Will Russian Internet Troll Farms Succeed To Make The West Destroy Itself?

Owen Matthews, The Spectator: Putin plans to make the West destroy itself

Chaos and division is the real goal for Russia.

There’s only one person who’ll be genuinely pleased with the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report, finally revealed on Tuesday, and that’s Vladimir Putin. Russia emerges as an amorphous and formidable enemy — all the more so because the inconclusive and much-redacted report contains next to no substantiated allegations. Instead Russia appears as a phantom, unknowable menace, and this will spawn a thousand conspiracy theories far more corrosive and confusing to our politics than any Moscow-generated Twitter-storm or document leak.

There’s no smoking gun on Brexit. Yet the government-induced delay in publication allows anyone that way inclined to imagine a cover-up. Even the insistence that the state should do more to prevent Russian meddling plays into Putin’s hands. The fear of Russian interference in British elections creates chaos and division — and this, rather than any particular result, is Putin’s real goal.

Russia may be reeling from a collapse in oil prices and one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection in the world, but Moscow relies on pushing the idea that it’s the West that is really in trouble, racked with violent culture wars and suffering from a profound loss of faith in its own values. The Kremlin’s new party line is: we may have it bad, but their crisis is much worse. And where Putin’s propagandists lead, its trolls and hackers follow.

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WNU Editor: When it comes to social media's impact on politics and society there are two opinions/sides. There are those who believe that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are the centers of the universe (especially when it comes to the news), and those who do not. I am skeptical on its impact. But I do credit that it can break stories that the main stream media has missed and/or chosen to ignore. And as for Russia's role in using social media to impact social and political opinion. I have not been impressed.

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