Incited Rioting
Monday, August 5, 2024
Incited Rioting
Russia has a long history of using influence operations to undermine law and order in other countries for the sake of inflaming civil conflict and strife among its perceived enemies. This pattern of state behavior goes well back in history to czarist times, back before that regime was removed and brutally murdered itself by the communist revolutionaries under Lenin and Trotsky.
All that historical baggage set aside, today’s Russian dictatorship under Vladimir Putin is chalking up misinformation wins in the west over and over again. The latest has involved inciting ethnic rage in the UK by way of online agitation. Violent right-wing riots have broken out in Southampton, Hampshire, UK, after a dummy online news outlet calling itself “Channel 3 Now” attempted to pin a knife attack on an imaginary perpetrator of Muslim immigrant extraction. From the Beeb’s report:
[The fake story resembling similar instances—see article—is] the same with Monday’s attack on a children’s holiday dance and yoga session in Southport, England.
A false name - attributed to the 17-year-old accused of killing three little girls as well as injuring eight other children and two adults - spread like wildfire across X, formerly known as Twitter.
The BBC is not repeating the false name here to avoid spreading misinformation. Media organisations cannot give the suspect's real name for legal reasons, but Merseyside Police have said the name shared on social media is incorrect.
Nevertheless, posts on X sharing the fake name were actively promoted to users and racked up millions of views.
The result was all that the Kremlin could have asked for: sowing rage and fear and instability in the UK. The garbage story was picked up and amplified by irresponsible political commentators, politicians, troll-farm TwiX1 accounts, and text message conversations on the instant messaging app Telegram, which seems to be very popular with the Russian state.
There was discussion of the rally [which turned into a violent mob] on regional anti-immigration channels on the Telegram app. Protest movements are often organised in closed chat groups we can’t access.
But false and unfounded claims about the attack expanded beyond the usual online spaces where these kinds of protests are organised.
Content being seen by millions of X users, rather than just the fringes of social media, could also normalise some of the hate being pushed.
Some of those amplifying these ideas included prominent political commentators and politicians. Others were less well-known, but with a reputation for promoting evidence-free conspiracy theories.
It makes for quite the story, and I can only recommend reading it in its entirety.
The question that I don’t know the answer to is how western governments and civilian authorities can deal with these destabilizing propaganda operations without merely increasing the level of suspicion, mistrust, and rage in civil society. Nevertheless, one would hope that governments and public figures might behave responsibly by cooperating against foreign malefactors. One would hope…
Thanks to commenter C C Writer for the wonderful blend of Twitter and X as a moniker for the social media website, posted in comments several months ago.
Good morning. None of the under-50 crowd is up yet. It's damp outside, temperature in the 70s.
Good morning. Heavily overcast but no rain, which is really good because we have a graveside funeral to attend at 11. It is for a friend of my husband, a really gifted musician who lived a full life and made the world a better place.
And there is a storm coming later this week and my family lives on the coast.
And we are working on breaking it to my mother that it's time for her to move into an assisted living facility. She will be happier there because she will not be alone.
I need something escapist, hopeful and literary to read or listen to.
It does look like a good week to clean out the attic.