If Russia can create fake ‘Black Lives Matter’ accounts, who will next?

By Anne Applebaum, washingtonpost.com

Send a spy to spread rumors on the other side of the front line. Drop leaflets into enemy territory. Debilitate the enemy using its own people, in their own language — Lord Haw-Haw, Tokyo Rose — over their own radios. The tactics of demoralization are as old as politics — as old as war — and now we know what the second-decade-of-the-21st-century version looks like, too.

Pushed by a congressional investigation, Facebook has finally turned over some 3,000 advertisements and links to pages created and paid for by Russian trolls. Among them was “Secured Borders,” a fake, Kremlin-backed “organization” that appeared to be based in Idaho. It pumped out messages about immigrant “scum” and attracted 133,000 followers before it was shut down. In August 2016, its Russian backers actually promoted a rally in Twin Falls to protest an alleged “upsurge of violence against American citizens.”

Read more at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/if-russia-can-create-fake-black-lives-matter-accounts-who-will-next/2017/10/15/ffb2e01e-af79-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.d29e89053c78

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