Reddit’s r_The_Donald has been very closely tied to the propaganda alt-right machine, as referenced in different articles on the Fake News & Propaganda page
While the first direct evidence of the Trump Campaign’s collusion with the Russian hackers was revealead (GOP Operative worked for Mike Flynn to obtain Hillary’s missing 33,000 emails by contacting at least 2 Russian hacker groups), and simultaneously Trump was calling for 32 million people to lose healthcare by repealing the ACA, concurrent with Trump defunding the agency tasked (Election Assistance Commission) with protecting our election systems, Trump attacked Mika from “Morning Joe” with lying Tweets about her “Bleeding from her face”, and then r_The_Donald created a video of Trump beating up CNN to shore up more support generated by Trump fans appreciating his lack of good taste with Mika.
“Before it made it to President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, a now-infamous video of the leader beating a man with the CNN logo transplanted over his face wound its way through Reddit — and appeared to have been created by a redditor with a history of openly racist posts.
The GIF appears to have first been posted to Reddit’s /r/the_donald board just a few days ago by user HanAssholeSolo, where it quickly accrued nearly 9,000 upvotes as of Sunday afternoon.” MIC
Sounds like a wonderful thing, doesn’t it? It’s created more divisions among people than can be counted. What is it? A PAC formed to produce propaganda, which became a Free Speech lawsuit upheld by a Supreme Court decision in 2010 and made way for “Dark Money”, or anonymous campaign contributions and effectively unlimited corporate donations.
Wikipedia: “The Political Action Committee (PAC) Citizens United was founded in 1988 by Floyd Brown, a longtime Washington political consultant, with major funding from the Koch family (industrialists who own “the second largest privately owned company in the United States”). The group promotes corporate interests, socially conservative causes and candidates who advance their mission.
Citizens United President and Bannon’s propaganda producer David Bossie, along with Catholic, Lenin-loving Steve Bannon. Lawrence Kadish is awealthy real estate investor/founder of Chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, whose Victory Film Group pushes Tweets that work with Breitbart New’s Anti-Muslim stories. Funded by the Koch Brothers and the Mercers.
FRIENDS:Kellyanne Conway, Newt Gingrich, Michael Reagan, nationally syndicated radio show host and chairman of Citizens United’s Faith and Family Project. The Mercers funded Citizens United in later years.
FOES: Obama,Clinton, John McCain, NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
A Closer Look at Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon from Wall Street on Parade: “Three of the men associated with Citizens United, the right-wing organization that took the legal case to the U.S. Supreme Court that ushered in today’s unprecedented era of unlimited corporate money in U.S. elections, took key posts in the Donald Trump campaign beginning this past summer.
One of the men, Stephen K. Bannon, has been named by President-elect Trump to be his Senior Counselor and Chief Strategist in the White House. While Bannon is widely cited for his executive role at Breitbart News prior to joining the Trump campaign, he is also the long-tenured, right-wing filmmaker for the Citizens United organization. A number of the films made by Bannon list Lawrence Kadish as Executive Producer and Victory Film Group as an affiliated entity involved in the documentaries.
When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the Citizens United Case in 2010, David N. Bossie, then President of Citizens United (who also joined the Trump campaign this year) had this to say about Lawrence Kadish:
“First and foremost, I would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Kadish who have been incredibly generous from the very first day of this process. We would never have been able to reach the Supreme Court without their support. I also need to thank the thousands of donors who exercised their right to free speech to support Citizens United and this defense of the First Amendment.”
What the Citizens United decision effectively did was to drown out the voice of millions of average Americans while hedge fund titans and Wall Street billionaires can now individually contribute over $3 million, $5 million, $7 million and more to Super PACs supporting pro-corporate candidates.
Kadish is a wealthy real estate investor and founding Chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He has prominently backed a series of neoconservative pro-Israel groups. Kadish’s full-throttle support for Israel and his involvement in numerous Bannon films for Citizens United, suggest that the heavily distributed rumors of Bannon being anti-Semitic are peculiar charges at best.
The Victory Film Group that is associated with the Bannon/Kadish movies has a Twitter page that plants the seeds of distrust of Muslims and appears to be a form of co-branding with Breitbart News, frequently promoting news stories on the Breitbart web site. One reTweet reads: “Judge Who Ended Interrogation Of Boston Bomber Has Ties To Muslim Brotherhood.” Another reTweet states: “57 Million New Immigrants to Enter America.”
On October 2, 2006, in reaction to revelations of a cover-up of inappropriate communications between Republican Congressman Mark Foley and United States House of Representatives Page, Citizens United president David Bossie called on Dennis Hastert to resign over his role in covering up the scandal.[6]
Citizens United campaigned against Michael Moore‘s 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, advocating for government limits on how much advertising the film received.[8] It simultaneously made advertisements attacking the film,[9] and produced a film called Celsius 41.11, meant to counter Moore’s film.[10]
Citizens United’s best known campaign centered around a documentary film it produced that was highly critical of Hillary Clinton.[11] It has also produced and screened advertisements attacking other Democrats, including Bill Clinton,[8]John Kerry,[12] and Al Gore.[11] In the 1988 US presidential election, Citizens United ran an ad that used Willie Horton to attack Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. The ad was described as racist by commentators such as Mother Jones.[11]
In the case, the conservativenon-profit organizationCitizens United wanted to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Clinton was running for U.S. President. This would violate a federal statute prohibiting certain electioneering communications near an election. The court found the provisions of the law that prohibited corporations and unions from making such electioneering communications to conflict with the U.S. Constitution.
