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Russia Reportedly Bought Thousands of Facebook Ads Sought To Stress Racial Divisions (thehill.com)
According to The Washington Post, Russia government actors bought Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election cycle that sought to exploit and divide based on hot-button racial issues. Some of the ads promoted civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter, while others criticized them in an effort to sow division. The Hill reports: Facebook is handing over some 3,000 ads to congressional investigators as part of probes into the Kremlin's alleged effort to influence the outcome of last year's presidential election. Other ads allegedly highlighted Hillary Clinton's support among Muslim women and promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages. Facebook didn't comment on the story, but did refer to a statement earlier this month from its chief privacy officer, Alex Stamos: "Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the idealogical spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."
Facebook is a willing participant in election fraud?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The ads were initially reported to be pro Trump. It seems Facebook itself reported false information to seed decent.
...and ridiculous beliefs like this are why the Right will be in power for the next 50 years. It's not the facts of the situation, it's the fact that to you, they are The Other. And you'd rather do anything than tolerate The Other.
The conservatives I know have a realistic understanding of human nature (i.e., it is fundamentally flawed) and set expectations accordingly; i.e., there will never be a Utopia.
It is the leftists who believe that human nature is basically good, and that people do bad things because of external forces (e.g., their living conditions); Therefore the goal of arranging those external forces so they no longer cause people to do bad things becomes the greatest moral imperative.
So, on one hand we have people who believe that Utopia is impossible, and on the other we have people who believe that creating Utopia is the highest (perhaps only) moral priority. The first group believes the second group is deluded in their belief that Utopia is possible; the second group believes the first group is immoral for opposing their efforts to create one at any cost.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
...who have used race baiting against working whites in the same way white supremacists attack black and latinos. It's an inversion of LBJ's famous observation about poor southern whites:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Only instead of getting poor whites to resent minorities who have never done a thing to them, it's getting poor minorities to resent white people who have never done anything to them. And all the while, the fine folks at COINTELPRO are laughing their asses off as people ignore the deep state crony capitalists hiding behind the curtain.
Alright, who are you and what have you done with the Uberbah that I've argued with on /. countless times over the years!? LOL!
Damn man, I find myself agreeing with your posts a lot lately! Well said. It's all about 'divide & conquer' using propaganda and disinformation while simultaneously dumbing-down the population so they are unable to think critically or possess any knowledge of history. Evil Kabuki theater.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Some stories based on out of context reports. Others based on a discredited dosier (sourced from a foreign government which is what he's accusing Trump of doing). Other stories that use as their source the other stories listed. There are nearly no facts in any of those. It's all innuendo. You should take your head out of your ass so you can actually see the difference between reality and shilled political theatre.
...and ridiculous beliefs like this are why the Right will be in power for the next 50 years. It's not the facts of the situation, it's the fact that to you, they are The Other. And you'd rather do anything than tolerate The Other.
The conservatives I know have a realistic understanding of human nature (i.e., it is fundamentally flawed) and set expectations accordingly; i.e., there will never be a Utopia.
It is the leftists who believe that human nature is basically good, and that people do bad things because of external forces (e.g., their living conditions); Therefore the goal of arranging those external forces so they no longer cause people to do bad things becomes the greatest moral imperative.
So, on one hand we have people who believe that Utopia is impossible, and on the other we have people who believe that creating Utopia is the highest (perhaps only) moral priority. The first group believes the second group is deluded in their belief that Utopia is possible; the second group believes the first group is immoral for opposing their efforts to create one at any cost.
Hitler very successfully made the very same arguments. He even quoted Darwin. IMO it all comes down to whether or not humans can rise above the fundamental urges that lead to tribal manifestations of these urges. A majority of the German population fell under this spell and we know it lead to WW11. It seems that America right now is undergoing the very same shift to an idiotic pseudo Darwin concept of survival of the meanest bastards, this is happening on a financial basis as well as a political one.
Tsar Putin is no dumb ass cookie. He knows that by putting small amounts of intel dollars into the already volatile American political system his sponsorship of the oligarchs and up and coming Russian elite will help him stay in power. Why you ask? Because the already established organized crime institutions in the US are ripe for take over and this is what is happening. Although Castro is dead and his brother still sorta runs the show there are still a great many who would like to have Cuba turn into a free for all of organized crime that sucks dollars from the US and this now includes the new up and coming Russian Mafia kingpins not just the native American ones.
Sadly the governments of both the US and Russia are now under the control of organized crime. What the Russians are doing in no different than the CIA secretly backing drug lord dictators while turning a blind eye to the Mafia king pin Santo Trafficane and his French connection heroine trade all the way back to Laos during the De Gaulle era in Indo China. And what is going on to this very day with the internal corruption of the so called "war on drugs". This secret economy and political actions of a key part of the US government has created a serious risk of division by corruption of the entire US political system. Left and Right, conservative and democrat in reality have nothing to do with it. We are all being taken for a ride by those who seek only to have a free ride at the public trough and rule by division and deception and could in reality, care less about the populace they have sworn to serve.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
TIME magazine in 1996 bragging about how we interfered in the Russian election.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
$100,000? Like, really? The Clinton+Trump campaigns have spent together over $200,000,000 on their campaigns. Either the Russians are absolute geniuses and light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to effective political ads, or this is just another inflated sensationalist article trying to get views for WaPo using a hot topic.
Also, I'm somehow missing the connection to Russia in the article - it's once again presented as a certainty, but it is not explained how the authors managed to do the attribution to the Russian government. If this is considered a serious article in the US, I'm not surprised that "fake news" is a thing there. How about some critical thinking?
Really, guys, to the rest of the world this histeria is beyond awkward and facepalming. Trump is your creature, born out of the swamp that is the 2-party scam, not some foreign plant. Reform your political system, and these things won't happen. Until you do so, according to the article everybody who has $100,000 to burn will be able to elect your president for you...
I don't think that Russia needs to buy Facebook ads to sow hate and dissent in the USA: reading these comments, I think that you are terribly capable of sowing hate by yourself. I think that Trump is quite foolish, but the hate and belittling campaign against him is not a sign of rightful social activism, but another mean through which American institutions are weakened. This kind of social turmoil is nowadays quite common in all the Western world (anti-establishment movements are strong everywhere), no matter if you are conservative, liberal, socialist or whatever: the pretension of being some kind of sole paladin of justice is what is killing the democratic process in the USA and in Europe.