Don’t worry. This is a much shorter read than the last article. We promise.

The original animus for our ‘Inauthentic Selves’ article was to figure out who exactly was funding the transgender movement. To put it mildly, the current discourse around transgenderism in the LGBT movement is a raging dumpster fire. We wanted to find out why that was. We found a movement that promoted fake news, bad science, and refused any forms of criticism, with a lot of establishment money behind it, including far-right Republicans.

We still had a lot of questions — roughly ten thousand words were cut from the original article to make it more readable online. One of these questions was if Russian trolls had influenced the discourse in any way. We decided to expand this out to the general left to see if the general toxicity, particularly online had been encouraged in anyway by Putin’s buddies.

To answer this question, we used the NBC and 538 databases of tweets made by Russian-linked accounts to search for attempts to influence the discourse on LGBT issues. The list of Russian-linked accounts was released by the House Democrats Intelligence Committee, you can read a copy here. We also used the releases by the House Democrats Intelligence Committee of images and Facebook accounts used by Kremlin-linked accounts. We also investigated the list Tumblr released in March Kremlin-linked Tumblr accounts that had been suspended. Little writing has gone into how the Russians hijacked the left-side of the argument at all, so we aim to help correct some of that deficit.

The answer to our question was yes: the Russians did try and influence that discourse. How?

Firstly, let’s explain Russian trolls. It’s fairly well known that the Russian Internet Research Agency, a troll farm linked to the Russian government, hijacked the social media around the 2016 Presidential elections, and abroad in the UK during their Brexit Referendum. But they didn’t just target elections. New research has emerged detailing how Russian trolls tried influencing the vaccine ‘debate’ that has left the West with a dedicated group of ‘anti-vaxxers’ and rising rates of easily preventable diseases, often citing a discredited study by Andrew Wakefield, that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Such trolling around the vaccine debate included spreading a fake story that three quarters of a Mexican village’s children had gone to hospital after receiving a vaccination. This involvement isn’t a conspiracy theory — it’s being investigated by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who indicted twelve Russian agents on hacking charges regarding the 2016 presidential election. An FBI press release describes the ‘mobilization of social media bots and trolls to spread disinformation and amplify Russian messaging’.

Satisfied we aren’t talking horseshit? Good. So how did Russian trolls influence left discourse?

Most importantly of all, I feel like anyone who participates in these discussions should be worried that foreign intelligence agents sought to influence these discussions, whether you are left wing, right wing, or a chicken wing.

LET US BEGIN WITH FACEBOOK

Quite a bit has been written about Facebook being trolled by Russia already, and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, was compelled to testify before Congress on the issue. Facebook was used by Russian-linked companies like Cambridge Analytica to micro-target people after scraping information from their personal Facebook accounts to build a psychological profile. They were then ‘micro-targeted’ with what are called ‘Sponsored Stories’ on Facebook, or advertising. You can read excellent reporting on the issue in The Guardian here.

What we’re looking at is, however, ads directly placed by Russian agents, released by the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

Let’s start with the account called ‘LGBT United’, shall we?

“California Attorney General ruled against the execution of gays and lesbians A California judge argued against a proposed initiative about the execution of gay and lesbian people, naming this measure “unconstitutional on its face.” The Sodomite Suppression Act proposes that “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” The act also will outlaw advocating gay rights to minors. California Attorney General Kamala Harris claimed that the proposal was unconstitutional and it had no place in civil society. The proposal reminds me the Inquisition. We live in a free and tolerate country! So even talks about such an initiative should be immediately stopped. Where is our President? Stop considering gays as naughty and not like all the others. We are all equal. Despite all the arguments that the opponents of gay marriage call, polls show that the majority of Americans stand for gay marriages. Why not to hold a referendum as the Irish did? Why we should listen to conservatives?”

This was the caption to the following image:

Some posts appear to mirror the well-documented right-wing trolling attempting to stoke racial divisions, by stoking divisions between the LGBT community and religious groups, such as the following ad

“Hate does seem to be a Christian ideal….

3rd federal court case seeks to block Mississippi LGBT law

A diverse group of gay, straight and transgender people have filed the third

federal court challenge seeking to block a Mississippi law that lets clerks cite

religious beliefs to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to samesex

couples. The lawsuit filed Friday says House Bill 1523 violates the

separation of church and state by favoring “certain narrow religious beliefs

that condemn same-sex couples who get married, condemn unmarried

people who have sexual relations and condemn transgender people.”

How many times do we have to do this? Your BELIEFS don’t supersede my

RIGHTS!! You just want to use your religious beliefs as an excuse to

deliberately harm others and have no consequences for doing so! You can

believe whatever you wish, but you cannot use those beliefs to deny me my

rights!”