However, the court upheld requirements for public disclosure by sponsors of advertisements. The case did not affect the federal ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidate campaigns or political parties.
The decision was highly controversial when announced and remains a subject of much discussion today.[4]
Citizens United and the Trump Administration
In 2016 the Donald Trump presidential campaign enlisted Citizens United president David Bossie as deputy campaign manager.[13] During the campaign, Bossie made regular television appearances on behalf of the Trump campaign.[14] Bossie is a close friend and longtime acquaintance of Trump administration officials Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway,[15] having introduced Bannon to Trump in 2011.[16]“
Citizens United Productions
Citizens United Productions, headed by president David Bossie, has released 25 feature-length documentaries. The following is a list of films produced by Citizens United Productions.
“Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others, not themselves, most citizens like to think that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. ‘Other people can be manipulated, but not me,’ they declare.” — Margaret Singer, Ph.D.
Fake news and propaganda threaten our democracy and limit meaningful conversation. The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate It’s International Talk Like a Chekist Day—here’s a quick primer on kombinatsiya, konspiratsiya and more By John R. Schindler March 28, 2017
“Provokatsiya–Provocation is complicated, but at its most basic involves secret acts to confuse and dismay your enemy. The recent antics of Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee—positing conflicting and unsubstantiated allegations of malfeasance by our spy agencies—are a classic provocation designed to divert attention from the White House as its Russia crisis mounts. Provokatsiya gets more complicated and nefarious from there, with the ultimate aim of turning the tables on your enemy and defeating him detail—before he realizes what’s happened.
Konspiratsiya (yes, conspiracy), the Russian term for what we call espionage tradecraft. This is the clandestine nuts and bolts of recruiting and running agents, placing targets under surveillance, running covert action and whatnot.
Kompromat(compromising material), which is used to coercively recruit people to spy for Russia—and to keep already recruited agents in line.
Dezinformatsiya(disinformation) is another Russian term once known only to espionage mavens but which, thanks to the events of 2016, now falls off the tongue of average citizens. Deza, as it’s called for short, is the original “fake news,” an alluring amalgam of fact and fantasy—much of it unverifiable—designed to confuse readers and shift political discussions. It was part of the KGB’s Cold War arsenal, when Chekists faked documents and disseminated lies through trusted Western journalists, in order to embarrass the West, especially NATO and the United States. Some of these vintage disinformation fables are still with us, despite being debunked decades ago.
Aktivniyye Meropriyatiya(Active Measures), which is a vital Chekist concept lacking a precise Western equivalent. It roughly aligns with our notion of political warfare, albeit with a highly clandestine side. The bureaucratically bland-sounding KGB definition of Active Measures covers a broad brush of nefarious spy-games.
Psychops meets Big Data:The Internet Research Agency, St. Petersburg, led by Putin’s “chef” Yevgeny Prighozin employedbots and thousands of human trolls to attack our democracy. Using the Mercermoney and known Russian Intelligence front-funded Cambridge Data Analytics, board member Steve Bannon (Mercer-backed Breitbart News) and former Trump Campaign manager from March-August 2016 and foreign political strategist, Paul Manafort, together with Brad Parscale’s Project Alamo and Facebook employees onsite and Rebekah Mercer’s input from afar, tested each social media meme in sometimes 100,000+ variations to target and manipulate each voter on an individual basis, concentrating on vulnerable districts, using a minimum of 5,000 data points. Israeli military intelligence psyops were also employed by Psy-Group, and Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Elections also has had a working relationship with ex-Mossad Black Cube. Russians hacked all 50 states and obtained voter roll information to complement their efforts. Polling data was passed from Manafort to the Russians via intermediaries. Everyone was affected by this attack, one way or another. Fake Russian accounts created Trump rallies, and misogynist “Bernie Bros” are thought to have been Russian trolls in part. Even Jill Steinhad dinner with Putin and Flynn in December 2015 in Moscow. Bernie Sanders‘s ties go back to the early 80s.
Unfortunately, our President gets his news from fake sources, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been a promoter, our Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has long been at the helm with Breitbart News, and Trump’s friend and loyalist, Robert Ailes, has gone down with Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones, Milo, and others.
RISS/Russian Institute For Strategic Studies, released two strategic documents in June 2016 and October 2016. “Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin.” Reuters The June and October 2016 papers were written under Leonid Reshetnikov, who retired in January 2017, and was replaced by Mikhail Fradkov. “Fradkov headed Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency for nine years. Before that he served for three years as Russian prime minister.” RISSMikhail Fradkov is now “Almaz-Antey” Chairman of the Board of Directors RISSOn Jan. 31, the websites of Putin’s office [bit.ly/2os9wMr] and the institute [bit.ly/2oLn9Kd] posted a picture and transcript of Reshetnikov and his successor Fradkov meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. Reuters
“Russia Today and Sputnik published anti-Clinton stories while pro-Kremlin bloggers prepared a Twitter campaign calling into question the fairness of an anticipated Clinton victory, according to a report by U.S. intelligence agencies on Russian interference in the election made public in January. [bit.ly/2kMiKSA]
Russia Today’s most popular Clinton video – “How 100% of the 2015 Clintons’ ‘charity’ went to … themselves” – accumulated 9 millions views on social media, according to the January report. [bit.ly/2os8wIt]
The report said Russia Today and Sputnik “consistently cast president elect-Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional media outlets.”
The report said the agencies did not assess whether Moscow’s effort had swung the outcome of the race in Trump’s favor, because American intelligence agencies do not “analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.” [bit.ly/2kMiKSA]” Reuters
