In the flurry of news today about the dreadful misdeeds of the despicable Brett Kavanaugh and the high wire walking of Rod Rosenstein, this Jane Mayer article in the latest issue of the New Yorker didn’t seem to get the attention it deserves. www.newyorker.com/…
Mayer writes about an upcoming book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know, due out in October. Written by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and founder of Factcheck.org — this book analyzes the Russian efforts to tip the 2016 election to Donald J. Trump.
A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.
The sobering conclusion that professor Jamieson reaches is that the actions of Russian hackers and trolls proved decisive in tipping the election to Trump.
Jamieson concluded, the Russian saboteurs nimbly amplified Trump’s divisive rhetoric on immigrants, minorities, and Muslims, among other signature topics, and targeted constituencies that he needed to reach. She noted that Russian trolls had created social-media posts clearly aimed at winning support for Trump from churchgoers and military families—key Republican voters who seemed likely to lack enthusiasm for a thrice-married nominee who had boasted of groping women, obtained multiple military deferments, mocked Gold Star parents and a former prisoner of war, and described the threat of venereal disease as his personal equivalent of the Vietcong. Russian trolls pretended to have the same religious convictions as targeted users, and often promoted Biblical memes, including one that showed Clinton as Satan, with budding horns, arm-wrestling with Jesus, alongside the message “ ‘Like’ if you want Jesus to win!” One Instagram post, portraying Clinton as uncaring about the 2012 tragedy in Benghazi, depicted a young American widow resting her head on a flag-draped coffin. Another post displayed contrasting images of a thin homeless veteran and a heavyset, swarthy man wearing an “undocumented unafraid unapologetic” T-shirt, and asked why “this veteran gets nothing” and “this illegal gets everything.” It concluded, “Like and share if you think this is a disgrace.” On Election Day, according to CNN exit polls, Trump, despite his political baggage, outperformed Clinton by twenty-six points among veterans; he also did better among evangelicals than both of the previous Republican nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain.
This is an important book based on serious academic analysis of one of the most important issues of our era — and its publication two months before the 2018 midterms could not come at a better time.
Every vote matters.
Turnout is critical.
What do we have to lose?
Everything,