Another rambling post was this:

“ NOM’S LAST ATTEMPT TO BAN SAME SEX MARRIAGE National Organization for Marriage is asking all of the GOP presidential candidates to sign an anti-equality pledge. Let’s take a look at just how crazy this pledge gets. That’s just nuts! They want candidates to support a constitutional amendment to ban marriage nationwide. This will never happen. For the last decade public support for marriage equality has gone from 35 percent to 55 percent! But they don’t stop there. NOM also wants candidates to “work to overturn any Supreme Court decision” in favor of the freedom to marry. NOM wants the president to only nominate judges who will uphold marriage bans, but at this point, legal consensus so strongly supports marriage equality that supporting marriage bans is a sign that person isn’t qualified to be a judge. Also, NOM wants the candidates to weaken civil rights laws, creating loopholes to let companies and citizens to discriminate if they cite a religious justification. That could actually happen — and it already has in some states — so it’s a huge concern. And fifth, they want the Department of Justice to investigate harassment against people who oppose marriage equality. Sure, gays and lesbians are harassed every day, fired, kicked out of their homes and schools, separated from their families, but I really hope soon there’ll be NO MORE of it! There’s a part of me that feels very sad for NOM’s fanatics. When they finally kick the bucket, they’ll be dealing with the reality (whether they openly face it or not) that their Life’s Work has amounted to NOTHING. Nothing they worked for made anyone’s life better. At all. They didn’t win, and they wasted their lives fighting against the inevitable. And when they’re dead and gone, they’ll be remembered only as footnotes in shameful history — or more likely they’ll be forgotten completely. #LGBT #NOM #SameSexMarriage #Marriage #SCOTUS #equality

LGBT United reached into the real world and promoted a GoFundMe for Rodney Sumter, a victim of the Orlando shooting:

HELP RODNEY SUMTER RECOVER Rodney Sumter Jr., 27 miraculously survived Pulse nightclub Orlando shooting, being shot three times. But he’s still in a lot of pain. Rodney is still recovering at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Lenita Sumter, his mother, said he is in intense pain and that it has been difficult for him to get comfortable and is needing sedation and heavy pain medications. Rodney was shot in the arms and back. He had surgery Monday to repair his arms, but shrapnel was left in his back. He had another surgery Wednesday night, family said. Doctors said Rodney is running a fever and suspect he may have an infection. Please help Rodney Sumter to recover! https://www.gofundme.com/294czwct

Another post, given as text only (the screenshot was redacted in the release), tries to organize a counter-picket to the Westboro Baptist Church:

“Well, as you know, schools are places of learning and also miniature societies. The school climate has a direct impact on both how well students learn and how well they interact with other people. More and more teachers today understand the importance of socialization and try to make their classes more friendly where each student feels involved. But despite these efforts, students who are LGBT continue to face a harsh reality…. May 24,25 Westboro baptist church is planning to stand against tolerance in education system near LGBT-friendly Lawrence High School. They want to “remind this nation that the parents, students, teachers and staff of the high schools celebrate disobedience to God’s law.” They are just inciting hate riots and violence! Their right to protest infringes on others rights! Personally have had enough of those assholes. Someone should picket them (in return)!! Any volunteers willing to help me drown out their voices of hatred? Please, DM us for more information and we can stop their nonsense — to put them on the right way!”

Other posts celebrated ‘Radical Queers’

“THE COLORFUL ACTIVISM OF NEW YORK’S MOST RADICAL QUEERS These wonderful people creating a powerful community through progressive politics, community gardens, wild parties, and colorful performance. Call them the radical queers, and know that the term is flexible; and evolving. From the local gardens of the East Village to Bushwick warehouses; a new wave of New York artists; thinkers and activists young and old. They are banding together to question and redefine what it means to be queer today. It’s beauty; perfection; freedom, and of course lots and lots of LOVE! #Igbtq #queer #NYC #art #glamour #perfection”

A key theme is stoking division, as we can see on IRA-linked page ‘Born Liberal’:

Born Liberal seems to specialize in using left identity politic to sow division: here it is stoking up anti-Clinton sentiment.

“If you ask me about the Clinton Foundation, do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, many governments which are dictatorships… yeah, I do,” Sanders said in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN. So, Bernie has the point. I appreciate the way he maintains his independent opinion in spite of all the pressure that is on him as the “second Democratic option”. Because that is a fact. The Clinton Foundation is nothing more than an “organized crime” at it’s finest, in which we are investing our taxpayers’ money! Hillary has no problem in accepting foreign money from the countries, like Saudi Arabia. Hillary has no remorse about taking money from countries that abuse the rights of women, while she has always had her own alleged feminist stance. She does not refrain from receiving money from the countries that prosecute, torture and execute LGBT on the legal basis, although Hillary has always been a “defender” of the minorities. So, why are so many people going to vote for her? That’s a secret for me. What’s your opinion on that point?

LGBT United created fake events for readers to picket the Westboro Baptist Church.

LGBT United started several fake events. Here’s another.

