15 - How to Turn a Bernie Bro into a Russian Bot

Summary

Like a lot of Americans, my twenty-two-year-old friend John began the 2016 presidential campaign as a passionate supporter of Bernie Sanders and the progressive cause. During family gatherings, he spoke eloquently, if quietly, about income inequality, single-payer health care, and a livable wage.

By Election Day, John had become a full-fledged Hillary hater, an angry young man who posted fake news stories about Clinton online, trolled family members, and greeted the election of Donald Trump with a strange elation.

To understand what happened here requires an understanding of how two historical forces collided during the 2016 election: Cold War–style Russian propaganda and old-fashioned American misogyny. Because John's radical shift in perspective was, in fact, engineered— both from outside America and from within his own psyche.

We now know that Russian operatives, acting on orders from the Kremlin, bombarded guys like John with anti-Clinton agitprop throughout the campaign.

This effort was part of what the New York Times called, back in 2015, “the biggest trolling operation in history,” one aimed at decimating “the utility of the Internet as a democratic space.” It was also, in essence, the new face of an old tradition: Soviet espionage, which had evolved from double agents to cyber warfare.

When people hear allegations of cyber warfare, they envision high-tech operatives hacking into secure government servers. But the Russians recognized that American democracy in the Internet era was vulnerable to a far more humble approach. They could “hack” Bernie supporters simply by posting propaganda on their Facebook pages, websites, and forums.

The Russians targeted Bernie believers because they evinced the same basic attitudes as Trump voters: contempt for the establishment and Clinton. Wikileaks released 19,000 Russian-hacked emails on the eve of Democratic National Convention specifically to promote the notion that Clinton and the Democratic establishment had jobbed Bernie.

It appears that the Russians made a calculated bet that a guy like John, if sufficiently goaded, would shift from an agenda driven by progressive goals to one driven by animus toward Clinton.

I saw this shift play out in real time.

As summer 2016 turned to fall, Bernie Sanders campaigned for Clinton and openly implored his followers to reject Trump. Yet John did not post any articles critical of Trump. Nor did he draw attention to GOP voter-suppression efforts.