(note: this pic already existed in our site database.)
I’m going to tell you at the outset that this will be a disappointing diary. Regardless of what angle you’re coming from or what you’re hoping to get out of it, I can promise you that I’ll at least try to disappoint each camp of readers in its own unique way.
We’re still in the middle of a pretty dense fog when it comes to how Russia may have tried, successfully or unsuccessfully, to influence the presidential election. I can’t claim to have any information or insight about any of the business connections, backroom deals, dossiers, classified materials, or bit players that hasn’t already been covered exhaustively elsewhere. My opinions are, at best, ambivalent, and that includes the topic of this diary. But I do want to lay out one possible example of a coordinated media strategy that’s been discussed — propagation of stories, fake or otherwise — though whether that media strategy was an effective one or just noise (or whether contributing to noise was itself effective), I won’t even pretend to assess. This is a diary of raw material for you to do with as you please.
Before I begin, though, I want to lay out some clear lines so that my message here doesn’t get garbled in translation. I’m using the word “meme” here in a slightly inaccurate way: not quite the Dawkinsian packet of information, not quite the popular internet macro, but a mix of both leaning more toward the latter. I use “meme” here to refer to an undigested claim that is repeated, like a macro, without context or supporting knowledge, something like the way “Vince Foster” is a two-word incantation used by people who couldn’t pick out Vince Foster’s photo in a lineup or actually explain who he was. These bits of information, small and easy to repeat, spread much more quickly than arguments, explanations, or in-depth debunkings, and that potency makes them politically useful.
I used Foster as an example because it’s so absurd, but even true, factually-based information can be reduced to a handy meme: it’s a major tenet of the battle over political semiotics, where audiences are more responsive to simple formulations (see, for example, George Lakoff on metaphors). I want to be clear on this, because the example I’ve chosen might rub people the wrong way. I’m not here to analyze the content in-depth, just the process, and it holds true for fake and “real” news alike. Truths, whole or half, can be weaponized, as well.
Mrs. World War Three
There’s a steady history of Russians arguing that Western politicians have been beating the drums of war toward them for years, and surely most people who follow the news from Russia remember their state media honcho Dmitri Kiselev boasting in 2014 that Russia would reduce Americans to radioactive ash if we ever tried anything. Russian media hit on this point a few times during the Crimea annexation: a typical headline reads “World War Three May Start Over Crimea”. Okay.
Of course Clinton came into the primary with a more hawkish reputation and stances than the other Democrats, so critiques of hawkishness in itself are no big surprise. Threat of World War, however, is a unique expression of hyperbole — if every hawk beefing with Russia was a potential World War in the making, we’d have exhausted the expression by now — so I was surprised to see just how pervasive it had become by the end of the election season. Where did it come from?
The first English-speaking publication I can find that connects election-era Clinton policy with the explicit threat of World War Three, albeit over Syria, is a late 2015 piece for Al-Jazeera by Adam Johnson. I think Johnson’s analysis is incomplete (no reason to go into that now), but it’s an analysis, not a meme — nothing yet that replicates itself in a seemingly self-sustaining way, nothing ripped from context as a bludgeon. It’s come by honestly.
After that, it’s mostly quiet for a bit. Not until March, when anti-Clinton author and genocide denier Diana Johnstone gave an interview made entirely out of talking points to Counterpunch, does it start to circulate again within a certain fringe. In her latest thing she calls a book, Queen of Chaos, Johnstone had argued that “avoiding World War III is somewhat more urgent than ‘proving’ that a woman can be President of the United States,” a quote that interviewer Maidhc Ó Cathail immediately pounces on for elaboration (and it’s in the title of the interview). Johnstone’s analysis is hopelessly shallow, and she hedges a bit on making the accusation directly, but that didn’t stop the article and its headline from being picked up elsewhere, traveling from its English-language host to Italy and from there to Russia (though still pretty small-scale stuff: I’ve never even heard of the Russian outlet, which mostly reprints foreign articles about Russia.)
In fact, the only major statement by a prominent (ish) figure I can find before the Tide Turns in late July comes from Dr. Cornel West, in an interview with Pajamas Media at a conference outside the Republican convention (note: edited for clarity). Again, despite a more widely ranging conversation, the headline focuses on his claim Clinton might saber-rattle her way into World War III (he says the same about Trump which, curiously, does not make the headline.) His focus, unlike Johnson’s in December, is on NATO expansion and increased tensions with China (?), a more wide-ranging if conventional anti-neocon argument.
There was one high-profile debate over the possibility of World War Three, but it had nothing to do with Clinton or the U.S. at all: David Cameron warned that Brexit threatened stability in Europe, which the United Kingdom would “come to regret,” citing earlier world wars as examples of British isolationism. He never actually used the words “World War Three,” but … every single headline seemed to, because that’s how local media mocked him, the same media that would later report these warnings about Clinton with a straight face.