“Is here anyone from Glendale, Arizona? WE NEED YOU! HELP US to protect the memory of the victims of hate! Last week on Friday, May Kieu and Dorothy Dutiel, both 15-year-old sophomores at Independence High School in Glendale, each died of a single gunshot wound about 8 a.m. just outside the school’s cafeteria. The girls were a couple. Police are calling it a murder-suicide. This heart-breaking incident is all over the news and the comments are disgusting! Homophobes use the incident as a proof that homo love is a sin! This is just ignorance! Two children died and people are grieving! How would you feel if strangers came to your neighborhood or your school to push their agenda? These assholes are just aggravating the situation and traumatizing other KIDS! If you live in Glendale, Arizona, please, come and support us today: 6602 N 75th Ave, Glendale, AZ 85303. LET’S STAND UP AGAINST BIGOTRY! If you are not from Glendale, please, SHARE this post! Let people know we support them! P.S. please, send us photos from the event.”

The Russians don’t stop in trying to cause divides between groups of people — here is LGBT United bashing the Catholic Church:

Vatican Says Transgender Man Cannot Become A Godparent The Vatican has rejected a request by a transgender man in Spain to become a godparent, ruling that his sexual identity means he is incapable of carrying out the task. Alex Salinas was asked by his family to be godfather to his nephew, but the bishop of his local diocese on Spain’s southern coast questioned his gender identity. Salinas was born a woman but has since undergone hormone therapy and has a male ID in Spain. He is now waiting for gender surgery. Bishop Rafael Zornoza Boy of Cadiz and Ceuta rejected the family’s request to name Salinas as a godfather. Then, after a media storm, the bishop wrote to the Vatican for advice. Zornoza published the Vatican’s reasoning for rejecting Salinas’ wish. It said transsexual behavior “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one’s own sexuality.” The pope supported gays, but now for some reason the transman wasn’t allowed to be a godfather in Spain, an entirely Catholic, but at the same time, the most friendly country towards the LGBT community. Anyway it’s just another superstition of Church. Funny.

LGBT United also railed against the transgender military service issue, with a side-order of bashing Trump opponent Mike Huckabee.

ABOUT 15,500 TRANS PEOPLE ACTIVELY SERVE IN THE MILITARY. It’s estimated that over 134000 American veterans are transgender. Not long ago these people were forced into hiding. As a result, many were unable treatments for their gender dysphoria, a state of emotional distress caused by how the gender someone was designated at birth conflicts with their gender identity. Coming out as transgender requires telling everyone in your life about you and enduring the consequences which often means the loss of family, lifelong friends, your job, and being the subject of ridicule, discrimination, and often violence. No one makes the decision easily and no one transitions unless they have to do so. Transphobic slur of stupid politicians like GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee seeking to tremendous efforts of transgender community who are still struggle for equal rights. We know how easily bigots and fools who has power are able to reverse progressive changes for their own benefit. We can’t let that happen! These people know what it means to be Transgender and know what it is to serve in our Armed Forces. We respect their opinion in both of these areas, especially over those of Governor Huckabee who has not experienced or accomplished either. #transgender #military #equality #transphobia #mikehackabee

LGBT United also tried stoking anger against the state and law enforcement, using Chelsea Manning as an example:

“THE US ARMY HAS PUNISHED CHELSEA MANNING for possessing books and magazines having to do with LGBTQ and political issues. They accused her of misconduct for having an expired tube of toothpaste and for brushing food off the table. They placed her in a solitary confinement — a torturous, extremely distressing experience. The whole cruel, corrupted system is against her. It looks like military prosecutors view Manning in a way that means she must be “broken” or forcefully assimilated because of her crime — first, because she exposed the government’s crimes, and government really doesn’t like it, and second, because she’s trans. Their goal is to see that Manning is as dehumanized as possible, but it’s clear who the real non-humans are. Someone has gone to great lengths to paint Chelsea as a deceitful and psychotic character. But how many of those punishing Manning should themselves be in a psych ward? Transphobia is a one ugly thing. So sad when heroes like Chelsea Manning forced to suffer, to undergo injustice and humiliation, even though they had been through enough already! Free Chelsea Manning you sadistic creeps!! #ChelseaManning #FreeChelsea #transphobia #LGBT #transgender #PrideHeroes”

LGBT United also didn’t miss an opportunity to talk about Caitlyn Jenner’s controversial ESPY award:

CAITLYN JENNER: “TRANS PEOPLE DESERVE YOUR RESPECT’ Caitlyn accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2015 ESPY Awards. Caitlyn is amazing! It was her first public appearance since announcing her decision to transition. And her speech brought me to tears. It was very touching and thought provoking. She spoke about her own personal experience so far as a transgender woman. But she also dedicated a significant percentage of her speech to a thoughtful and touching discussion of the vast number of issues facing the larger transgender community. In her past life Caitlyn was known worldwide as a sports hero. Today she is an American hero of a great courage. Because it takes courage to stand up and do everything she has done and is doing. #CaitlynJenner #transgender #equality #ESPY

As well as pushing Caitlyn Jenner as an ‘American Hero’:

“The Journey Begins: Caitlyn Jenner launches weekly blog on LGBT issues The most fabulous trans icon Caitlyn Jenner is a blogger now. She posted the first letter in what is to be a series of personal posts for WhoSay Monday, titled, “The Journey Begins.” The blog will be dedicated to become a voice for the LGBT community. “Up until now, I have totally isolated myself from the transgender community so I have a lot of catching up to do,” Jenner says. “I feel such a responsibility to this courageous group to try to get it right and tell all sides of the story. To me, that’s always the biggest question: am I doing it right?” Finally our community got someone who will represent our position and actually help people struggling with being transgendered, like helping them with surgery, medications and etc. Caitlyn is a real new American hero!”

