From Russia With Hate

With the hearings in Washington turn up all types of Russian medaling around the world and now we heard about the Facebook ads that Russian used to stir up hate here.

These are the most popular stealth Russian Facebook ads from each month
The Washington Post
By Philip Bump
May 10, 2018

On Thursday, Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee released several-thousand ads that had been run on Facebook as part of Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. politics from mid-2015 through August of last year. We broke down the numbers behind those posts, including how many clicks they got each month and how much they cost.

We thought it would be interesting, though, to also pull out the most popular ads that were introduced each month to get a broad sense of which advertising efforts were actually effective. Below, the ad campaigns initiated in each month from June 2015 to August 2017 that received the most overall clicks. (No data is available for June 2017.)

They had a number of pro-LGBT ads along with anti-LGBT and it looks like they were trying to generate a wedge between us.

Then get a load of this ad, talk about siring up hate and divisiveness.

They also had pro and anti-Black Live Matter ads, anti-immigrations ads, and patriotic ads

But this isn’t a recent phenomenon do you remember the uproar over Jade Helm and using the military to take everyone guns and political dissidents?

Hysteria over Jade Helm exercise in Texas was fueled by Russians, former CIA director says
Gov. Greg Abbott's decision in 2015 to ask the Texas State Guard to monitor a federal military exercise prompted significant criticism. A former CIA director said Wednesday that the move emboldened Russians to next target elections.
The Texas Tribune
By Cassandra Pollock and Alex Samuels
May 3, 2018

A former director of the CIA and NSA said Wednesday that hysteria in Texas over a 2015 U.S. military training exercise called Jade Helm was fueled by Russians wanting to dominate “the information space,” and that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's decision to send the Texas State Guard to monitor the operation gave them proof of the power of such misinformation campaigns.

Michael Hayden, speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe podcast, chalked up peoples’ fear over Jade Helm 15 to “Russian bots and the American alt-right media [that] convinced many Texans [Jade Helm] was an Obama plan to round up political dissidents.”
[…]
Jade Helm 15 was a planned military training exercise that became a fascination of conspiracy theorists before it even began. The exercise, which spanned several states, began in Texas in Bastrop County in 2015 and was described by federal officials as routine. But some conspiracy theorists speculated that the exercise was a covert effort to institute martial law. Hayden was not CIA director at this time.

The governor bought it hook, line and sinker, and he order the State Guard to keep an eye on the military.

I think that if Russia cannot play nice in the world sandbox that we should give them a “time out” and cut their internet.