It’s really a Brave New World out there, teeming with Russian trolls swiveling back and forth in St. Petersburg warehouses, spreading inflammatory political memes online under the direction of Vladimir Putin’s security services in their ongoing and systematic efforts to to sow discord among American citizens. Just as they did in the 2016 election, they found common cause—wittingly or not—with right-wing Republicans in this country who honed their trolling and disinformation skills back in the days of Bush v Gore.
Their preferred target is social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but they’re happy to infest the online message boards of Yahoo and any other news forum that allows commentary. They have wonderful salt-of-the earth, American-sounding handles like “Ben McCaffrey from Spokane” or “Sherry Smith from Roanoke” and sometimes the handle comes with a picture (usually an attractive young woman), but to a large extent they’re the creations of vodka-swilling, pill-popping Russian thirty-somethings desperate for some kind of employment in Putin’s kleptopia. They find willing tools in sites like Breitbart and Infowars to get their messages into the mainstream. And in a matter of hours they manage to-co-opt the brains of—most strikingly and commonly--your average Republican voter. For all intents and purposes it no longer matters whether the Tweet or meme originated in a Moscow boiler room or in some American wingnut’s basement. In terms of dissemination—“sharing,” reTweeting, and “liking,”--the two are mutually symbiotic.
So in the past week they’ve been super-busy because they know how many American eyes have been glued to the confirmation hearing of the (alleged) attempted rapist, Trump Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
The New York Times debunks five “viral” myths propagated by right-wing (and implicitly Russian-supported) sources about Doctor Christine Blasey Ford, who Kavanaugh allegedly tried to rape, all presently bubbling through the same social media feeds that “inform” all our Republican friends.
Dr. Blasey, as she is know professionally, has been the subject of a torrent of misinformation online. Some viral rumors about Dr. Blasey have been quickly debunked. But false claims have continued to spread on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other social networks.
The brilliant aspect about these meme-generating trolls is that they can afford to be totally, painfully, obviously wrong and still succeed in duping people. As the frenzy to discredit Ms. Blasey reached its fever pitch, the meme quickly spread that she had received negative reviews about her supposedly “dark” personality from her own students. While as a practical matter no one bothered to elaborate on what a “dark” personality could possibly signify, this phony meme was soon embarrassingly squelched because the person being attacked turned out to be the wrong Christine Blasey. Nonetheless, the usual suspects in the right-wing slime machine ran with it like excited children with a new piece of candy:
This story made an early appearance on Grabien, a little-known news website. It was then picked up by several right-wing media outlets, including by the Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who tweeted a link to it, and the Drudge Report, which featured it on its home page.
Nevermind the reality that it was all false, though. Right-wing smear machine Gateway Pundit never corrected the story and it remains there to this day.
But...there’s more! Some Twitter idiot who calls himself “Josh Cornett” spread a rumor making its way through the ionosphere that Dr. Blasey had made a similar rape allegation against Judge (now Justice) Gorsuch. Here is what “Cornett” said:
“According to sources Diane [sic] Feinstein’s reluctance to mention the Kavanaugh accuser’s letter during confirmation session is because the accuser sent a similiar [sic] letter directed at Judge Gorsuch last year.” In a follow-up tweet, he said that he had “no idea” if the information was true, but that “my source has been very accurate in the past.”
If that admission doesn’t inspire confidence, I’m not sure what would. The entire story was made-up bullshit. But I guarantee you some of your right wing friends sharing Facebook memes think it’s the Holy Gospel.
Undaunted, the Right then loudly claimed that Dr. Blasey was literally the next Tom Steyer—a calculating, omnipresent large-scale donor to the Democratic Party. But that one fell flat as well:
According to data from the Federal Election Commission, her donations to Democratic committees and campaigns from 2013 to 2017 total less than $100.
Not exactly George Soros territory, huh?
Then someone produced a picture of someone resembling her holding an anti-Trump sign at a Woman’s March, which would put her in the company with several million other American women (apparently the dubious logic here was that a survivor of attempted rape wouldn’t want to demonstrate against a serial assaulter of women like Trump). This, surely, must be the smoking gun! But alas…it turned out to be a stock photo of someone taken a year earlier.
Dr. Blasey did attend a California Women’s March in 2017, according to The Mercury News. But the photo...was taken at a march in New York in 2016, according to Alamy, the stock photo website.
And finally, someone created an imaginary link between her brother and the Special Counsel’s investigation into Trump’s conspiracy with the Russians to sway the 2016 election. Some Fool with a flag on his Twitter logo propagated that one:
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Whenever you see the phrase: “Coincidence? I don’t think so” you can probably bet the mortgage that you’re being fed a line of garbage. And in this case, Dr. Blasey’s brother quit Baker & Hostetler over thirteen years ago.
The underlying subtext that seems to get lost in all this creative right-wing nonsense is the implicit assumption that this well-established, secure, professional woman would put herself, her future and her family at grave risk simply to advance a (likely futile), bogus effort to maliciously derail the advancement of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The possibility that someone would do such a thing only if they felt absolutely morally compelled to do it doesn’t even enter into the right-wing thought process.
There’s a reason for that.