That’s the prelude, at least. The argument that Clinton could lead us to World War III did exist, in varying degrees of plausibility, before late July of 2016. But at that point, something really weird happened:
The Turn
Politonline.ru, one of the media outlets owned by Vadim Gorshenin, a friend and colleague of United Russia spin doctor and Putin’s deputy chief of staff Konstantin Kostin, published a curious editorial way back in May 2015. It was titled “The New U.S. President Will Start a Third World War with Russia”, and it began thus:
With her tough anti-Russian rhetoric, Hillary Clinton is painting herself and the rest of the world into a corner before the elections, because the average American, who perceives Russia as "a distant and terrible" enemy, will expect drastic action from her, and this could lead to World War III. This opinion was expressed by a high-ranking member of the U.S. Republican Party in a private conversation with a special correspondent for Politonline.ru.
First off: back the fuck up... What “high-ranking member of the Republican Party” is a) expressing this kind of thing at all in May 2015, and b) isn’t saying it to English-language media but anonymously to Politonline? Gorshenin’s mini-media empire does have some legs in Russia — it includes, for example, the well-known Pravda.ru (not the same outlet as the old Soviet newspaper) — but this is a strange, out of the way source for a random Republican interview, much less an anonymous one. Buckle up, because it’s only getting weirder from here.
We now know (or think we know? or suspect? I’ve lost track) that the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies was allegedly drawing up plans for an anti-Clinton media blitz a year later, in June 2016. The specific contours of their plan remain unclear as long as the documents themselves are held classified, but I note this here because the timing is interesting. The next month, July 2016 (the same week as Wikileaks’ first publication of stolen campaign documents!), Politonline decided to republish their year-old May 2015 article with a few small changes. Gone, for example, are the original article’s caveats about the reliability of the Republican official (“Of course, Republicans are the Democratic Party’s direct competitors,” the original warned its readers.) The new version also debuted a slightly different headline — “President Hillary Will Begin World War Three with Russia” — and a curious tab title: “Mrs. World War Three.”
Now the Gorshenin apparatus goes into high gear. Here’s Pravda.ru jumping in the next day with an even more bizarre claim, in an article about Clinton's alleged propensity to… um, knock over flags:
The US presidential candidate from the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, who local [местные] media has dubbed "Mrs. World War Three," continues to drop her country's flags.
Leaving aside the flag stupidity… she’s already been dubbed “Mrs. World War Three,” though I can’t find any evidence that this sobriquet was originally or even widely used outside the Gorshenin circle of properties or websites linking directly to them (though it does get picked up later by some far, far-rightwing sites). Is “local” here a highly meta acknowledgement that it’s only been adopted within this closed circle? Friends, I have no idea.
I do know that the claims of Clinton’s World War threat reach a feverish pitch in Russia over the next weeks, with the Gorshenin properties doing a full-court press. Various sites around the internet picked up and republished the various Politonline articles (including some other far-far-right ones), and here’s both Politonline and Pravda.ru recycling the original quotes yet again for a September article. But perhaps the culmination of the now meme-ified “Mrs. World War Three” was the infamous television rant by professional clown and Liberal Democrat leader (read: right-wing populist) Vladimir Zhirinovsky on Russia-1. Though the subject of the program was ostensibly Clinton’s failing health — yes, we get comparisons of her falling down with shirtless Putin on horseback to illustrate weak v. strong leaders, and this was prime time on the country’s second most-watched network — Zhirinovsky pivots into the threat that a nuclear-code holding Clinton would mean for the civilized world. (Zhirinovsky has a long history of making threats, so this is especially rich.)
Note that the clip above was prepared for English consumption by hack site Russia Insider, or as Jim Kovpak describes it, a pro-Kremlin English-language aggregation site doing an inept Alex Jones shtick. So it’s no real surprise that the soon-to-be-childless Alex Jones latched onto this clip immediately, framing the Russian politician’s rant with his own pithy title, “Hillary Clinton is a Witch Who Will Start World War III.” Again, the main topic of the original rant, the conspiracy to cover up her terminal illness, is downplayed behind the impending threat of a Clintonian World War Three. We’re now far removed from anything like a considered take. “Mrs. World War Three” has arrived.
Frenzy
It’s hard to know what memes will stick in public consciousness and what will simply blow over, given enough time. Clinton does herself no favors at this point, because her October 10 debate performance reiterates exactly what Johnson and others had identified as a possible path to nuclear war: no-fly zones over Syria. Agree or disagree, but it's at least more nuanced than that (she’s talking about using contingent ones as leverage to get Russia to the diplomatic table), though we’re well past the point of nuance by now. The meme-ified version has already taken hold. So when former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs testified in September that controlling all Syrian airspace would require war with Russia, it provided an easy, context-free clip to spread the World War Three meme more extensively state-side, which outlets like RT were happy to do.
I mentioned at the outset of this story that a meme could just as easily be true, and while I think it takes a few steps too many to get from Clinton’s specific plan for a no-fly-zone to World War Three (it requires, I think, a partial misreading of her plan and a willingness to imagine she’d continue to pursue a whole series of bad steps after the initial plans fail), the very potency of that meme, that easily digestible nugget of truthiness, had no real use for nuance or debate. Frankly, it worked better without it.
