askchapo

Its pretty well proven that they run bots on social media and fund really far right influencers. But the funding doesn't seem to equal success unless the message already resonates with US conservatives. And there's way more NATO bots, and even more IDF bots.

Russiagate is clearly bullshit. Failed attempt by liberals to make racism seem unamerican. But we're preaching to the choir here.

The plots that have surfaced have basically been funding weird basically irrelevant fractious groups of 'leftwing' cultists like Black Hammer, and random rw influencers.

I would assume that their media presence is much higher for countries that have Russian speakers.

Less than the US interferes with everyone else's politics.

Russia is interfering with US politics but I don't think Russia is actually influencing US politics.

The material conditions of neoliberalism lead to the rise of reactionaries and fascism.

The US will create forces like Trump, the alt-right, Steven Miller, Fuentes, with or without Russian money. The seeds were already planted long before Russian involvement.

I'm preaching to the choir here but liberals find it much more comfortable to blame an external entity than reflect on what's rotten on the inside.

Lots of countries do influence campaigns and I’m pretty sure Russia does too, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as aggressive as countries like the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

They probably have similar schemes to the NED to pay influencers to spread pro Russian propaganda but it’s obviously not as big of an industry as US propaganda. Overall Russia seemingly has very little influence over US politics.

Everything liberals have accused Russia of doing since like 2016, the Zionist Entity has been doing very openly for decades. Yeah Russia probably has intelligence divisions with spies in the US. There are probably propaganda streams that attempt to influence the American public. However every country on earth with the means does this. Everyone has spies in America.

But the Zionist Entity has AIPAC and every year politicians from both parties go on a stage and swear fealty to Zionism. It's so open and brazen and no spycraft conspiracies are needed. Zionists do their dirty shit openly, and even when they try to do secret stuff like with Ben-Ami Kadish or Jonathan Pollard, it doesn't matter. The American empire remains their steadfast ally despite it all.

Like there was an incident in 2019 where the FBI found a bunch of telecommunications interception devices (stingrays) scattered around Washington DC, then told the state department that from forensic analysis it was probably Israel that planted them. The Zionists then blatantly lied referencing some agreement in the 60s that America and Israel wouldn't spy on one another. And then nothing happened and the most zionist president who ever lived got elected in 2020.

as a Russian agent in the U.S. I can tell you we lowkeyniunely just sit on our asses and get paid to do nothing, every once in a while they send us a congratulations on our last operation that we had no relations to and we wave and smile.

Whatever Russia does can't amount to even a fraction of a percent of the influence the general domestic and international bourgeoisie have over the electoral process to the point that the only reason to even think about it is honestly rooted in xenophobic fear

Far, far less than the US interferes in Russian politics

The more liberals scream about it, the less I believe it's real. If it was real, liberals would not try to manifest it into existence this much.

Probably the same amount as most large foreign nations but significantly less than large multinational corporations

They pay me like $3k a month and I'm a 1 in a million guy so I guess it's something like $12M a year.

The normal amount.

Duh, they'd be stupid not to?

I think the Trump = Russian agent stuff is BS tho,

Somewhat ig. Although nowhere near what the US did to Russia in 1996 as libs claim.

Mostly just soft influencing, social media campaigns, some money laundering to fund political organizations they think fit their goals. However, I don’t think they’re doing it to a level that’s more than typical for a country with their level of resources. Which is to say, there’s a lot of countries influencing American politics and many of them are doing it more successfully than Russia.

Psyops leverage existing conflicts. Russia didn't create our problems, and doesn't have the resources to do half of what libs like to think they are responsible for. That said, of course they would exploit any advantage available. Still, it's not hard to look back at US history and see how we ended up here.

To me it's like, obvious that the federal system largely runs on bribes and buy-in. Given our international proclivities, it feels wildly hypocritical to be mad that other countries try to establish their own buy-in with our system.

Like, democrats will throw trans people under the bus for not donating enough and supporting leftists over them. They're petty, punitive, and look at everything from a numbers pov - be that attention, sympathy/alignment, and most especially, straight up money.

That we often just pick a nation at random to make an Official Enemy every few years makes it entirely sensible that the international situation is one of people trying to protect themselves from that inevitability both domestically and in Washington DC

It's hard to have a problem with it in that manner. It's hard to care, because there's no way Russian influence actually matters a whole lot beyond creating opportunities for their own buy-in to national concerns.

Their RT media house seems to do pretty well trying to hook into nativist currents in the US, I'd give them some credit for US rightist skepticism on Ukraine. Still they're probably not as effective as Al Jazeera for a comparison.

I don't think they do too much beyond public-opinion targeting-media and bots (which idk, is that "Russiagate", I thought there was some element of supposed criminality?) because of sanctions and surveillance it's much more work for Russian capital to bribe US officials so I doubt they bother.

I would be amazed if a large number of US "representatives" at the higher levels aren't being blackmailed or bought off by someone, and it's probably based on which one works, then they use the other. Maybe some of those reps already have an amount of money that makes them less prone to being bought off, so blackmail needs to be involved, or the blackmail isn't needed if money works, but after a certain point, I don't think there are many upper-level people in any major government who aren't being influenced by other countries or oligarchs in one way or another, and to an extent, it doesn't seem to matter. The US does it, Britain does it, surely Russia does it, China does it, and it's done to them.

It reminds me of MK-ULTRA because the program was started because of the assumption that other countries were also going to try mind-control programs. After years of the US trying to develop mind control of its own, they realized that other countries had a much easier system where they just bought people off, and that had a much better rate of success because people just wanted to be comfortable. After MK-ULTRA was scrapped, buying off assets was the next best (and real) thing to a more standardized extent.

Wasn't the greyzone getting FSB money or something like that?

i don't believe in the pee pee tapes or the bubba tapes really. imo if they had it there's no reason atp for donald trump not to openly declare fealty to putin, or at least stop fighting him so much. i think they're gonna discover evidence that russia paid someone who actually matters (like not tim poo or even charlie kirk) and then they're gonna pin everything since 2016 on it. but in terms of actual effect, ukraine is the only evidence in american politics that russia exists at all

Probably on the order of $100 million per year. Definitely not $10B/yr or more.

Like so many other things, the Russians have found and specialized in niches that take advantage of the American approach, for a tiny fraction of the money that America throws at comparable things.