our fake Bernie supporter has changed as the talking points have changed.
First, Biden is lying about the troops amassed, Putin has no interest in attacking.
Second, Putin had to attack because Nazis.
Third, no civilians are killed.
Fourth, Putin had to attack because of biolabs.
Fifth, no one died, the videos are all fake.
Sixth, Zelensky is terrible, just like the Squad is terrible. They are all secretly in bed with right wing forces. It is fine to sacrifice Zelensky – who isn’t trustworthy – to the higher cause which she pretends is progressivism but is and always was right wing Putinism.
Liars and trolls have no shame. They won’t stop so they need to be marginalized.
I said the EDITOR of The Nation. She has written on precisely the themes that Dienne takes up.
Bob,
Do you mean the FORMER editor? The current editor is a man.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, despite having little sympathy for Ukraine self-rule. Apparently rich heiresses who buy magazines believe climate change – which will affect their own loved ones lives – must always take precedence over the lives and sovereignty of expendable Ukraine folks despite offering up not a single reason why that has to be a “choice”. But even she does what our resident pro-Putin troll does not – actually criticizes Putin.
“The Nation condemns the decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin to abandon the path of diplomacy by attacking and undertaking “special military operations” in Ukraine. These actions violate international law and fuel a dangerous escalation of violence.”
That’s a lot more than our resident pro-Putin troll has ever conceded.
She also wrote:
“Russia’s ILLEGAL actions…”
“With the UNLAWFUL invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has blown up the post-Cold War era.”
Bob, I hope you have noticed that pro-Putin trolls here do not even acknowledge that Putin did anything wrong. That’s why I disagree with you about them being real folks. They can’t even concede what vandenHeuvel does about the invasion.
Thanks, NYCPSP.
Bob: The fertile ground of America’s fascism is constantly fertilized by those who fear any movement toward positive governmental activity. Caring not a bit of this country is ruled for the good of the few, they have warned of Russia during its communist era with urgent jeremiads. But now that Russia is not communist, they are OK.
The American fear of communists, going back to the train men’s strikes of 1877 and intensifying during the nativist era in the post World War I aftermath, came to its fruition in the creation of the “military industrial complex” and the politics of fear that have run the country since the Cold War. Then, suddenly, there was no more Russian Communism.
But there was still a fear on the right that those who believe in a government that works for all the people would usurp the privileged status of the few. Over the years, as the left argued for some programs to help the people who were not in the winner’s circle in our economy, the right re-defined what it is to be a socialist/communist.
And from this process has come the fertile ground for Putin’s disinformation.
Roy, what I find confounding is that there are people on the left who seem to think that Russia is an idealistic, Communist state struggling against greedy capitalists. They don’t acknowledge that Russia today has no ideology other than greed and power. It is a kleptocracy, and Putin is the most successful of the kleptocrats. Putin is not a socialist or a Communist. His American apologists act as though he is an idealist, when he is no more than a Kremlin thug.
Russia is run by a Mafia.
Well said, Roy!
Diane,
I do not believe anyone on the left believes those lies about Putin’s Russia being a society they would want to emulate. Bernie Sanders calls Putin a poster boy for greed and oligarchy.
There are some folks pretending to be on the left that support Putin, but they are just professing to be on the left and a close look at their writings will always show that they are not critical of right wing Republicans either.
The true leftists may condemn the US, but they condemn Putin as well and strongly criticize Putin’s invasion as illegal and immoral.
Faux leftists are trying to get journalists to characterize them as “leftists” in order to discredit the entire left. Nothing makes the left less popular than hearing folks like Gabbard or dienne77 identified as “leftists” because their writings are so deluded and pro-annihilation of Ukraine. If I didn’t know better and thought dienne77 represented “the left” I would be extremely anti-left. Luckily, I know that AOC and Bernie don’t spew that hate and nonsense, and they are the real folks on the left, not the pro-Putin trolls and those like Gabbard who get funding from pro-Russian sources.
Bob,
You make many good points, but I think you underestimate how much those who think they are fighting the good fight are being unwittingly brainwashed themselves by the media. If you don’t call that out, you are complicit. If you do not marginalize the voices who are only there to divide but instead make those voices “important to listen to”, you are giving them credibility.
And the other side is NOT giving our side the same credibility at all.
Maybe you can think of it in terms of education. One side is only saying “public schools are a disaster, greedy teachers and unions only care about themselves, lazy and abusive teachers can never be fired, children are being irreparably harmed. Look at these terrific charter schools where every single student passes state exams and goes on to college, how dare those greedy union teachers want to stop this.
The other side says “oh you make very good points about how public schools are very bad and you are so right that there are some very bad teachers but isn’t there some value for public schools to exist.”
You think that is a strong message? That reply just treated the folks who are trying to destroy public schools and who will use the most blatant lies to do so as if they are good people, who make very good points, and sure once in a while they are wrong, but other times they are right and hey are really good people making good points.
Meanwhile, the other side continues to say that everyone who is on your side is a greedy selfish teacher who doesn’t care at all about kids.
Even this blog gives folks who SOMETIMES post blatant propaganda whose only intent is to mislead as if they should be given credibility. I get it. But just telling you that is exactly what the media does when people who try to destroy public schools with blatant lies are treated as if they are honest actors because one of the statistics they used happened to be true.
