Since the 2016 presidential election, a perception of acute paranoia on the part of the Democratic Party and its supporters has come into focus. This apparent affliction concerns alleged Russian interference in the American electoral process. Right-wing users of social media platforms have gotten used to being called Russian agents – or even Russian bots – merely for supporting President Donald Trump or for any criticism of Democrats or of left-wing ideology in general. Is this paranoia warranted, though, or is it an affectation? [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]…far less insidious than has been portrayed.[/perfectpullquote]
Though Russia has certainly meddled in the political system of the United States and of other countries, its influence is far less insidious than has been portrayed. The question is: Have Democratic political operatives themselves been inflating the issue and perhaps even fabricating much of the supposed intervention?
Democrat Election Meddling
The supposed Russian bots appeared again prior to the 2017 special election to fill a Senate seat in Alabama. Embattled Republican candidate Roy Moore abruptly acquired thousands of new followers on Twitter and the media was soon reporting that these mysterious new Moore supporters were fake Russian accounts. Leftists on Twitter had a field day, gleefully pointing out this latest alleged attempt by Russia to boost a Republican candidate in a vital election. Mother Jones, the ultra-progressive website that pushes left-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories, ran a story with the headline “Russian Propagandists Are Pushing for Roy Moore to Win.”
The effort also extended to Facebook, on which a fake “conservative” page was created to persuade Alabama conservatives not to back Moore.
As The Daily Caller reported, however, this attempt to use fake social media accounts to influence the Alabama Senate race was, in reality, a false flag operation, conducted by Democratic political operatives. The Daily Caller cites an internal report obtained by The New York Times. The whole effort was, of course, designed to help Democratic candidate Doug Jones – who went on to narrowly beat out Moore for the Senate seat – by making it appear that the Republican was being surreptitiously aided by a hostile, foreign power.
Roy Moore
“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” one Democratic operative says in the report. Those behind the operation painted it as an experiment, which was, The Times says, “designed to explore how certain online tactics worked, not to affect the election.”
Even assuming that this highly suspicious attempt to play down the true intentions of that “experiment” were true, it remains an issue of enormous concern and one that should be taken up by the Federal Election Commission and, perhaps, by the Justice Department. These Democratic operatives are claiming that they were not trying to affect the outcome of the election itself but merely learning to what extent such propaganda operations influence the voters. Those two things are the same, however. It is entirely ridiculous to claim “we were not trying to influence the election; we were simply trying to find out how much we could influence the voters.”
Putting aside, then, the nonsensical nature of such a claim and taking it at face value, it should be disturbing to everyone who cherishes the integrity of the electoral system that a group of political operatives decided to “experiment” with ways to influence American voters during such a prominent and consequential campaign.
Rethinking 2016 Russian Interference
In light of what happened in Alabama, one cannot help but wonder how much of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election was actually Russian in origin. From everything Congress and the American public has learned about the machinations of Democratic operatives – including those within the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – it is clear that portraying Donald Trump as some kind of Russian Manchurian candidate has been long in the works.
In his quest to uncover the extent of alleged Russian interference in the last presidential election, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted a number of Russian nationals and at least one Russian company. Conveniently for those who promote the conspiracy, none of those accused will ever see the inside of an American courtroom, and none will ever be compelled to testify or publicly reveal the true extent – or lack – of their involvement in election meddling.
How much of the whole Russia collusion and election meddling story, then, is actually true and how much of it was created by Trump’s political opponents? The Democrats are poised to take over the House of Representatives and have already made clear that they intend to shut down all investigations into what really happened in 2016. The seemingly unaccountable special counsel investigation is lead by a man with numerous conflicts of interest and staffed exclusively by supporters of the Democratic Party. The American people will never learn the truth about Russian involvement in the 2016 election precisely because much of that involvement may have had little to do with the Russians.
