The Washington Post recently put out an article criticizing Russia for hiring online trolls to advance narratives that are in Russia’s interests.
The problem is not that a country advocates for its own interests. Every country does that. The problem is these trolls represented as if they were average people acting of their own volition but were not. That is false pretenses and is a dishonest tactic.
The problem for Democrats who are complaining that Russia unduly influenced the election is that Hillary Clinton’s Super Pac Correct the Record did the same thing.
Correct the record employed a group of trolls to go online to defend Hillary and “push back online on Sanders supporters” (and later against Trump supporters.) While pretending to be unpaid citizens operating of their own free will.
In 2015, Correct the Record announced that is would work in coordination with the Clinton campaign.
Hundreds of e-mails released by wikileaks confirm coordination between Hillary’s campaign and Correct the Record.
In leaked e-mails, the CEO of the Center for American Progress expressed concern over this connection saying “I’m not their biggest fan… this does seem shady” … “skirting if not violating law doesn’t help her”.
Defendants of this co-ordination claim there is an “internet exemption” that exempts Correct the Record from campaign finance law regulations. Whether this is a valid loophole or not, the important point is that Hillary is coordinating with a group that engages in the same false pretenses that some Democratic elites are complaining Russians is doing. The hypocrisy.
Trump didn’t coordinate with the Russians to hire trolls. Russia did it on its own. Hillary’s campaign DID coordinate with this dishonest behavior and approved of it.
Correct the Record went on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and 4chan to manipulate the public. Some Reddit users were very upset about this practice, claiming CTR trolls attempted to bury trending topics about wikileaks releases damaging to the Clinton campaign. More like “Cover-up the Record”.
Correct the Record also helped write a pro-Hillary/anti-Bernie story for CNN’s opinion page that was officially credited to Atlanta’s black mayor Kasim Reed. CNN may as well have written “by Hillary Clinton” on the credit tag of the article. Talk about false pretenses! Russia didn’t do anything like that. The article was released right before the Georgia primary. Clinton won the state easily. CNN carried the story, who is owned by Time Warner who donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.