The more things change, the more they stay the same. This morning Fox News reported that Michael Moore participated in anti-Trump rally allegedly organized by Russians.
Further down in the article, they write that 25,000 people attended that rally. Yes, Michael Moore was there. So was I. So were my wife and daughter. so were at least 24,996 other people. We were voicing our collective outrage and despair over the election results. It turns out that Russian Bots promoted that rally. Does that mean that we were supposed to stay home?
I’m reminded of 50, 60, 70 years ago, when J. Edgar Hoover set his target on the Civil Rights Movement, because The Left supported it, and some on The Left were Communists, and Russians were Communists, so supporting the Civil Rights Movement was supporting Russia, and visa versa.
So, how do we do what we do without being manipulated, or feeling that we are being manipulated by Russian Bots and trolls? The fact that I even ask the question shows how successful the bots and trolls actually are.
Years ago, when I was a Junior in high school, I got to take a political science class at Brooklyn College. This was during the Ford Administration, and at one point Ford fired Defense Secretary James Schessinger. We in the class were predictably outraged, because if President Ford did it, we were against it. Professor Sunjo Han — I still remember his name — called us on it. Schlessinger was not our hero. He told us something that I never forgot, back in 1975:
“The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.”
And so it is true here as well. If Russian Bots promote anti-Trump sentiment, they portray themselves in that moment as “the enemy of Trump” — my enemy — but they are not my friends.
Yes, the Russians are out to sow discord and conflict. It is important to know our bedfellows, and to keep an eye out for manipulation. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.
At the same time, we can easily be manipulated, by the bots and trolls, and Fox News, and intimidated into staying home, for fear of being manipulated. And that would be the biggest Russian mindf@%k of them all.