Last week, a Facebook friend of mine opined that he was considering voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in November.
Joe Biden, he said, had too much blood on his hands regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict, and he could not in good conscience vote for him.
It’s only been about a month since I wrote a column on this particular topic (“An open letter to the ultraprogressives”). I don’t intend to rehash that column here, but I basically said that if you’re a progressive who votes for a third party candidate or doesn’t vote at all because you take issue with Biden’s foreign policy, then you’re effectively casting your vote for Donald Trump and you’re operating from a place of privilege because you know you won’t be affected by whatever policies will be enacted in Trump’s second term.
Because I’m a pain in the neck, I replied to my friend’s post and shared that column, and I mentioned that Russia had pumped a ton of money into promoting Jill Stein on social media in 2016 and 2020. She’s been described as either a Russian asset or a useful idiot, and I have yet to see any compelling evidence that makes me feel any differently.
Within minutes, someone had responded to my comment. She said that I was sharing lies, and she posted a series of memes talking about how the Democrats are going to steal the election and you should vote for Jill Stein.
I decided to view her profile, and I discovered something interesting.
She had one profile picture, a grainy photo of a smiling woman who vaguely resembled the late Della Reese. Her profile said that she ran a marijuana dispensary in New Mexico. That was the extent of the personal information available on her page.
Scrolling through her feed, I saw she posted dozens of times per day, sharing memes and news links with her 3,000-some friends. Every single post fell into one of four categories:
- The Democrats are incompetent/evil/no different from the Republicans.
- Third party candidates are great and worth voting for.
- At the same time, the election is going to be stolen anyway so there’s no point in voting at all.
- Don’t listen to the media because Russia and China are actually doing some great stuff!
A suspicion forming, I searched her unique name on Google. I got one hit, but it was for a man who definitely did not resemble the kindly woman in the profile photo. I then Googled her dispensary business, which turned out to not exist.
I realized I had found a Russian bot in the wild. After a little more research, I confirmed the profile checked every single box.
I knew that Russian bots were supposed to be rampant on Facebook and Twitter, but I’d never actually encountered one before. I replied to her comments, informing her that I knew she was a Russian bot and presenting my evidence.
The bot posted a couple more anti-Democrat memes in rapid succession. Over the following days, it would occasionally reply to me with new memes, prompting me to ask it if it had any actual rebuttal to my accusation that it was a Russian troll and not a real person. It did not answer.
I scrolled through the comments on my friend’s post and saw that out of 20-plus comments, only two people seemed to think that voting for Jill Stein was a good idea: the aforementioned Russian bot, and another person that I’m 95% percent certain was a second Russian bot.
To be clear, I’m not sharing this story to make my Facebook friend feel bad in the event that he reads this. The fact is, our nation is experiencing a sophisticated misinformation and propaganda campaign the likes of which we’ve never seen, and we have little defense against it. It’s perpetrated by bad actors both foreign and domestic. We have Russian troll farms unleashing a tidal wave of misinformation on social media, entertainment outlets that masquerade as news outlets so they can rile up their base and draw profit from their anger, and politicians that lie through their teeth because they know their base doesn’t care about the truth, only about what FEELS true.
This propaganda targets both sides of the aisle and it’s astonishingly effective. And frankly, making progressives feel disenchanted with the Democratic Party is only slightly more difficult than beating a toddler at arm wrestling. It’s not like the troll farms have to try particularly hard.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and if someone wants to vote for Jill Stein or not vote at all, it’s their right to do so. At the same time, regardless of party, we should all take a moment to consider whether our opinions are actually our own.