Another post seems to be encouraging suicide contagion:

On the national level, the suicide risk for gay, lesbian and transgender youth is far higher than it is among straight youth. LGBTQ youth actively plan suicide at a 2.6 times greater rate than straight youth. LGBTQ youth attempt suicide at a 4.0 times greater rate than straight youth. LGBTQ youth require medical attention for suicide attempts at a 5.1 times greater rate than straight youth. Behind these numbers are countless lives lost. This has to stop! Discuss problems together — but only at the initiative of the youth. Be caring and supportive discussing these issues. Don’t sweep the problems “under the carpet”! #LGBTQ #youth #suicide #acceptance

LGBT United spreads false information about LGBT people having ‘full civil rights’ (spoiler alert, they don’t), as well as sowing further division:

We have a method in place called, don’t vote these morons into office! Passing the “First Amendment Defense Act” introduced by Sen. Mike Lee has been anti-LGBT conservatives’ top priority since the Supreme Court brought marriage equality to all 50 states. It’s part of the National Organization for Marriage’s post-Obergefell plan and Republican presidential candidate pledge, and the Family Research Council mentions it almost daily. Lee joined NPR this week to defend the bill, basically admitting that all it does is enable anti-gay discrimination. Lee framed his concern as one about the government discriminating against religious institutions — for discriminating against people in same-sex marriages. It’s the latter he wants to allow by ensuring that the government never penalizes any religious institution that refuses to recognize a same-sex couple’s marriage, or employ them, house them, or serve them. Mr. Lee, you are ridiculous! You’re just going to have to get over that fact that we have full Federal civil rights now. Or don’t! We will go on happily living our lives while you froth at the mouth and throw a fit because we’re being treated equally under the law!’

It didn’t stop at LGBT issues though. The Russians also used the police issue on Facebook.

For example, while a screenshot isn’t included, here is a description of an ad run by Russian trolls through their page ‘Black Matters’.

Do you notice the targeting? The date? This was a micro-targeted ad run targeted at Ferguson and the surrounding area. If you don’t know why this is significant, do you remember the Ferguson riots after the killing of Michael Brown? That’s how complex this was. The ad text tells the reader that the police dehumanize black people, because it is simply their function.

Black Matters also micro-targeted Ferguson in ads asking people to like the page:

Russia painted the police as inherently white supremacist, and the dream of racial equality as dead, while trying to incite a riot, micro-targeted at Ferguson, Missouri.

Please note that the above image and the ones below, have been redacted so I do not have a screenshot. Another post by ‘Black Matters’ that micro-targeted Ferguson was a post about Rachel Dolezal, who claimed to be ‘transracial’. Here we can see the micro-targeting of Cleveland, which was reeling from the murder of Tamir Rice.

Black Matters continued micro-targeting Ferguson and Cleveland:

And it kept going and going and going:

Another page, Don’t Shoot, targeted the general United States with material like this:

Don’t Shoot tried portraying the police as ‘pigs’ and dehumanized law enforcement.

Another ad was for the website ‘BlackMatters.us’ which was a Russian troll website.

Or this page, called ‘Williams&Kalvin’

The most prominent troll that was linked to Russia was probably the ‘Blacktivist’ account. Here is some of their material:

An advertisement that recruited likes.

Another one.

One ad requested people to change their Facebook profile frame. Oh, and send Russia your picture.

This is the kind of material it often shared:

Hey, are you worried yet?

TUMBLR TOO

Russia didn’t really stop at Facebook and Twitter. This kind of behavior was all over Tumblr. Tumblr is a ‘micro-blogging’ platform dominated by fandom blogs and leftist discussion.

On March the 23rd, after a BuzzFeed investigation a month prior, Tumblr released a list of trolls that ‘were engaged in state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaigns’

Tumblr’s full statement:

Democracy requires transparency and an informed electorate, and we take our responsibilities very seriously. We aggressively monitor Tumblr for signs of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, and take the appropriate action when we uncover anything. As part of our commitment to transparency we will be maintaining this list of usernames that we have determined were engaged in state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaigns.

Tumblr then listed eighty-four accounts that had been suspended. Tumblr left the evidence up in the form of ‘reblogs’, which is when one Tumblr user re-posts another Tumblr users post on their ‘dashboard’.

So, of course, I went to take a look. This involved looking at archived versions of the troll’s pages, but I mostly looked at the reblogs of the content that the IRA-linked trolls posted. I painstaking crawled through those reblogs

What the content of the blogs displays is a clear intent to drive Tumblr’s leftists to an extreme.

