• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, November 2, 2017

It's now said that Russian agents posted 120,000 pieces of content on Facebook and 131,000 messages on Twitter, ran 170 accounts on Instagram and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Google’s YouTube service. Those posts were then liked, shared and followed by others, spreading the messages to, it is said, over 100 million people.

It's hard to say if the objective was to influence the Presidential election or simply to further damage an already ripped social fabric.

If you review some of the postings, the agents were clearly aimed at inciting the alt-right to provocations. Clearly there was a market for this kind of divisive ideology. Do we also blame that on the Russians?

There is really nothing new about any of this.  The U.S. used propaganda to try and change regimes around the world that it thought threatened U.S. interests -- and, if that didn't work, sponsored coups and revolts. Why is this Russian "interference" any different?

They are simply doing their jobs, using a variety of resources to keep the U.S. as destabilized as possible. If you think for a moment we are not doing the exact same thing in Russia or elsewhere in the world, you are naive.

The media for propaganda has changed. It used to consist of dropping leaflets and sponsoring alt newspapers and handbills, or hiring agitators to stand on street corners and stir up passions. Or sending radio programming across borders. Now they can just stick it in social media feeds -- not only lowering their costs, but greatly enhancing their reach efficiency.

If you are 15, or dropped out of high school, you can be somewhat excused for buying what the Russians were selling. No doubt propaganda has gotten highly sophisticated, but with a minimum of online research, you can test to see if something is really true.

Unless, of course, you are thrilled to read or watch something that fits like a glove with your own world view. You know, kinda like watching Fox as your only source of news and commentary. In that case, you will believe anything that supports your position, even if some idiot like Alex Jones says it.

So I wonder, is this just another example of reaching brand loyalists who are already customers? There are lots of folks who think this is a total waste of money and that you are better off trying to get someone at the awareness stage and move them down the funnel.

But to move someone down the funnel, you have to be a lot more compelling than the "Hey bros, are we gonna keep taking this shit?" approach of much of the Russian messaging.  

Maybe it is all about tonnage. Wasn't it Joseph Goebbels who said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it?"

By the way, he also said, "The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative."

It was his boss, Adolf Hitler, who wrote in "Mein Kampf"that "the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.... Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

As I said, nothing about this is new. But (last quote, I promise): forewarned is forearmed.

* Groucho Marx