The Tweets of War
Vladimir Putin's digital army is in your feed, and so are American politicians--because despite all the bluster and finger-wagging since the 2016 election, social media is still platforming propaganda
Today, I am h8ting on social media as a substitute for being able to do anything to affect the impending tragedy unrolling in Ukraine. If you know someone interested in how social media is affecting the American conversation about this impending and criminal conflict, please:
As the threat to a free and independent Ukraine grows hour by hour, Russia is doing what Russia does best: creating chaos. And American social media companies are making money from it, as they do from all domestic and international conflicts.
You may or may not see it in your feed, but all you have to do is put “Ukraine” in the search bar. Then, a mish-mash of known and unknown actors emerge to try to confuse you about the issues at stake in this Eastern European standoff and where American interests lie. Even Juanita Broaddrick, who went right off the deep end after accusing former President Bill Clinton of raping her during his years as governor of Arkansas, is involved. Broaddrick tweeted an “EXCLUSIVE BOMBSHELL” from a fake news site claiming that “documents” from the “Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office” confirm that millions of dollars have been laundered for the Biden and Kerry families through that country. “It is beginning to look more and more,” the article concludes, that “Trump picked [Ukraine] for his, perfectly deployed, trap.”
The story makes no sense, but then it doesn’t have to: these sites exist primarily to house headlines and graphic pictures that bad actors like Broaddrick can share on social media. There is little expectation that anyone will click through to the story. But, then, the tweet gets relayed into other networks: a fake account quote tweeted Broaddrick’s tweet with the question: “Is this why we're currently having problems with the Ukraine?”
As Peter Singer and Emerson T. Brooking explain in Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media (2018), disinformation campaigns not only thrive on social media, they are also a standard weapon of war. “Attacking an adversary’s most important center of gravity—the spirit of its people—no longer requires massive bombing runs or reams of propaganda,” Singer and Brooking write. “All it takes is a smartphone and a few idle seconds.”
OK, that image—of a single person playing with their cell phone—may seem to minimize the horror of conventional war. But it also is just a taste of what the book reveals: the massive resources that nations, and non-state actors, pour into cyber-propaganda.
Unfortunately, if this war goes off in Ukraine, there will also be plenty of bombing: my understanding is that it has already begun in the eastern part of the country, where a civil war has been raging since 2014. But Russia’s capacity to infect American cyberspace with disinformation is more significant than it ever was during the 2016 presidential election. In September 2021, MIT Technology Review estimated that in the runup to the 2020 elections, Russian troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month through Facebook alone. Three-quarters of the people who saw this garbage “had never followed any of the pages. They were seeing the content because Facebook’s content-recommendation system had pushed it into their news feeds.”
Now, the Russian government is actively working to soften up the world to accept Putin’s annexation of Ukraine, and our social media security is as soft as it ever was. Conservative populists and MAGA admirers in the United States are taking advantage of that too, flooding the zone with shite about Ukraine as part of their continuous effort to undermine the Biden presidency.
To a portion of the American right, a war in Ukraine isn’t a tragedy: it’s a gift. The pro-Russian former President, Donald J. Trump, recently told his followers that Putin is "genius" and "savvy" and that Biden is constantly out of step with his Russian counterpart. We have also seen a string of texts from the usual suspects claiming that elites have created the Ukraine crisis to screw the American public.
For example, Marjorie Taylor Greene (from her not-yet-canceled R, GA-14 Congressional account) declares: “War and rumors of war is incredibly profitable and convenient. And just like that, the media now has a lie to use as the reason for our shattered economy and out of control inflation. What a sad existence it must be to shill for Globalism & America Last politicians.”
Matt Gaetz (R, FL-1), Greene’s office husband, declares: “Number of countries Russia invaded during the Trump Presidency: Zero.” Not true: Putin consistently supplied insurgents in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, two areas Russia has just recognized as fake “People’s Republics” and from where he plans to stage part of his invasion throughout the Trump presidency.
Jim Jordan (R, OH-4), who has spent most of the week tweeting Clinton conspiracy garbage, has now woven that content into something posing as a foreign policy tweet: “Maybe if the Democrats weren't so obsessed with Russian `collusion’ for all those years, they could have done something to keep Russia from causing actual problems.”
But here’s the real problem: the platforms themselves and their unwillingness to invest in truth. Once again, we are faced with the price of having never regulated social media. You would think Democrats and Republicans might have acted by now, but no. So now, the United States is faced with having a real war on its hands, and once again, the possibility of having a fact-based national conversation about the United States’ responsibilities to the world is foreclosed.
Short takes:
The first “freedom” truck convoy, one originating in Scranton, PA (Not an accident, right?), is slated to arrive in the Washington D.C. area this afternoon to protest pandemic control measures (how to flip Virginia back in the Democratic column, right?) According to NPR, they will be met by 700 National Guardsman requested by the District of Columbia government and the U.S. Capitol Police. Memories of J6 violence “have fueled a heightened sense of anxiety and speculation over the coming convoys,” the Associated Press reports, but D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser “said she wasn't yet warning residents to avoid the Capitol area or the National Mall.” (February 23, 2022)
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has declared that gender-affirming health care for children is child abuse, telegraphing an even more aggressive posture towards trans kids than the state has taken thus far. Paxton is running for re-election this year, which may have something to do with why he is going after trans kids—again. But, as Melissa Gira-Grant reports at The New Republic, his new assault on trans kids is part of a broader Christian right agenda to elevate “parents’ rights” over all aspects of a child’s life. (February 23, 2022)
The Idaho State Legislature, in all its wisdom, has just passed a bill criminalizing employer vaccine mandates. “If passed into law, it would become a misdemeanor for employers to refuse to hire or to fire someone for not being vaccinated for a coronavirus or any vaccine made available under an emergency use authorization,” Clark Corbin of the Idaho Capitol Sun reports. It would also become illegal to refuse to hire or to fire an employee for refusing to disclose their vaccination status. Each violation of the bill would be punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.” (February 22, 2022)