Let’s start. Here’s a post by ‘gogomrbrown’ that urges Bernie Sanders supporters to ‘eat the rich’.

Other content is more disturbing. The blog ‘gentlexnoise’ which posted avant-garde gifs, tells readers that ‘reality is a product of propaganda’

That’s rather ironic, isn’t it? ‘Gentlexnoise’ also posted anti-police propaganda.

‘Info-mix’ was a Tumblr blog that posted material aiming to depress its audience

‘Lagonegirl’ was one of the most prolific Tumblr accounts used by the IRA, and it sought to divide the left by targeting ‘white feminists’.

Here ‘lagonegirl’ is again, targeting ‘white people’ in an attempt to divide the left movement

‘Lagonegirl’ also used the deaths of black transgender women to spread disinformation and propaganda about the transgender movement, including the ‘trans murder myth’, which we debunked in our prior article.

‘Lagonegirl’ was probably one of the most popular IRA trolls with their posts reaching hundreds of thousands of notes. Here ‘Lagonegirl’ criticizes the inclusion of Kevin Costner’s character in Hidden Figures.

‘Lagonegirl’ specialized in targeting white people.

And yes, there’s more

‘Lagonegirl’ also posted material glorifying the Black Panther Party, reblogging this from fellow IRA trolls ‘4mysquad’ and ‘sumchckn’, and urged readers to distrust law enforcement organizations.

‘Lagonegirl’ began promoting violence in 2017, including ‘Nazi Punching’

‘Funkycodex’ targeted film representation and people calling for ‘diversity’, posting this, which was reblogged nearly 10,000 times.

‘Funkycodex’ also railed against the ‘bogus capitalist process’, quoting Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth.

‘Funkycodex’ like other IRA trolls, also tried fomenting distrust in law enforcement organizations:

‘Funkycodex’ outright urged readers to question the rule-of-law.

‘Funkycodex’ was also an anti-Clinton troll, posting lengthy rants on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, urging Democrats who may have supported Bernie to not vote for Clinton in the general election, and about a rapist cop who raped an intern, urging readers to realize that ‘some people who earned their badges can do any kind of felony’, despite the fact the cop in the linked article was punished.

Many of these Tumblr blogs promoted Bernie Sanders. So too, did ‘funkycodex’. ‘Funkycodex’ even posted fake news about Henry Kissinger, falsely attributing a quote about depopulation to him.

‘Bastardpigeon’ also sought to get users to distrust law enforcement.

‘Bastardpigeon’ also encouraged readers to see ‘Blue Lives Matters’ activists (themselves given support by Russian trolls), as a cult:

‘Bastardpigeon’ also posted material telling readers that police brutality was simply part of being a police officer:

Another very popular blog was ‘bellaxiao’, which also posted pro-Bernie material:

At one point, ‘Bellaxiao’ scored Wil Wheaton on their reblog chain, giving their posts hundreds of thousands of reblogs.

An account called ‘blacknproud’ even tried influencing the Beyhive.

A user amusingly named ‘feelmydragonballs’ even noted that the Russian campaign was effective:

User ‘massmedear’ was also an IRA troll and tried dividing black and white women on the left:

Unlike the rest, ‘thetrippytrip’ focused on targeting the section of Tumblr that identifies as ‘LGBTQI’ (and knowing Tumblr, dozens of other letters). ‘Thetrippytrip’ also posted feminist material.

from the Tumblr of ‘auntiewanda’

‘Thetrippytrip’ even rails against the ‘cisgendered’:

‘Thetrippytrip’ even posted about ‘bathroom bills’

Even innocuous things were actually posted by Russian trolls:

‘Thetrippytrip’ did enjoy fear mongering through:

Or, yes, propagating false information and further distrust of law enforcement, (Storme DeLarverie threw the first punch, and neither Marsha Johnson or Sylvia Riveria, incorrectly lionized for that brick, were there):

‘Thetrippytrip’ even posted about capitalism.

Or further disinformation, such as ‘no instances’ of trans people attacking others in bathrooms (which is categorically false, see our prior article)

And to top it off, material like this was also posted by ‘thetrippytrip’. That’s a hundred thousand comments, by the way.

‘Thetrippytrip’ also pushed the ‘representation in media’ angle:

‘Thetrippytrip’ wasn’t the only Russian troll posting this kind of stuff: ‘the-real-eye-to-see’, also promoted the division (and the raging ‘flag debate’) between people of color and white people in the LGBTQI community:

Here, like the attacks made on religious communities by ‘LGBT United’, more disinformation is spread:

A pro-Bernie Russia troll, ‘this-truly-brutal-world’ also tried pivoting Bernie voters to Trump:

Last, but not least, here’s ‘swagintherain’ telling readers to not trust ‘the white media’.

Who should the 8,600 commenters on this post trust then? Russian trolls?

Maybe Russian trolls on Twitter?

