this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
42 points (100.0% liked)
Politics
10178 readers
460 users here now
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'll just leave this here
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russians-launched-pro-jill-stein-social-media-blitz-help-trump-n951166
Instead of "just leaving this here", how about you actually clarify what you're implying? It sounds like you're accusing Jill Stein of being a Russian asset, and I think it's really irresponsible to make this kind of accusation in a vague way that gives you plausible deniability.
I don't know for sure who is and isn't a "Russian asset" for any given definition of "Russian asset."
I mean, there was this, but she assures us that it meant nothing.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/jill-stein-says-nothing-happened-at-her-dinner-with-putin/
But in any case, the third party candidacy of the Green Party was absolutely a tool for Russia in 2016 to peel off potential Democratic voters to elect Trump, and I would expect the same games to be played this year. Specifically the Russian troll army, the Internet Research Agency, created faux Black voices on social media platforms and, after accumulating sufficient followers to have a large platform, attempted to convince Black voters to either not vote at all or vote third party.
Look, I love pretty much everything Cornell West stands for, but this seems like an incredibly unwise move, to put the best possible face on it.
OK, so you want to have your cake an eat it by implicitly accusing her while saying you just don't know.
Anyway, I think you're giving the American voters too much credit if you think they couldn't elect Trump without Russia's help. You're also vastly overstating the size and influence of the Internet Research Agency. If it truly was a Russian attempt to influence US politics, it was a deeply unserious one.
The 20216 election was incredibly close. It doesn't take much to influence the final result with narrow margins, especially when considering our archaic voting system which significantly over-represents less populated areas (i.e. changing a few hundred votes in one district can be more influential than another district with 10x as many voters if all of those voters are more politically consistent).
There were plenty of other factors that may have pushed Trump over the line, and most of them come down to Hillary being a bad candidate.
RE: "oh, so you want..."
I'm not really into argument-by-psychic-powers-or-psychoanalysis so when you open your reply by telling me you've read my mind, I'm done.