Newly energized, Zhirinovsky’s World War Three rhetoric resurfaces in mainstream U.S. media when Reuters reports on another of his rants, this one promising multiple “Hiroshimas and Nagasakis” if Clinton is elected. Shortly after, on October 26, Trump picks up the mantle in his typically bizarre, half-understood talking-pointish kinda way, badly articulating Clinton’s World War threat to Reuters “as he dined on fried eggs and sausage” (shady, Reuters!) — though whether he got those points from reading (lol) one of the sources discussed here or from twitter followers quoting some intermediary (the Zhirinovsky story was popular in cesspools like ZeroHedge, for example, and Brietbart used it as a headline multiple times), I have no idea. I do know that Trump’s first use of “World War Three” with Clinton comes in this interview, just days after the second debate, where Chris Wallace pressed Clinton on her Syria plan (again, note the difference between what she was calling for, specifically, and how it was being painted elsewhere.)
After Trump’s outburst, WaPo’s Anne Applebaum took note of his weird, sponge-like ability to absorb specific, and specifically worded critiques from Russian media. It’s one thing to grab at ideas that were floating in the air (and Trump came to love the World War Three metaphor, regardless of his target), but some of the conspiracies he spouted have identifiable provenance. The specific path of those ideas is somewhat more obscure, but very well could have traveled from Russia through social media to Trump’s tiny twitter hands without a conscious chain of connection. Regardless, Trump launches Mrs. World War Three into the stratosphere, now the official talking point of a presidential candidate with a massive online following.
And of course it spreads through mainstream discourse from there. By the close of October, the Independent is arguing that Trump is the peaceful candidate to Mrs. World War Three, while gay robot vampire Peter Thiel, now an overnight expert on Syrian geopolitics, warned people of Clinton’s impending nuclear threat. November arrives, and Jill Stein grabs the World War Three football before her last minutes of media attention disperse, with Putin’s advisor joining in a few days later, suggesting Americans must choose between Trump and World War. On the eve of the election, the pro-Trump National Enquirer’s sister publication, Globe, made Hillary’s World War Three their front page headline. This harmonized well with high-ranking member of the U.S. Republican Party, Sen. Rand Paul, saying the same thing on Morning Joe just after election-day smoke cleared, while Russian state media site Sputnik, who Applebaum earlier fingered as one of Trump’s ultimate sources of news (sic), said they couldn’t agree more. And I’m not even engaging with the swamp that was social media’s #worldwar3 hashtag during that last month. If you were on Twitter or Facebook at all in November, you know very well: there be dragons.
We weren’t immune, of course. There are comments all over, but it’s hard to know what to do with them. I envy the kind of data scientist who can develop proper controls to study this “objectively,” if such a thing were even possible. What happened here largely appears to echo what happened in mainstream discourse. Some comments were reasoned, others were most definitely not. There are occasional uses of the meme early in the year, mostly thin retreads of Johnstone and co. Incidence increases dramatically in late summer, especially after the debates, and even if that spike were related to pushback (e.g. “How can anyone take this seriously?”), it still means we were talking about it and contributing to its spread. A couple of these comments even come from users who materialized, said their piece, and promptly left (or were banned). But I’m not interested in turning this into an inquisition, or criticizing specific users, or branding other users with a scarlet R (and please don’t use the comments for that, either.) Yes, that makes this a weaker diary. You’ll have to forgive me for deciding not to publish more on this angle, because revisiting the primary/election wars (I went back and read hundreds of comments) gave me a ton of indigestion as it is. That’s not why I’m writing this piece. We’re all vulnerable in different ways.
Look: maybe none of this matters. Maybe these memes, in Dawkinsian style, propagate in purely organic ways, regardless of whether one outlet or figure coordinated with another. Clinton made arguments that, in the context of Russian aggression, sounded “tough” — but also belligerent. That multiple outlets would independently come to the same conclusions, or that they might be influenced by reading each other, would be no great surprise. It’s also true that ideas circulate more quickly in ideologically homogeneous habitats. For example, this December, Pravda Report (yet another Gorshenin property) interviewed Matteo Carnieletto on the coming Pax Trumpiana: Carnieletto is the same Italian journalist who republished the Diana Johnstone interview that was picked up by Russia’s Inopressa back in January. It’s enough to make your eyes glaze over. No wonder people are seeing patterns in static. There are connections everywhere you look. But do they mean anything?
So what does this diary actually argue? Or does it argue anything at all? Was there coordination? Between some Russian outlets, surely. Was the coordination broader than that? Is it provable? Did it matter? Did it substantially reshape any arguments, or did it just accompany an already active line of critique? Did it materially change the election? Did it change the minds of a critical number of voters, or even a large number, or any at all? How could we even begin to measure that? And would it really matter if we could? What would it change?
Well... I promised you this diary would be disappointing. Nearly 3,000 words, wasted, just like that.