TWITS ON TWITTER

As aforementioned, we also looked through the Tweet datasets provided by 538 and NBC. You can find NBC’s coverage on their dataset here, and we used this database of 538’s 3 million Tweets. If you want information on how Clemson gathered the Tweets for 538, you can find that here. These tweets are confirmed to be from Kremlin-linked accounts from the Internet Research Agency, as revealed in this exhibit of the House Intelligence Committee.

That said, let’s get into showing you what was tweeted about. I was unable to find many screenshots, so I have included links to the tweets in the dataset for your reading pleasure.

LGBT United, who’s Facebook and Instagram presence is discussed above, also had a Twitter presence.

A screenshot of LGBT United’s Twitter page.

LGBT United continued its anti-religion crusade on Twitter, such as in these Tweets linked below.

Or with tweets like this:

LGBT United even understood some nuances:

(notice the s?)

And it even pushed the trans murder myth:

And pushed people to stay away from Clinton:

And repeatedly pushed Bernie:

One thing Russian trolls even tweeted about was linking the ‘queer movement’ to Black Lives Matter. This was posted by ‘ ALECMOOOOODY’:

This tweet was reposted by other Russian Twitter accounts — either by posting the same message, or through retweets. This wasn’t the only attempt to link ‘queer’ to racial politics by Russians, as this was retweeted by IRA troll ‘BIGBOYSNEED’:

“ RT @telesurenglish: ‘In NYC Afro-Latinos and queer youth protest Minneapolis terror.’ #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/Duk2WLF6wx #racism htt…”

Or this one by ‘BLEEPTHEPOLICE’

“BLACK, QUEER AND TRANS LIVES MATTER Pride Toronto, 2017 https://t.co/nY3BvnGTYo”

Russia targeted the Orlando shooting on Twitter too, with this tweet by ‘ CRYSTAL1JOHNSON’:

‘LAGONEHOE’ posted about the show #DearWhitePeople:

There were even tweets tweeting about focusing on ‘Black Muslim femmes’ by ‘ANTONHAYHAY’ for May Day:

Some accounts posed as news outlets, ‘ NJ_BLACKNEWS’:

Russian trolls often tweeted to support particular activists, such as Janet Mock, like in this retweet by ‘ BLMSOLDIER 418’

“ “It’s okay to be trans-ignorant. It’s never okay to be transphobic.” — @ janetmock # DaytimeDivas”

Pushing disinformation about trans murder rates (which are far lower than the rest of the population by several orders of magnitude), was also thing to do, as we see in this retweet by ‘ LACHRISTIE’

The topics were diverse on Twitter, and included tweets about ‘transkids’, e.g. this one by LGBT United.

Russia also used the hashtag #ProtectTransKids. For example, this retweet by ‘ BRENTMCCLURE275’ tries dividing the left:

Dividing the left was a fun tactic, as we see in this tweet by ‘ BIGSEANBEAST’, and which was also tweeted or retweeted by a number of Russian trolls.

And hysteria about the Trump Presidency courtesy of this retweet by ‘ CAMOSASEKO’:

And this retweet by ‘ ALECMOOOOODY’

Even the common ‘trans women are women’ line received a boost from Russian trolls, in a retweet by ‘

BRENTMCCLURE275’:

Russian trolls were well aware of even the bi vs pan debate, because Russian troll ‘ ILOVESARAHRICH’ tweeted about it:

Russian trolls even retweeted about ‘TERFs’:

Was retweeted by ‘ HUNTERODDDDOM’

Was tweeted by “ RAMONASNAILS”

And

was tweeted by “ WATCHMEWALKIN 2747”

And to top it off: Russia knows your gender is valid! Thanks for retweeting this,‘ IMISSOBAMA’

If you’re wondering, Russian then harnessed some of this discourse to be used for its right-wing trolling operation, like in this tweet by ‘ CHESPLAYSCHESS’:

And their right wing trolls weaponized it, like in this tweet from ‘JENN_ABRAMS’

And Russia even used it for its right-wing trolls to tweet about video games:

After that tweet from ‘ FAMEONYOUBITCH’, should we look at how Russians understood Leftbook terms like ‘All Cops Are Bastards’ (ACAB), like this tweet from ‘ 4MYSQUAD’ (which, if you’ve been paying attention, was also a profile on Tumblr). All of these were tweeted by that account:

And combining some of the Left’s causes in one handy tweet!

There are 57,300 more tweets on the police issue, from fake accounts, tweeting from extremes on both the left and the right.

Beyond acts like this, Russian operatives also ran ‘fake’ news outlet accounts that often-reposted content from genuine news outlets and what the Clemson researchers’ term ‘Hashtag gamers’, who would generate or post on hashtags like #RuinAVideoGame or #ReplaceAWordInAMovieTitle, and then occasionally post politically charged material under those hashtags. Why? Who knows!

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

What to do with all this information, all these images, all this disinformation?

We are going to answer this question: what did the Russians intend with this?

