Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Is Russia Still Targeting American Blacks on Social Media?

And will we only find out the details years after this November's election?

One of the most shocking conversations I had in the days after the election of November 2016 took place over a lunch with two African-American co-workers, one male and one female, both in their forties. I spoke (ranted?) about my horror of the new White House resident planning to move in on January 20, 2017, and both of them told me that they had not voted, even though they were registered and had voted in 2008 and 2012. When I asked why, the short answer was that "Hillary Clinton would be just as bad as Trump" and "her emails" were somehow proof that she was just as dishonest as Trump. Neither one of them was a heavy consumer of television news or a reader of the New York Times (our local paper), but they were both watchers of popular entertainment (including the Apprentice shows) and active on social media. As more and more has come out about targeted Russian propaganda aimed at American Blacks through Facebook (as addressed in the following 2019 video from Senator Kamala Harris), I have to believe that some of their attitudes about Hillary came from that blizzard of lies, even though we were not living in one of the swing states that Trump's Campaign Manager Manafort had told the Russians to target.

With only 41 days until the election, what lies are currently being told to Black voters (and other key groups) about vice-presidential candidate @KamalaHarris in targeted social-media posts? What lies are being told about @JoeBiden to suppress voter turnout in 2020?



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