http://uk.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7?r=US&IR=T
Interesting. I certainly have noticed an upswing in "Russia is amazing, it's all the fault of the bad Americans" in the last few years and I was struck by the amount of supposedly Europeans talking about how it's fiiiine that Russia can invade another country and annex a part of it, defending a structural weakening in their own region.
I have also noticed a reasonable correlation between pro-Trump online supporters and pro-Russia. It's hardly surprising, even without anything nefarious involved, Trump is blatantly obviously weak and isolationist, and an American president that would remove the US' power from NATO would be God's own gift to Putin and his expansionist ideals.
Is it possible that a lot of us are being uber-trolled?
"It is designed, as retired KGB General Oleg Kalugin once defined it, 'to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.' The most common subcategory of active measures is dezinformatsiya, or disinformation: feverish, if believable lies cooked up by Moscow Centre and planted in friendly media outlets to make democratic nations look sinister." - Michael Weiss
Potential case in point: Wikileaks Clinton/Sanders. Given the relative lack of actual evidence of misconduct (as opposed to a couple of people frustratedly talking about it), the main result of this is to split the Clinton Democrats and the Sanders Democrats.
Caveat - I am sure there are plenty of Europeans and Americans pro-Russia with or without being pro-Trump. It's a perfectly legit position. But there does indeed seem to be some mischief afoot and it's being pretty smartly organised.
I suppose history will tell eventually.