Russia has been linked to multiple Neo-Nazi and pro-Trump groups across the nation and in Europe. This recent Atlantic article sums up the phenomenon:

After the Kremlin accelerated its covert war against Western democracies in the aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s intelligence services dramatically ramped up their “active measures” (in Russian intelligence jargon, aktivnyye meropriyatiya or “active measures” refers to a broad range of covert influence and/or subversive operations) using radical-right and fringe groups. These groups serve as the perfect unwitting agents to accomplish Moscow’s twin goals of destabilizing Western societies and co-opting Western business and political elites. By forging ties to radical groups on the far right, and sometimes on the far left, the Kremlin has developed convenient local surrogates that can amplify its talking points, even as Russian trolls reinforce the divisive narratives such groups spread online. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the partnerships between the Kremlin and these groups are always marriages of convenience. Many are genuine partnerships based on a shared aversion to liberal democracy and a desire to undermine it. The Kremlin’s recruitment of skinheads, biker gangs, soccer hooligans, and street fighters does not usually appear geared toward the armed overthrow of democratic governments. Far more often, the recruitment, indoctrination, and manipulation of fringe right-wing groups seems aimed at sowing political chaos in Western democracies and subverting or weakening democratic institutions. But occasionally, as in Ukraine, these proxies can operate directly in support of Kremlin operations.

So, was this all an active measure?

Yes.

This propaganda — let us call it what it is — sought to build resentment towards other groups, divide the left along identity politics lines, create discourse that was toxic, incite violence and create a distrust of the state and its mechanisms, such as the police.

How many of you would have shared ‘punch a Nazi’ memes if you knew that the meme you were reblogging about punching Nazis was designed to incite violence by Russian intelligence sources? It is a small leap from ‘punch Nazis’ to applying that violence to anyone you disagree with. Russian sources sought to legitimize violent political action on the left. ‘Punch a Nazi’ glorified violent anti-fascists on the left and lionized them as fighting evil. Once such violent political action is legitimized, it is a short leap to treat other political opponents in the same way: such as the ‘Punch TERFs’ t-shirts that emerged over the course of the year at Pride Festivals and the violence directed at ‘TERFs’. ‘Die Cis Scum’ has gone from a meme to a threat. Legitimizing this political violence means there is ample justification for engaging with right-wing groups, who are also encouraged by the Kremlin and have had violence legitimized for them, too.

What stands out to me the most is that much of the content seems disturbing and designed to upset the viewer. This was from things as simple as discouraging the often college-bound or college-attending users of Tumblr by telling them that college was expensive, and they’d be saddled with a ‘shitty waitressing job’ anyway, to posting ‘avant-garde’, postmodernist style gifs asking the viewer to question reality. What is the purpose of this? Is it to make the viewer even more vulnerable to active measures? Is it to engender a sense of hopelessness in two extremely divided sides?

The purpose of all of this is to create chaos, to divide. Hence, we see the attempts to divide people by which particular groups they belong too. We see this with the Tumblr accounts that primarily focused on black politics — look at how much they blame white women and ‘white feminism’, both of whom have become acceptable cover on the left to be misogynist. Or trying to incite violence by micro-targeting messages at areas like Ferguson and Cleveland. Another example is LGBT United trying to turn LGBT people against the religious, repeatedly, by using stories of violence, linking all anti-LGBT prejudice to religion, and even organizing fake events to picket extremists such as the Westboro Baptist Church. The goal is to divide and make the left ineffective as a group, as it becomes consumed by infighting by various identity factions.

No worse was this attempt to divide than the attacks on Hillary Clinton. Many accounts built up a fandom supporting Bernie Sanders — and with him out of the race, many of those accounts tried encouraging people either to not vote, or to vote Trump, as Hillary Clinton was literally the devil. This included disinformation, campaigns like #BernieOrBust, and false quotes of political figures such as Henry Kissinger, which were widely shared on social media platforms. Hell, some of us shared some of the pro-Bernie memes that created. We personally felt a bit dirty — I’m unsure of how you felt. By dividing the left on this issue, and into various identity politics factions, Trump’s political path to the White House was made easier.

The other objective was to make the left distrust authority, the media, and especially the state and its mechanisms — such as the police.

The vast majority of the content that I sifted through was anti-police. This included assertions that policing, by its nature, involved violence and brutality, that police were immune to the law and could what they liked, and most of all, Black Lives Matter. The Russians took the very legitimate cause of black people being disproportionately, and often unjustifiably shot by predominantly white police officers, weaponized it, and used the movement around that cause to cause nothing but toxicity and division. It weaponized it to the point it was micro-targeting areas that had suffered murders of unarmed black men by police. It encouraged the view that the country’s problems are fundamentally irreparable, with comments about subjects such as ‘late capitalism’, and that Clinton could not fix any issues, therefore one should not vote for her. The goal seemed to be to create apathy and distrust in the government and its institutions.

And when you can’t trust mainstream news, who are you going to turn to?

Popular, left-wing Tumblr blogs, of unknown provenance, who could well be agents of a foreign power?

