Russian social media debate: clickbait or information warfare?

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

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4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2019

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A new Senate Intelligence Committee report accuses the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm, of using "social media to conduct an information warfare campaign" against the United States. This comes one week after the U.S. imposed new sanctions on the IRA and its funder, Yevgeny Prigozhin. What is the IRA, and are the claims of a Russian influence campaign against the U.S. well-founded? Aaron Maté and journalist Jefferson Morley of "The Deep State" blog debate and discuss. Guest: Jefferson Morley, journalist, author, and editor of The Deep State, a blog about intelligence agencies. Read Jefferson Morley's article, "How Secrecy Undermines Mueller and the Defense of Democracy." https://www.justsecurity.org/65251/ho... Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Pushback on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pushbackshow Aaron Maté on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate Pushback on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lu7MGQ Pushback on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/pushbackshow Pushback on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2mpwIQm Pushback on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=465855 Find transcripts and more at https://thegrayzone.com/pushback ||| The Grayzone ||| Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com Support our original journalism at Patreon: https://patreon.com/grayzone Twitter: https://twitter.com/grayzoneproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/thegrayzone Minds: https://minds.com/thegrayzone

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to pushback. I'm Erin Mate. The U.S. government has imposed new sanctions
0:07.8	targeting the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm accused of meddling in the
0:12.2	2016 U.S. election. The Treasury Department says that the IRA and its financier,
0:17.8	Ivgeny Purgosian, are continuing, quote, attempts to subvert American
0:21.9	democratic processes.
0:23.9	The IRA has put out thousands of posts on U.S. social media accounts.
0:28.7	Only a small percentage, though, actually concerned the 2016 election, and the firm spent
0:34.1	just $46,000 on Facebook ads before that vote.
0:38.7	But still, its activities have been widely portrayed as a massive threat to U.S. democracy
0:43.7	and possibly decisive in Donald Trump's election victory.
0:47.3	Well, to discuss this, I spoke recently to Jefferson Morley.
0:50.3	He is a journalist, author, an editor of a blog called The Deep State.
0:55.2	Jefferson, thanks for coming on pushback.
0:56.9	So your piece takes issue with an argument that I've made, which is that it was disingenuous,
1:02.2	I think, on Mueller's part to suggest that this Russian troll farm was a part of a sweeping
1:08.9	and systematic Russian government interference campaign.
1:11.5	Your piece- Right.
1:12.6	Yeah.
1:13.6	What I was saying in my piece was I think that there's not a formal connection between the Russian
1:20.4	government and the Internet research agency, but a very strong informal relationship, which means that there's really a kind of functional
1:30.7	or transactional connection.
1:32.6	Okay, so, and you based that on the fact that this, the owner of the troll farm, this
	...

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