So, despite Russian attempts at manipulating the population, Clinton lost because of the electoral college, an institution designed by the founders to ensure that minority land owners would always be able to override the popular will of the masses. Russia's political meddling is demonstrably far less effective than US meddling globally.

[–] natecheese@kbin.melroy.org -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So your point is that Russia does try to interfere in American and other foreign elections, they just aren't very good at it?

The electoral college makes it easier for foreign actors to influence American elections. Instead of convincing 3 million people to change their votes from Clinton to Trump in order to effectively influence the election, the entities spreading FUD only need to influence a few thousand in key swing states.

From your Brookings article:

The bottom line is that the Mueller report clearly shows that the Russian information operations were highly adaptive to the political context in the United States, followed a seemingly well-thought out strategic plan akin to a marketing or public relations campaign, involved direction from Russian intelligence, and were incredibly effective in infiltrating American media while influencing public debate around the 2016 election.

The article from the Nation is a poorly sourced opinion piece from someone who seems to have a very poor understanding of how the Russian intelligence works. The key "gotcha" in the article is that IRA is not a Russian government agency, rather a private company run by Russian individuals.

This isn't in contradiction to the Mueller report, it's common for Russian intelligence (and other intelligence agencies around the world, including CIA and other American intelligence agencies) to use private corporations to carry their agendas. As pointed out by the Brookings article Russian intelligence directed the actions of IRA, even though IRA and its employees weren't directly employed by the Russian Government on paper.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There is no evidence (that I've seen) that Russia targeted swing states and swing voters specifically as you seem to be claiming. That was the accusation levied against Trump and Cambridge Analytica and even that claim fell apart for lack of evidence.

The point is that you retorted "it's election interference all the way down" when replying to a comment about how the USA should not be involved in arbitrating elections in other countries. You then went further to say that election interference stops at countries like Russia because the elections are fake.

But A) Russian interference in the USA is not the same as USA interference in Venezuela. Evidence: Russia did not actually manage to effect the election, only some of the discourse around the fringes. Meanwhile, the USA backed a coup in Bolivia and literally sent trained mercenaries to support them, and prop up the fake president, Juan Guaido, in order to create the problems that they can then solve with violence, coups, and puppets. And B) the USA has been interfering in Russian politics for decades, including supporting Navalnhy with literal logistics, security, and financing.

So get your fake "oh you're so disrespectful in your communications" pearl clutching liberal bullshit outta here and stop trying to pivot your way into a safe space where your world view remains intact. If you want your worldview to be unchallenged, then stick to watching the tube and leave the discourse to people who are willing to be wrong for the sake of an accurate understanding of what's happening in the world.