Right-wing web sites have moved into the stage of this latest mass school shooting where they try to convince everyone that the shooter was a Democrat—despite his MAGA hat and the pleasant weekend he spent training with white supremacists—and buckle down to attacking the survivors of a massacre. But the burden is not on the alt-Reich alone. They have an ally in this fight ready to stand arm-to-metaphorical-arm with them in the effort to demean children and maintain the right to mow them down wholesale.
One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.
Those accounts first poured out false stories about the shooter.
Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group.
But days later, the bots have another target and, not at all coincidentally, that target matches that of the right-wing sites (and Donald Trump Jr). The biggest topic of discussion by Russian bots—up an astounding 12,000 percent overnight—is the student survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Not every tweet or Facebook post against the surviving students is bot-generated. Some come from brainless numbnuts of a more natural variety.
In particular, the attack has focused on Davig Hogg, who is under a constant barrage for being the son of an FBI agent, and for daring to demand that adults do something to stop children from dying. As of midday on Tuesday, bot traffic aimed at attacking Hogg continues to increase. In most cases, the bots aren’t creating new stories, they’re just making sure that the attacks right-wing American adults have already aimed at a 17-year-old high school kid get lots of visibility. As the day has worn on, the number of attacks has only increased.
Since both eroding belief in the FBI and seeing more Americans die are primary goals of Russian bots, it only makes sense that they would be pushing this information.
That Russian bots would be taking right-wing talking points and personal attacks on children and using them to spread division and anger seems only logical. What’s harder to understand is why the right keeps providing fodder for the Russian machine.