Thread by @frodofied

My God.

There is so much here. Arrogance and complete lack of crittical thinking are chief among them.

These are verified facts:

1. Russia decided to support only two candidates in the 2016 American election. One was Donald Trump, the other was Bernie Sanders.

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2. Russia began deploying misinformation bots across social media as early as 2014. These bots disseminated and encouraged the spread of anti-Clinton fake news stories. There were hundreds of thousands of them and they infested Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, DKos and Instagram.

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Their targeted audiences were young idealistic high school and college students whom they inundated with data and stories about Clinton and the Democratic Party that included exaggerations, blame shifting, and outright fabrications.

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Simultaneousy they pushed positive narratives about both Trump & Sanders following the same pattern of exaggeration & fabrication, replacing blame shifting with glory claiming.

Suddenly, for instance, Sanders had always been supportive of gay marriage & Clinton was anti-gay.

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This was happening a full year before the fight for the Democratic nomination began.

By the time Sanders entered the race to be nominated to lead the party he had always publicly abhorred many young voters had had over a year of curated fake news shared with them as fact.

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This is all established fact.

In light of these facts a rational person might pause to wonder how much of their thinking had been influenced.

How much of their admiration for Sanders and hatred of Clinton been the product of an orchestrated effort by outside forces?

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At the very least it seems obvious that any antipathy toward Clinton was, again, at the very least, probably exaggerations of exaggerations.

This seems logical and probable.

Yet no such evolution of thought has taken place.

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Indeed, many on the left who had fallen prey to the efforts to dehumanize Clinton & recast her as an evil oligarch who was an enemy of the people & friend to corps, would dig in their heels.

Too few Sanders supporters have come forward to even acknowledge the possibility.

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Which means Russia won, and now knows they can win. The left have become the willing if unwitting participants in the theft of our democracy.

In the end, it was a tour de force of narrative shaping that was aided by endemic American misogyny & powerful computer algorithms.

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The logical way to fight Russian efforts would be for the left to reengage, admit mistakes have been made, and try to move forward as allies, if not actual political counterparts.

But, presently, that common sense approach seems impossible.

To our collective detriment.

#resist

* Astonishing too how Hillary and Bill Clinton, who were, like Bernie Sanders, raised in basically middle class households were somehow, despite most evidence to the contrary, so easily transformed into nothing more than wealthy, distant, corporate worshipping oligarchs.

In fact, both Clinton's have worked incredibly hard for all they've achieved. They've never stopped working.

Both have done extraordinary things.

Yes, they are wealthy now. But this wealth is new. It's also wealth they share. They pay their taxes and live philanthropic lives.

Sanders, however, attended the University of Chicago and later joined the white flight movement to wealthy Vermont in 1968 and didn't take his first real job when he was 40 years old. He does not give to charity and refuses to release his taxes,

The Clinton's have released their taxes every year since 1992.

Yet, Sanders is portrayed as the working man's hero while the Clinton's are painted into caricaturized villains' roles.

Strange political algebra.