If the folks who lie are marginalized maybe they would stop lying, or others who have similar views but who actually want a conversation would replace them. But the status quo – where liars are given the same credibility as people who are unwilling to lie to get what they want – simply benefits the liars. And as long as they are incentivized to continue to lie, this country is unlikely to ever move to a better place.
Marginalize those folks. They always marginalize us,even if we believe in making our points with truth, but we still bend over backward to give them credibility no matter how many times they lie. And we delude ourselves in believing that the public understands that when they see one side demonizing us with lies and tells folks that we are evil, and our side says “well the other side does say some truthful things sometimes and deserves to be listened to, but here is what we believe”, that we can win elections.
When the left legitimizes liars who demonize progressives instead of marginalizing them, the right wing seizes power. There is nothing wrong with honest criticism, but honest criticism is truthful. It isn’t full of lies.
NYCPSP, Dienne is useful. The nonsense she posts provides excellent opportunities for refutation. And she does a great job of keeping up with and parroting the latest in the ever-changing Russian rationale for its brutal aggression. She’s like a disinformation clipping service. Useful. A real time-saver, like prepping one’s ingredients before cooking.
NYCPSP, democracy is messy. Any fool can stand up in the Agora and spout nonsense. And then others can explain why this is nonsense. That’s how it works.
Is dienne77 credible about ANYTHING?
She should not be. Credibility is not based on whether at any given time you happen be saying something truthful.
Credibility is supposed to be based on whether you are the type of person who lies whenever lying serves your purpose and then doubles down on those lies when anyone tries to correct the record. And then lies even more to demonize the person calling out your lies.
AOC has credibility. I don’t always agree with her positions, but I always agree with how she defends those positions. Same with Bernie. Same with “she who may not be named”
Other people should never have credibility. I don’t care whether Matt Gaetz or Josh Hawley happen to say something I agree with, just like I don’t care if Putin or Trump says something I agree with. The fact that they blatantly lie actually makes them terrible purveyors of something that happens to be true.
But our country is in big trouble because the right wing convinced the media that just because someone is a purveyor of blatant lies doesn’t mean that he should not be considered a credible source. Because sometimes this person also happens not to lie.
It is NEVER important to listen to liars. They are not credible on ANYTHING and should be marginalized. They should post their lies freely, but the price they pay is that if they happen to say something that isn’t a lie, the only reply to them should be “sorry, you are a known liar so everything you post should be disregarded as lie.”
Liars are not “credible”. Our society now seems to be embracing the Orwellian view that liars are credible when they don’t happen to be lying! They are NEVER credible and if they are treated that way, maybe they will stop lying. Because they are incentivized to continue as long as their lying does nothing to detract from their credbility.
A person may not be credible, but that doesn’t mean they can’t say something that is credible. I am not going to take them at their word, but I am not necessarily going to ignore what they say if only to debunk what they say. We’ve seen how well “ignoring” Trump’s repeated lies have gone.
Off topic but about the success of false narratives-
A You Gov poll found that the lie, “Christians are under attack,” was accepted in part because Americans believed 30% of Americans are Jewish… 27% are Muslim … (btw- they thought 21% are transgender). Each of those groups is in reality less than 3%.
Clearly people at this blog would have answered the poll similarly. When I post about weaponized religion, there are always some who trot out minuscule sects as equivalents in terms of access to power.
Media should preface all reports in the context of scale.
“We’ve seen how well “ignoring” Trump’s repeated lies have gone.”
Trump’s lies weren’t ignored. They were presented as something that should not damage Trump’s credibility and that’s exactly how his voters saw them. They accepted someone who lied half the time and told the truth the other half and soon they couldn’t tell the difference between the truth and lies because the media had done such a good job of convincing voters that lies don’t really matter and it’s wrong to be too mean to someone who lies because sometimes that person tells the truth.
Now the rest of the Republicans have picked up that mantle to demonize teachers and progressives and anyone else who stands in their way.
FYI — the reason I started coming to this blog is that I realized that charter promoters were lying. I used to think charters were a good idea until I realized that the people promoting them were lying a lot.
I didn’t understand why their lying was condoned by so many people.
And I didn’t consider all the “truthful” things that charter promoters said, which I apologize for.
The charter movement lost all credibility with me because the people promoting them were lying so often to make their pro-charter case. Now I understand from what everyone is saying that I was wrong.
The folks promoting charters by lying about them were no longer trustworthy to me and I was wrong because sometimes they did tell the truth and I needed to focus on that instead.
Listening to you all, I now realize it was wrong of me to be so against charters just because their supporters kept lying. Some kids are helped and that’s what matters.
That’s all for changing my mind about charters. I was judging them harshly because they were using lies to justify their existence, but what is important is that they said some truthful things and that makes charters a very credible alternative to public schools that I need to support.
They were essentially ignored by his opponents. The news media hyped them but the Democrats tried to just dismiss them.
At any time in American history, about 30% among us have been racist, misogynist conspiracy theorists, more than willing to rat on one’s neighbor. But having an out-and-out white supremacist in the White House encouraged them to come crawling out from under their rocks. It’s time to let them know it’s not OK.
Agreed
Diane Ravitch: Roy, what I find confounding is that there are people on the left who seem to think that Russia is an idealistic, Communist state struggling against greedy capitalists. They don’t acknowledge that Russia today has no ideology other than greed and power. It is a kleptocracy, and Putin is the most successful of the kleptocrats. Putin is not a socialist or a Communist. His American apologists act as though he is an idealist, when he is no more than a Kremlin thug.
THIS!!!