Do you see how that benefits a foreign power? A group of people increasingly pushed to a political extreme, with distrust in the rule-of-law and the government that provides it? It creates chaos and instability. Now imagine two sides to a debate that distrust the rule-of-law and the government that provides it, with political views that oppose each other on every issue, and a worldview that paints the other side as fundamental, almost existential enemies to your very identity, your group. That is the state of our current political discourse — and it is one the Russians have encouraged, if not outright created. Ultimately, what all of this does is creates a fractured, divided, political discourse that is incapable of compromise. A completely polarized nation cannot achieve anything, or worse, falls to political instability and even violent conflict — like the various fascist vs anti-fascist protests, where the Russians themselves encouraged violence and ‘Punch A Nazi’. Police are monsters, unable to reform and always brutalizing. ‘White people’ need to sit down. Black Lives Matter wants to overthrow the state and kill police. ‘TERFs want to kill all trans people’.

All of those statements are falsehood — but they what these two extremes believe! And they are statements that were encouraged by foreign intelligence services.

However, the two sides are more like fun-house mirror versions of one another. Here’s a crucial thing to remember about mirrors — they reflect back on each other. If you watch a reflection of yourself throwing a ball, you might be throwing it left-handed rather than right handed, or completely distorted in the case of a fun-house mirror, but you’re still throwing the ball. It just looks different. More and more, political extremists on either side of the debate are beginning to resemble one another. This is known as ‘horseshoe theory’, where it is the centers of political thought that differ the most, and the closer one reaches a political extreme on either the right or left, the more the two sides begin to resemble one another.

Think about it — ‘cultural appropriation’ is not at all that different from demanding that the races are kept separate. Transgenderism has far more in common with gender roles and patriarchy than it does with feminism. The outcome of an anarchist shouting ‘fuck the police’ and the far-right insisting on the illegitimacy of the government and its organs, such as the police is exactly the same — a distrust of government organizations. While the principles and position are supposedly different, the outcome is the same: extremist attacks on police and the government. By making the extremes all too similar, and then pushing people to those extremes, a foreign power could achieve its goals no matter which side wins- the ultimate way to hedge one’s bets.

This material is simply what has been caught by law enforcement and released to the public. The rabbit hole is far, far deeper than can be covered in the scope of this article. It is highly likely that there are Russian trolls yet undiscovered, throwing Apples of Discord at every possible political situation in America. Democracy, the media, and the government have been subverted by a foreign power that wishes to divide us. It is fundamentally revolting. No matter where you stand politically, we should not let a foreign power create division. What if the great dividers of the left over the past few years — the contributors to a toxic, identity politics-based discourse, have been Russian psyops? ‘Queer’? ‘Cultural appropriation’? An ever-proliferating number of genders and pronouns? What about terms like ‘wypipo’? Perhaps even the very normalization of the concept of ‘privilege’, which blinds identity politics to class and group unifiers, is a Russian psyop! Is postmodernism a Russian psyop, a whole philosophical movement that has reduced the left to a collection of language obsessed navel-gazers?

We are living in a society that has abandoned the concept of ‘real’. Who is a real person, and who is a digital echo from Moscow? What’s a real man? What’s a real woman? What’s physical sex? What’s ‘real’ government? Who has a real identity? What are our real thoughts, our real ideology? What is reality? Is it based on material conditions, or linguistically constructed? To live a society that has decided to unmoor itself from what is real — to borrow a term from RuPaul - to abandon realness, while the Earth burns and we feed the fire is surreal. Instead, we now fight battles based on identity, insisting that those identities are our ‘authentic selves’, and that any possible disagreement with that identity, or political identity, is tantamount to violence and will be responded to in kind. To a dispassionate observer with a bad sense of humor, the situation is almost hilarious. But when the future is threatened by bands of politically charged idiots, weaponized by a foreign power, the situation stops being funny and starts being frustrating. If the Left wants to focus on these identity battles, which were encouraged by a foreign power to destabilize the left, then it is spent as an effective force. We have no way of getting out of our current crisis without unity, compromise, and for the Left: a return to a Marxism, to social democracy, based on material realities and class consciousness rather than the postmodernist perversion promulgated by neo-liberal identity politics.

If we want to solve climate change, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, or fight for the liberation of gays and lesbians, people of color, and women, we can’t do that if we’re divided and navel-gazing. But the current state of the left only encourages that division. It’s time to come together, as one, and repudiate Russian attempts to divide the left. We are stronger together.

I do not wish to blame every ill of the Left on Russia. But perhaps the question we need to be asking is where our thoughts and ideas ultimately come from, and who they could possibly serve, rather than living in blissful ignorance of the attempts of a hostile foreign power to subvert the entire Western left and push it to a violent extreme. Because if we don’t, the Left is going to end up completely ineffective at the most crucial time in history.

Sue Donym is a concerned citizen living in Northern California.

This article would not have been possible without collaborators. Thank you to those who researched, read, and edited this article.