Beware the Trolls
Alternet writer Carl Gibson darkly asserted last week:
Foreign governments influencing American elections is now a fact of life that the U.S. government will have to contend with for the foreseeable future, according to various geopolitical experts.
Like COVID, malign foreign actors meddling with American elections, specifically from Russia, are now endemic.
The fact we’re here shouldn’t come as a surprise; after all, the Mueller Report confirmed Russian operatives, both official and unofficial, helped bend the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor. While they were unsuccessful four years later, they still tried.
The fact we’re talking about it, though, and the US Justice Dept. (DOJ)’s seizure last week of 32 internet domains the Russian government directed specifically “to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections,” is proof we are no longer powerless to it.
The problem lies now not in whether we handle it, but how.
Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland explained the DOJ would be “relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran — as well as China or any other foreign malign actor — to…
